Publishing under the red veil

The KSČ, did not have an impact directly on the spot, but through organizations with an impact on what can and cannot be published, such as Zväz československých spisovateľov, the society of Czechoslovak writers, where translators had their own section. On one side, they offered funds to support writers and  other art sectors, which were previously underfinanced, but on the other side, literature became more dependent on this financing, which lead to a certain loss of artistic freedom. This phenomenon is called „nationalisation“ of the distribution and publishing of literature. The idea behind this was that the writers themselves, through authors organizations, should decide what books should be printed, which means that literature would no longer adapt to trends in literature, but rather focus on national literature. But we should ask ourselves a question – should literature be guided? A free market with healthy competition offers the readers what they want most, whether that is for example a translation of a popular book from abroad or domestic literature - a book from a Czechoslovakian author - literature market simply adapts to the demands of the readers. Apart from the strict rules of publishing, the government could influence the future development of literature through other ways. One such way was the distribution of paper. To someone from abroad it may seem absurd, but the paper factories were under state control, so the government also decided how much paper a publisher could receive. Cooperative publishers, agreeing to the dominant ideology of socialistic realism, received more funding and also paper, which allowed them to publish on a greater scale than the others. Publishers that did not abide to the rules or dared out to speak against the rules, were often met with confiscation of property and its transfer to the hands of the state. The property was then managed by a „národný správca“ (freely translated as a national administrator), which was usually a person more willing to cooperate, or even a supporter of the current regime. By these actions, the power of the regime was slowly, but surely increasing.

Now that we are familiar with the publishing situation in Czechoslovakia, we would like to discuss the paratexts of Slovak translations of Dutch literature. As we already know, we cannot speak of a regular free market, where publishers compete between each other to be successful. But despite this fact, we can still find a huge variety of paratexts – aspects of a book which are meant to attract the potential reader and provide information about the book or author’s life.  So the question arises – why was there such a variety? Dutch literature in that period was not so well-known in Czechoslovakia, so through the use of paratexts, for example a nicely designed cover, people could notice the book and perhaps decide to learn more about it. That is when the other types of paratexts come into play – interesting facts about the author or in some cases illustrations. Another type of paratexts which appeared frequently were forewords. They were often written by the translator and in some cases also mentioned the regime’s most respected values, of course only in a positive way. For example if the book’s main protagonist shared the qualities of an ideal socialistic hero, they were brought up and put on a pedestal.

What we also found out is that a lot of the illustrations and covers were created by successful graphic designers and artists, such as Ladislav Guverna, a surrealistic painter, who has also received international awards for his works of art. As long as the illustration was not depicting the politic regime in a negative way, the publisher had a free hand. We cannot speak about a specific style, since every publisher had a different style. In the case of the book Goethe – Nico Rost, we can see that the cover is totally different than the original – we can see a surrealistic design. Below, you can see two very different types of covers, one of the already mentioned book Goethe and one very simple and basic, the cover of Kamenné svadobné lôžko (Het Stenen Bruidsbed) by Harry Mulisch, which bears almost no information that could attract the potential reader. Mulisch was not particularly a welcomed author for the communist regime, which may explain the unattractive cover presented with caution to the Slovak readership. Rost on the other hand, was an left-wing Dutch author who wrote his Dachau diary and was sent to this camp because of his political thoughts.

The regime also came with a phenomenon typical to communistic countries – having everything under your thumb, although sometimes indirectly. As we already mentioned, there was no official censorship, so how could the government influence what can and cannot be published? Very easily – through distributing paper needed for printing only to „cooperative“ publishers. That way, they did not have to worry about someone throwing a shade at the regime. The following photo of paratextual information belongs to the book Ženy do Jacatry (Vrouwen naarr Jacarta), written by Ary den Hertog.  At first it does not seem like anything special can be found there, but upon a closer look, almost at the bottom, there is a small number which indicates the following code: povol. SÚKK – č. 46/I – OR – 1972, which meant that the Slovak authority for book culture – a censorship agency -  had agreed to the publishing of this book in the year 1972.