For a Critical and Bibliographical Reconstruction of the Relationship between Fascist Censorship and Translations

Abstract

This contribution intends to analyse the critical interest of the latest decades towards the fascist cultural context with specific reference to the field of transaltions which were placed on the Italian market in increasing numbers, especially from the 1930s. The intent would be to demonstrate how the transnational cultural dynamism that animated the twentieth century and that continues to enliven the Europe of the twenty-first century, can still be traced even in a dictatorial context – static and anachronistic par excellence – where there were many translation dynamics which, although conditioned by censorship, animated the growing publishing market. We will try to retrace the steps taken so far by a particular critical line relatively recent and grown in an international context that has begun to shed light on the many shadows that still surround the fascist cultural sphere, underlining how the latter has been neglected by post-war criticism to become a priviligied object of study only in recent decades. The picture that is emerging seems to be much more jagged than it could have been imagined soon after the end of fascism and it is now agreed that from an initial disinterest of the regime for the subversive potential of books and translations, there was a progressive interference by means of an arbitrary censorship so as to cause a surprising and dynamic permeability to the entry of foreign books. For their part, the publishing houses followed the evolution of regulatory interventions in order not to incur in bans, seizures and economic losses by applying a sort of preventive self-censorship on the works to be published which led to a content and formal manipulation of the texts of departure with surprisingly regularity.