Introduction

Zofka Kveder (1878–1926) was an enthusiastic researcher of new geographical and cultural spaces from a young age. As a twenty-year-old girl, she went to study in Switzerland, dependent only on her savings. Later, in the spring of 1900, she settled for six years in Prague, which was then a centre for young students from the Slavic south. The contacts she made in the Czech capital benefited her in the Croatian cultural space when she moved to Zagreb in 1906.[2] Her desire to discover new worlds and establish contacts with representatives of foreign cultures was a trigger for many activities in the field of cultural transmission. As an immigrant, Zofka Kveder discovered literary personalities and their works in her new homelands, met interesting national representatives, about whom she then wrote in journalistic and literary texts, and was overwhelmed by various movements and ideas that she wanted to share with others. These activities can be described as cultural transmission, which Dutch researcher Petra Broomans understands as a reciprocal process of sharing cultural and literary information, while cultural transfer means a one-way activity – for example, translating a text from one language into another. Literary mediation does not only include translation but more:

A cultural transmitter basically works within a particular language and cultural area. She/he often takes on various roles in the field of cultural transmission: translator, reviewer, critic, journalist, literary historian, scholar, teacher, librarian, bookseller, collector, literary agent, scout, publisher, editor of a journal, writer, travel writer or counsellor. Transmitting another national literature and its cultural context to one's own national literature and cultural context is the central issue in the work of a cultural transmitter. Transmission often reflects a bilateral situation. Even the transmission of one's own literature also takes place. The motivation can be aesthetically, ideologically, politically and / or economically based.[3]

As P. Broomans adds, cultural transmission can also be the transmission of ideas that a mediator comes into contact with when discovering other cultural spaces. Cultural transmitters can live among members of the same community and mediate from a foreign culture, but they can also live in foreign cultural spaces, which enables them to transmit their own culture to a new environment. In this sense, Zofka Kveder acted in many ways.

After leaving the Slovene ethnic space, she published various articles in Slovene and Croatian newspapers in which she wrote about artists from the new cultural environments in which she lived. Moreover, at the same time she tried to acquaint the readers in these places not only with her own literary work but also with translations of other Slovene writers into German and later also into Croatian and Czech. Translations of short stories from her first prose collection Misterij žene (The Mystery of the Woman, 1900), in which the author conveyed ideas about female subordination, were published in German, Czech, Croatian, and Polish newspapers and journals. In this way, she crossed geographical and linguistic boundaries and operated multiculturally and transnationally, which places her in a special and not so very large group of cultural transmitters of her time. The presentation of her literary transmission therefore represents a contribution to a transnational cultural transfer and transmission history[4] that has not been written yet,[5] and such a history must in particular focus on the role of women in this field, as gender can be an important factor in cultural mediation.[6]

Zofka Kveder as a translator of works by Czech, German, and Croatian authors into Slovene and German

Getting acquainted with a foreign culture takes place in different ways. Among the most common ones is fascination with a certain work of art, which encourages translation into the mother tongue of the mediator. However, transmission can also be the result of personal contacts. Soon after arriving in Prague, Zofka Kveder established contacts with many authors who lived there and wrote in Czech and German. It is unclear how Kveder got to know German-speaking authors in the circle of Oskar Wiener, but we know that Zdenka Hasková helped the Slovenian writer to join the Czech circle of young artists in the Slavija literary club and the Ružena Svobodova literary salon.[7] In gatherings with various cultural figures, Zofka Kveder also acted as a representative of Slovenian literature who undoubtedly acquainted her Czech intellectual friends with her. Contacts with Prague writers encouraged the transmission of their artistic achievements to the Slovene speaking area, but also to the German and Croatian ones.

Compared to the German one, the Czech circle was more inspiring in terms of literary transmission, as it encouraged Zofka Kveder to translate Gabriela Preissová and to write about Ružena Svobodová, Eliška Krásnohorska, Božena Nemcova, and Teréza Novákova. Zofka Kveder knew Preissová and Svobodová personally.[8] For the Zagreb daily Agramer Tagblatt, she translated into German a short story Jahody (Strawberries) by Gabriela Preissová, in 1901. She also translated her play Gazdina roba (The Slave Woman) into Slovene and it was staged at the Provincial Theatre in Ljubljana on 13 October 1904. It is very likely that she also met writer Božena Vikova-Kuněticková in Prague. As can be seen from a letter, she wrote to the then very successful Czech writer in May 1902, and she translated one of her one-act plays into German and offered it to the magazine Dokumente der Frauen (Women’s Documents). But the editorial board of this important feminist magazine had already accepted a translation of B. Vikova-Kunětickova's short story for publication, so the editor, Marie Lang, postponed the publication of Kveder's translation to a later period. Unfortunately, the magazine ceased publication in the same year.

Zofka Kveder probably met German writer Gabriela Reuter in Berlin. She wrote about this in the text Kod Gabrijele Reuterjeve (At Gabriela Reuter’s), where she also mentions her book Aus guter Familie (From a Good Family, 1895) and states that she read it with friends in Prague. The novel moved everyone and they fell in love with Gabriela Reuter. She also mentions this novel in her literary text Študentke (Students, 1900).

Translations from Slovenian into German and Croatian

Zofka Kveder translated a lot of the prose of the Slovenian leading modernist Ivan Cankar into German, and these translations were published in the German newspaper Politik in Prague. She even planned the publication of her short stories collection Vinjete at Albert Langen publishing house.[9] Undoubtedly, she was also an important mediator in the translation of Cankar into Czech. His play Za narodov blagor (For the Wealth of the Nation, 1901) was translated into this language by her friend Zdenka Hasková. Kveder should also be given a lot of credit for the first staging of this play in Prague.[10] She was also very active as a translator of other Slovenian writers into German.[11]

After moving to Zagreb, she acquainted the Croatian cultural environment with the works of Slovenian writers through articles about them and translations. In 1913, together with Milan Vrbanić, she published a selection of Slovene short stories in Croatian (Kveder, Vrbanić 1913). For the Croatian National Theatre, on the initiative of Dr Branko Gavella, she translated Cankar's drama Hlapci (The Serfs, 1910).[12]

Unfulfilled translation plans

Kveder’s meeting with the Bulgarian Petko Conev during her studies in Switzerland stimulated her interest in Bulgarian literature, as can be seen from Petko Conev's letter of 31 October 1900. It can be concluded from the letter that Zofka Kveder planned translations from Bulgarian literature, as she asked a Bulgarian friend for advice on which Bulgarian literary works would be interesting to translate. Conev wrote to her:

I was waiting for some Bulgarian authors who would recommend me good short stories and novels. In the upcoming period, I will have more time as to be able to undertake the desired translations. However, it is questionable whether you will understand anything from my German. Unfortunately, the Bulgarian-German dictionary has not yet been published and I doubt it will. Other philologists are now busy creating a new, much more extensive dictionary. Maybe you plan to do the translation yourself? It would be very good if you could. I want to help you as much as I can. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, I will get answers from our writers, and then I will immediately write to you about the scope of the work and perhaps also the content.[13]

Obviously, personal meetings were an important stimulus for translations of Czech authors into Slovene and German, and for translations of Slovene authors into German and Croatian.

Responses to the publication of Zofka Kveder's works in the German, Czech, Croatian, Serbian, and Bulgarian speaking areas

Zofka Kveder published some of her works in German and Croatian, while others were mostly translated into foreign languages by other translators. Her work of this kind is particularly extensive in the Czech-speaking world, where she has also published books that have been reviewed in the Czech press.[14]

It is not clear how her texts came to be published in Polish and Lusatian Serbian, but it is possible to follow the responses to her works in the Bulgarian and Serbian cultural spaces.[15] The analysis of these responses reveals that Zofka Kveder was most often presented as a Slovene author, which means that she was also an important transmitter of Slovene literature to other cultural spaces. The performances of her dramatic texts also testify to her recognisability in the Slavic cultural space.

Performances of Zofka Kveder's dramatic texts in the Slavic space

The first staging of Zofka Kveder's play took place in Prague in the 1903/04 season. The one-act play Ljubezen (Love, 1901) was staged together with the one-act play Red sv. Jurija (The Order of St. Jurij, 1900) by Slovenian playwright Anton Aškerc, but this happened without the knowledge of both, even more – they were cited as Russian authors. They were staged by the young Urania Theatre in the Prague suburbs, which gladly opened its doors to innovations from around the world. As early as the autumn of 1902, Kveder asked her friend Ziegleros to recommend her to one of the owners of the then advanced theatres on the outskirts of Prague, perhaps Švanda or Pištěk.[16] Zofka Kveder wrote about this in the article “Velectěný pani redaktore” (“Highly respected Mr. Editor”), which was published in the newspaper Čas (The Time) in 1904.[17] Also in the text Pro domo, found in the writer’s manuscript legacy, a staging of Ljubezen in Urania is mentioned. Kveder wrote:

Some twelve, fourteen years ago, a small injustice happened in Prague. I don't know what it really was: whether I didn't get the furniture I was praying for, or whether it was when they gave one of my one-act plays on the Prague stage, of course without my knowledge, as a translation from Russian. Machar, who lived in Vienna at the time, somehow found out about it, – not from me! and wrote a very nice article in The Time in defence of my rights. That was in Prague.[18]

The next performance took place in Zagreb. The one-act play Tuje oči (Foreign Eyes, 1901) was staged at the Croatian National Theatre on 17 October 1905 as directed by Josip Bach. They played in Slovene and together with three other South Slavic one-act plays. Due to its success with the audience, the one-act plays were performed again four days later (21 October 1905).[19]

On 8 November 1905, it also appeared on the Belgrade stage as part of the so-called South Slavic evening, which had previously taken place in Zagreb, but with a slightly different selection of texts. The Slovenian drama was again presented by Zofka Kveder with Ljubezen. Ljudmila Malinova Dimitrova found out that Ljubezen was played in Serbian translation by Vlado Stanimirović, directed by Milorad Gavrilović, and played by Radomir Petrović (old Koder), Jelena Gavrilović Petrović (Mrs Koder), Bogoboj Rucović (Dušan), Aleksandra Bojićeva (Jelva), and Luka Popović (Branko). According to Dimitrova, two reviews of the play – in Odjek (The Echo) and Srpski književni glasnik (The Serbian Literary Herald)[20] – had been published.

Transmission of ideas in journalistic and essayistic texts

As an important form of cultural transmission, P. Broomans cites the transmission of ideas that “travel” in literary texts and their translations, in travel letters, in international educational strategies and art colonies: “Travelling ideas are like the roots of a rhizome, they become established in one place and then extend to another on the waves of cultural transfer, in the form of literature, letters or paintings. During this travel, both at departure and upon arrival, obstacles have to be overcome or negotiations undertaken.”[21] In the nineteenth century, the ideas of women's emancipation and feminism were intensively circulating in Europe. As a woman who advocated free-life choices, Zofka Kveder was open to feminist ideas and communicated them in both her literary and journalistic works. In the present article, due to space constraints, we will focus only on journalistic articles.

Feminism

In her early feminist texts, Zofka Kveder focused mainly on the views of leading feminists from the German and Scandinavian-speaking areas. She published her first such text in the newspaper Slovenski narod (The Slovene Nation) on 1 February 1899 and titled it “Nekaj o ženskem vprašanju” (“Something About the Woman Question”). In a witty and conversational tone, this text draws attention mainly to the attitude of (male) society towards women who cannot or do not want to fulfil the traditional female role, and tries to explain why it is important for women to have the opportunity to live independently. The author changes the feuilleton style of writing in her first feminist article for the magazine Slovenka (The Slovene Woman) entitled “O ženskem vprašanju” (“On the Woman Question”, 1899). Although there is a humorous tone in the introduction, it makes it clear that university studies should be accessible to women. In articles written from the spring of 1900 onwards, wit is often replaced by irony and sarcasm, a reconcilable tone is no longer to be found. The development of her feminist thought was certainly influenced by the intensive reading of literature on this topic in both German and Czech. In the article “Kaj hočemo” (“What do we want?”, 1900) Kveder summarizes excerpts from the novel by Czech writer Josef Laichter (1864–1949) Za pravdou (For Justice, 1898). In this article, she most clearly expresses her view on the role of women: a woman must remain faithful to her innate duties, being a wife and mother is her basic profession, and she can add professional fulfilment, and above all she can choose a partner out of love and not only to ensure her own economic security.

The condition for a girl to develop into an independent woman, as the author emphasizes again, is proper upbringing. Zofka Kveder also published feminist articles in other newspapers – Slovenski narod and Jutro (The Morning). The article “Žensko vprašanje” (“The Woman Question”, 1910), written after lectures in Trieste and Gorizia in 1910, is an attempt at a short history of women, in which the author also exhibits a good knowledge of writings on “the woman question” (M. Wollstonecraft, J. Stuart Mill).

As a representative of a small nation, Zofka Kveder was aware that only by writing in foreign newspapers could she acquaint wider circles with the emancipatory aspirations of Slovene women. In Prague, she established contacts with Czech feminists and was given the opportunity to present the Slovenian women's movement to the Czech public. This is how the article “Ženské hnutí slovinské” (“The Slovenian Women's Movement”) was written, in which the magazine Slovenka is presented as an important part of the Slovenian women's movement. After moving to Zagreb, Zofka Kveder acquainted the Czech society with the situation of women in Croatia.[22]

Zofka Kveder also reported on the first Slovenian women's magazine in the German-speaking world. In the Vienna Dokumente der Frauen she published an article “Zustände in einem Waisenhaus” (“Situation in an Orphanage”, 1900), in which she first summarized an article on the Carniolan girls' orphanage, entitled “Vzgoja v sirotiščih” (“Education in Orphanages”), published in the tenth issue of Slovenka on 15 October 1900, and then presented the magazine and emphasized that the journal with the new editor also got a new image, as she started to change it from a family magazine to a feminist one.

In Agramer Tagblatt, during the First World War, she warned that women's suffrage should not be overlooked in political decisions, and reported on the Women's Congress in Stockholm. During and after the war, she published numerous articles on the role and position of women in the new state in the magazine Ženski svijet (The Woman’s World), later renamed Jugoslavenska žena (The Yugoslav Woman). In the first issues, published during the war, she wrote about the role of women in the peace movement and what they demand in the political field. The striking article was entitled “Što hočemo?” (“What do we want?”, 1917), just like the article in Slovenka almost two decades before. In a Croatian article, she wrote that women want peace, political and social equality, so that women will not give up the right and duty of motherhood. As the parliament is preparing a reform of the right to vote, Zofka Kveder also writes that Croatian women demand the right to vote. In articles already written in the new state, she encourages the active participation of women in public life, as in this way they co-create a new homeland. A few texts were also devoted to the presentation of women's education in the Czech Republic.[23] Žarka Svirčev concisely defines the importance of the newspaper in terms of conveying both feminist and Yugoslav ideas:

The Yugoslav character of the magazine that Zofka Kveder insisted on, despite the kind of cultural displacement she faced during the period of the magazine's publication, was important because of the unification and emancipation of all women, because of similarities within the differences that were respected in magazine texts. The editor foresaw the epochal importance of the intercultural perspective, which enables the polyphony of women's voices, which complicates the representative network of women, thus gaining strength.[24]

The power of artistic creativity (articles about artists and their creations)

In Slovene modernity, the position of the artist is a motive constant in literature and journalism, so it is not surprising that Zofka Kveder also wrote texts in which she problematised the underestimated role of artists in society and defended their artistic autonomy. Zofka Kveder articulated the idea of the artist as an exceptional individual, which had been a topic of scholarly interest in articles and essays since the Romantic era.

After leaving the Slovenian cultural space, Zofka Kveder acquainted her compatriots with foreign artists and their creations in various magazines. In the Bavarian capital, she was strongly impressed by the Italian painter Giovanni Segantini, so she wrote an article about him for the art journal Ljubljanski zvon (The Ljubljana Bell). She also reported on exhibitions and theatrical performances from Prague in other newspapers and journals. Lilijana Stepančič writes about her reports on exhibitions:

She did a great job. She informed the Slovenian audience about contemporary art as presented at important exhibitions in Prague, aroused in the institutionally less complex Slovene cultural space a curiosity about the rich cultural life in the Czech capital, and supported the ambitions to develop cultural events in Ljubljana. With greater visibility of the more advanced and liberal part of fine art as created by newspaper publications, she made a contribution to raising the importance of the then so-called non-historical nations within a nationally imperialist world.[25]

She also indirectly presented Czech culture in an article about librarian Jan Lego, in the feuilletonKritika in svetovna literatura pri nas (Criticism and World Literature in Slovenia, 1901) and in a record on Czech public libraries in the journal Domači prijatelj (Family Friend, 1904) which she edited. Moreover, she also reported to readers of Nada (Hope), Savremenik (The Contempory), Jugoslavenska žena (The Yugoslav Woman), and Agramer Tagblatt on cultural life in Prague.

Throughout her cultural career, Zofka Kveder actively represented Slovenian literature in the spaces in which she lived and created. For Prague's Politik, she wrote a review article on Slovene writers entitled “Einiges von der slowenischen Literatur” (“Some Notes on Slovenian Literature”, 1903). In the introduction, she explains that the Slovenes like to read and that they are a solid nation, as otherwise they would succumb to all the severe pressures of alienation. Then she introduces individual authors. She also wrote about Slovene literature in the article “Něco ze slovinské literatury” (“Something about Slovene Literature”), which was published in the newspaper Národ (The Nation).

Kveder acted as a cultural transmitter in another direction as well: she introduced Croatian writers, who wrote in the magazine Nova Nada (Novonadaši), to the Slovenian audience. She published most articles about Slovenian writers after moving to Zagreb in the Croatian literary magazine Savremenik (The Contemporary). In 1907, she first introduced Simon Gregorčič, Josip Murn, and Dragotin Kette to Croats, and in 1910 she published a series of articles titled “Slovenska knjiga i pisci” (“Slovenian book and writers”) in which she wrote about Ernestina Jelovšek, Ivan Cankar, Ivan Lah, Vladimir Levstik, Fran Milčinski, and Anton Aškerc. Although she wanted to provide as much information as possible about the presented writers, she also touched on other topics. Writing about the poet and priest Simon Gregorčič, she cannot avoid mentioning Slovene Catholic critic Anton Mahnič, who rejected Gregorčič's artistic expression because it was not in accordance with Catholic doctrine, and reminds of a similar treatment of Anton Aškerc and Ivan Cankar at the hands of the Slovenian Catholic Church. However, her attitude is not narrow or one-sided, since she devotes an exhaustive article to Slovenian writers and priests (Aškerc, Medved, Meško, Sardenko, and Finžgar) and presents their work in a favourable way.

Yugoslavism

The Yugoslav idea was very topical at the time when Zofka Kveder lived: “The idea of the brotherhood of Slavic nations, as carefully nurtured and conditioned by the political situation, managed to overcome the differences that arose between centuries-separated nations in two empires. The end of the First World War brought a new European map. The new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes put the Yugoslav idea to a new test.”[26] ^, [27]

Zofka Kveder, an enthusiast of the Yugoslav idea, experienced this situation first-hand. Even before the First World War, she used the term “Yugoslav”, for example, in her article Zlata Praga (Golden Prague, 1906), where she names painters who were born in Slovenian ethnic territory as Yugoslav painters. During the First World War, in Ženski svijet she explains why the Yugoslav identity is closest to her:

Today, what was is falling apart, and we women must move forward. Let's work towards the accomplishment of our most beautiful goal: unite the Yugoslavs! We work sincerely and with all the enthusiasm and sacrifice that a woman's heart is capable of feeling for this great idea which saved us from a hundred years of slavery. Let us not be petty, let us not think only of the interests of our tribe. It is not enough, Serbian woman, to feel like a Serbian woman today – You must be a Yugoslav! You are not a real Croatian native if you are only a Croat and you are not a Yugoslav! And you, Slovenian, forget your provincial patriotism and be a sincere daughter of a united, free Yugoslavia! […]

That is why, sisters, curse be upon the one among us who with her tongue is trying today to sow the old seeds of discord between us! Curse be upon the woman who disturbs the pure idealism of our husbands with quarrelsome remarks and poisonous words!

The Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs are one people today, they are Yugoslavs today! The children of our children will not even know that they are anything else but Yugoslavs, just as today we no longer know about the people of Kranj, Styria, Zagorje, Lika, Šokci, and Vlachs of our fathers.[28]

The renaming of the magazine Ženski svijet to Jugoslavenska žena reveals how close the idea of Yugoslavism was to her. Perhaps this was connected with her belief that in the Yugoslav identity all other national identities are melted. In 1919, she wrote optimistically that Slovene women no longer wanted her, while Croatian women did not recognize her as “theirs” and neither did Serb women, and that this sometimes hurt, but at the same time gave her the strength to remain a Yugoslav. However, this stance on identity did not enable her to overcome all the obstacles. Her Yugoslavism was especially problematic when she began to introduce it tendentiously into literary texts, especially drama, which made her the target of attacks by the Croatian cultural figures who rejected Yugoslav unitarism and centralism.[29]

Multiculturalism

The idea of Yugoslavism was close to Zofka Kveder mainly because of the possibility of coexistence between different cultures. Zofka Kveder had been fascinated by the diversity of tangible and intangible cultural heritage since her first encounters with other cultural spaces. After living in Trieste, where she was fascinated by the Mediterranean temperament, the first large city in which Zofka Kveder intended to stay for a long time was Zurich. She reported on her first impressions of the city in Slovenski narod. In a similar way, she also perceived the Bavarian capital, Munich, which she presented to readers of Agramer Tagblatt with her own experience of the city, and not just by documenting the cultural sights in it. During the First World War, she reminisced about her Balkan trip. She paid special attention to women, wanting to point out that the Slavic area is marked by a common cultural history:

The same names that Slovene women have borne since 900 B. C. still live in southern Serbia today. In the villages around Skopje, Veles and Bitola, in Kosovo Polje and along the mighty old Albanian border in Prizren – everywhere in the free and mercantile villages made of wicker and mud, mild names came to my ear: Tihica, Ljuba, Dražica, Vesela, Kosa, Lepa, Vila, and Iverka – which Slovenes bore one thousand, nine hundred, and eight hundred years ago on the plains and hills of Styria and Carinthia. How I liked cute naive names in Macedonia: Ljuta, Zla, Dobra, Zemidraga, and the like. [...] In Skopje's Montenegro above Skopje, women and girls still wear white linen dresses all embroidered with black ornaments in memory of the Kosovo tragedy, just as in the Croatian Littoral women wear black robes in the scorching sun, in memory of the death of the Frankopans.[30]

She also vividly presented her journey through Bosnia, where she paid particular attention to the lives of the locals, their customs and habits, and with special interest she also delved into the lives of women. She also wrote about Bosnia, especially its colonization, in an article for Agramer Tagblatt.[31] However, she was not always tolerant of other cultures. A negative attitude towards Judaism is revealed by her record in Ženski svijet.[32]

Conclusion

Zofka Kveder was undoubtedly the most multilingual and multicultural author of Slovenian modernism. Her contacts with representatives of foreign cultures and her following of current ideas were triggers for many activities in the field of cultural mediation. She translated the writings of Slovenian authors into German, Czech, and Serbo-Croatian, and she also translated from these languages. For example, she translated from Czech into German, or from Czech into Slovenian. Another activity of cultural transmission is, according to Petra Broomans, the transmission of ideas. Kveder was well-read in German and Czech feminist writings and transmitted feminist ideas to the Slovenian society through her articles in Slovenian newspapers and journals but also through her literary works. She was also a transmitter of artistic achievements, not only in the field of literature but also visual arts and theatre. After WW1 she was an ardent advocate of Yugoslavism, and was involved in many polemics about the issue of the Yugoslav identity, and also in connection with the identity of the Jews living in the territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Her literary and journalistic writings show her openness towards different cultures – she was especially interested in women’s lives within foreign cultures and her oeuvre contains some problematic conceptions concerning the images of Jews.

While her journalistic texts have recently been the subject of research in the field of literary and art history,[33] her translation work still presents a challenge for more in-depth presentations and also for a correct placement in the history of translation.