Translating Canada

The “Other Women”: Canadian Women Writers Blazing a Trail into Germany

The “Other Women”: Canadian Women Writers Blazing a Trail into Germany Brita Oeding and Luise von Flotow University of Ottawa One of the stereotypical German associations with Canada and its history is that of pioneers, explorers, and conquerors of the wilderness. Some of them must have been women, “roughing it in the bush,” as Susanna Moodie, the Canadian “Ur-pioneer,” has described it. However, while this particular stereotype usually excludes women, they played an important role as literary pioneers in contemporary Germany, blazing the trail for later Canadian writers. )URPWKHODWHVRQZDUG*HUPDQWUDQVODWLRQVRI&DQDGLDQDGXOWÀFWLRQZHUH dominated by books written by women. In this chapter, we focus mainly on English Canadian writers for the reason that our interest lies in the German mainstream response to Canadian writing in translation: far more English Canadian than French Canadian writers were translated into German during the time frame discussed here. The reviews printed in the 1980s and 1990s predominantly focused on English Canadian DXWKRUVDQGRQO\RQWKHEHVWVHOOLQJRQHV7KLVIRFXVUHÁHFWVDJHQHUDOWHQGHQF\ both in Canada and in the majority of international Canadian Studies. This chapter is concerned, then, with German responses to the wave of translations of English Canadian women writers,1 a response that, in its enthusiasm, undoubtedly had a strong effect on the international success of the works. Most of the reviews that we use to trace this response come from the 1. There have been recent attempts to stimulate Germany’s interest in French Canadian writing and to overcome the tendency to ignore the existence of French cultures on the North American continent. The anthology Anders schreibendes Amerika: Literatur aus Quebec 1945–2000 was published in 2000, and in October 2001 then Canadian Governor General Adrienne Clarkson visited Germany with a delegation of about forty “cultural workers,” half of them French Canadian. Among them were dramatist Michel Marc Bouchard, poet Pierre Morency, and the writer-translator pair Émile Martel and Daniel Poliquin. %BRITA OEDING AND LUISE VON FLOTOW archive of newspapers and journals in Innsbruck, Austria, and appeared between 1980 and 1999 in major German-language publications, mainly in Die Zeit, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Rundschau, Die Welt, and Neue Zürcher Zeitung. PIONEERS IN WOMEN’S WRITING In the late 1980s and 1990s, a reader living in Germany could easily have got the impression that virtually all Canadian writers were women. New books by Canadian women appeared regularly in bookstores and were reviewed in the arts and culture sections of all the major newspapers. Photographs of the authors were everywhere: Margaret Atwood looked out of bookstore windows and many newspaper and magazine pages, Barbara Gowdy beguiled readers (of reviews at least) with charming photographs, and many travelled widely to readings and book signings, to book fairs and academic events, as well as to the Canadian Embassy. Indeed, people might have been led to think that Canada was women writers’ heaven on Earth, a secret paradise that especially encouraged and nurtured creative writing by women. :KLOH&DQDGLDQÀFWLRQKDGEHHQDSSHDULQJLQWUDQVODWLRQVLQFHEHIRUH:RUOG War II, German readers had hitherto been offered a rather spotty selection: six books by Mazo de la Roche were translated in the forty years from 1936 to 1975;2 Arthur Hailey and Malcolm Lowry were translated as Canadian authors in the 1970s, although their status as “Canadian” writers is rather dubious.3 Some of Leonard Cohen’s work was translated in the wake of his success as a singersongwriterintheearly1970s (buthardlyreviewed);4 anovelbyMargaretLaurence, one by Morley Callaghan, as well as two books by Mordecai Richler had been translated by the late 1970s. A number of books by women writers from French Canada had arrived in Germany at various unrelated moments: three novels by Gabrielle Roy were translated between 1956 and 1970, Anne Hébert’s Kamouraska (1970) appeared in 1972, even one year earlier than the English translation (two other works were published in the 1990s), Marie Claire Blais’s Médici Prizewinning Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel (1965) was published in German as Schwarzer Winter in 1967. Until the late 1970s, however, there was no more than DIUDJPHQWHGWUDQVIHURI&DQDGLDQÀFWLRQZULWLQJLQWR*HUPDQZLWK&DQDGLDQ  'HOD5RFKH ² LVEHVWNQRZQIRUWKH´-DOQDµVHULHVDIDPLO\KLVWRU\VHWLQÀFWLWLRXV Whiteoaks, Ontario. 3. Hailey immigrated to Canada from England after World War II and spent many years living in the...