The Reception of Virginia Woolf in Europe (review)

REVIEWS MARY ANN CAWS and NICOLA LUCKHURST, eds. The Reception of Virginia Woolfin Europe. London/New York: Continuum, 2002. xxxvii + 450 pp. A pioneering work in comparative reception studies, this book is a well-documented survey of the reception, translation, and evaluation of Virginia Woolf 's writings in Europe. Offering a survey ofthe main phases, trends, and developments in the dissemination ofher image and texts from France to Poland, and from Sweden to Greece and Spain, it exposes the "different social and cultural tempos in the various countries of the newly bom European Union," as one contributor puts it (282). From the French predilection for 77ie Waves and a depoliticized Woolfto the German embrace ofthe feminist cultural icon, from Woolfs early and abiding popularity in Sweden to her recent role in the struggle for recognition in Spain ofCatalan linguistic and cultural identity, the reader is introduced to a variety of cultural constructions of Woolf and to a plethora of factors affecting, influencing, and mediating the European reader's encounter with her. On the one hand, divergences in the various national receptions are located within broader structures: war as both a productive and a repressive force, making, for instance, Mrs. Dalloway "an obvious choice for translation in 1945" in Denmark (169), yet more often interrupting the processes ofediting, translating, and publishing Woolfs work; the fairly recent establishment of English Studies at European universities; and the political climate more generally, from the rise offeminism to the pressures ofcensorship, both communist and fascist. On the other hand, differences in the reception histories have resulted from the efforts of individuals as well: ardent and indefatigable admirers such as Victoria Ocampo, one ofWoolfs first feminist readers and editor ofSur, the magazine that commissioned Borges's Woolftranslations in the 1930s, or Wolfgang Wicht, her publisher in the GDR and "the only scholarly critic ofVirginia Woolfin East Germany during the whole period" (108), whose autobiographical account constitutes a unique eyewitness description ofpublishing conditions in a communist regime. In addition, much attention is given to the place oftranslation in the dissemination oftexts, including the impact ofsome particularly successful, or poor, ones; most notoriously, Marguerite Yourcenar's "undoubtedly very beautiful " but "deeply, almost insidiously, unfaithful" translation of 77ie Waves (55). Some themes recur: in many countries, Woolfs arrival coincides with that of modernism, with translations ofMrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, and reviews and criticism linking Woolf with Joyce and Proust "in a pecking order," Nicola Luckhurst notes, "that is invariably to Woolfs disadvantage" (3). Auerbach's Mimesis plays a significant role, through the dissemination ofthe English and French translations, or through translations into their own languages. And the women's movement establishes Woolfas a feminist icon, initiating the popular reception of Woolfas a modem classic with the publication oftranslations ofA Room ofOne 's Own, Three Guineas, and Orlando—a reception which, in the 1990s, is reinforced by film versions such as Sally Potter's Orlando. Like its Anglo-American counterpart , the European installation ofWoolfas a cultural icon results from two converging trends: Woolfs role as figurehead ofthe women's movement and the release, from within Bloomsbury, of (auto)biographical materials in the form of diaries, letters, and memoirs, not least the widely and swiftly translated biography by Quentin Bell (Virginia Woolf: A Biography, 1972). Vol. 27 (2003): 180 THE COMPAKATIST One also discovers specifically European takes on Woolf, for instance, the immensely popular German selection from Leonard Woolfs autobiography entitled Mein Leben mit Virginia (1988), later translated first into Italian (1989), then into Danish (1991). Or one leams about Woolfs special status in France, where, despite her marked influence on French feminism from de Beauvoir to notions of écriture féminine, she remains virtually unknown as a feminist. To this day, Woolfs overtly feminist texts are received "as untranslatable in cultural terms, their topics and its [sic] treatment specific to England," as Laura Marcus writes apropos ofthe Editions Stock's rejection ofA Room ofOne's Own and 7Aree Guineas in the 1930s (331). Such a wealth of new information on Woolfs reception, instead of sating, leads one to be greedy for even more. One wishes, for example, there were chapters on the Netherlands and Belgium, Switzerland and Austria...