TRANSLATIONS OF NOVELS IN THE ROMANIAN CULTURE DURING THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY (1794-1914): A QUANTITATIVE PERSPECTIVE

This article uses quantitative methods to provide a macro perspective on translations of novels in Romanian culture during the long nineteenth century, by modifying Eric Hobsbawm’s 1789-1914 period, and using it as spanning from 1794 (the first registered local publishing of a translated novel) to 1918 (the end of the First World War). The article discusses the predominance of the French novel (almost 70% of the total of translated novels), the case of four other main competitors in the second line of translations (or the golden circle, as named in the article: German, English, Russian, and Italian), the strange case of the American novel as a transition zone, and the situation of five other groups of novels translated during the period (the atomizing agents: the East European, the Spanish, the Austrian, the Nordic, and the Asian novel).

references included in Romanian novels 2 , they would be better discussed alongside short stories, as the selected fragments were carefully devised to be self-sufficient, functioning outside the original body of the novel (take, for example, "The letter of a father to his son" from Le Lys dans la vallée by Balzac). Undoubtedly, it would be interesting to investigate whether these fragments follow the same model of the French monopoly and to propose an analysis of serialized publishing, but for the time being such a project is difficult to imagine producing any surprises since the DCRT entries mainly confirm the same French monopoly in the case of fragments. Century] (Cornea, in the volume De la Alecsandrescu), where he discusses the status of intermediaries specifically in this period (generally French translations) and the formation of a modern literary consciousness by means of translation. Thus, it has to be kept in mind that the translations I will be discussing were largely mediated by French versions, at least until the end of the century (1870-1880). The situation persisted in the twentieth century for the commercial canon, especially without actually mentioning the intermediary, as recent studies have shown; for example, this was the case of Dracula, rendered in the 1990s (Martin). However, it must be said from the very start that until recently no quantitative perspective was available on the imports of the modern Romanian literary field. Most studies of this period in terms of translation focused on particular cases connected with linguistic modernization, highlighting in a didactic manner "the enrichment, betterment, and refinement of the Romanian language" 3 due to the programs led by important intellectuals like "Gh. Asachi, I. Heliade Rădulescu and Gh. Barițiu" (Petrea), the relationship between canonical translations and the appears in 1844 (according to the DCRR). This means that upon its emergence (both in local production and through a significant number of translations), the novel bypasses these foundational cultural battles about translation and manifests itself fully through its noncanonical aspect. This is when adventure novels enter the stage (Alexandre Dumas-Père as early as 1846 with Le corricolo [1843]), as well as sentimental novels (George Sand in 1847, with Indiana [1832). Followed by a series of subgenre novels (or canonical variants of adventure literature, like Gulliver's Travels, rendered in 1848), they began to shape a diverse Romanian literary consciousness visible in local commentaries only in the third part of the nineteenth century, in the same period when Titu Maiorescu  used his position as one of the most important critical voices of the time to stress the importance of the genre (Maiorescu, "Literatura"

The Critique of Translation and the Novel in the Nineteenth
[Literature] [1882]). Later on, at the turn of the century, "[r]ather than judged aesthetically, translations were measured with this political or, more exactly, nationalist yardstick" (Ursa 313).

Foreign Proportions of Novel Import
However, to what degree do these quantities expose/show a certain minor condition of  (2014): "the minor is not a failed state or potentially great one, but a translated nation" (2) 7 . Despite the fact that his analysis has poetry as the main focus, we can witness the same phenomenon in the case of the novel. Following in Cotter's footsteps, I would define a minor literary culture through the relationship established between local production and literary translation. In terms of poetry, the situation has not yet been analyzed (there is no comparative report on translation and autochtonous production in terms of volume publishing or periodicals), but the novel has been investigated from this point of view. According to Andrei Terian's results from "Big research. What the table above shows is quite impressive, even if this dominance was largely well-known: in every single way, the Romanian novel of the nineteenth century is radically dependent on the French one. And, accordingly, the landscape of modern novel translation cannot be represented without discussing the situation of The table shows the division of non-French translations into Romanian on two levels of relevance: 1) the golden circle comprises German, English, Russian, and Italian novels (for the purpose of this study, I will only comment on the evolution of German and Russian translations), which will be called competitors. Not because they stood a chance against French novel translations, but because they fought each other for a place in Romanian culture (a funny way of putting this, of course, since no literature was actually fighting to penetrate Romanian culture at that point in history). The American novel emerges as a newcomer, embraced by local intellectuals even in the more conservative areas (influenced by trends like "sămănătorism" or "poporanism") especially for the sake of its novelty. Somehow (and I will give a more thorough explanation of this), Romanian writers and editors felt that America was a young territory still under development, and viewed it as being equal to Romanian culture at best (no matter how strange it seems today); 2) the atomizers are primarily East European cultures (Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Serbian novels), Nordic (the Danish, Swedish, Islandic, and Norwegian novel), Asian (Japanese, Korean, Indian), alongside two literatures that -for some reason, either geographic distance or imperial proximity -never managed to enter the first category: the Spanish novel and the Austrian one.

The French Novel and Its Dominance
As shown by the numbers and the evolution of the graph, the French novel constitutes the entire mass of novel translation in the period. Linking this observation to a few recent results obtained through quantitative analysis, which demonstrate that in the autochtonous novel "Paris is the foreign city most frequently used as setting" 10 (Baghiu   1897; 1898; 1899; 1901; 1902; 1903; 1906; 1907 [3 novels]; 1909; 1911; 1915; 1916; 1918

Political Case of the American Novel
In order to observe the translation dynamics for other important literatures which enter the Romanian field in the nineteenth century and up until 1918, we must trace the roots of these developments. There is not enough space here for an exhaustive account, so I will only discuss three literatures (keeping in mind the intention to address the English novel and the Italian one on another occasion) which become visible in the Romanian space through translation and generate (as far as I can infer at the moment) three different entry types. I will expand upon the intention of translation as it appears retrospectively. I am not necessarily pointing towards a sort of collective subconsciousness of the small Romanian literary field, but I am interested in the successive pleas of certain groups for specific national literatures, which produce three different configurations: A) the German novel, born out of an academic interest, especially in the high-culture or intellectualized forms of certain novelistic genres and subgenres; B) the Russian novel, filtered through the canon, with the big names of the 14 (1852; 1891; 1892; 1894; 1896; 1897; 1898; 1908

2.2.3.
As I will try to demonstrate in this subchapter, the local interest in the American novel is more difficult to decode, because it actually derives from a political interest, which was generally ignored in literary criticism. The thesis is also formulated by Rodica Mihăilă, who shows that "in the case of American literature, the politics of Romanian translations was dictated first and foremost by political motives" (Mihăilă 286).
Although the American novels translated into Romanian are close to the competitors' golden circle, they are not all that relevant to Romanian culture until very late (foreseeing the results of another research project still underway, I can argue that it becomes truly relevant in the proximity of World War II). This is because the American novel is largely represented by adventure or travel literature and by sensationalist fiction, "translated from German for popular consumption" (Mihăilă 286). Here, the canon imitates the mass. Therefore, even in 1933 (77 years after the publishing of the first translated American novel), the historian Nicolae Iorga  deemed it necessary to offer clarifications when discussing the situation of American art: "unfortunately, there are still people who believe that America has no art or literature of its own, which is a huge mistake" 15 (Iorga 242). Moreover, Iorga uncovers an entire toolbox of possible empathy for the Americans, based on the plight of the brutally colonized American Indians: "specifically because they are being defeated and destroyed, we -who have often been defeated on these lands, and whom so many tried to destroy and banish from these lands, but have never succeeded and never will -must have sympathy for the Indians" (Iorga 249). The connection is not arbitrary: even in the preface to the first American novel rendered in Romanian, Uncle Tom's Cabin  (Borza, "Translating"); the second is the attempt to compensate for the absence of a colonizing dimension by exoticizing certain spaces, visible in the important travel writings of the time or in certain Romanian novels (Baghiu et al., "Geografia 1901-1932. This, as well as the fact that the first powerful translations from Asia, Africa or Latin America appear only in 1948 (Baghiu, "Translating Hemispheres") are the reasons why I intend to analyze the issue in a separate study.

Conclusions
For now, however, this is where we find ourselves: 11 important source areas can be found in this exhaustive statistic of novel translation, including only 20 national literatures. This is all that actually enters our "translated culture" during the long nineteenth century. 70% of these translations are represented by French literature. The remaining 30% is in its turn divided between 90% continental literature coming from the center and 10% continental literature from the periphery. Only 6 novels from outside Europe, United States and Russia are rendered, and their translation involves an intensive process of exoticization which doubles the condescending Orientalist discourse of the contemporaneous diaries, novels, and travelogues. This shows that, while a "minor culture/literature" is, of course, a "translated culture", it is not at the same time interested in translating the planet. This is what the long nineteenth century has to offer: big numbers of novel translations that vary, yet too little.