Der Rilke-Kult im Slowakischen Staat (1939–1945)

Summary The study is dedicated to the reception of Rainer Maria Rilke’s work in the Slovak State (1939–1945). It uses André Lefevere’s translatological approach to highlight the manipulative nature of Slovak translations of Rilke. With the help of the category of patronage, it shows how Slovak translators Ladislav Hanus and Viliam Ries transcended the meta-patronage of the Slovak state and relativised its ideological monopoly by questioning clericalism as a component of state ideology. They did this by emphasising nationalistic poetics in their translations of the novel Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) and the prose poem Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (The Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke). Hanus relied on the sub-patronage of the cultural association Matica slovenská, whose representative Stanislav Mečiar, a supporter of National Socialism, was largely accommodating towards him; Ries acted under the external patronage of Nazi Germany and misinterpreted the Cornet for propaganda purposes.