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Katherine Mansfield and Continental Europe Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–42996–4 Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Janka Kascakova and Gerri Kimber 2015 Individual chapters © Contributors 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identifi ed as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndsmills,Basingstoke, Hampshire,RG21 6XS Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–42996–4 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Katherine Mansfi eld and continental Europe: connections and infl uences / edited by Janka Kascakova, Gerri Kimber. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1–137–42996-4 (hardback) 1. Mansfi eld, Katherine, 1888–1923—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Mansfi eld, Katherine, 1888–1923—Appreciation—Europe. I. Kascakova, Janka, editor. II. Kimber, Gerri, editor. PR9639.3.M258Z7323 2015 823'.912—dc23 2014038550 Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–42996–4 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–42996–4 Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgements viii Notes on Contributors ix 1 Introduction 1 Janka Kascakova and Gerri Kimber I Reception 2 An ‘utterly concrete and yet impalpable’ Art: The Early Reception of Katherine Mansfield in Italy (1922–1952) 7 Maurizio Ascari 3 Katherine Mansfield’s Early Translations and Reception in Hungary 26 Nóra Séllei 4 ‘My dear, incomparable, priceless, Kateřina Mansfieldová’ – The Reception and Translations of Katherine Mansfield in (the former) Czechoslovakia 40 Janka Kascakova II Poland and Germany 5 ‘That Pole outside our door’: Floryan Sobieniowski and Katherine Mansfield 59 Gerri Kimber 6 Katherine Mansfield and Stanisław Wyspiański – Meeting Points 84 Mirosława Kubasiewicz 7 Katherine Mansfield’s Germany: ‘these pine trees provide most suitable accompaniment for a trombone!’ 99 Delia da Sousa Correa III Connections with Other Authors 8 ‘Liaisons continentales’: Katherine Mansfield, S. S. Koteliansky and the Art of Modernist Translation 117 Claire Davison v Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–42996–4 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–42996–4 vi Contents 9 ‘There is always the other side, always’: Katherine Mansfield’s and Jean Rhys’s Travellers in Europe 142 Angela Smith 10 The Beauchamp Connection 154 Jennifer Walker IV Identity, the ‘Self’ and ‘Home’ 11 ‘How can one look the part and not be the part?’: National Identity in Mansfield’s ‘An Indiscreet Journey’, ‘Je ne parle pas français’, and ‘Miss Brill’ 171 Erika Baldt 12 ‘Strange flower, half opened’: Katherine Mansfield and the Flowering of ‘the Self’ 185 Kathryn Simpson 13 The ‘dream of roots and the mirage of the journey’: Writing as Homeland in Katherine Mansfield 202 Patricia Moran V Reassessing the Fiction 14 Katherine Mansfield’s Stories 1909–1914: The Child and the ‘Childish’ 221 Janet Wilson 15 Katherine Mansfield and the Fictions of Continental Europe 236 C. K. Stead Select Bibliography 252 Index 259 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–42996–4 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–42996–4 1 Introduction Janka Kascakova and Gerri Kimber The detail of Katherine Mansfield’s passport on the cover of this volume is a fitting illustration of how – although it was for London and England that she set out on her journey from her New Zealand home in 1908, a journey she believed to be crucial for her life as a writer – she eventu- ally spent a significant amount of time on the Continent, where she also found her final resting place. While initially travelling for pleasure and in search of adventure, Mansfield’s Continental journeys soon became the means of escaping from difficult situations or people, and were later transformed into an increasingly desperate and vain hunt for a cure for her fatal illness. The resonances of this constant travelling can be seen in both her personal writing and her creative endeavours, and, as this volume illustrates, the impact these had on her proved comparably important to the influ- ence her writing would go on to exert on the Continent, long after her untimely death. Thus, this volume seeks to explore the dualistic aspect of Mansfield’s relationship with the Continent, and to highlight not just her constant physical travelling, but also the influence of the Continent and its artists, revealing how these factors would come to shape and inform her own writing, and how eventually the various representations of her persona and body of work would go on to inspire literary production in a number of European countries. The first section, entitled ‘Reception’, opens with Maurizio Ascari’s analysis of the response to Mansfield in Italy between 1922 and 1952. Ascari reveals how Mansfield’s reception was influenced by her personal writings and the cult originating in France, and subsequently illustrates how later translations of her stories into Italian engendered a rich and heterogeneous debate. In the context of another Continental country, Hungary, and taking into account the particular cultural context of the 1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–42996–4 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–42996–4 2 Katherine Mansfield and Continental Europe period from post-World War I up until the early communist era, Nóra Séllei exposes how Mansfield’s work was often used to promote the different aesthetic and literary agendas of various Hungarian authors and, as a consequence, it was attributed values quite alien to her own motivations as a writer. Janka Kascakova discusses Mansfield’s reception in the former Czechoslovakia and its succession countries, revealing how Mansfield – although obviously admired by individual intellectuals to the extent of engendering infrequent but nevertheless steady appear- ances in various publications – never reached the level of fame and appreciation found in France, Italy or even Hungary. The second section encompasses Mansfield’s connections to two European countries that played an important part in her personal and artistic life: Germany, where she underwent one of the most dif- ficult experiences of her life, and Poland, introduced to her in the person of her erstwhile lover Floryan Sobieniowski. In her essay, Gerri Kimber charts the relationship between Mansfield and Sobieniowski, reconsidering their time spent together in Bavaria. Kimber argues for a re-interpretation of this relationship as being more complex than previously thought, and suggests that Mansfield might have visited Poland with Sobieniowski; she offers as possible proof the poem ‘To God the Father’, which uncannily echoes in its descriptions the cele- brated Polish artist Stanisław Wyspiański’s stained glass window of the same name in a Krakow church. In a different take on Mansfield’s Polish connection and its influence, Mirosława Kubasiewicz explores affinities between Mansfield and Wyspiański, offering a discussion of his work as a means of enabling the understanding of her enthusiasm for him. Kubasiewicz discusses their common interest in the metaphysi- cal coexistence of life and death, in the role of the past in the formation of artistic identity, their focus on nature in their artistic endeavours and their exceptional portrayals of children. Delia da Sousa Correa revisits the theme of Mansfield’s relationship with Germany, reflected mostly in the German Pension stories, offering a fresh approach. She investigates Mansfield’s satirical responses to German life beyond the biographical and historical circumstances, but rather via her knowledge of the satiri- cal representations of German Romanticism in Victorian literature, and proposes that satire was integral to Mansfield’s response to German culture, well before her own personal encounter with Bavaria in 1909. The third section, entitled ‘Connections with Other Authors’, com- prises essays linking Mansfield with three very different authors, who were either from Continental Europe themselves (Koteliansky), or who, just as in the case of Mansfield, came from the colonies (von Arnim and Rhys) Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–42996–4 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–42996–4 Janka Kascakova and Gerri Kimber 3 and addressed the questions of travel, displacement and the position of colonial outsiders in
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