Queer perspectives in translation studies: Notes on two recent publications

The lines in the epigraph come from the collection of poems Múza oblieha Tróju (The muse besieges Troy, 1967) by the Slovak author and translator from French, Italian and Spanish Štefan Žáry (1918–2007).*It was published during the period of political thaw, a year before the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the forces of the Warsaw Pact. The 1960s saw various and variously conflicting endeavors – a revival of avant-garde and experimental poetics among others – both in Slovak literature and in translations into Slovak. Some of the poetry published during this period is still highly regarded for both its aesthetic and ethical qualities, while some of it serves more as a period document. The writing of Štefan Žáry, who in this book returned to the poetics he and a group of a few other poets modelled on surrealism in the 1930s and 1940s (nadrealizmus, lit. “over-realism”), belongs to the latter group.2 Perhaps more interestingly, in these lyric memoirs of Bratislava during World War II, Žáry describes the intimate bond between the nadrealisti being referred to (presumably derogatorily) as “homosexual” by their “others” (presumably the bourgeoisie). In the complex temporal and spatial layering of the collection, the aging poet’s memories of the 1940s are projected over the socialist 1960s, and the emotional sketch of Bratislava, its nightlife, and its bohemia is layered over the much more sober city almost 30 years later. This makes an interpretation of the male bonding, one of the