ABSTRACT
On the dust-jacket of the English translation of Claudio Magris's Danubio, John Danville's critical assessment of the book stands out for its epigrammatic conciseness: 'Danube is "international" in the best, Jamesian sense; it is also, I believe, a masterpiece.'1 This apparently simple statement opens up a series of possible questions: what is Danubio a masterpiece of, and how exactly are this masterpiece and its translation 'international'? This chapter deals with the problem of genre as it applies to Magris's book, and with the ramifications of the problem once we consider not only the original but also its translations - which have turned Danubio into that rare thing: an Italian book capable of international success.2 The intention is not to advocate rigid generic distinctions, but rather to argue that Danubio's resistance to rigid genre categorisation was in fact one of the most important factors in its wide European success. As noted in Chapter Two, the horizons of expectation activated by a particular text, including its generic affiliation, can shift when that text moves across cultures and canons through the process of translation. We can then ask whether translation strategies act towards the reinforcement of existing horizons of expectations or militate against them, a question which is particularly significant when applied to a book such as Danubio, with its intrinsic ambiguity - or complexity - with respect to traditional generic and stylistic criteria.
