Ri-creazioni di The Gadfly di Ethel Lilian Voynich tra mondo anglosassone, Europa orientale ed Estremo Oriente

The first novel published by the Irish writer Ethel Lilian Voynich, The Gadfly (1897), became extremely popular in the Socialist countries during the 20th century on the basis of a political interpretation of its plot, while it was almost ignored in the West, in particular in Italy, where the story is set in the years of the Italian Risorgimento (Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Papal States). A significant effort was made in the last decade in order to investigate the success of the novel throughout the world, as it was translated at least in 50 languages and was published in several editions, mainly in Russian and Chinese: it should be considered the most popular novel, set in Italy, in the world. This paper focuses on the influence of space – in the sense of geographical and cultural context of publication of a given work – applied to translation, on the basis of the concepts of “polysystem” (Even-Zohar) and “literary field” (Bourdieu). Comparing the original version in English with two Soviet translations in Russian, it is clear the effort to push a marxist and atheist interpretation of the novel, with the aim to facilitate its reception in the culture of the country where the translation was now made: censorship was instrumental in such an operation, as in the case of deletion of excerpts related to supernatural, religion or racist prejudices. In the broader context of the reception of the novel, the Italian setting shows peculiar dynamics: analyzing also visual works inspired by, or connected to, the The Gadfly, published in several countries, some “geographical misunderstandings” are attested, in particular involving Romagna region (less known at the world level than Tuscany). If in the novel by Voynich Romagna was described with a degree of Mediterraneity significantly higher than the real situation, this feature was furtherly exaggerated in subsequent illustrations and movies taken from the novel in Eastern Europe and the USSR during the Cold War. In PRC, after an interpretation of the book as a revolutionary story during the years of Mao Zedong, it is currently attested a reconsideration of The Gadfly as a romantic novel, where the geographical trajectories of the plot are absent or knowingly changed: for example, some illustrations of recent Chinese editions of the book represent Romagna region with Central European or Northern European architectural features: a mere “western backdrop” for a love story.