The Fields of German-speaking Literature. Practices of Cultural Recognition in Italy. The trajectories of Enrico Rocca and Aloisio Rendi

Working as a pars pro toto, the German language is the common feature of a wide range of literary phenomena, each with its own characteristics and socio-political context. Austrian, Swiss, and Central European literature are some of its most common manifestations, having individuated over time to the point that they may be considered expressions of cultural, national, and historical identities distinct from German stricto sensu. However, this process of individuation does not only have an endogenous character. Even before emerging in the German world, cultural specificities are identified by foreign cultures, specifically by the reception processes carried out through practices of cultural mediation, such as university teaching, translation, and literary criticism. In this respect, if we take into account the ‘polysystemic’ perspective (Even-Zohar – Toury 1982, Even-Zohar 1990; Hermans 1985, 2002, 2006), and a certain Bourdieusian turn this perspective has taken (Bourdieu 1992), we can see, for example, how the Italian cultural system represents an external point of view towards – and is effectively entangled with – the cultural systems of German-speaking cultures. With an eye to this play of perspectives, we can thus draw important conclusions regarding the complexity of the German field. This essay aims to highlight how an awareness of the geo-cultural and political situatedness of some varieties of German-speaking literature was developed in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century. Examining the biographies and careers of cultural mediators of the time, such as Enrico Rocca and Aloisio Rendi, we can see how cultural specificities in their socio-literary context are recognised by virtue of what Bourdieu calls ‘the restricted field of production’: that is, the output of a literary field with less economic power but greater cultural prestige. This aspect of the field plays an increasingly decisive role in editorial policies that aim to preserve differences and canonise them precisely because of their extraordinary character.