6. Commissioning Political Sympathies: The British Council’s Translation of Jane Eyre in Greece

Eleni Philippou

© 2023 Eleni Philippou, CC BY-NC 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0319.10

Jane Eyre’s First Translation: A Prelude

The first full translation of Jane Eyre into Modern Greek was translated by Ninila Papagiannē, and published in 1949 by Ikaros publishers under the aegis of the British Council in Greece. It was reprinted by Ikaros in 1954/1955, and the same translation was later reprinted in 1993 by S. I. Zacharopoulos Press. Since this initial translation, abridged, juvenile, and scholarly editions of Jane Eyre have been published in Greece, not to mention more low-brow popular adaptations of the book, such as a Classics Illustrated comic. It may seem surprising that it took over a hundred years for Jane Eyre to be translated into Greek, but up until the 1940s translations from French were pervasive across the Greek literary market. In fact, in the 1800s French and Italian largely dominated the translation scene, with French gaining ascendency with the decline of the Venetian Democracy of 1797.1 French texts constituted over 60 percent of the translations during this period, with English translations only starting to appear in Greece in 1817 when the British took over the Ionian islands.2 Although Shakespeare and Lord Byron feature on the list of the most translated authors of the period (Shakespeare at number nine and Byron at number seventeen), the list is overwhelmingly French.3

Interestingly, Sophia Denisi points out that in the second half of the nineteenth century, household literary magazines contributed decisively to the dissemination of translated novels, which initially had been treated with distrust when first arriving in Greece, and only were accepted as a serious literary form after decades.4 However, it is difficult to collect accurate information on the translation scene in Greece in the period between 1900–1950, owing to both local and global events. Statistical information was affected by Greece’s chequered twentieth-century history. Greece experienced a series of massive political upheavals: the Balkans Wars (1912–1913), World Wars (1914–1918; 1939–1945), and the Civil War (1946–1949), and the Asia Minor Catastrophe (1922), preceded by the Greco-Turkish War. These events not only affected the production of books and their current existence (bad quality paper was used), but contributed to the lack of care for and cataloguing of books in public libraries.5 Despite these significant problems, K. G. Kasinēs has been able to determine that between 1901–1950, French texts were most translated, then English (out of 537 titles, 110 were American and one Australian), followed by Russian, German, and Scandinavian languages.6 In contrast to the nineteenth century, the twenty most translated authors were a more balanced mix of English and French writers, with Shakespeare holding first place.7

The proliferation of French translations in the nineteenth century was primarily a manifestation of Greece’s political and cultural sympathy towards France. The Greek War of Independence (1821–1830) was inspired by the French Revolution, and up until the 1940s, French was the only foreign language taught in state schools. English began to gain ascendancy in twentieth-century Greece. During the 1930s, Greek intellectuals became more interested in English, partly owing to their interest in the modernist movement. Key Greek literary figures, such as George Seferis, spent time in Britain before the Second World War which allowed for greater receptivity towards British culture. Furthermore, English was introduced into state schools in 1945. The most important feature of the increasing engagement with English was the presence of the British Council in Greece from the late 1930s onwards, with the explicit aim of promoting cultural dialogue between the two nations. In the March 1946 issue of the Anglo-Greek Review (a publication of the British Council that we will discuss in due course) the role of the British Council was outlined thus:

The main purpose of the British Council is to give the inhabitants of the other countries of the world the opportunity to understand British culture and the British way of life, and to give the British the opportunity to understand the culture of other countries […]. What needs to be remembered above all the details is the ultimate aim of the Council’s activities: that is, the spreading of mutual understanding, respect and love between the peoples of the world. And that, above all, is the Propaganda of Peace.8

Although this passage expresses admirable sentiments, proclaiming that the British Council is an open and inclusive space set up with an emphasis on cultural exchange, in fact the British Council as an institution was not entirely innocuous, especially considering that the Council was founded before the Second World War by Sir Reginald Leeper, a British civil servant and diplomat.9 Leeper’s founding of the British Council was inspired by his recognition of the importance of ‘cultural propaganda’ in promoting British political interests both during peacetime and in war, a view no doubt informed by his time in the Department of Information’s Intelligence Bureau (1916–1918), and as Director of the Political Intelligence Department (1938–1943).10 Leeper saw the establishment of the British Council as a means of asserting ‘soft power’.11 For Leeper, cultural diplomacy was an effective manner of securing political power, especially if such diplomacy projected forth an image of cultural reciprocity and exchange between different countries.12 Leeper supported ‘qualitative rather than quantitative propaganda’ and an avoidance of ‘one-sided methods of cultural infiltration’.13

Although the British Council first opened in Athens in 1937, its presence was relatively short-lived as in 1941 it was forced to close owing to the Second World War.14 Greece was occupied by German forces in April of 1941. Within a few months, as Greece’s national economy collapsed and the official state lost its authority, inflation, black-marketeering, food shortages (eventually escalating into famine) became rampant.15 Arising from this bleak reality, Greece developed a robust resistance against the Axis powers which was riven along two political lines: EAM/ELAS and EDES. The former was roughly composed of two bodies — the National Liberation Front (EAM) of which the Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) was the military wing. This front was of a leftist nature and dominated by the Communist Party of Greece. The latter, the National Republican Greek League (EDES), was composed of nationalists with a republican background, and the largest of the anti-communist resistance groups. EAM’s growth (particularly in the provinces, aided in part by urban communist activists) was rapid and robust, and by 1944, when the German occupation came to an end, EAM/ELAS claimed that its ‘support extended to more than one million members’.16 Despite the Germans’ best efforts to suppress the resistance through violence and terror, the resistance not only persisted, in fact, German suppression may have even bolstered the resistance.17

The polarisation between Greece’s two resistance groups came to a head with the liberation of Greece in 1944 and the ensuing Civil War in the years 1946–1949. Put crudely and very simplistically, the Civil War played out between the Hellenic Army, a coalition of monarchist and republican forces (including both members of EDES and former quislings) supported by the United Kingdom and the United States and in favour of the pre-war status quo, and the Democratic Army of Greece — the military wing of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) — backed by Yugoslavia and, intermittently, by Albania and Bulgaria. This foreign interference in a Civil War may seem surprising, however, the threat of Greece becoming a Soviet state was a cause for concern for both the United States and Britain owing to its strategic and geographic importance. Greece was considered to be on the ‘front line of the struggle between the US and the USSR for world domination’.18 The Anglo-Americans considered it imperative that the Greek Left be defeated during the Civil War so that Greece did not come to succumb to Soviet expansionism.

Preceding the Civil War, the German occupation of Greece came to an end in the late summer of 1944. Greece was ‘taken over by local partisans’ — predominately EAM/ELAS who did not accept the provisional government under Georgios Papandreou installed by the British in October 1944.19 The provisional government was not particularly successful — demands for the partisans to demobilise ultimately resulted in a breakdown of negotiations.²⁰ This provisional government also desired to reinstate the Greek king.21

The British registered the tensions at play in post-liberation Greece with great alarm, reading the popularity and strength of EAM/ELAS as reaching its logical culmination point with Stalin commandeering the Greek state.22 The British felt that to avoid such a situation, it had to ‘neutralize the Greek Communists, whom it could not hope to control’.23 In fact, as far back as 17 August 1944, Churchill had written a ‘Personal and Top Secret’ memo to the American president Franklin Roosevelt to say that:

The War Cabinet and Foreign Secretary are much concerned about what will happen in Athens, and indeed Greece, when the Germans crack or when their divisions try to evacuate the country. If there is a long hiatus after German authorities have gone from the city before organised government can be set up, it seems very likely that EAM and the Communist extremists will attempt to seize the city.24

This correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt is a stark example of how the British were watching the Greek political scene carefully. The British expected their transatlantic neighbour, the United States, to understand that ‘extraordinary interventionist measures were needed if the interests of the entire Western camp were to be safeguarded’.25 Britain and America’s focus on keeping Greece well out of the Soviet grasp meant that their energies were channelled into preventing a Communist victory during the Civil War.26 The consequence of this was that ‘Greece became the object of powerful external forces whose ultimate purpose went far beyond the need to solve Greece’s post-war problems’.27

With the re-opening of British Council in 1944, the Council’s commitment to disseminating and consolidating English gained renewed political impetus in this divisive climate, and with Britain’s wider objectives in mind. Yet, it is important to note, that from the time of its 1944 reopening in Greece, the Council itself may not have understood its policies as explicitly political, a point noted by Peter Mackridge in reference to the nature of the British Council: ‘there was a stark difference in perception between what British and Greeks considered to be ‘apolitical’ and ‘political’. For the British Council, ‘apolitical’ simply meant supporting the conservative status quo; with reference to Greece at the time, it therefore entailed supporting the monarchy’.28 However, British Council documents of the time certainly point to a paternalistic attitude towards Greece in which the Council takes an active interest in engineering Greece’s national fate. A British Council memorandum from the mid-1940s, entitled ‘British Council Work in Greece’, notes that ‘[w]ith British support and under British protection, an attempt is now being made to find some sort of national government which can gradually attract to itself the more idealistic and progressive elements [i.e., non-Communist elements] in the country, and set them to work on the task of reconstruction’.29 The same memorandum continues: ‘We have, moreover, undertaken in Greece a responsibility such as we have towards no other country in Europe, and Greece therefore has a special claim to our attention’.30 The British Council hoped specifically to engage the politically ambivalent members of the Greek youth in the hope that they could instil political beliefs of a more ‘moderate’ nature — ‘pulling them away from EAM and other [left-wing] cultural influences’.31 The Council aimed to achieve this ‘in part by accessing the countries’ own ‘cultural reserves’ but also through sustained cultural and educational programmes’, as detailed in reports dated 1945–1946.³² (The educational programmes were primarily the training of teachers for English language provision in Greece, and the establishment of English language.33) Koutsopanagou references a 1946 report that suggests two ways that Britain could exert influence — firstly, by countering propaganda against Britain and the West in the immediate present, and secondly, in the long term, through a ‘constant flow of books, articles, films and British cultural influences […] at a steady level’.34 It is to this long term aim, primarily the translation of English literary works, that we now turn.

The British Council’s Translation Programme and Jane Eyre

The British Council’s literary translation programme came into effect in 1949, when a contract was signed for the publication of six translated editions of English classics. A subsidy of £1400 was to be advanced to Ikaros Publishers by the Council during the translation programme’s first year, and a further £150 for each publication if the contract was renewed.35 By March 1950, four plays by Shakespeare (Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre had been published.36 A year later, Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Much Ado about Nothing, together with Rudyard Kipling’s Selected Short Stories, and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, had been published.37 Furthermore, the serialisation of Vasilēs Rōtas’s translation of Troilus and Cressida — never before translated into Greek — began in the Anglo-Greek Review’s January-February 1951 issue. Shakespeare’s Othello, King Lear, and Troilus and Cressida, and Lytton Strachey’s Queen Victoria were published over the course of 1951–1952, whilst Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and three plays by Oscar Wilde over 1952–1953.38

A committee was formed for the selection of titles, translators, etc., although it is unclear who exactly composed this committee and how the translators and titles were decided,39 or if the publishers were in any way responsible for the choice of translators.40 An advance of £50 was made to Ikaros upon the initiation of the programme in 1949 for the translations into Greek.⁴¹ Yet, it is clear that the British Council realised that in some instances no systematic translations of English classics into Greek had ever been attempted and that they hoped that their translations, certainly in the case of Shakespeare, would become the definitive editions. The Council also decided to commission new translations of works that had been previously translated very successfully, as is the case with Dimitrios Vikelas’ renderings of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, and Jacob Polylas’ The Tempest. Owing to the lack of archival evidence, it is difficult to speculate as to why the Council felt it necessary to retranslate existing works, but such a decision could be attributed to any one of the following factors: a desire to offer an updated or more contemporary translation, or to assert or affirm their authority as an institution and preeminent purveyor of British culture.42 Furthermore, the retranslations could possibly be a product of the personal desire of the translator to interpret a specific work anew.43 In the very first year of the translation programme, Shakespeare, Dickens, and Brontë were translated by three different translators. Jane Eyre was translated by Ninila Papagiannē.44

Maria Papagiannē, informally known as ‘Ninila’, was born in 1913 in Smyrna in Turkey. Her formative years were spent between Constantinople and Athens, a time when the Ottoman Empire was in a state of flux. Papagiannē’s family moved permanently to Greece in 1922 — the year of the compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey.45 After completing her education at the American College of Greece46 (then known as the Junior College for Girls),47 Papagiannē went on to become a translator and novelist. Papagiannē’s translations, many of which are still available today as reprints, include nineteenth and twentieth century British and American novels. In particular, she translated works by Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Henry James, Stephen A. Larrabee, Herman Melville, Don DeLillo, and Lawrence Durrell.48

Unfortunately though, there is no archival evidence from either Ikaros or the British Council to explain Papagiannē’s connection to the British Council, and why she would have worked with them to produce a translation of Jane Eyre. However, we may make some tentative speculations to explain Jane Eyre’s inclusion in the translation programme, both thanks to its reputation as a British cultural work, and in relation to Papagiannē’s personal life and aesthetic sensibilities. Firstly, Jane Eyre was popular from its initial publication, and continued to remain popular well beyond Brontë’s death in 1855. Charlotte MacDonald, making further reference to various literary scholars, notes that for late nineteenth or early twentieth century audiences, Jane Eyre represented a bygone era, a time of ‘province, stage coach, country property’, an era that conveyed a ‘reassuring and confirming story of England at a moment of early nineteenth-century modernity’.49 Together with writers like Dickens, Jane Eyre fulfilled an ‘appetite for stories of Englishness’, which would thereby make it a good choice for educational programmes within and outside of Britain that aimed to consolidate or foster a sense of British identity — it has been taught globally, often in former English colonies.50 In fact, for McDonald, Jane Eyre’s ‘charisma’ as a text fed (and continues to feed) into its appeal to different classes or groups of individuals: for some it is a tale of resistance in which Jane resists power and injustice: she (in own words) may be ‘poor, obscure, plain and little’ but this governess still stands up to the wealthy and powerful Mr Rochester.⁵¹ She is a symbol of sovereignty, controlling her own destiny and fate. Her ‘autonomous self’ reflects back to the reader the ‘utopian promise that Jane Eyre long illuminated in the global imagination’.⁵² This sovereignty, of an individual in command of herself, makes Jane a particularly compelling figure for female readers, and perhaps made her appealing to Papagiannē whose novelistic works show a preoccupation with strong or unconventional female protagonists.

Papagiannē’s novels, entitled Πέρασμα Ανέμου (1968) [The Wind Passing Through], and Μια πόλη μια ζωή (1969) [One City, One Life], were published by Ikaros within a year of each other. In both instances, the novels portray Papagiannē’s pronounced interest in history (connecting with her training as a professional tour guide53), and are written as ‘autobiographies’ from the perspective of an unconventional female narrator. The first novel takes place in ancient Greece, and deals with the figure of Mirini: a fife-playing hetaira — a type of ancient Greek prostitute who aside from providing sexual services, was an artist and entertainer. The second novel begins in the pre-World War II period and extends into the 1950s, with particular emphasis on Germany’s occupation of Greece. In this book, the novel’s protagonist, Maya Constantinou, makes a personal plea to the first mate of the SS to free her childhood friend and neighbour (585).

As Farinou-Malamatari notes, for readers of Greek literature, Papagiannē’s second novel, One City, One Life, is strongly reminiscent of the novel, Invalids and Wayfarers (1964) by Giorgos Theotokas — one of Greece’s preeminent novelists and liberal intellectuals.54 Theotokas’ novel, set in Greece, presents a relationship between the female tragedian, Theano Galati, and a SS officer’s helper, a director named Ernest Hillenbrand. However, the resonances are far from coincidental: Papagiannē had a personal familial connection to Theotokas: her maternal grandfather was Theotokas’ grandmother’s brother.55 In 1962, Papagiannē related to Theotokas in two interviews her personal story of the occupation — the very story that then appeared in Invalids and Wayfarers.56 Theotokas’ novel draws the relationship in judgemental terms, borne out of Galati’s fear and loneliness, and ultimately as an example of political treason, whereas Papagiannē’s rendition of the relationship is far more sympathetic, seeing it as a love that transcends political or national boundaries, and in which the SS commander is impressed by Maya’s bravery and intelligence.57 Papagiannē’s transgressive behaviour during Greece’s savage occupation by Germany points to Papagiannē herself being a strong independent woman, one who functioned outside of societal norms and conventions. It is this subversive ability to push up against convention which may, we speculate, have made Jane Eyre, with its spirited and unique female protagonist, an appealing novel for Papagiannē to translate.

Indeed, in lieu of archival evidence of why the British Council chose to include Jane Eyre in their translation programme, we could make the following assumptions: that the British Council chose the novel because of its popularity, charisma, and multifactedness, as discussed earlier. Alternatively, Papagiannē herself could have been an advocate for the novel, nominating it to the Council because it embodied some of the features central to her very own novels — a female-centred worldview, and literary universe narrated by a female protagonist who functions outside the traditional female roles of wife or mother. Moreover, she may have advocated for the novel because its emphasis on female agency spoke to some of her own personal values and ideals as a nonconformist and free-thinking woman.58

Although Papagiannē’s translation of Jane Eyre contains omissions of certain paragraphs or sentences (which we discuss later in this chapter), the most famous feminist passages in the novel have been retained, such as Jane’s meditation in Chapter 12, where she asserts that ‘women feel just as men feel’ and laments their unfair treatment in the nineteenth century.59 Furthermore, one of the novel’s most famous instances of female agency in which Jane declares that she chose to marry Rochester — the opening lines of the epilogue: ‘Reader, I married him’ have been rendered in a manner that maintains Jane’s independence and free will. Papagiannē’s ‘Αναγνώστη, τον παντρεύτηκα’ (back translation: ‘Reader, I married him’) could have been translated variously as ‘Reader, we got married’ or even as ‘Reader, he married me’, which is the case with some later Greek translations of the novel.60

However, Papagiannē certainly missed some opportunities to assert Jane’s agency, as is evidenced in Chapter 23 in Rochester’s comment to Jane: ‘You — poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are — I entreat to accept me as a husband.’ Papagiannē’s translation ‘Έτσι που είσαι φτωχή και σοβαρή και μικροκαμωμένη σε θέλω για γυναικά μου’ can be back translated as ‘You who are poor and serious and small, I want as my wife’.61 In the English source text, Rochester’s entreaty requires Jane to agree and allow the marriage: her will is at the very centre of the question. In contrast, Papagiannē’s translation highlights Rochester’s needs and desires: Rochester is not asking for Jane to accept him as her husband, but rather offers a clear statement of his will in which Jane is an object to be possessed.62

Papagiannē’s translation, for the most part, is fairly competent. Nonetheless, Papagiannē seems to have struggled with the references to Northern European magical creatures (elves, sprites, goblins). and instead used religious terms to describe the magical creatures with which the Greek, predominately Orthodox, readership would have been familiar. Often, the novel’s magical creatures were translated simply as demons or devils. For example, when Jane comments that Rochester is no longer affectionate and now treats her with disdain, labelling her a ‘provoking puppet’, ‘malicious elf’, ‘sprite’, ‘changeling’, Papagiannē translates his comments in the following way ‘ενοχλητικό κουταβάκι’ ‘irritating little puppy’, ‘ανυπόφορο ζιζάνιο’ ‘unbearable pest’, ‘δαίμονα, κουτόπραμα’ ‘demon, foolish thing’.63 Although puppet is probably a misreading in which Papagiannē has mistaken the word puppet for puppy, in the instances of elf, sprite, and changeling, it is clear that she is unable to find an appropriate term for these different magical creatures, and therefore condenses the words into one all-encompassing theological term: demon. In the same chapter, where Rochester comments to Jane: ‘Is this my pale little elf?’, Papagiannē again reverts to familiar biblical imagery translating ‘pale little elf’ as ‘χλομό μου διαβολάκι’: ‘pale little devil of mine’.64 (Strangely, the reprints of her translation have not been altered despite accurate terms for these supernatural creatures being in existence.⁶⁵) Papagiannē’s translation also tends to miss intertextual references, such as those to Shakespeare.

The Council were unsure of the financial feasibility of their translation initiative, and the covering letter to the 1949/50 Annual Report asserts that no sales figures for the Council’s publishing of translations are available yet, but that the writer ‘understands from the staff here on leave that the response has not been great. The Shakespeare versions are apparently much more popular than Dickens’.66 The 1952 sales returns show Macbeth as the most popular title followed by Great Expectations, with Kipling’s stories the least successful.67 A general comparison between the 1952–1953 records and those of 1950–1951 show sales remain more or less at a steady level, although the report does not specify the number of sales.⁶⁸ The sales were presumably low, as the 1953–1954 Annual Report suggests: ‘although sales are poor by British standards, demands for Shakespeare is [sic] constant’. The same report states that earlier volumes containing Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet are now out of print.69

Despite the presumably low sales, in the 1949–1950 Annual Report of the Books and Publications department, P. B. de Jongh (the Functional Officer for Books and Publications) unequivocally states that the ‘general reception of the public was most favourable and several distinguished Greek literary critics have pointed out in the Press that the initiative taken by the British Council will enable a hitherto very evident gap in Greek libraries to be filled’.70 The Local Publications section of the same Annual Report states that ‘Comment in the Press and outside has been most appreciative [of the translations]. The Ministry of Education has welcomed this project warmly’.⁷¹ Upon closer inspection it appears that the British Council went to some effort to ensure that their translations were promoted and publicised.72 An Annual Library Report from 1950 (the year that Jane Eyre was published) states that the directors of the various British Council’s Institutes of English Studies that were located around Greece were asked to publicise the Council’s translations, promote sales and offer suggestions for new titles to the translations committee.73 The Report continues that free copies of the translations for press review could be provided by the Council, and that the directors should inform the Books Officer if they want to sell the books in their institutes (however, directors were free to decide their own policy in this respect).⁷⁴ There was a level of synergy and support between the British Council’s various initiatives for the translations. For example, the introductions to the translated Shakespeare plays were written by Professor Sewell, the Byron Professor at University of Athens. (As mentioned earlier, the Byron Professor position was initiated by the British Council in 1937 for the teaching of English Language and Literature.) In the same year as the publication of Jane Eyre, the Institute for English Studies lists in their ‘extracurricular activities’ a lecture in Greek by Mrs Vafopoulou at the Institute of English Studies on the subject of the Brontës.75 In the Annual Report of the British Institute of Salonica 1948–49, reference is made to a teaching programme in which Shakespeare is taught with special reference to Julius Caesar and Twelfth Night, texts that feature as part of the translation programme.76 Even supposedly innocuous celebrations had the purpose of promoting the translations. The Representative’s Annual Report of 1954–1955 notes that the ‘actual purpose’ of the celebration of the 350th anniversary of performance of Othello, Lear, and Macbeth, was to ‘advertise the Ikaros translations of Shakespeare into Greek, which the Council subsidises’.77

Jane Eyre and the Anglo-Greek Review

The magazine Anglo-Greek Review (Anglo-Hellēnikē Epitheōrēsē) appears to have been extremely useful in airing the translations by the British Council. The first twelve issues of the magazine were published by the Anglo-Greek Information Service (AIS, later AGIS), a propaganda organisation that was dissolved at the end of 1945.78 With AGIS’s dissolution, the Review’s publication became the responsibility of the British Council.79 The Review, produced in Athens, published reviews and articles about literature rather than literary works, and was edited from around its third issue by George Katsimbalis, the leading Greek literary figure. Katsimbalis gave up his editorial role in 1952, and was succeed by and G. P. Savidis, the literary critic who was later to become the Seferis Professor at Harvard. The Review primarily published educational or informative articles, often of a relatively impartial or conservative character: these pieces were not focused on provoking debate or introducing new literary trends, as Dimitris Tziovas also notes.80 Some of the articles are surveys of developments in English literature or short articles on different aspects of British life, rather than incendiary opinion pieces. Moreover, initially the magazine ‘looked to the recent cultural past and tried to canonize it, rather than addressing the present and the future’.81 Under Savidis’s editorial command, contributions from women, younger writers and critics, some of whom were even Left-leaning, became more prominent.⁸²

As Peter Mackridge points out, it is difficult to ascertain with complete certainty the objective behind the Review’s publication as those responsible for the initiation, development, and running of the Review are no longer alive and the Review lacks an archive.83 However, the editorial manifesto in the first Review hoped that the readers ‘of each country [Britain and Greece] who are learning the language of the other’ come to a ‘closer understanding’.84 The magazine asserts itself as a space in which the British reader can gain knowledge of the Greek zeitgeist: about what Greece is ‘thinking and feeling today about the problems which confront’ her by accessing ‘contemporary sources’.85 Yet the English-Greek bilingual character of the magazine was lost by its fourth issue, and the focus skewed towards an exclusively Greek readership, even though the contents page remained bilingual until 1953.86 Peter Mackridge even notes that Katsimbalis was particularly keen to publish translated British reviews of Greek works suggesting that he viewed the readership as a Greek audience interested in seeing how Greek literature was faring abroad.87 The Review helped ‘familiarise the Greek public with aspects of British life, its arts and institutions.’88

The Review had a subtle political agenda, advocating the ‘values of liberal democracy’ by including articles on the ‘liberal institutions, democracy and freedom of speech’, especially in its early issues.⁸⁹ However, the Council itself saw the magazine as a non-partisan space, and prided itself on its reputation as a highbrow publication, appealing to the ‘sophisticated taste’ of their Greek readership.⁹⁰ An Annual Report from 1947–1948 states that the publication is read by ‘all intellectuals irrespective of their political sympathies; contributions by writers of the Right and the Left have appeared in the same issue — an almost phenomenal occurrence in post-war Greece’.91 The same Annual Report notes that the Review does much for the Council’s ‘prestige’ and that its ‘rigorous abstention from politics is in marked contrast to the vast majority of Greek papers and periodicals’.92 Yet Tziovas reads this claim for non-partisanship in a rather more nuanced way, suggesting that the Review was an ‘attempt on the part of the British to support the liberal intelligentsia of Greece and offer them a respectable forum in which to express themselves and promote the country’s cultural achievements’.93 Although the Review was no means overtly ideological, nor vulgar propaganda, it definitely locked into a larger system of British Council initiatives within an even broader British strategy of ‘promoting liberal democracy and offering a taste of British life and culture’.94 It largely aimed to create a ‘favourable backdrop to the stage upon which politics and diplomacy were conducted.’95

It is not clear if the Greek editors had any real say about the magazine’s content, or if the British funders of the magazine primarily dictated editorial policy and content. Indeed, Tziovas rightfully asserts that it is unknown ‘who chose these pieces [the articles] or where they came from (particularly with earlier issues)’.96 An Annual Report from 1947–1948 states that ‘[t]he quality of the material received from the Council in London for publication in the Review continued, as during last year, to be of a quality required by the Editor’.97 This statement suggests that Britain would send articles to the Council, but the Editor was not entirely powerless: it seems as if he may have had some control as to whether the articles were of publishable quality.

Whatever the editorial policy, the overlap between the translation programme and the articles in the magazine suggests that part of the editorial mandate was to support British Council initiatives. The serialisation of Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, and The Winter’s Tale (all featured in the translation programme) cannot have been coincidental, and was probably an attempt to increase sales or publicise the texts. The Review’s January/February issue of 1949 contains an article by Augustus Muir entitled ‘Famous English Women Novelists’, that discusses Jane Austen, George Eliot, and the Brontë sisters.98 The article is probably a translation from English but the source text remains unlocatable, thereby suggesting that the piece may have been specially commissioned for the Review. The article coincides with the publication of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1949), and the prospective publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1950), thereby killing two birds with one stone. Muir’s reading of Jane Eyre is very progressive, stressing Jane’s female agency and independent thought. Muir registers that the novel’s publication was controversial and scandalised many readers, noting ‘It also shocked some who found in the book a revolutionary attitude against existing societal norms/traditions’,99 but his praise of the book is overt. He squarely comments, ‘[C]lever and enlightened people, such as the great English novelist [William] Thackeray, recognised its great creative strength’.100

An article, ‘The English Novel’, in the 1951 Review by the Greek literary critic, Professor Apostolos Sahinis, directly registers three British Council translations that were published over the course of 1949–1950: Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and Great Expectations.101 Sahinis notes that the collaboration between Ikaros publishers and the British Council has put three English texts into circulation that embody ‘the spirit, the climate, the atmosphere and sensitivity of 19th century English literature’.102 In the article, Sahinis laments the fact that Greek novelists are using Russian and Scandinavian novels as their models for writing prose. According to Sahinis these novels (by Knut Hamsun, for instance) are largely stylistically experimental, or avant garde, and should not be considered worthy of emulation. For Sahinis, Greek novelists should aspire towards the great classic English novels such as Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, and Great Expectations. Sahinis introduces Charlotte Brontë as the sister of the writer of Wuthering Heights, presumably based on the fact that the Greek reader was familiar with Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights had already been translated into Greek in the nineteenth century. Sahinis suggests that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights share an interest in the supernatural and are set in isolated castles in the English countryside where emotions and passions cannot be released or expressed, and as a consequence tyrannize the characters to generate unusual psychological states or situations.103 Sahinis reduces Jane Eyre to a romance, stating that the book is about the life of a poor orphan who becomes a governess and after a series of trials ultimately finds joy in the arms of her beloved Mr Rochester.104 In a somewhat backhanded compliment, Sahinis notes that what the novel lacks in development and action is compensated by Brontë’s sensitivity and pensive, lyrical temperament.105 He notes that the reader cannot avoid the ‘prattling’ or ‘babbling’ characteristic of women’s novels, but this is countered by the ‘warm feeling of life’, the descriptions of the English natural world, and the interesting rendering of the protagonist’s emotions.106 Whereas in Muir’s article, Jane Eyre is understood as a revolutionary novel that disrupts societal codes through its creative energies, Sahinis sets up Jane Eyre as riven of such potential. Sahinis’ plainly misogynistic tract aims to be positive, but undoubtedly diminishes the novel by seeing it simply as an expression of emotion.107

Sahinis may have read the text in English rather than in translation owing to his knowledge of English from his years as postgraduate student at Kings College London. His derogatory or negative comments about the novel probably do not arise from Papagiannē’s translation, but are rather a manifestation of his general literary conservatism. In fact, the Greek translation largely expresses the source text’s feminist urgency and vigour when Jane passionately advocates for the rights of women or female independence.108 In translation, it does not become a sappy sentimental romance. Furthermore, the translation is free of superfluous detail — what Sahinis refers to as ‘prattle’ — because Papagiannē expunged parts of the text that she found extraneous. (Admittedly, she may have deleted certain sections based on the assumption that the Greek readership would have had difficulty understanding the content, or perhaps because they were too difficult to translate into Greek.) Lastly, the text, at various points, tends to downplay the supernatural elements that Sahinis emphasizes in his review.

For example, one of the instances where Papagiannē has made cuts to the text is the conversation between Rochester and Jane in Chapter 24. Here, the two characters converse: at times playfully and flirtatiously, but then also more seriously. They discuss Rochester’s treatment of Blanche Ingram; Jane’s aversion to being bedecked in jewels, and their relationship. The source text reads:

“Hush, sir! You don’t talk very wisely just now; any more than those gentlemen acted very wisely. However, had they been married, they would no doubt by their severity as husbands have made up for their softness as suitors; and so will you, I fear. I wonder how you will answer me a year hence, should I ask a favour it does not suit your convenience or pleasure to grant.”109

From this passage, Papagiannē has retained only, ‘Ποτέ δεν βρήκα την όμοιά σου, Τζέην. Μ’ ευχαριστείς και μ’ εξουσιάζεις.’, which, when back-translated, reads as, ‘I never met your likeness. Jane, you please me, and you master me’. These lines are followed by Jane’s words: ‘Αναρωτιέμαι, κύριε, (θα μου συγχωρήσετε, πιστεύω, αυτή μου τη σκέψη) αναρωτιέμαι αν θα μείνετε πάντα έτσι, κι αν θα μου κάνατε ποτέ μια χάρη, που δε θα σας ερχότανε και τόσο βολική, κι αυτό για να μ’ ευχαριστήσετε μονάχα’, which back-translates to ‘I wonder, Sir, (and you will forgive, I believe, this thought of mine) wonder if you will always stay like this, and if you would ever do me a favour that would not come to you so conveniently, and that solely to please me’.110 The deleted sections suggest that Papagiannē may have struggled to translate the supernatural elements (the references to witchery, elfishness; an uncanny turn of countenance, or Hercules and Samson being charmed).

Alternatively, and to return to our earlier discussion of the feminist element of the translation, Papagiannē may have consciously chosen not to include the references to Hercules and Samson and ‘their charmers’, even if a Greek audience may have been familiar with these mythological and biblical stories. She may have been keen not to reinforce misogynistic stereotypes that portray women in a negative light (as manipulative temptresses) or male figures as emasculated or humiliated by women. Both the references to Samson and Hercules present male figures renowned for their strength being denigrated or weakened by a female romantic interest. In the Old Testament, Samson was seduced by Delilah and lost his strength after confessing his secret to her that his strength was a result of his hair never being cut. She not only strips Samson of his strength by cutting his hair in his sleep, but betrays him to the Philistines who then enslave him and blind him. In ancient Greek mythology, Hercules, as punishment for a murder, became the slave of the widow Omphale, Queen of Lydia, with whom he later had three children. In some variations of the myth, as Omphale’s slave, he is forced to do women’s work, and is thereby emasculated.111

The cheeky tone, flirtatiousness, and otherworldly element of the source passage may have been lost in translation, but despite these omissions, the essence of the source passage has been captured. Papagiannē’s translation expresses firstly that Rochester has submitted to Jane’s mastery (while stripping this mastery of any suggestion of denigration or emasculation), and secondly that Jane feels anxiety at possible changes in Rochester’s demeanour in the future.

It is uncertain if Muir’s and Sahinis’ reviews actually assisted in the sales of the translations, or whether they had any influence on Greek society at all. There is no accurate data on the magazine’s dissemination, although we know that the price of the magazine fluctuated and reflected the volatility of the Greek economy during the war, and post-war years. The Council asserts that it had extensive circulation in its early days, but this cannot be substantiated.112 Nevertheless, these reviews do point to the synergy and energy of the British Council in endorsing and publicising their translations.

Conclusion

The translation of Jane Eyre was by no means a neutral exercise but rather part and parcel of a wider political and ideological strategy conducted by Britain after the end of the second World War. In the wake of the Cold War — in the struggle for territorial and ideological expansion between the Anglophone West and the Soviet East — Greece was of significant political and geographic importance. As a consequence, Britain’s policy of soft power, which was channelled through institutions such as the British Council, aimed to make Greece conducive to British influence. Through lectures, English language classes, the establishment of a University Chair, and a systematic translation programme (among other things), the British Council aimed to promote and disseminate British culture. Although, there is no documentation that discusses why Jane Eyre specifically was chosen as part of the British Council’s translation programme, its selection speaks to the novel’s enduring popularity, its ‘Englishness’, and ability to appeal to different readers in different ways, as mentioned earlier in this chapter.. Indeed, it is not difficult to speculate that the British thought that the novel would offer a worthy contribution to their literary translation programme, with the tale of this little governess hopefully cultivating Greek sympathies in the ruins of the Second World War and the Greek Civil War.

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