Truman Capote’s other Voices, other Rooms and Censorship in Communist Romania

Abstract

The paper presents the censored fragments of Mircea Ivănescu’s Romanian translation of Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, published by Univers Publishing House in 1978, as well as the translator’s (or the censor’s?) contribution to the “edulcoration” of certain details that did not comply with the Communist ethics of the late 1970s; it also discusses the reason why the Romanian version underwent a purging process at the time. Another issue tackled in the paper is the appraisal of Ivănescu’s merits and demerits as a renowned translator, in general, and as the translator of Capote’s novel, in particular.

Keywords

• gay literature
• Communist ethics
• censorship
• Truman Capote
• faithfulness to the original
• redundancy
• Mircea Ivănescu