Abstract
During the 1930s, when Olbracht wrote all his Subcarpathian novels, he started to become involved in literary translation, translating exclusively from German. This study carries on from the work of J.
Opelík from 1967, which for the first time put forward the proposition that Olbracht's approach to translation work was very active, so these translations acted as catalysts to hasten the qualitative transformation in Olbracht's work. The study compares the collection of prose works Golet v údolí (1937) with T.
Mann's tetralogy of novels Joseph and his Brothers (1926-1942), from which Olbracht translated a total of three works during the 1930s (the first two in collaboration with H. Malířová).
A comparison of both authors' poetics indicates that between the two works there are several analogies supporting and in many respects complementing Opelík's theory. A look at Golet v údolí in the light of Mann's tetralogy opens up new ways of interpreting this crowning achievement by Olbracht.