In 1922 Béla Balázs published Der Mantel der Träume: Chinesische Novellen, illustrated with intensely colorful watercolors by Marietta (or Mariette) Lydis. A limited edition, Balázs’ 1922 volume is hard to actually lay hands on in the United States. It has been recorded on microfilm from the copy in the University of Wisconsin, Madison, library and turns up on internet auction sites that show its illustrations, but is available for sale only as an art object.
In 1974, the Japanese publisher Kodansha had Balázs’ novellas translated by George Leitmann as The Mantle of Dreams with black-and-white graphics by the Japanese illustrator Katakura Shigeo “adapted... from the originals by Marietta Lydis” (frontmatter). Zipes’ translation, The Mantle of Dreams: Chinese Fairy Tales, reproduces Shigeo’s adaptations as reproduced in an Italian edition of 1994, unfortunately losing the opportunity to revive Lydis’ beautiful illustrations.
The texts of Balázs’ novellas are engagingly playful, as when he has a poet sing “so gloriously that the gods above became drunk and fell from the clouds to the earth like little sleeping birds from their nest” (“Li Tai-Pe,” 73), or as when in another story the quarrelsome Yang-Tsu chooses the sky he wishes to walk beneath (77–9). Such images make it clear what drew Jack Zipes to these delightful little stories.
Even though the stories of The Mantle of Dreams are cloaked in a Chinese naming of persons, places, and objects, their overarching Sinophilia grows out of early twentieth-century European sensibilities; and the wry irony of “The Clumsy God,” “The Opium Smokers,” “The Flea,” and “The Clay Child” belongs more to contemporaneous intellectual Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest than to the collection’s unnamed cities. Similarly European sensibilities suffuse the artless miracles of “The Friends,” as do significant elements from Hans Christian Andersen’s “Red Shoes” in “The Flea.”
An awareness of dark social ills like alcoholism (“Li Tai-Pe and the Thief”) and opium addiction (“The Opium Smokers”) intrudes here and there, although Balázs gives opium use a sympathetic turn: his two deaf mutes “lacked the colorful bridge of words to connect them” and turned to opium’s “sweet veil of torpor” where “words are superfluous” (86, 88). Similarly lyric phrasing in stories such as “The Old Child” charms even in translation.
Translation is a complex undertaking, and even in Balázs’ straightforward German text, nearly every phrase poses questions that have to be resolved. Does one render his exact words in order to convey his specific points of reference? Or does one strive to arrive at his text’s larger cultural sense? Should apparently mundane textual markers such as punctuation and paragraph separations be maintained?
Even though Leitmann’s and Zipes’ translations proceed from the same text, they often produce differing results. In some cases Zipes corrects Leitmann’s errors, but in others he introduces his own. Examples of this can be followed in the chart below, where square brackets around words and phrases highlight translation choices, with problematic translations and outright errors placed in parentheses.
|
Balázs, “Der ungeschickte Gott” 1922 Fu-Hi war [tausend Jahre lang] mit einem Berg verdeckt gewesen. So strafte ihn der Himmselsherr wegen seiner Ungeschicklichkeit. Das geschah [kurz nach] seinem menschlichen Tode, da er zum Gott der Freundschaft eingesetzt wurde, aber [sein Amt noch nicht lange verwaltet hatte] und auch in die kaiserlichen Opferlist[en] noch nicht eingetragen war. Eines Tages war ein goldener Drache als Bote bei ihm erschienen, der ihn zum Himmelsherrn berief. Da [qualmten] [Wolken aus den Füßen Fu-Hi’s], er stieg empor und flog an den neunzehn Mondhäusern vorbei, durch die dreiunddreißig Himmel hindurch, bis zum großen [Nephritthron]. Dort saß der Himmelsherr, und goldene Drachen krochen ihm [zu den Ohren hinein] und kamen bei der Nase wieder heraus. (19) |
Leitmann, trans., “The Clumsy God” 1974 [For a thousand years] Fu Yi had been covered by a mountain. In this manner the lord of the heavens had punished him for his clumsiness. All this took place (after) his human demise, when he was made the god of friendship, but (had not yet taken up his duties) and was not yet on the imperial sacrificial list[...]. One day there arrived a messenger in the form of a golden dragon, who bade him appear before the lord of the heavens. Thereupon (clouds appeared at the feet of Fu Yi). He rose up, flew past the nineteen houses of the moon, through the thirty-three heavens, and arrived at the [throne of nephrite]. Seated on it was the lord of the heavens; golden dragons crawled [into his ears] and emerged from his nose. (27) |
Zipes, trans., “The Clumsy God” 2010 Fu-Hi had been covered by a mountain (for a thousand long years). This was how the Lord of the Heavens had punished him for his clumsiness. It all began [right after] Fu-Hi’s mortal death, when he was appointed god of friendship. He [had not governed very long in his office] and had not yet been registered in the imperial sacrificial list[s] when one day, a golden dragon appeared before him as messenger and summoned him to the Lord of the Heavens. All at once [clouds billowed from Fu-Hi’s feet]. Then he climbed upon them and flew past the nineteen houses of the moon and through the thirty-three heavens to the great [(alabaster) throne], where the Lord of the Heavens was sitting and where golden dragons crawled (through his ears) and re-emerged through his nose.(80) |
A bit further on in this story Balázs’ phrase “die Eitergeschwülst des Hasses zu öffnen und fließen zu lassen” (20) is translated accurately by Leitmann as opening “the inflamed sore of hatred and letting it drain” (30). Zipes maintains the sense of the verb fließen (to flow, drain) while turning it into the noun pus, but his “tumor” (81) is wrong. Infelicitous usage also gives pause: Zipes’ phrase “treaded on some bread” (90) is better translated by Leitmann as “one day he happened to step on a piece of bread” (39), while his breezy tone in “It looks bad” (“The Clay Child”) feels out of place. Balázs was Jewish, in which regard, either Zipes or his copy editor made a gaffe in rendering “minyan” (the required number of adult Jewish worshippers necessary to conduct a public worship service) as “minion” (4, an obsequious, servile person).
The sixty-nine-page introduction, nearly as long as the tales themselves, focuses on Balázs’ personal life, loves, and writings. It names the intellectuals (Kodaly, Bartok, Lukacs, Brecht) and the movie people (the Hollywood director Michael Curtiz [Kertesz]; Alexander Korda) with whom he interacted and lists his extensive collaborations with them in the early film industry. A screenplay writer, he thought deeply about film as a vehicle of narratives for mass audiences, and composed three volumes of film theory. Balázs, who seems to have written nonstop from an early age, has today been largely forgotten. Those who wish to pursue this aspect may be referred to Eliot Weinberger’s “The Man Who Wrote Everything.” Of his extensive oeuvre, only Balázs’ film theory and his Chinese novellas have been translated into English.
With Balázs’ titular Chinesische Novellen translated by Zipes as “Chinese Fairy Tales,” genre questions inevitably arise. Balázs’ designation of the tales as “Novellen” is the more accurate in terms of twentieth-century literary theory, that is, a fictional narrative intermediate in length and complexity between a novel and a short story. Twentieth-century fairy tales, which differ fundamentally, are commonly held to be brief fictions that incorporate magical elements from a more-or-less set corpus. Since Balázs’ novellas resemble fairy tales only in their brevity and their otherness of place, Zipes’ use of “fairy tales” in the title can be understood as taking advantage of the elasticity of the term, which in contemporary usage has come to be applied to a broad range of fictions beyond traditional fairy tales.
WORKS CITED
Balázs, Béla. Der Mantel der Träume: Chinesische Novellen. Munich: D. and R. Bischoff, 1922.
Balázs, Béla. The Mantle of Dreams. Trans. George Leitmann. New York: Kodansha International / Harper and Row, 1974.
Weinberger, Eliot. “The Man Who Knew Everything.” New York Review of Books (November 25, 2010): 52–53.
--------
[Review length: 1344 words • Review posted on September 1, 2011]