Karl May, the Storyteller
Karl May's simple, straightforward, and startlingly graphic prose and his
gift as a story-teller with an immortal message, make him as readable today
as during his lifetime. And even if the barrier between his Western stories
and those by, say, Earnest Haycox or Zane Grey or James F. Cooper should
never crumble, there still are May's oriental adventure tales set in the
Arabian and Turkish world of the 1870's, whose authenticity can hardly be
challenged, and which sparkle with unbounded wit and suspense, and show the
first-person hero as a contemporary errant knight in his successful crusade
against crime and wickedness among proud and haughty sheiks and cruel slave
traders and cunning bandits galore. They have all the splendor of the
Arabian Nights and their chraracters are the liveliest to be met in this
field of literature. There are, further, Karl May's several voluminous
family sagas, interwoven with historical events - such as Benito Juarez
warring against Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, or the Napoleonic era and the
Franco-Prussian war 1870/71 - that take the reader nonstop through all sorts
of havoc and intrigue and murder to the final triumph of noble hearts. In
Germany, these latter novels are among the bread and salt for students of
literature, as representing the very models of German counterparts to the
sensational English novel of the Victorian era.
One main obstacle in bringing Karl May home to American readers must be
clearly voiced, however: his easily-to-be-grasped style - both in the
descriptive passages as in the dialogue - turns deceptive and slippery when
translated into American (or British) English. Obviously, the translator
must be in complete accord with the writer's mood, with the atmosphere
hidden between the lines, with the underlying subtleties; a full command of
the German language as such will not suffice. Germans have experienced this
phenomenon with the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs: in the translations,
even at the hands of extremely good linguists, most of the magic, of the
inherent appeal, got lost; for the true enjoyment of Tarzan, of John Carter,
of David Innes and the rest, only the American original will really do.
Still, the obstacle may be overcome in the case of Karl May if effort
prevails and - late though it be - America may yet discover, to its
long-lived delight, Germany's undying magician between book covers: KARL
MAY.
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