Publication Update March 2021
Printed copies of Manas and Mountains Oceans Giants are being distributed to bookshops and online sellers, and e-book formats are also on sale now. This is an opportune moment to highlight my introductions to these two epic works.
In 2019 the independent UK publisher Galileo acquired the English-language rights to Döblin’s two mid-1920s epics : the dystopia of the 27th century Mountains Oceans Giants (ISBN 978-1912916245) and the free-verse Himalayan epic Manas (ISBN 978-1912916214). After half a year’s delay caused by the response to the “virus”, both titles are now available in print and e-book formats. Hurrah!
Here I offer some materials to help Anglophone readers orient to these intriguing but unfamiliar works.
Previously published excerpts from my translations can be found at
http://intranslation.brooklynrail.org/german/manas-a-himalayan-epic (April 2016)
http://intranslation.brooklynrail.org/german/mountains-oceans-giants (December 2016)
My adaptation of Manas as a radio play can be downloaded – MANAS – A PLAY FOR VOICES – book format May2018 .
I’ve also produced a little package of materials that critics might find helpful as they delve into these unknown works – INTRODUCING MOG & MANAS TO ENGLISH READERS-2 .
As a contribution to the familiar and currently very popular genre of the Dystopian, Mountains should attract considerable interest based on title and blurb alone – both because so many of its themes have grown even more salient in the past hundred years (in contrast, for example, to Wells’ Fabian fantasies), and because of the extraordinarily intense and visionary depictions of the Iceland-Greenland venture and its awful consequences.
Manas, however, requires particular promotional effort, having been so resolutely ignored by the Germanist literary establishment in all the years following enthusiastic recviews by Robert Musil and others. Here’s what I said in Introducing Mog and Manas…:
THE VANISHED MASTERPIECE
C.D. Godwin
Lots of books shine briefly, only to end unmourned in the remainder bin.
Some books have legs, remain in print for decades. Helped by college reading lists, perhaps, or because they persist in resonating with the reading public.
A few books acquire a mystical reputation: out of print, hard to find, but rumoured to be something special.
The fate of Manas corresponds to none of these.
Not many other works of true literary worth and interest have been so studiously ignored and neglected for almost a century after they first appeared. Passed over even in comprehensive bibliographies. Unexplored by scholars of literature. Utterly unknown to Anglophone editors and reviewers, let alone the interested reader.
It really is remarkable how little attention Germanist scholars have paid to Manas. Only one substantial study has appeared so far, and that over 50 years ago. Whatever may have appeared in English is buried in obscure scholarly journals.
When the very nice new Fischer Klassik edition of Manas (2016) was being prepared, the editor, David Midgley, was told by the publishers that they didn’t expect it to sell.
Yet when it first appeared in 1927, leading German writers wrote long enthusiastic reviews, while noting that readers fed on the standard fare of the 1920s German book trade might find it hard going. Robert Musil even hoped it might arouse controversy.
Instead – nothing. Deafening silence. And Sam Fischer stopped Döblin’s monthly stipend.
Then two years later Döblin’s only international best-seller, Berlin Alexanderplatz was published. Overnight, that became the only work by which he would henceforth be known. A whole industry sprang up to discuss that book, while the rest of his enormous output attracted only sporadic attention.
Except for Manas. Manas attracted as good as no attention at all.
This leaves me with the delicate task of encouraging you to read this wonderful work.
Ignored by the critics? you say; Can’t be much good then. Not so, I urge: take the taste test! Sample some of the scenes. Savour the language, the sounds, the moods and voices. (This is a text for the ears, not just the eyes.)
Blank verse! you say. That’s a hurdle, for a start. Not so, I promise. There’s nothing complicated or ‘hard’ about the crisp, direct, powerfully dramatic format Döblin chose for Manas. (Nothing here of the chaotic noisy word-montage of the Berlin novel!) Overcome your fear of ‘poetry’! Find delight in the vigour, the vivid scenes, the voices human, divine, demonic, the constantly surprising actions and mood-shifts. You’ll keep wondering: whatever next?
As I translated Manas I imagined it as a graphic novel, a stage play, a film – Bollywood film, even! Once I’d finished, I adapted it as a radio play, incorporating about a third of the full text along with a synopsis and other navigation aids. You can download Manas – a Play for Voices for free. (If you belong to an AmDram group, why not encourage a group reading?)
I hope the commentaries by Heinz Graber, Robert Musil and others will attune you to this wonderful work, and encourage a buzz in the Anglosphere that will at last allow Manas to receive its just deserts alongside Gilgamesh, Homer, Dante, Byron, Pushkin, Walcott, and other examples of the verse-novel genre.
