1 Introduction
When Frank Norris unexpectedly died of peritonitis at the age of thirty-two in October 1902, American periodicals responded with a flurry of death notices, obituaries, and retrospective articles about his life and work. Many of these pieces were especially attuned to the publicationsâ individual interests and target audiences. In the December 1902 issue of the literary magazine The North American Review, for example, William Dean Howells discussed Ãmile Zolaâs influence on Norris, offered detailed readings of McTeague (1899) and The Octopus (1901), compared Norris to Stephen Crane, and reflected in very general terms on the future of American fiction.1 Already in October 1902, the University of California Chronicle, a quarterly dedicated to social and academic events on UC campuses, in turn, had printed a collection of personal reminiscences of Norris by Harry M. Wright, one of the writerâs closest friends from his student days at San Francisco Boysâ High School and UC Berkeley.2
Yet perhaps the most interesting obituary of Norris appeared as late as October 1903 in the 1904 edition of the Pionier, an illustrated German-language calendar published by the New York City-based nonprofit Socialist Cooperative Publishing Association. Unsigned and simply entitled âFrank Norris,â the seven-page article not only contains a general appraisal of Norrisâs writing, an excerpt from his essay âThe True Reward of the Novelistâ (first published in Worldâs Work in 1901), and a large photograph of Norris comfortably sitting in a chair, reading a book, and smoking a pipe (also taken from a 1901 issue of Worldâs Work; see fig. 9.1). It also features what one may consider the very first German translation of The Octopus: A Story of California, the first installment of Norrisâs projected âEpic of the Wheatâ trilogy and the last novel published in book form prior to his death.3
The first page of âFrank Norris,â published anonymously in the 1904 edition of the Pionier
The uncredited photograph had originally appeared in a 1901 issue of Worldâs Work
Like those by Howells and Wright, the Pionierâs obituary of Norris, and especially the translation of The Octopus offered therein, were specifically tailored to the editorial formula and the target audience of the calendar â in this case, German-speaking supporters of the international labor movement living in the US.4 Indeed, in âFrank Norris,â as well as in the follow-up article âDer Weizen als Nemesisâ (published in October 1904 in the 1905 edition of the calendar), the Pionier and its translator(s) use a variety of translational strategies to position The Octopus as a âpurpose novelâ informed by and supporting a Socialist worldview. It is these strategies that this chapter seeks to identify by combining a periodical studies with a translation studies approach. More specifically, conceiving of the network of textual and pictorial elements that surrounds the translation within the obituary in particular and within the Pionier in general as paratexts of the translation, I will show how the calendar employs not just translational shifts at the textual level (for example lexical choices) and textual selection or âzero translation,â but also and especially paratextual framing to present Norrisâs novel as a âwake-up callâ to German-speaking Socialists in the US.
In a second step, I will draw on translation studies scholar André Lefevereâs conceptionalization of translation as ârewritingâ in order to compare the Pionierâs translation of The Octopus to other popular rewritings of the novel from the period, including early newspaper reviews and D. W. Griffithâs 1909 movie A Corner in Wheat. The parallels that will emerge from this comparison suggest, as I will argue, that in the wake of the novelâs publication, there existed an entire range of popular rewritings â reviews, adaptations, translations â that sought to generically categorize The Octopus as a âsocial novel,â an example of âlittérature engagée,â or, to use the title of Norrisâs May 1902 article in Worldâs Work, a ânovel with a âpurposeââ5 â a perspective that sharply contrasts with later academic critiques of The Octopus as a seminal example of American literary naturalism. From a methodological perspective, the comparison of early rewritings of The Octopus further supports the notion that periodical texts, translations, and particularly translations that were published as periodical texts, must not be read in isolation, but should always be regarded as part of an intertextual network of periodical texts and images and/or rewritings. Moreover, such a comparison also confirms the idea that both periodicals and translations/rewritings â and particularly anonymous and illustrated translations such as the Pionierâs rewriting of The Octopus â fundamentally undermine the âunitary conception of authorshipâ6 and should therefore be read as the products of an interpersonal network of collaborators.
2 Translation Studies, Periodical Studies, and the Pionier
Following the rise of descriptive translation studies and what later came to be referred to as the âManipulation Schoolâ during the 1980s as well as the ensuing âcultural turnâ during the 1990s,7 translation studies scholars â especially those focusing on literary translation â have become particularly interested in the production and reception processes of translations. This generally entails, as Claire Gilbert has recently noted in an article for The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Culture, paying special attention to the âcontext and co-textsâ of translations,8 that is, the ânetwork of personal and institutional relationships in which a translator, a patron, a reader, or any other actor in the translation process is embeddedâ as well as the âtexts or other materials found outside the translation.â9 In the context of a translation published in a periodical, such as the Pionierâs translation of The Octopus, âcontext and co-textsâ first and foremost refer to the various actors involved in the production, distribution, and reception of the periodical as well as to the various textual and pictorial elements that surround the translation within the periodical publication.
It is precisely at this point that periodical studies and translation studies converge. For just as translation studies has refused to examine translations in isolation, periodical studies has been based on the premise that periodicals are more than just compilations or containers of individual, independent features. And just as translation studies has therefore become particularly interested in the âcontext and co-textsâ of translations, periodical studies has thus come to increasingly focus, as John Fagg, Matthew Pethers, and Robin Vandome have noted in the introduction to a special issue of American Periodicals (2013),10 on the institutional networks of periodical actors and the intertextual networks of periodical features that make up the periodical. In the present case of a translation published within a periodical, then, translation studies and periodical studies directly feed into each other, as their mutual interest in the interpersonal and intertextual networks that produce and surround the periodical feature/the translation have become squarely congruent.
Unfortunately, very little is known about the periodical/translational actors â editor(s), illustrator(s), translator(s), etc. â involved in the production and distribution of the Pionier in general and of âFrank Norrisâ in particular. What we do know is that the Pionier: Illustrirter Volks-Kalender (Pioneer: Illustrated Calendar for the People), to give it its full title, was one of several âsatelliteâ publications of the New Yorker Volkszeitung, which, along with the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung (founded in 1834) and the Deutsches Journal (1895â1918), belonged to the three most successful German-language daily newspapers in New York City during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.11 Established as the official organ of the Socialistische Arbeiter-Partei (Socialist Labor Party) in January 1878 at 184 William Street near Printing House Square, the New Yorker Volkszeitung (NYVZ) was formally published by the nonprofit Socialist Cooperative Publishing Association, with Alexander Jonas, who had previously edited the weekly Arbeiterstimme, as editor in chief and recent Russian émigré Sergius E. Schewitsch in charge of the Sonntagsblatt (the Sunday edition).12
By 1903, when the NYVZ celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary and âFrank Norrisâ was published in the Pionier, the paper had almost quadrupled its rather modest original circulation of 5,50013 and had a new editor in chief. Since 1891, German-born Hermann Schlüter had been at the head of the NYVZ. As Peter Conolly-Smith notes, Schlüter had âemigrated to the United States in the 1860s, worked for the German-language radical press in Chicago, then returned to Germany as a foreign correspondent during the panic of the 1870s, only to leave for America once more in the wake of Bismarckâs 1878 antisocialist laws.â14 Schlüter would remain in his post until his death in 1919 while simultaneously authoring a series of monographs on the German American labor movement (for example, Die Anfänge der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung in Amerika, 1907). Moreover, by 1903 the NYVZ had grown into an entire family of periodicals, including the NYVZ and its Sonntagsblatt, of course, but also the weekly journals Vorwärts: Wochenblatt der New Yorker Volkszeitung (since 1878) and The People/The Worker (in English; since 1891)15 as well as the yearly Pionier (since 1881).16 Carol Poore maintains that the same people who were responsible for the NYVZ, the Sonntagsblatt, the Vorwärts, and The People/The Worker also wrote for the Pionier,17 although it remains unclear who exactly was involved in âFrank Norrisâ and especially in the translation of The Octopus. As virtually all of the NYVZ staff were native speakers of German and (more or less) fluent in English, anyone could have acted as the translator(s).
In fact, given the multigeneric and multimedial nature of âFrank Norrisâ â the article comprises, as we shall see, biography, literary criticism, translation, as well as printed text and photography â but also given the political orientation of the Pionier, it is not entirely inconceivable that the article in general and the translation in particular were the product of collaborative work. On the one hand, the various competences or skills required for âFrank Norris,â from critical analysis and literary translation to the reproduction of images, may have called for the cooperation of several experts in each of these fields. On the other hand, such collaborative work would have fit particularly well with the political spirit of this publication, which was, after all, officially published by what referred to itself as the Socialist Cooperative Publishing Association. To be sure, like many other periodicals at the time, the NYVZ and the Pionier were hierarchically organized, with â formally, at least â an editor in chief at the head of the editorial teams, and especially the Pionier liberally accorded the âsocial prestige of authorshipâ18 to contributors of literary texts (short stories and poems), their names appearing below the titles of their texts as well as in the table of contents. However, articles dealing with politics in general and the labor movement in particular are often left unsigned, thus suggesting a team of collaborating editors, illustrators, and other periodical actors that speaks with a common, unitary voice.19
Much more can be said, of course, about the network of textual, pictorial, and other periodical elements that surround âFrank Norrisâ and âDer Weizen als Nemesisâ within the 1904 and 1905 editions of the Pionier, both of which have been digitized and are freely available online.20 Comparing these two editions to earlier and later ones as well as to Pooreâs general description of the structure and the content of the Pionier over its more than fifty-year life span21 â the last edition appeared in 1932, which was also the year in which the NYVZ ceased publication â one may conclude that the 1904 and 1905 editions constitute fairly typical issues of the calendar: for example, the cover of the 1904/1905 Pionier shows a drawing of a middle-aged, bearded man in a leather apron against the background of a river landscape. Surrounded by work tools (for example, an anvil and a hammer), the man is holding a flagpole topped with a Phrygian cap; the fluttering banner reads âPIONIERâ (âpioneerâ). The themes of liberty and labor are taken up again in the background, where four circular inserts depict a smith, a carpenter, a farmer, and a sailor (all male), signs of industry and commerce dot the landscape (for example, a factory with a tall smoking chimney and steam and sailing ships), and the actual words âFreiheitâ (âlibertyâ) and âArbeitâ (âlaborâ) appear above the setting sun. This cover image, which had been used at least since 1900, would be retained until the 1910 edition, when it was replaced by a drawing of a man in front of a log cabin (that is, an actual pioneer) flanked by allegorical depictions of liberty and labor.
Similarly, while the frontispieces of earlier and later editions of the Pionier would feature the âportrait of a revolutionary leader like Marx or Lasalle or a reproduction of a painting (perhaps from revolutionary history such as Adolph [von] Menzelâs paintings of 1848, but perhaps also a landscape or genre painting),â22 the 1904 and 1905 editions greet readers with studies of the âenemiesâ of the revolution â those who, in the eyes of the NYVZ, shun honest âArbeitâ and stand in the way of âFreiheitâ: a picture of a hopelessly inebriated monk amidst empty wine bottles entitled âIn the Monastery Cellarâ (1904) and a drawing of a group of policemen hiding behind a street corner and waiting to attack a march of workers called âUnsettled Timesâ (1905). Along with capitalists, agents of authority such as the clergy and the police were frequently targeted in the texts and pictures printed in the Pionier.23
Following the frontispiece and the table of contents, the actual calendar section only takes up twelve pages â one for each month â and thus a little more than ten per cent of the entire calendar. Each month is accompanied, as Poore notes, by an illustration as well as a list of âimportant dates including events from American and European progressive history.â24 The list of âhistorical and biographical datesâ for March 1904, for instance, includes the death of Goethe in 1832 and the birth of Wilhelm Liebknecht (one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party in Germany) in 1826, the emancipation of Russian serfs in 1861 and of Puerto Rican slaves in 1873, but also the Boston Massacre in 1770 and the withdrawal of British troops from that city six years later. Hence, the calendar section addresses an immigrant readership that clearly retains some attachment to the old home, its language, culture, and politics, but also has a keen interest in European and international progressive history, and especially that of the new home.
This also applies to the back section of the calendar. In addition to about ten pages of advertisements mainly for small, local, German-owned businesses â like the NYVZ itself,25 the Pionier apparently found it difficult to attract ads from larger, American companies â this section usually features âgreetings from many socialist and labor fraternal organizations in New York City, and lists of books which could be ordered from the NYVZâ:26 in fact, in both 1904 and 1905 the âSocialist Literature Company,â which used the same address as the offices of the NYVZ, ran ads for âAgitations-Broschürenâ (propaganda material) such as one Emil Liesâs Was ist Socialismus? (âWhat Is Socialism?â) or Municipale Forderungen der Sozialdemokratie (âMunicipal Goals of Social Democratic Politicsâ) by editor in chief Schlüter himself, but also for editions of the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Ferdinand Lasalle.27 In addition, the 1904 edition also offers readers information about the measures and weights, coins and bills, abbreviations, and time zones used in the US,28 thus once again marking the Pionier as an immigrant publication.
The bulk of the Pionier, however â about 80 pages per issue â is made up of what Poore refers to as âreading materialâ:29 the characteristic mix of poems, short stories, essays on issues of art, science, history, technology, and travel, as well as pictorial material (some of which related to specific texts) that could also be found in a typical issue of one of the leading American literary magazines from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries â sans any serialized matter such as novels or regular editorial departments, however. Unlike in these literary magazines, but as in the (German) immigrant press in general,30 only some of the material was original and specifically written for the Pionier. As Poore points out, âmany pieces were taken over from the German press or calendarsâ and âvery little material was translated from English for inclusion.â31 In fact, while also featuring both original pieces (for example, short stories and illustrated articles on science and nature by German American writers Edna Fern and Wilhelm Gundlach, respectively)32 and reprints from Germany and Austria (for example, Friedrich Schillerâs crime report âDer Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehreâ [âThe Criminal of Lost Honorâ] and Franz Brandâs sketch âEin Arbeiterâ [âA Workerâ]),33 the 1904 and 1905 editions of the Pionier do contain a fair amount of translations, not just from English (in addition to The Octopus, an illustrated short story by Lewis A. MacBrayne entitled âThe Promised Landâ and first published in 1902 in McClureâs),34 but also from French (Ãmile Zolaâs âLe paradis des chatsâ [âCatsâ Paradiseâ]) and Russian (Maxim Gorkyâs âVyvodâ [âThe Procession of Shameâ] and excerpts from Leo Tolstoyâs âRazrushenie ada i vosstanovlenie egoâ [âThe Restoration of Hellâ]).35
Poore also maintains that from the point of view of content, âby no means all of [the âreading materialâ] was overtly political. Those pieces expressing a clearly socialist standpoint were definitely in the minority.â36 Of course, articles such as âDas Leipziger Centralkomite und Ferdinand Lassalleâ (âThe Central Committee in Leipzig and Ferdinand Lassalleâ) or âDer Klassenkampf in Coloradoâ (âClass Conflict in Coloradoâ) openly acknowledged their ideological bents.37 Yet while some of the other material published in the Pionier may not appear explicitly political in itself or upon first sight, at least in some cases concrete intertextual connections and the periodical surroundings may also suggest otherwise. Thus Zolaâs piece, especially when appearing in a periodical that bears the words âArbeitâ and âFreiheitâ on its cover, may be argued to make a strong case for the liberation of the working class; and the reproduction of Jean-François Milletâs âLe semeurâ (âThe Sowerâ), which may appear like an illustration included merely for decorative purposes or to fill up space, strongly resonates with Norrisâs The Octopus, where Presley and his poem of political protest, âThe Toilers,â are based on American poet Edwin Markham and his acclaimed âThe Man with the Hoe,â which in turn is based on Milletâs eponymous painting.38 Hence, in some cases it was mainly or even exclusively the periodical surroundings that suggested a political and, more specifically, a Socialist reading of a particular text or illustration published in the Pionier. This was not the case, however, with the calendarâs translation of The Octopus.
3 From âA Story of Californiaâ to a âNovel with a âPurposeââ
Indeed, paratextual framing was just one of the translational strategies that the Pionier used to make Norrisâs novel fit into the collection of more or less overtly political reading material aimed at a German-speaking, Socialist-leaning immigrant readership that was published each year in the calendar. The others were textual selection (or âzero translationâ) and translational shifts at the lexical level (for example, lexical choices). It should be emphasized, however, that none of these translational strategies is exclusive to the Pionierâs translation of The Octopus, and neither is their particular combination. Indeed, any translation process necessarily and inevitably involves textual selection (beginning with the question of which texts should be translated), lexical shifts, and, particularly in the case of literary translations, paratextual framing (for example, through blurbs, prefaces, or translatorâs notes) for a specific purpose â or, as Theo Hermans famously wrote in the introduction to The Manipulation of Literature (1985): âFrom the point of view of the target literature, all translation implies a degree of manipulation of the source text for a certain purpose.â39 The task here, then, is less to establish that specific translational strategies have been used or that âmanipulationâ has taken place during the translation of The Octopus, but rather to identify the particular purpose or effect of these strategies. Ultimately, I argue, this purpose or effect was to present Norrisâs âStory of Californiaâ as a ânovel with a âpurpose.ââ
With respect to translational shifts at the textual level, it is instructive to compare the Pionierâs 1904/1905 anonymous translation of The Octopus with that by Eugen von Tempsky, published only two years later, in 1907, as Der Octopus with the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt in Stuttgart (Germany). Perhaps one of the most striking differences between these two German translations of the novel is the heavy use of English loanwords and expressions in the translation published in the US. For instance, whereas Tempsky translates the term âboarding-houseâ as âKosthaus[e]â â an established translation that had been used as early as 185840 â the Pionierâs translator(s) use(s) the compound âBoardinghaus,â consisting of the English âboardingâ and the German âHaus.â41 Likewise, in the Pionier âcable carsâ and âstreet carâ appear as âKabelcarsâ and âStraÃen-Car,â respectively, while Tempsky uses âKabelbahnâ and simply drops that part of the sentence that contains the word âstreet car.â42 Moreover, the Pionierâs translator(s) frequently retain(s) English terms of address and American coin names, whereas Tempsky uses German equivalents and/or adds explanatory footnotes. Thus âMrs Gerardâ remains âMrs Gerardâ in the Pionier, but becomes âFrau Gerardâ in Tempskyâs translation;43 and âquarter,â ânickel,â and âdimeâ (the coins) are translated as âQuarter,â âNickel,â and âDimeâ in the Pionier and as âVierteldollar,â âNickel,â and âDimeâ by Tempsky, with added footnotes identifying, for example, a nickel as a âfive-cent coin made from nickelâ (my translation) and worth â20 Pf. [Pfennige; a former German coin unit].â44
Hence, while Tempsky was primarily translating for a Europe-based, German-speaking readership that possessed no or comparatively little knowledge about life in the US, the Pionierâs translator(s) apparently assumed that the calendarâs German American immigrant target audience was at least somewhat familiar with, for example, American coin names â and if they were not as of yet, the back section of the 1904 edition offered them a succinct guide to such matters (see above). Though the Pionier may have also reached European readers â even during the years from 1878 to 1890, when the NYVZ and, presumably, all of its satellite publications were banned in Germany under the so-called Anti-Socialist Laws,45 Jacob Obrist recalls reading the paper in Paris, where it was sent to him from his native Switzerland46 â it was to German (or German-speaking) immigrants in the US that the calendar was addressed first and foremost.
The Pionierâs intended audience not only had an impact on translational shifts at the textual level, however, but must have also played a role during the process of textual selection. Obviously, as a periodical comprising a mere hundred pages, the Pionier could not possibly have translated Norrisâs 650-page novel (in the 1986 Penguin edition) in its entirety.47 In fact, what the calendar offers its readers in its 1904 edition is but a translation of (a part of) one single chapter of The Octopus, namely, the second half of chapter VIII of book II of the novel.48 This chapter, however, focuses precisely on those characters of Norrisâs novel with whom the Pionierâs target audience arguably could have identified most easily â that is, Mrs Hooven and Hilda, the wife and the daughter of Hooven, the German-born tenant on Magnus Derrickâs âLos Muertosâ ranch. Following the climactic shootout between the farmers and the agents of the Pacific & Southwestern Railroad and the death of Hooven, Mrs Hooven and six-year-old Hilda (as well as the Hoovensâ other daughter, nineteen-year-old Minna) decide to âabandon ⦠Los Muertos and her home foreverâ49 and move to San Francisco. When he learns of the Hoovensâ unexpected departure, Presley is immediately alarmed: âthe suspicion forced itself upon him that Mrs Hooven ⦠country-bred, ignorant of city ways, might easily come to grief in the hard, huge struggle of city life.â50 It is not only due to their German ethnicity, but also due to the Hoovensâ unfamiliarity with the âhard, huge struggle of city life,â then, that German(-speaking) immigrants, and especially German(-speaking) immigrants in New York City, may have particularly empathized with and related to them.51
Of course, the second half of chapter VIII of book II of The Octopus also constitutes that famous part of the novel in which Norris, in sections and paragraphs that grow shorter and shorter, cuts back and forth between scenes of the Hoovens roaming the streets of San Francisco, begging and looking for food, and scenes of Presley attending a lavish dinner party at the mansion of railroad magnate Mr Gerard. Contrasting an almost pathological analysis of Mrs Hoovenâs slow starvation with extremely detailed descriptions of the various dishes served at the dinner party, the chapter culminates in two short paragraphs that suggest that precisely at the moment when the guests thank Mrs Gerard ââfor a delightful dinner,ââ Mrs Hooven is declared dead due to ââexhaustion from starvation.ââ52
By selecting this â and only this â part of The Octopus for translation, however, the Pionier completely reconfigures both the central conflict and the final message of the novel: on the one hand, readers of the Pionier translation never learn that the majority of the farmers in the San Joaquin Valley are, in fact, big landowners whose reckless, solely profit-oriented monoculture complements rather than contrasts with the monopoly of the railroad. Silencing this âpre-historyâ of the climactic shootout through careful textual selection or âzero translation,â53 the Pionier presents the struggle between the capitalist railroad and the equally capitalist farmers as one between small, honest laborers (the Hoovens) and big, morally corrupt plutocrats (the Gerards and their dinner guests) â an instance of the very class war that is also evoked in countless other features in the calendar and in NYVZ publications in general.
On the other hand, by also withholding from its readers the âConclusionâ of The Octopus, in which the narrator asserts that âfalseness dies,â âinjustice and oppression in the end of everything fade and vanish away,â and that âall things, surely, inevitably, resistlessly work together for good,â54 the Pionier simultaneously leaves them with the profound sense of injustice and frustration, the âsympathetic or angry responseâ55 that the âdinner party/starvationâ scene has elicited in many readers and critics (and that has led some among the latter to utterly reject the âConclusionâ as inconsistent and incompatible with the rest of the novel).56 Rather than ultimately constituting an assertion of the utilitarianism and optimism expressed in the âConclusion,â The Octopus transmogrifies, in its translation in the Pionier, into the very âkind of work that Norris himself celebrates in his essay âThe Novel with a âPurposeâââ:57 a call for protest and action and, hence, a very fitting piece for a family of periodicals that elsewhere characterized itself as a wake-up call to laborers.58
For the follow-up article âDer Weizen als Nemesisâ (âThe Wheat as Nemesisâ) in the 1905 edition of the calendar, the Pionier similarly selected a scene that must have elicited a strong affective, even cathartic response in many of Norrisâs readers â namely, the last section of chapter IX of book II of The Octopus,59 in which S. Behrman, the âseemingly intangible and indestructible local agent of the railroad in the San Joaquin Valley and the âarch-enemyâ of the farmers,â60 who had miraculously survived two assassination attempts, meets a gruesome death when he falls into the cargo hold of a wheat ship and is buried alive under the grain. The selection of this â and only this â scene, too, somewhat alters the final message of the novel. In The Farm Novel in North America, I have argued that Behrmanâs death is ultimately presented as meaningless, since according to âthe larger viewâ taken in the âConclusion,â the fates of individuals such as Behrman (or the Hoovens, for that matter) simply do not count â they are but âmotes in the sunshine,â and while they, as individuals, may suffer, âthe race goes on.â61 By contrast, in the Pionierâs translation Behrmanâs death appears like a direct and well-deserved retribution for the death of the Hoovens. To be sure, while âFrank Norrisâ may be considered a âwake-up call,â âDer Weizen als Nemesisâ should not be mistaken for a call for or a sanctioning of violence or murder: as Hoerder and Weber have pointed out, the NYVZ regularly distanced itself from radical anarchism.62 Paratextually invoking some higher order â that is, the titular ânemesisâ in the shape of the wheat â the 1905 translation nevertheless seeks to indicate that the Pionier and its readership have espoused the right cause.
Incidentally, the suggestive title is one of the very few immediate paratexts that surround the Pionierâs translation of The Octopus in the 1905 edition of the calendar. Indeed, apart from this title and a subtitle that identifies the source of the text as a âscene from the novel âThe Octopus,â by Frank Norrisâ (my translation),63 âDer Weizen als Nemesisâ merely offers its readers a two-paragraph introduction that briefly summarizes the plot of the novel leading up to this âmasterful sceneâ (my translation).64 While the translation published in the 1904 edition is not even mentioned, in its depiction of the central conflict of The Octopus as one between honest, hard-working farmers and a ruthless monopolistic enterprise, the 1905 summary largely corresponds to the transformation that Norrisâs text had undergone in the 1904 edition as a result of textual selection: Behrman, for instance, is described as being driven by âpitiless unscrupulousnessâ and acting with âdevilish calculation,â wasting no thought on âall the injustices that he had committed, all the blood that had been spilled, all the misery that he had brought upon so many familiesâ (my translation).65
Just like âDer Weizen als Nemesis,â âFrank Norris,â too, features an introductory plot summary that situates the translated scene within the novel as a whole; and here, too, Hooven is depicted as just another one among the many Californian wheat farmers who âbravely fightâ against the âcrushing superior force of the railroad monopolyâ (my translation).66 Compared to the 1905 edition of the Pionier, however, the 1904 edition of the calendar accompanies its translation of The Octopus with a much richer immediate paratextual apparatus: in addition to the plot summary and the news of Frank Norrisâs recent death â ostensibly the motive for publishing the article in the first place â âFrank Norrisâ also includes the aforementioned photograph of Norris taken from Worldâs Work as well as a detailed description of the writerâs âEpic of the Wheatâ project, probably based on the note included in the first book edition of the second part of the trilogy, The Pit: A Story of Chicago.67 Even more importantly, âFrank Norrisâ employs quotes from Norrisâs essay âThe True Reward of the Novelistâ (published in October 1901 in Worldâs Work) as well as from Ferdinand Lassalleâs âWas nun? Zweiter Vortrag über Verfassungswesenâ (first published in 1863 and translated into English as âNo Compromiseâ)68 to characterize Norris and his âEpic of the Wheatâ as unencumbered by the quest for fame and fortune and as committed to speaking the truth.
Thus the author(s) of âFrank Norrisâ translate and quote from the last section of âThe True Reward of the Novelist,â in which Norris differentiates between âFictitiousâ (âroyaltiesâ) and âReal Rewardsâ (âsincerity, sincerity, and again sincerityâ),69 in order to substantiate their claim that Norris was âno fashionable writer, no worshipper of success,â and certainly âno whitewasher seeking to win the favors of the dominating classesâ (my translation).70 Likewise, they insist that the âEpic of the Wheatâ is âfree from hypocrisy and whitewashingâ and knows ânur ein Ziel â¦: das âAussprechen dessen, was istââ (âbut one goal: the âstating of that which isââ [my translation]).71 In contrast to the source of the lengthy quote from âThe True Reward,â that of the rather short quote used to indicate the goal of the âEpic of the Wheatâ â âAussprechen dessen, was istâ â is not indicated in the article. The author(s) of âFrank Norrisâ may have assumed that Pionier readers were sufficiently familiar with the writings of German Socialist and founder of the first German labor party Ferdinand Lassalle to identify the phrase as having been taken from Lassalleâs 1862 speech âWas nun?,â in which he famously noted that âAll great political action consists in the stating of that which is, and begins with, such a statement.â72 (And if some of them were not, then the excerpt from Julius Vahlteichâs speech celebrating the 40th anniversary of the founding of Lassalleâs party, which was printed in the very same issue of the Pionier, as well as Lassalleâs collected writings, advertised by the Socialist Literature Company in the back matter of the 1904 calendar, may have offered a hint or two.)73
Aligning the alleged goal of Norrisâs trilogy with Lassalleâs definition of political action and, hence, more or less subtly identifying the âEpic of the Wheatâ as a political and specifically a Socialist work, the Pionier presents the âStory of Californiaâ as a ânovel with a âpurpose,ââ a literary text that, as Norris writes in his eponymous 1902 essay, constitutes âa great force, that works together with the pulpit and the universities for the good of the people, fearlessly proving that power is abused, that the strong grind the faces of the weak, that an evil tree is still growing in the midst of the garden, that undoing follows hard upon righteousness.â74 In fact, this is precisely what happens in the Pionierâs translation of The Octopus, where the âundoingâ (in the shape of Behrmanâs death in the 1905 edition of the calendar) âfollows hard upon righteousnessâ (the dinner and the simultaneous death of Mrs Hooven in the 1904 edition). To be sure, and as I have already mentioned, the Pionierâs paratextual framing of the translation extends far beyond the limits of âFrank Norrisâ and âDer Weizen als Nemesisâ and also includes, for example, âDas Leipziger Centralkomite und Ferdinand Lassalle,â the reproduction of Milletâs âLe semeur,â or the advertisement for Lassalleâs collected writings in the 1904 edition. Indeed, all of the texts and images published in the 1904 and 1905 issues of the calendar may be conceived of as paratexts of the translation that, together with textual selection and translational shifts at the textual level, contribute to tailoring Norrisâs novel to the Pionierâs target audience and to rewriting The Octopus as a ânovel with a âpurpose.ââ
4 The Pionier and Other Popular Rewritings of The Octopus
However, the Pionierâs translation of The Octopus was by no means the only rewriting of Norrisâs âStory of Californiaâ as a purpose novel that appeared during the first decade of the twentieth century. In âWhy Waste Our Time on Rewrites?â André Lefevere has conceptualized translation as a form of ârewritingâ of literature, often designed, like reviews, criticism, historiography, anthologizing, adaptation, and other forms of rewriting, âprecisely to push a given literature in a certain direction.â75 In addition to my reading of the Pionierâs translation of The Octopus, two more forms of early rewritings of Norrisâs novel â namely, (film) adaptation and reviews â have been recently examined by Katherine Fusco and Sydney Bufkin, respectively.76 Neither Fusco nor Bufkin refer to the concept of ârewriting,â but their findings generally corroborate Lefevereâs claim that rewritings tend to âpush a given literature in a certain direction.â Moreover, a comparison of Fuscoâs, Bufkinâs, and my own findings suggests that early popular rewritings of The Octopus all tended to push the novel into the same direction â one that sharply contrasts with the direction into which later, more âeliteâ rewritings (for example, literary criticism) sought to push Norrisâs work.
Thus, Fusco has examined A Corner in Wheat, written and directed in 1909 by D. W. Griffith for the Biograph Company (which, incidentally, was based in Manhattan, just like the NYVZ). Depicting wheat speculator W. J. Hammondâs successful attempt at controlling âthe entire market of the world,â77 A Corner in Wheat is mainly based on The Pit: A Story of Chicago (1903), the second installment of Norrisâs âEpic on the Wheat,â as well as on âA Deal in Wheat,â a 1902 story by Norris that has often been described as a âpreliminary sketchâ for The Pit.78 As Fusco points out, however, Griffithâs movie also borrows some of its key scenes from The Octopus â notably, the very scenes that had been selected for translation in the Pionier: Firstly, about five and a half minutes into the fourteen-minute movie, Griffith starts cutting back and forth between âThe Gold of the Wheat,â scenes of a lavish dinner party at Hammondâs, and âThe Chaff of the Wheat,â79 scenes set at a bakery, where due to the rising flour prices a woman in ragged clothes accompanied by a young girl (reminiscent of Mrs Hooven and Hilda in chapter VIII of book II of The Octopus) cannot afford to buy bread anymore. Secondly, in the following segment, which is introduced by the intertitle âA Visit to the Elevators,â80 Hammond shows his dinner guests around the grain elevator. After receiving a note from his accountant which informs him that he now has âcontrol of the entire market of the worldâ and that âyesterday added $4,000,000 to [his] fortune,â81 Hammond âraises his fist heavenward in celebration of his earnings, steps backwards, and, losing his balance, tumbles into the grain tankâ82 and is eventually buried underneath the wheat, much like Behrman in chapter IX of book II of The Octopus.
Fusco argues that like The Octopus, A Corner in Wheat generally remains committed to the naturalistic focus on the wheat as a deterministic force, as evidenced by the wide shots of sowers in a wheat field with which the movie begins and ends,83 and maintains that Griffithâs parallel editing further contributes to the Naturalistic bent of the movie.84 At the same time, however, she also admits that the juxtaposition of the lavish dinner party and the starving Mrs Hooven/the woman having to leave the bakery empty-handed âmay provoke a sympathetic or angry responseâ within readers and viewers.85 Hence, even if the movie as a whole, like The Octopus, takes a distanced, deterministic perspective, the scenes borrowed from the novel, like its translation in the Pionier, rather support a reading of A Corner in Wheat as a âmovie with a âpurpose.ââ
Bufkin, in turn, has examined early reviews of The Octopus in newspapers and literary magazines and has noted a clear dichotomy: whereas, she argues, magazine reviews geared at a more select, elite audience âemphasized a proto-modernist aesthetic that prefigured twentieth-century academic readings of the novel,â newspaper reviewers writing for a broader, popular audience rather âsaw the book as a purpose novel,â considering âThe Octopusâs depiction of corporate corruption and unprincipled trusts as a call to action.â86 As Bufkin shows, newspapers such as the Evening World (New York) or the San Francisco Call, which both serialized the novel,87 but also the New York Times, the Sun, and the Daily Tribune, the Boston Evening Transcript, the Washington Times, the Richmond Dispatch, the Dallas Morning News, and the Louisville Times all viewed The Octopus in terms of contemporary politics, with, for instance, Isaac Marcosson writing in the Louisville Times that â[Norrisâs] story is a terrific protest against the oppression of a community by a great railroad; it is a stinging indictment of a trust, that fastened its tentacles in the rich soil of a great country and wrote the story of its success in the lifeâs blood of its martyrs.â88
According to Bufkin, newspaper editors and reviewers particularly embraced such a reformist reading of The Octopus for at least two reasons: Firstly, emphasizing plot over form and aesthetics â that is, following Bourdieu, the interests of popular over those of elite taste89 â newspaper reviews sought to âshap[e] the novel so that it appealed to the wide range of newspaper readers, who were just as likely to come from the lower classes as the literary elite.â90 Secondly, elevating the âtopical over the universalâ â that is, the topical issue of trusts and monopolies over the Naturalistic concern with deterministic forces â newspaper reviews raised âsocial and political questions [that] would have been addressed in the other sections of the paper through news stories and editorials.â91 Much like the Pionier, then, newspapers used their popular rewritings of The Octopus to tailor Norrisâs novel to their specific target audience and their specific editorial formula. What the newspaper reviewers mostly objected to, in turn â namely, the novelâs optimistic âConclusionâ92 â and what some contemporary magazine reviewers and most later critics used as an argument against a reformist reading of The Octopus â namely, the fact that (most of) the victims of the railroad in the novel are wealthy capitalists themselves93 â are precisely what the translation in the Pionier, through textual selection and paratextual framing, excised from the text.
In the wake of the novelâs publication, then, there existed a considerable variety of popular rewritings of The Octopus â reviews, film adaptations, and translations â that all viewed Norrisâs text as a purpose novel and that competed with contemporary as well as later, more elite readings of the âStory of Californiaâ as a of work literary Naturalism. As Bufkin has shown,94 this link between the popular and the reading for purpose can be traced back to The Octopus itself, specifically to the discussion between Presley and Vanamee about where to publish Presleyâs poem, âThe Toilers.â In chapter III of book II of The Octopus, Vanamee describes âThe Toilersâ as ââan Utterance â a Messageââ â a âpoem with a âpurpose,ââ in short â and warns Presley not to ââpublish it in the magazines,ââ but rather in the ââcommon,ââ ââvulgar,ââ and ââundignifiedââ daily press, where it will be read by ââthe People.ââ95 Hence, while Presley associates reading for literary art with elite magazines â he argues that the ââgreat magazine gives me such â aâbackground; gives me such weightââ96 â Vanamee firmly links the reformist perspective with the popular press. Ironically, the poet eventually agrees to publish âThe Toilersâ in the newspapers, but âthe novel shows Presleyâs poem working its way through bourgeois literary institutionsâ and âgives no indication of the response from the People for whom the poem is ostensibly intended.â97 Instead, appearing âas an advertisement for patented cereals,â98 it is shown as fully participating in the capitalist commodification of the wheat. Nevertheless, through Vanamee and Presleyâs discussion about the publication of âThe Toilers,â The Octopus somehow anticipates its own rewriting in the periodical press of the day.
5 Conclusion
Of course, the translational rewriting of The Octopus as a purpose novel in the Pionier cannot be solely attributed to the popular nature of the calendar â though it did refer to itself as a âVolks-Kalenderâ â but must first and foremost take into account, as I have sought to argue in this chapter, the periodicalâs commitment to the Socialist cause.99 Methodologically, this argumentation has depended upon a combination of periodical studies and translation studies approaches, a combination that allows for both a reading of textual and pictorial elements surrounding a translation within a periodical as paratexts of the translation as well as a reading of the various actors involved in the production, distribution, and reception of the periodical as translational actors. This combination, in turn, has been greatly facilitated by the turn towards the âcontext and co-textsâ of translations within translation studies on the one hand, and by what may be referred to as the ârhizomaticâ turn in periodical studies on the other hand â in short, by the parallel turn of both disciplines towards the notion of networks. Just as periodical studies today conceives of periodicals as intertextual networks of periodical elements and as the products of interpersonal networks of periodical actors, translation studies has become particularly interested in the networks of textual, personal, and institutional relationships in which any translation is inevitably embedded.
This parallel development or convergence of interests may likely turn out to prove particularly opportune for ventures in periodical studies that take an explicitly transnational perspective and will, therefore, inevitably be confronted with questions of linguistic, medial, and cultural translation. Indeed, a transnational periodical studies may greatly benefit from the specific expertise of translation studies, which has, by its very nature, long dealt with the movements of texts across borders and has, in the process, not only developed a keen sensitivity to the various linguistic, cultural, institutional, social, and political factors that may impact these movements and their products (the translated texts), but has also gathered valuable experience in identifying, locating, and reading the particular documents and sources that are needed to analyze these movements â from translatorsâ notes and legal documents pertaining to translation rights to the comments of government âreviewersâ (censors) on translation projects in totalitarian regimes.
It is, however, not only in the very specific case of translations published in periodicals that periodical studies may benefit from an integration of translation studies. As my comparison of the Pionierâs translation with reviews of The Octopus in newspapers and literary magazines has shown, periodicals served as vehicles not only for the novel itself (in serialized form), but also for all kinds of ârewritingsâ of it. A conceptualization of translation as a subcategory of rewriting may thus yield further insights and inquiries into connections between rewritings published in periodicals, between rewritings and other periodical elements, as well as between periodicals as a whole, also and especially across linguistic and other borders. In what other ways has The Octopus been rewritten in periodicals, in the US, in Germany, but also in other countries, and what does that tell us about The Octopus, the rewritings, and the periodicals that published and the people that were involved in them? Have these and other rewritings of The Octopus such as D. W. Griffithâs A Corner in Wheat been rewritten, in their turn, in periodicals, for example in the shape of translation or movie reviews? And what can we learn from all this about (transnational) periodical networks, whether between periodical elements or between periodical actors? Periodical studies may wish to turn to translation studies for answers â and for more questions.
Bibliography
Bassnett, Susan, and André Lefevere, eds. Translation, History, and Culture. London: Pinter, 1980.
Bassnett-McGuire, Susan. âWays through the Labyrinth: Strategies and Methods for Translating Theatre Texts.â In The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation, edited by Theo Hermans, 87â102. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. First published 1985.
Beers, Terry. The End of Eden: Agrarian Spaces and the Rise of the California Social Novel. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2018.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge, 1986.
Bufkin, Sydney. âResisting Naturalism: Purpose and Literary Value in the Reception of Frank Norrisâs The Octopus.â Book History 18 (2015): 197â234.
Conolly-Smith, Peter. âTransforming an Ethnic Readership through âWord and Imageâ: William Randolph Hearstâs âDeutsches Journalâ and New Yorkâs German-language Press, 1895â1918.â American Periodicals 19, no. 1 (2009): 66â84.
Conolly-Smith, Peter. Translating America: An Immigrant Press Visualizes American Popular Culture, 1985â1918. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2004.
Cordell, Ryan. âReprinting, Circulation, and the Network Author in Antebellum Newspapers.â American Literary History 27, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 417â445.
Dawson, Jon F. âTransforming History: The Economic Context of Frank Norrisâs âA Deal in Wheat.ââ Studies in American Naturalism 4, no. 2 (2010): 119â131.
Fagg, John, Matthew Pethers, and Robin Vandome. âIntroduction: Networks and the Nineteenth-Century Periodical.â American Periodicals 23, no. 2 (2013): 93â104.
Freitag, Florian. The Farm Novel in North America: Genre and Nation in the United States, English Canada, and French Canada, 1845â1945. Rochester: Camden House, 2013.
Friedländer, Paul. âGutachten.â Berlin: Amt für Literatur und Verlagswesen, 1953.
Fusco, Katherine. âTaking Naturalism to the Moving Picture Show: Frank Norris, D. W. Griffith, and Naturalist Editing.â Adaptation 3, no. 2 (2010): 155â178.
Gilbert, Claire. âSocial Context, Ideology and Translation.â In The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Culture, edited by Sue-Ann Harding and Ovidi Carbonell Cortés, 225â243. London: Routledge, 2018.
Griffith, D. W., dir. A Corner in Wheat. New York: Biograph, 1909.
Gunning, Tom. D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.
Hermans, Theo. âIntroduction: Translation Studies and a New Paradigm.â In The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation, edited by Theo Hermans, 7â15. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. First published 1985.
Hermans, Theo, ed. The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. First published 1985.
Hoerder, Dirk, and Thomas Weber, eds. Glimpses of the German-American Radical Press: Die Jubiläumsnummern der âNew Yorker Volkszeitungâ 1888, 1903, 1928. Bremen: Publications of the Labor Newspaper Preservation Project, 1985.
Howells, William Dean. âFrank Norris.â The North American Review 175, no. 553 (December 1902): 769â778.
Lassalle, Ferdinand. âNo Compromise.â In Speeches of Ferdinand Lassalle, with a Biographical Sketch, 42â51. New York: International Publishers, 1927.
Lefevere, André. âWhy Waste Our Time on Rewrites? The Trouble with Interpretation and the Role of Rewriting in an Alternative Paradigm.â In The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation, edited by Theo Hermans, 215â243. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. First published 1985.
Lefevere, André. Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London: Routledge, 1992.
McElrath, Joseph R., Jr., and Jesse S. Crisler. Frank Norris: A Life. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.
Möllhausen, Balduin. Tagebuch einer Reise vom Mississippi nach den Küsten der Südsee. Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1858.
Norris, Frank. The Octopus: A Story of California. New York: Penguin, 1986. First published 1901.
Norris, Frank. âThe True Reward of the Novelist.â Worldâs Work 2, no. 6 (October 1901): 1337â1339.
Norris, Frank. âThe Novel with a âPurpose.ââ Worldâs Work 4, no. 1 (May 1902): 2117â2119.
Norris, Frank. The Pit: A Story of Chicago. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1903.
Norris, Frank. Der Octopus. Translated by Eugen von Tempsky. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1907.
Obrist, Jacob. âMeine Bekanntschaft mit der âN. Y. Volkszeitungâ und andere Erinnerungen aus den letzten 50 Jahren.â Sonntagsblatt der New Yorker Volkszeitung (January 29, 1928): n. pag. Reprinted in Glimpses of the German-American Radical Press: Die Jubiläumsnummern der âNew Yorker Volkszeitungâ 1888, 1903, 1928, edited by Dirk Hoerder and Thomas Weber, 117â118. Bremen: Publications of the Labor Newspaper Preservation Project, 1985.
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Pionier: Illustrirter Volks-Kalender 1905. New York: Verlag der New Yorker Volks-Zeitung, 1904.
Poore, Carol. âThe Pionier Calendar of New York City: Chronicler of German-American Socialism.â In The German-American Radical Press: The Shaping of a Left Political Culture, 1850â1940, edited by Elliott Shore, Ken Fones-Wolf, and James P. Danky, 108â121. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Starnes, Rebekah. âFrom the Periodical Archives: The Entertaining Companion: âPhiladelphisches Magazin,â the First German-American Literary Journal.â American Periodicals 19, no. 1 (2009): 85â97.
Steinroetter, Vanessa. âThe Politics of Humor: Max Cohnheimâs âColumbiaâ (1863â1873), a German Newspaper in the Nationâs Capital.â American Periodicals 19, no. 1 (2009): 21â48.
Toury, Gideon. In Search of a Theory of Translation. Tel Aviv: Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1980.
Tucker, Amy. The Illustration of the Master: Henry James and the Magazine Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.
Tymoczko, Maria. âTranslation, Resistance, Activism: An Overview.â In Translation, Resistance, Activism, edited by Maria Tymoczko, 1â22. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010.
Van der Linden, Marcel, and Gregory Zieren. âAugust Sartorius von Waltershausen (1852â1938), German Political Economy, and American Labor.â In The Workerâs Movement in the United States, 1879â1885, by August Sartorius von Waltershausen, edited by David Montgomery and Marcel van der Linden, translated by Harry Drost, 28â64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Wright, Harry M. âIn Memoriam â Frank Norris: 1870â1902.â University of California Chronicle 5 (October 1902): 240â245. Reprinted in Frank Norris Remembered, edited by Jesse S. Crisler and Joseph R. McElrath, Jr., 105â109. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2013.
Howells, âFrank Norris.â
Wright, âIn Memoriam.â
The Pit: A Story of Chicago, the second installment of the âEpic of the Wheat,â was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post from September 1902 through January 1903, but did not appear as a book until January 1903; see McElrath and Crisler, Frank Norris, xxii.
On the development of the calendar as a periodical form, see Poore, âPionier,â 108â10.
Norris, âNovel with a âPurpose.ââ
Tucker, Illustration, 158.
See Toury, In Search of; Hermans, Manipulation of Literature; Bassnett and Lefevere, Translation.
Gilbert, âSocial Context,â 226.
Gilbert, 226, 227.
Fagg, Pethers, and Vandome, âNetworks and the Nineteenth-Century Periodical,â 101.
On the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung and the Deutsches Journal, see Conolly-Smith, Translating America, 54â76 and Conolly-Smith, âTransforming,â respectively.
On Jonas and Schewitsch, see Van der Linden and Zieren, âAugust Sartorius,â 48n49. On the NYVZ in general, see Hoerder and Weber, Glimpses, 9â18 and Conolly-Smith, Translating America, 54â76.
See Poore, âPionier,â 111.
Conolly-Smith, Translating America, 69.
On the Vorwärts and The People/The Worker, see Hoerder and Weber, Glimpses, 10, 11.
During the first two years of its existence, the NYVZ had apparently imported and distributed a yearly calendar from Europe, namely, Der Republikaner, edited by Jacob Obrist and printed in Switzerland; see Obrist, âMeine Bekanntschaft,â 118.
See Poore, âPionier,â 111.
Cordell, âReprinting,â 418.
With respect to the NYVZ, Conolly-Smith has similarly pointed out that editor in chief âSchlüterâs editorials were never signed, and his name never even appeared in the newspaperâs masthead.â Conolly-Smith, Translating America, 69.
See
See Poore, âPionier,â 112.
Poore.
Poore.
Poore.
See Conolly-Smith, Translating America, 69.
Poore, âPionier,â 112.
Pionier 1904, 97; Pionier 1905, 100.
Pionier 1904, 95.
Poore, âPionier,â 112.
See, for instance, Steinroetter, âPolitics,â 33 or Starnes, âEntertaining Companion,â 86.
Poore, âPionier,â 112.
See Fernâs âFinchenâ (Pionier 1904, 31â34) and âEine Beichteâ (Pionier 1905, 41â43) as well as Gundlachâs âWas uns die Steine lehrenâ (Pionier 1904, 27â30) and âNaturkräfte und Naturschönheitenâ (Pionier 1905, 29â32). On Gundlach, see Poore, âPionier,â 114.
See Pionier 1904, 16â23 and Pionier 1905, 84â88, respectively. Schillerâs text was first published under the title âVerbrecher aus Infamieâ in his own journal Thalia in 1786; Brandâs sketch had been previously printed in 1895 in the Austrian libertarian journal Deutsche Worte.
See Pionier 1905, 35â40. In contrast to the other reprinted pieces, here the source was acknowledged, possibly because of the illustrations.
See Pionier 1905, 56â57, Pionier 1904, 59â60, and Pionier 1904, 60â63, respectively.
Poore, âPionier,â 112.
See Pionier 1904, 35â37 and Pionier 1905, 45â54, respectively.
Pionier 1904, 93. On the connection between Presley and Markham, see, for instance, Beers, End of Eden, 129.
Hermans, âTranslation Studies,â 11.
See Möllhausen, Tagebuch, 22.
Norris, The Octopus, 592; Norris, Der Octopus, 649; Pionier 1904, 48.
Norris, The Octopus, 593; Norris, Der Octopus, 649, 650; Pionier 1904, 48.
Norris, The Octopus, 592; Norris, Der Octopus, 649; Pionier 1904, 48.
Norris, The Octopus, 597, 599; Norris, Der Octopus, 653, 656; Pionier 1904, 50, 51.
See Hoerder and Weber, Glimpses, 14.
See Obrist, âMeine Bekanntschaft,â 117.
Conolly-Smith maintains that the NYVZ serialized a complete translation of The Octopus in January 1910. Conolly-Smith, Translating America, 310n49. I have been unable to find this translation in the microfilmed issues of NYVZ available at the New York Public Library.
Norris, The Octopus, 592â613. Page numbers refer to the Penguin edition.
Norris, The Octopus, 567.
Norris, 567.
The translator(s) further emphasized the connection between the Hoovens and readers of the Pionier by consistently referring to (German-born) Mrs Hooven as âFrau Hooven,â whereas (American-born) Mrs Gerard is referred to as âMrs Gerardâ (Pionier 1904, 48; see above).
Norris, The Octopus, 613.
Tymoczko, âTranslation,â 6.
Norris, The Octopus, 651â52.
Fusco, âTaking Naturalism,â 161.
See Freitag, Farm Novel, 123.
Beers, End of Eden, 135.
On the title page of its twenty-fifth anniversary edition, published in the same year as the Pionierâs translation of The Octopus, the NYVZ printed a drawing of an angel holding a torch and blowing into a fanfare horn labeled âArbeiter-Presseâ (âworkersâ pressâ) in order to wake up a man sleeping on the ground next to a shovel and a spade. The caption reads âMann der Arbeit, aufgewacht!â (âMan of labor, wake up!â; see Hoerder and Weber, Glimpses, 42â43).
Norris, The Octopus, 639â46.
Freitag, Farm Novel, 126.
Norris, The Octopus, 651â52; see Freitag, Farm Novel, 143n40.
Hoerder and Weber, Glimpses, 13.
Pionier 1905, 59. In fact, in the German original the subtitle uses the term âNovelleâ (ânovellaâ), presumably an erroneous translation of the English ânovelâ into German.
Pionier 1905, 59.
Pionier 1905, 59.
Pionier 1904, 47, 48.
See Norris, The Pit, n. pag.
See Lassalle, âNo Compromise.â
Norris, âTrue Reward,â 1339.
Pionier 1904, 47.
Pionier 1904, 47.
Lassalle, âNo Compromise,â 46.
Pionier 1904, 35â37, 97.
Norris, âNovel with a âPurpose,ââ 2119.
Lefevere, âWhy Waste,â 219. See also Lefevere and Susan Bassnettâs âGeneral Editorsâ Prefaceâ to the Routledge series âTranslation Studies,â printed in e.g., Lefevere, Translation, viiâviii. Bassnett-McGuire, in turn, elsewhere refers to a 1908 article by Luigi Pirandello about âIllustrators, Actors and Translators,â in which Pirandello argues that all three âfalsify the original text, ⦠reinterpret and in doing so rewrite it.â Bassnett-McGuire, âWays,â 93.
See Fusco, âTaking Naturalismâ and Bufkin, âResisting Naturalism.â
Griffith, A Corner in Wheat, 00:10:32.
See, for instance, Dawson, âTransforming,â 119.
The two intertitles first appear at Griffith, A Corner in Wheat, 00:05:26 and at 00:06:09.
Griffith, A Corner in Wheat, 00:10:00.
Griffith, A Corner in Wheat, 00:10:32.
Fusco, âTaking Naturalism,â 161â62.
Fusco, 164â65. Tom Gunning has drawn parallels between these shots, Milletâs âLe Semeur,â Markhamâs âThe Man with the Hoe,â and The Octopus. See Gunning, Griffith, 251.
Fusco, âTaking Naturalism,â 161.
Fusco, âTaking Naturalism.â
Bufkin, âResisting Naturalism,â 198, 202.
In July 1901 and November 1902, respectively. See Bufkin, âResisting Naturalism,â 207.
Quoted in Bufkin, âResisting Naturalism,â 217.
Bourdieu, Distinction, 34. See Bufkin, âResisting Naturalism,â 210â11.
Bufkin, âResisting Naturalism,â 198.
Bufkin, 219.
Bufkin, 217.
Bufkin, 202.
Bufkin, 203â5.
Norris, The Octopus, 376â77.
Norris, 377.
Bufkin, âResisting Naturalism,â 204.
Norris, The Octopus, 394.
This link between a reading for purpose and a Socialist worldview, however, opens up yet another trajectory in the history of rewritings of The Octopus in general and of German translations of the novel in particular: In 1954, then East Berlin-based publisher Aufbau sought to issue a new edition of The Octopus for readers in the German Democratic Republic. The parallels between the translational shifts carried out by the Pionierâs translator(s) and the comments and recommendations by the GDRâs âadvisory reviewerâ (censor) for the East German edition of the novel are remarkable (see Friedländer, âGutachtenâ).