Just started rereading "Bambi" by Felix Salten
I guess you could also say that I'm reading it for the first time in the Jack Zipes translation. Zipes is a noted professor of German at the University of Minnesota who also translated the Grimm Brothers fairy tales.
I read the Whittaker Chambers translation when I was a kid - yes, that Whittaker Chambers, I couldn't believe it was the same guy. Whittaker Chambers was a famous communist who wrote for several communist publications, and spied for the USSR in Washington DC as a member of the Ware Group. He eventually became disillusioned with Stalin and testified against Alger Hiss in the House Un-American Activities congressional hearings. He also wrote several books, including the first English translation of Bambi. Chambers was eventually awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan.
Felix Salten was an Austrian Jew who wrote the book in the 1920s as an allegory of the treatment of minority groups in Europe. This wasn't clear from the Chambers translation and definitely purged from the Disney movie. It is also a coming of age novel in the tradition of German bildungsromans. Zipes' introduction says that the book was not written for children. Salten was an interesting character, on one hand an environmentalist (the book was also an expression of this) while also an avid deer hunter.
I read the Whittaker Chambers translation when I was a kid - yes, that Whittaker Chambers, I couldn't believe it was the same guy. Whittaker Chambers was a famous communist who wrote for several communist publications, and spied for the USSR in Washington DC as a member of the Ware Group. He eventually became disillusioned with Stalin and testified against Alger Hiss in the House Un-American Activities congressional hearings. He also wrote several books, including the first English translation of Bambi. Chambers was eventually awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan.
Felix Salten was an Austrian Jew who wrote the book in the 1920s as an allegory of the treatment of minority groups in Europe. This wasn't clear from the Chambers translation and definitely purged from the Disney movie. It is also a coming of age novel in the tradition of German bildungsromans. Zipes' introduction says that the book was not written for children. Salten was an interesting character, on one hand an environmentalist (the book was also an expression of this) while also an avid deer hunter.
