The particular difficulty in translating Castle Gripsholm has to do with what is perhaps Tucholsky’s greatest gift as a writer: his ear for speech. In a word itself untranslatable, he calls himself ‘ein Ohrenmensch’, literally ‘an ear-person’. It is the North German dialect, the ‘Plattdeutsch’ in the book that is the problem. Thomas Mann’s translator, H. T. Lowe-Porter says frankly that ‘dialect cannot be translated, it can only be got round by a sort of trickery which is usually unconvincing’. I have used little trickery. It seems to me that Tucholsky’s Platt is so integral to the book, so firmly and repeatedly and deliberately described and celebrated that to search for a ‘corresponding’ dialect in English (then constantly referred to as ‘Platt’) would be mistaken. The very specificity of it would make it distracting, paradoxical, absurd. Tucholsky himself, in a review of a translation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, protested at having Mellors speaking in a ‘Bavarian mountain dialect’ that was quite incompatible with his explicit vocabulary. Similarly, what English dialect has recourse to French, to an antique genitive, or to some of Tucholsky’s more carefully ‘planted’ idioms? I decided to aim for an understanding of the meaning of the German – difficult enough for a Saxon like myself, and someone whose sympathies tend to be with the taciturn Arnold anyway! – and to catch the Princess by the spirit, pace and tone of her speech, its qualities of parody and irreverence. I think it is still possible to ‘hear’ the book, even if not with its original genial locality. For help in understanding individual phrases, I owe thanks to my family, and rather more to Ebba Beer, Kay Hoff and Hans Werner Richter, who have the good fortune to be ‘Plattdeutsch’. I am conscious of having rather dwelt in my Introduction on the darker hinterland of the book, but I am confident that its sunniness needs no introducing – only the reader’s appreciation, and a little awe.

Michael Hofmann
April 1985
London

CASTLE GRIPSHOLM

Dedication

Epigraph

Or we can blow our trumpets

And go blaring through the land;

But we’d rather walk in days of spring,

When primrose blossoms and thrushes sing,

Quietly thinking beside the stream.

THEODOR STORM

Chapter One

1

Ernst Rowohlt Publishers

Berlin W50

Passauer Strasse 8/9

8 June

Dear Herr Tucholsky,

Many thanks for your letter of June 2. We have made a note of your request. For the time being, though, another matter.

As you know, we have been publishing mainly political books recently. Quite enough of your time and energy has gone on them. Now I think it’s time we did something for belles lettres again. Don’t you have anything in that line? What would you say to a short love story? Give it some thought. I’ll keep the price down, and print ten thousand copies to start with. Wherever I go, my bookseller friends tell me how popular this kind of book is. So how about it?