Translators’ note

TRANSLATORS’ NOTE

The source text for these translations is Robert Walser, Komödie: Märchenspiele und szenische Dichtungen (1986). Occasional notes are provided to enhance reading and understanding. The order of the first three plays is not chronological, but rather that of a dramatic or cinematic trilogy-triptych, one that allows the reader to challenge, in a small, Walserian way, the culturally hegemonic Disney cartoon adaptations of the past midcentury (and reinforced once more with the 2014 film Maleficent).

As to the titles, Snow White is a virtual cognate of the German title. Cinderella, however, is from the familiar French version of the tale by Charles Perrault — Cendrillon — which means the same as the German word Aschenbrödel, a scullion maid. (The second part of the word/name is from the verb brodeln, or prudeln, literally to seethe, boil, sputter, and figuratively to talk too much, which Walser exploits here.) Thorn Rose — which alludes to the heroine’s “thorny” quality — would be lost in the title that has supplanted it over time. Thus, “Sleeping Beauty” appears in the translation’s subtitle.

The inclusion here of The Christ Child is our inescapable assertion that Walser intended it as a fairy tale, too, given all the devotion to the original text as the other three.

J.R. & D.P.

Snow White

SNOW WHITE

A garden. To the right the palace entrance. In the background rolling mountains. The Queen, Snow White, the foreign Prince, the Hunter.

Queen:

Say, are you sick?

Snow White:

You would ask since you wanted death

on the one who ever stung you

in the eyes as too beautiful.

How you look at me so composed.

This kindness, showing in your eyes,

so full of love, is just made up,

the serene tone just counterfeit.

Hate really does dwell in your heart.

You dispatched the Hunter to me

and told him to draw his dagger,

to point it at this despised face.

You ask me whether I’m sick now?

Such sport sounds bad from a soft voice.

Indeed, softness becomes sly sport

when it is so fearlessly cruel.

I’m not sick; I’m very much dead.

The poison apple was painful,

O, O so painful, and Mother, you,

you’re the one who brought it to me.

So why joke about my being sick?

Queen:

Fair child, you are wrong. You are sick,

no, gravely, very gravely ill.

There’s no doubt this fresh garden air

will do you good. I beg of you,

just don’t let your weak little head

give in to the idea. Be still.

Don’t mull things over and over.

Get some exercise, skip and run.

Shout racing for a butterfly.

Scold the air for not making it

warm enough yet. Become a child.

Soon you’ll leave this color behind,

which is like a pale winding sheet

draped over your pink complexion.

Think not of sin. The sin should be

forgotten. Perhaps I did sin