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.