RRP: £10.95
BINDING: Paperback
PUBLISHED: 2004
ISBN: 9780946162703
PAGES: 224
Theodor Storm
Paul the Puppeteer; with 'The Village on the Moor' and 'Renate'
Translated from the German by Denis Jackson
WINNER OF THE WEIDENFELD TRANSLATION PRIZE 2005
This third selection in Denis Jackson’s pioneering series of translations contains three contrasting works of Storm’s middle period, the 1870s, when he moved from ‘watercolours’ to ‘oils’. In Paul the Puppeteer Storm’s affectionate portrayal of the vanishing world of the marionette theatre also contains sharp social comment. The Village on the Moor arises directly out of Storm’s professional career: it is a palpitating account, told through an investigating lawyer’s eyes, of the case of a mysterious death out on the moor. Both these works are translated into English for the first time. Renate records the memories of an eighteenth-century Lutheran pastor and his love for a farmer’s daughter who is persecuted by the local community for alleged witchcraft; it is one of the most moving stories in all Storm’s fiction.
‘Finely balanced between potential tragedy and empathy for those caught up in the structures that cause it, Paul the Puppeteer is a tale of great charm and humanity, yet not afraid of taking sides. It is framed here by two novellas linked by intimations of sorcery …’ – Maren Meinhardt, Times Literary Supplement
‘Why does one bite one’s lip with anxiety when Paul breaks the puppetmaster’s best puppet, or when the local yobbos start to wreck the show? And why, when our now grown-up heroine, half-starving, sees Paul’s face and cries out his name in the icy town square of Heiligenstadt, does one find one’s heart swelling for a moment with relief and joy? – It’s Storm’s painterly eye, of course, that does the trick. He takes us to the places where it happens and we see them plain; we are there. One can almost smell the drains.’ – Nicholas Bagnall, Slightly Foxed
THEODOR STORM (1817–88) was born in the small North Sea coastal town of Husum, where he established himself as a lawyer and spent almost his entire life apart from fifteen years of political exile. His fifty or so novellas grew out of his lyric verse, which includes some of the finest in the language. His intricately wrought, subtle narratives, strongly rooted in time and place, have long made him a favourite author of his fellow countrymen, and the English-speaking world has begun to accord him a place beside better known writers of other nations whose work has long been accepted as classic.