Godine Publishes New, Complete Translation of Werfel’s Forty Days of Musa Dagh

It was also Barba who persuaded Vartan Gregorian to provide an introduction to the new translation. Gregorian, too, remarks about the alarm the novel raised for Germany’s Jews. He comments, “… the novel serves as an allegory, a not-so-veiled warning about the virulent racialism, chauvinism, anti-Semitism and amoral realpolitik that were about to be unleashed by the Nazis. It was a wake-up call for Jews and non-Jews alike about the impending calamity that was soon to engulf the Jews of Germany and German-speaking lands.”

Reidel, a poet and translator, became interested in Werfel through studying and translating his poetry.

In an interview from his Cincinnati home, he said, “I came across Werfel as part of a larger research project that involved the translation of poetry. I began to read his poems and more of his work and read the German version and then the English version of Forty Days. It was per- fectly clear that the English version had been cut. I would say about 20 percent of Werfel’s novel had been dropped in the Dunlop translation.”

According to Reidel, the missing material deals primarily with what was “idiosyncratic to the Armenian people, much of the color of their culture. The cut version also left out passages that might be considered especially offensive to the Turks, although I believe the Turks would have been offended by anything that portrayed them in a negative way. I would have liked to retranslate the entire book, but unfortunately that route was cost prohibitive, so the additions have been worked into the previous translation by Dunlop.”

Added Reidel, “Werfel had a keen sense of eternity and he knew what was happening. What he dealt with in Forty Days is what was haunting Europe at the time.”

Werfel was moved to write the story of the Armenians thanks to a trip he took through Palestine, Syria and Lebanon in the winter and spring of 1929-30. He knew the horrors of war well, having served as a corporal and telephone operator in the military corps of the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I on the Russian front.

In a prefatory note to the novel he wrote, “The book was conceived in March of the year 1929, during the course of a stay in Damascus. The miserable sight of maimed and famished looking refugee children, working in a carpet factory, gave me the final impulse to snatch the incomprehensible destiny of the Armenian peo- ple from the Hell of all that had taken place.”

The novel, at 900 pages, is a challenge to any reader, but like its literary cousin, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, it remains one of the most significant and compelling works of 20th-century literature.

In bare outline, the novel focuses on the defense of a small community of Armenians liv- ing in the mountainous region of Hatay Province of the former Ottoman Empire — as well as on events in Istanbul and provincial cap- itals where the Young Turk government orches- trated the deportation, concentration camps and massacres of the Ottoman Empire’s Armeniancitizens.

The novel’s protagonist, Gabriel Bagradian, is a wealthy Armenian from Paris who has returned to his native village of Yoghonoluk. The area is dominated by the presence of a great mountain, Musa Dagh, or Mt. Moses, as it would be in translation. Although Bagradian listens to the rumors of the killings of Armenians in nearby areas, he considers him- self a loyal citizen of the Ottoman Empire and at first does not believe the stories. But he soon overhears a Turkish district governor discussing the “Armenian problem” and the trick- le of refugees with their tales of brutal suppression becomes undeniable.

Bagradian rallies the villagers to take up positions on Musa Dagh and to prepare to fight to the death. At first, they mount a fierce and suc- cessful defense, but eventually, the better-equipped and more numerous Turkish troops overwhelm the Armenian forces and they are forced to disperse.

The book stands as a tribute to a courageous resistance by a minority against superior forces and the message could not have been lost on Jewish and German readers at the time of its publication. Werfel, whose previous novels had been banned because he was a Jew, was pillo- ried in the press in Nazi Germany as an enemy agent and propagandist.

In 1934, upon the occasion of the novel’s American publication, one critic, Louis Kronenberger, wrote in the New York Times, “If Hollywood does not mar and mishandle it, it should make a magnificent movie.”

Against the advice of his legal department, which feared Turkish objections, Irving Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer acquired the film rights for the novel from the Austrian publisher, and in the same year as its publication, began production on the film, which was to star Clark Gable as Gabrtiel Bagradian.

Despite the fact that the English version had been abridged and many of its most controver- sial passages omitted, the idea of a film that would dramatize the cruelties inflicted on the Armenians by the Turks, was indeed an anath- ema to the Turkish government of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

The Turkish ambassador to the United States, Mehmed Munir Ertegun, was charged with putting a stop to the film. He was quoted as saying to an MGM official, “If the movie is made, Turkey will launch a worldwide campaign against it. It rekindles the Armenian Question. The Armenian Question is settled.” The Turkish objections received a great deal of publicity and eventually MGM backed down.

In the 1970s, MGM sold the film rights to Forty Days and a low-budget, poorly-distributed film was made, directed by Sarky Mouradian.

Thus, Werfel’s great novel has yet to receive the cinematic treatment it deserves. Still, it is not impossible to imagine that Godine’s deci- sion to publish the complete text will renew interest in the making of a major movie.

The significance of Werfel’s achievement can- not be underestimated, because while there have been a number of privately published eye- witness accounts of the Armenian Genocide and several valuable non-fiction books that deal

intelligently with the subject, no other work of fiction exists that has done literary and dra- matic justice to the events of the Genocide. Werfel’s mammoth achievement stands alone as fully imagined testimony to terrible events still not fully acknowledged by modern Turkey, or, for that matter, the United States.

Perhaps a new reading of The Forty Days of Musa Dagh can bring about the rightful and universal recognition of the facts of history.

Werfel, like so many Jewish and German intel- lectuals — Thomas Mann and many others — was unable to remain in Germany, and in 1938 he fled with his wife, Alma Mahler, through Spain and France, eventually making his way to California where he lived until his death in 1945. His remains were interred in Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles, until, somewhat coin-

cidentally, Gregorian mounted a campaign to have them returned to his native Austria in 1975.

Although Forty Days is, without doubt Werfel’s greatest literary achievement, he is perhaps best known for The Song of Bernadette, the story of a religious peasant girl, which was made into a film. In spite of his Jewish background, Werfel was much drawn to Catholicism and spiritual and religious themes run through all his works. Traces of his interest in Sufi Islam may be detected in Forty Days.

Godine will publish Werfel’s novel, Pale Blue Ink in a Lady’s Hand later this year. And there is at least one additional title with an Armenian connection on Godine’s upcoming list — a collection of Youssuf Karsh’s photographs, titled Karsh: Beyond the Camera.