Sprachsatire in Nestroys Vaudeville-Bearbeitungen by Maria Piok (review)

Maria Piok has puts together an interesting history that seeks to explain why French literature was the shaper that it was for Nestroy's Viennese stage. Although the French Revolution had created a mistrustful atmosphere toward French culture in general throughout Central Europe, "bleibt das Interesse am Kulturgeschehen Frankreichs in vielerlei Hinsicht ungebrochen" (15). Paris remained a source of artistic and intellectual material for the Austrian stage, even though the language was really only learned at the aristocratic and upper-class levels in schools. In addition to background history, Piok does a superb job of tracing the origin of French-inspired theatrical works on the Viennese stage. The number of translations from the French continued to explode during the nineteenth century, adding to the repertoire of German-language drama. Indeed, the translations of French literature had to be altered in order to fit the culture that the Viennese audience actually lived in, a fact that did not elude Nestroy. In addition, Nestroy was up against copyright laws of the time as well as the prospect of censorship. He adapted works from the French stage to the stage in Vienna and more than half of the theater works produced between 1830–1880 belonged to this genre. Many of the dramas had to be adapted to conform with local traditions, of course, and Piok also provides discussion of Nestroy's fear of producing such works from the original French, that "der ausländische Einfluß könnte zu einem kulturellen Niedergang führen" (34). The sections covering how Nestroy chose pieces to have translated for the stage and the necessity of reworking them to fit the audiences made for especially compelling reading. Some works could not pass censorship laws; others contained cultural references that were too French and thus practically impossible for a Viennese audience to relate to. "Wie detailliert Nestroy die Dialoge wiedergibt, variiert von Szene zu Szene: Während manche Abschnitte ziemlich genau dem französischen Text folgen, werden andere stark gerafft oder auf einen Nebentext, der das Gespräch knapp zusammenfasst, reduziert." (103) Wordplay that worked in French was left out of German versions, such as the conversations of the Grisetten, or the French working-class girls. Their conversations were not translated but were instead indicated as simply "Mädl-diskurs" or an entire scene was left out altogether. Nestroy often seems to have decided at the beginning to cut passages or if they were not cut, he completely reworked them (103–4). These were the difficulties that faced the translators and producers who had to adapt the works to the stage.

This book also contains several good examples of dramas that were reworked by Nestroy. Piok does a good job of selecting from these dramas representative passages that illustrate the difficulties of translating for a German-speaking audience. Comedy and satire often cannot be translated from the original language; thus, translators often found themselves in cultural dilemmas that could make or break a work on the stage. Piok takes several dramas and discusses the difficulties facing translators and analyzes the issues that were difficult for Nestroy to rework, such as Das Mädl aus der Vorstadt, Der Zerrissene, and Der Talisman. In addition, other difficulties that faced Nestroy when arranging works for the stage were passages that dealt with class and the language use of certain classes. Not only did the passages have to fit the syntax of the German language but they also had to make cultural sense, a feat that was incredibly difficult to pull off. Piok provides superb examples of passages and situations in the original French to illustrate the need for exact, comparable German vocabulary so that the audience could also "get the joke" or make a cultural connection to the characters on the stage. All in all, although stage comedies< see above> had many difficult hurdles to leap over, the ending usually remained very simple in its formula and thus presented less trouble for Nestroy to prepare...