John Steinbeck Goes to War: The Moon is Down as Propaganda

4. Holland

7 8 tion in their homeland changed overnight after their government al)andoned power on 29 August. The Nazis gave up any remaining pretense of peaceful cooperation with the Danes and promulgated the severe new laws they had prolTLised. The Danes responded by becoming even more openlyfeisty and fractious than they had been before and by giving for the first time nationwide acceptance and active support to their resistance organizations . So visible now was the Danes' hostility toward the German occuI)ation forces and so effective their aid to the resistance that the Germans began to treat them as harshly as the~y had been treating the Norwegians for three and one-half years. That turn for the worse in the daily lives of Danes guaranteed that The Moon Is Down would continu.e to be widely read in Denmark. Having made its contribution to the political cause for which Jacobsen and his student organization had originally translated and published it, the novel would now be appreciated by Danish readers for its sympathetic portrayal of peaceable people beset by brutality. The best evidence of the enduring appeal of The Moon Is Down in Denmark after August 1943 is that new clandestine editions continued to appear between then and Oct()ber 1944, when the last of the dated volumes was printed. Some of the new editions were of yet another Danish translation: Maanen er gaaet ned (The Moon Has Gone Down), published by the Frit DENMARK Nordisk Forlag (Free Nordic Press). In a publisher's afterword the new translation included a statement about the importance of the Norwegian resistance, a statement issued by Steinbeck in commemoration ofthe third anniversary of the invasions of Norway and Denmark . Editions of Maanen er gaaet ned, like the various editions ofMaanen erskjult, were typed and reproduced on duplicating machines, but the former had machineprinted title pages rather than the typed and handillustrated ones of the earlier translation. Because the many printings in occupied Denmark of the two translations of The Moon Is Down were always samizdat operations, we will surely never know how many copies-or even editions-eirculated throughout the country. Bestettelsestidens illegale blade og b0ger (Illegal Pamphlets and Books ofthe Period of Occupation ) and its two supplements, however, provide arough idea. At least sixteen separate editions of Maanen er skjult appeared: three had apublication date of 1943, and six had no date. Maanen er gaaet ned came out in three editions, all apparently printed in 1944.19 The above sources, of course, list only copies accumulated in museums and libraries. Doubtless some typed editions prepared on private duplicating machines were eventually destroyed during the occupation or discarded after the liberation. Clearly, many thousands of copies of the two translations passed from hand to hand throughout oc- 8 0 cupied Denrrlark. Surviving copies are usually worn from heavy use. As in Norway, the popularity of The Moon Is Down in Denmark did not subside when German forces finally evacuated. Gy-ldendal, Steinbeck's Danish publisher, decided that the novel would be an appropriate one with which to reSUlne regular publication of his works in free Denmark. Gyldendal had published Danish translations of four Steinbeck novels before the occupation: Tortilla Flat in 1938, CifMice and Men and The Grapes ofWrath in 1939, and I1'Z Dubious Battle in 1940. Some reprints of these titles were published even during the occupation. According to Mogens Knudsen, German censorship virtually forbade translation of British and American books. Danisrl publishing houses could, however, issue new printings of earlier editions of such works if it was done diplomatically. The director of Gyldendal during the occupatio:n, a woman of considerable tact, developed the practice of translating an "innocent" German novel to show that she was not turning her back on the Third Reich and then publishing a British or American novel. Obviously, even such a tacit quid pro quo would not have excu.sed the publication of a novel like The Moon Is Down. Before issuing its postwar edition of The Moon Is Down, Gyldendal's director asked Mogens Knudsen, then a reader and translator for the firm, to examine the MAllNEN ER GAAET NED t " 1.'1 ,.O.t>ln~ fQUAO IoCCMnlll Title page ofanother edition ofthe second Danish translation of The Moon Is Down. The caption below the photograph reads, "From a target range in Norway, where the German recruits are using for target practice nine...