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

7. Conclusion

118 Mindful of tlleir precarious situation, Swiss officials frequently cerlsored publications and theatrical performances likely to offend the Germans. Despite Swiss fears of incurring Nazi displeasure, however, two editions of The MOoon Is Down found their way into print in the confederation in 1943: the expurgated French language version discussed earlier, Nuits sans tune, translated by MarvE~de-Fischer and published in Lausanne by Marguerat; and a German language version, Der Mond ging unter(The Moon Went Down), translated by Anna Katharina Rehmann-Salten (later Wyler-Salten) and published in Zurich by Humanitas Verlag. RehmannSalten ., the only daughter of Felix Salten (best known as the author of Bambi), was born in Vienna and had beell an actress, mostly under the direction of Max Reinhart.5 When Hitler came to power, she emigrated from Berlin, where she had been living, to Zurich. There, in the fall of 1942, she w()rked on her German translation of The Moon Is Dowrt and, like Ferdinand Sterneberg of Holland , on her own dramatization of the novel. She completed botll in November. Because the Nazis at that time were still on the offensive in Ellrope and because Switzerland was encircled by German armies, Swiss apprehensions that their country would suffer the same fate as Steinbeck's "Norway" were higher than at any other period in the OTHER COUNTRIES war. For this reason, even the Zurich theater, the Schauspielhaus, then "the cultural center of resistance against Nazism," at first refused to touch RehmannSalten 's dramatic adaptation. After the play opened to enthusiastic audiences at a theater in Basel, however, the Zurich Schauspielhaus capitulated, and The Moon Is Down enjoyed there alengthy and highly acclaimed run of around two hundred performances. According to Zurich professor Heinrich Straumann, it was "one of the greatest successes of the theatres of Switzerland during the war years."6 Together, the novel and the dramatic versions of Rehmann-Salten's translation helped strengthen Swiss resolve against Nazi intimidation. In the Soviet Union, The Moon Is Down was the best-known work of contemporary American literature during the war.7 Two Russian-language versions of the novel were serialized in Soviet magazines in 1943: one, a complete translation by N. Volzhina, appeared in Znamya; the other, consisting of excerpts translated by A. Belyayev, in Ogonyok.8 Although Soviet critics were favorably disposed toward Steinbeck at the time because he had depicted the abuses of capitalism in his proletarian novels ofthe thirties, these critics were virtually unanimous in their criticism of The Moon Is Down. Their most common complaints echoed those voiced in the United States a year earlier by critics such as James 120 Thurber and Clifton Fadiman. Steinbeck's "humanizing " of the Nazis showed that he had only "a foggy understanding ofFascist mentality," and his portrayal of the resistance ()fthe citizens ofthe mythical village ofthe novel was vague and unrealistic. According to Deming Brown, only ()ne Soviet critic strongly endorsed The Moon Is Down.9 But the survival of the Soviet Union still hung in the balance in 1943, and Russian critics were reserving their praise for war literature which would serve them more unambiguously as morale-boosting propaganda for the Allied cause. Besides, the Germans had been especially savage in the Soviet Union. Official Nazi racial policy had designated the Russian people Untermenschen, or subhumans, an.d Nazi soldiers, accordingly, had brutalized the populace. Small wonder that in a land where German atrocities were committed on an inconceivable scale, Steinbeck's "Nazi" invaders seemed airy figments of a naive foreigner's imagination. Far to the east, however, in another besieged land, The Moon Is Down seems to have served as antifascist propaganda no less effectively than in western Europe at the time. The :first publication of a Chinese-language version of Steinbeck's novel was in New China magazine . Originally published in Shanghai by the Zhong Hua (China) Book Company, New China had ceased OTHER COUNTRIES production at the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War. Later, the magazine moved its operations to China's wartime capital of Chungking, in Szechwan Province. One of the editors of the revived publication was a professor of Chinese literature, Chien Gochuen. Sometime late in 1942 Professor Chien procured a copy ofthe English edition of The Moon Is Down through the British press Attache's office in Chungking. Recognizing its value as anti-Japanese propaganda, Chien decided to translate it into Chinese. Beginning in...