Eudora Who?: Reception and Reading in Germany

When asked if I would consider researching the German reception of Eudora Welty for the International Centenary Conference in Venice, Italy, I silently groaned. Having lived off and on in Germany for over twenty-five years, I knew from perusing bookstores, talking to professors of American Studies at German universities, and going to American Studies conferences in Europe that Welty is not read much, not taught much, not known much. I have yet to find a single book of hers in any German bookstore for example, though I like to think that if I persisted, I just might come across some dusty copy of Delta Wedding sitting under a pile of used books in a second hand shop.

Of course, as much as Welty scholars would like to deny it, Welty is not as well-known or taught as she deserves to be even in the US, except in survey courses where "Why I Live at the P. O." or "A Worn Path" might be included on the syllabus or at universities where professors have a special interest in southern literature. More than once over the years when I have mentioned my dissertation on Welty and the pastoral tradition, I have been asked not who is Eudora Welty, but rather what is Eudora Welty. Even my dissertation director, who taught southern literature at a well-respected east coast university, had written the definitive biography of Thomas Wolfe, and was an eminent scholar in American literature, had not read any of her novels and told me that he knew about her only because his family doctor was a cousin of Welty's.

So I must admit that from the start of this project I was reluctant to investigate the German reception of Welty, fearing my sleuthing, which is what my research often felt like, would turn up very little.

I started by looking at the availability of German translations of Welty. Steven Bloom, a novelist friend of mine in Heidelberg, suggested I contact Sylvia Morowitz, the German translator of Joyce Carol Oates's work. Morowitz, who confirmed my initial impressions that I would not find Welty in any bookstores, suggested I look at ZVAB.com, an online bookstore in Germany that specializes in used books. Pearl McHaney also put me in touch with Margit Mueller, a former student of hers at Georgia State University, who wrote her thesis on Welty and Alice Walker. Mueller suggested another online bookstore: buchhandel.de. Of course, I also checked out Amazon.de (the German equivalent of Amazon.com). The following is a description of what is currently available, though as far as I was able to determine, all of the texts except Ein Vorhang aus Grün (A Curtain of Green) are out of print.

The first book of Welty's to be published by a German publisher was Die Hochzeit (Delta Wedding) in 1965 by Fischer Bucherei (Frankfurt and Hamburg), translated by Elisabeth Schnack. Schnack also translated Mein Onkel Daniel (The Ponder Heart) for a Swiss publisher, Die Arche, even earlier in 1958. Klett-Cotta, a publishing company in Stuttgart, under their Bibliothek der Moderne series, published a number of Welty's works: Ein Wohltatigkeitsbesuch (A Visit of Charity) in 1983, translated by Susan Schaub and containing "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies," "Why I Live at the P. O.," "Clytie," "Old Mr. Marblehall," "A Curtain of Green," "A Visit of Charity," "The Winds," "The Purple Hat," and "Livvie" and Die Tochter des Optimisten (The Optimist's Daughter), translated by Kai Molvig in 1991. Klett-Cotta also published a collection of Welty's stories under the title Der Purpurrote Hut (The Purple Hat) in 1986, translated by Katrina von Hutten and containing the stories from both A Curtain of Green and The Wide Net; Eine Stimme Finden (One Writer's Beginnings) in 1990, translated by Rudiger Imhoff, which was then published in paperback in 2001 by Munich publisher Bertelsmann; and Der Goldenen Aepfel (The Golden Apples) in 1992, translated by Tamara Willmann. A more recent publication is Der Rauberbrautigan (The Robber Bridegroom) published by Bertelsmann (in paperback) in 2000 and translated...