The Suppressed Novel
The Suppressed Novel is an article published in the Daily Express on 26 june 1913.
The Suppressed Novel
"The Song of Songs." By Hermann Sudermann. Translated by Beatrice Marshall. (Lane, 6s.)
Three years ago Mr. John Lane published an American translation of Hermann Sudermann's "The Song of Songs." Objection was taken to the work by the police, and after consulting with a number of wellknown authors, Mr. Lane withdrew the book from circulation.
Sudermann is, of course, an author with a great European position, and although the subject of the story is emphatically unpleasant, it was felt that the offence of the English version lay mainly in the unnecessary coarseness of the translation. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said of it:—
"I read the book with great interest. To say it is ever 'obscene' is an abuse of words. That there are passages which are coarse, and unnecessarily coarse, is on the other hand indisputable. I should not like any woman under forty to read it. And yet it is not written for the purpose of being coarse, and that is the essential point."
Mr. Thomas Hardy wrote:—
"A translation of good literary taste might possibly have made such an unflinching study of a woman's character acceptable in this country, even though the character is one of a somewhat ignoble type, but unfortunately, rendered into the rawest American, the claims that the original (which I have not seen) no doubt had to be considered as literature are largely reduced, so that I question if there is value enough left in this particular translation to make a stand for."
These and similar opinions led Mr. Lane to commission this new translation, by a writer of skill and discretion.
