The Jungle Ship

“Oh, one can never attain the true Dorado, even if one at last by luck treads golden pavements…  You never arrive; not yet arriving is called living.”

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Another Amazonian novel from the German!

In the months between submitting the faired manuscript of Döblin’s Land Without Death – The Amazonas Trilogy and its publication scheduled for September 2022, I’ve amused myself by translating Richard A. Bermann’s 1927 novel about the Amazon – the third German novel set in South America that I’ve tackled. (Robert Müller’s Tropics – The Myth of Travel was submitted to a publisher last year: there’s a 12 month moratorium on chasers, so I’ll follow up at the end of this month). 

WHO WAS RICHARD A. BERMANN?

Born in Prague in 1883, the rather frail boy shared a school desk with Leo Perutz (who would become a lifelong friend, and the most-read German-language author in the inter-war years; his By Night under the Stone Bridge is an absolute must-read!). They completed their schooling in Vienna, where Bermann founded a club for teenage aspiring writers, to whom he would offer kindly but merciless criticism. 

A pacifist during World War 1, he became the only war correspondent to be mentioned in despatches for bravery under fire. After the War he joined two expeditions into the Libyan desert, and pursued a globetrotting career as travel correspondent for leading publications. He wrote several books, under his own name and the pseudonym Arnold Höllriegel, including a biography of R. L. Stevenson (Home from the Sea: Stevenson in Samoa). His biography of the Mahdi (whose son he befriended on visits to Khartoum) was introduced in its English translation (The Mahdi of Allah) by Winston Churchill, who had fought as a young soldier in the Mahdist Wars. Other novels and reportage focused on Hollywood and the growing medium of cinema. 

Bermann reviewed Döblin’s Journey to the Land without Death (i.e. the first volume of the eventual Amazon Trilogy) in Der Wiener Tag in May 1937. His very positive review (“every line rings out with ingenuous vitality”) was unaccountably missed by the editors of the valuable collection of reviews of Döblin’s works Alfred Döblin im Spiegel der zeitgenössichen Kritik (AD as reflected in contemporary criticism). I shall post my translation here shortly. 

THE JUNGLE SHIP

The novel enjoyed great success when first published in 1927, appearing in different editions under the name Bermann or Höllriegel, and reprinted in the 1960s. The frame story draws on Bermann’s own experience as a tourist / travel writer, when a voyage to Manaus was thwarted by a military rebellion that closed the Amazon to traffic. 

In the novel, a fellow passenger becomes distraught at the lost opportunity to fulfil a lifelong dream (stimulated by Jules Verne’s 1881 novel La Jangada (Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon), so some fellow passengers concoct a scheme to divert him with the tale of an earlier obsessive voyager, embodying the moral it is better to travel than to arrive or, Navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse (Travelling is a greater imperative than living). 

The narrative in Part Two concerns Francisco de Orellana, the first European to travel the length of the Amazon from the headwaters as it emerges from the Andes, down to the ocean. But, the narrator assures us, this is no dry recital of history: the point is to draw out motives, states of mind, and the effect of obsessions on one’s perception of reality. Bermann weaves a masterful blend of reality and magical realism as the Conquistador’s dream of Eldorado leads him only into perils, fever, and ultimate failure.     

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An English translation of Bermann’s novel was published in 1931. Before I embarked on my own translation, I checked on Abebooks using the search term Bermann, which listed four copies priced at between £60 and over £100 (incl. P&P). So the earlier translation, it seemed, was practically unobtainable. 

After completing my translation I checked again on Abebooks, this time searching under both Bermann and Höllriegel. A few more copies were listed, all still pricey. One listing mentioned the translator’s name: Ethel Colburn Mayne. So I tried another search. Lo and behold, one copy was listed under her name (!), priced very reasonably at £10, from a supplier located not ten miles from me. 

A brief look at Ms Mayne’s version reveals that on the very first page she omits the entire opening paragraph, and cuts several other sentences from the Dedication. My version, whatever its other merits, is at least complete! 

Download the PDF of The Jungle Ship