The Kraus Project (38 page)

M
AN FRAGE NICHT …

Man frage nicht, was all die Zeit ich machte.

Ich bleibe stumm;

und sage nicht, warum.

Und Stille gibt es, da die Erde krachte.

Kein Wort, das traf;

man spricht nur aus dem Schlaf.

Und träumt von einer Sonne, welche lachte.

Es geht vorbei;

nachher war’s einerlei.

Das Wort entschlief, als jene Welt erwachte.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Without the persistent encouragement of Paul Reitter and Daniel Kehlmann, I never would have embarked on this project.
(They have no one but themselves to blame for how much work it turned out to be.) Paul is a model of the scholar dedicated to thought and careful research, and I’m indebted to him for sharing his deep knowledge of Kraus and his times, for patiently helping me solve many translation puzzles, for plunging wholeheartedly into the footnoting game, and for devoting a huge amount of energy to a book that doesn’t even have his name on the front cover.
I’m scarcely less indebted to Daniel for reading multiple drafts of the translations, for offering dozens of good suggestions and line edits, for saving both Paul and me from several embarrassing mistakes, and for bringing bold opinions to his footnotes and boundless enthusiasm to the project as a whole.

The copy editors Maxine Bartow and Mareike Grover did heroic work on what must have been a nightmare manuscript; Jonathan Galassi caught many infelicities in the translation and gently brought me to my senses at certain points where I’d lost them; Henry Finder protectively argued me out of some rhetorical excesses and faulty analogies in the footnotes.
Kathy Chetkovich, who knew nothing of Kraus, gave the manuscript a lay reading and reported on her characteristic effort to understand every sentence in it.
In the early 1980s, my wife read the wretched first drafts of the translations and made suggestions that proved valuable nearly thirty years later.
And George Avery not only introduced me to Kraus and commented minutely on the early drafts, he started me down the road of literature, from which everything has followed, including this book.

ALSO BY
JONATHAN FRANZEN

NOVELS

Freedom

The Corrections

Strong Motion

The Twenty-Seventh City

NONFICTION

Farther Away

The Discomfort Zone

How to Be Alone

TRANSLATION

Spring Awakening

(by Frank Wedekind)

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Franzen

Footnotes by Paul Reitter copyright © 2013 by Paul Reitter

Footnotes by Daniel Kehlmann copyright © 2013 by Daniel Kehlmann

All rights reserved

First edition, 2013

The original essays and afterwords in this volume are from Karl Kraus’s collection
Untergang der Welt durch schwarze Magie,
ed.
Christoph Wagenknecht (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989).
“Man frage nicht…” appeared in
Die Fackel
no.
888, October 1933.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kraus, Karl, 1874–1936.

The Kraus project / translated and edited by Jonathan Franzen; with assistance and additional notes from Paul Reitter and Daniel

Kehlmann.
— First edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-374-18221-2 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-374-71056-9 (e-book)

I.
Franzen, Jonathan, editor of compilation.
II.
Title.

PT2621.R27 A2 2013

838.91209—dc23

2013015008

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eISBN 9780374710569

First eBook edition: September 2013