Lost original version of the novel "Solar Eclipse" by Koestler found

The Kassel Germanist Matthias Weßel (32) discovered the manuscript in the Zurich Central Library in the course of research for his doctoral thesis. Records of the Europa publishing house, where the Austro-Hungarian writer published briefly in the 1930s, are kept there.

In "Sonnenfinsternis" - his best-known work - Koestler takes issue with communism. Until now, it had been assumed that the original text was lost when he fled from France to England in 1940 under adventurous circumstances to escape the Nazis. Koestler had previously had an English translation made and published in London. Under the title "Darkness at Noon," the work became a bestseller, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world. It was not until 1946 that a German version appeared, based on a back translation by Koestler. Koestler became one of the most successful, and late in life, one of the most controversial English-language writers of his time.

The document that has now surfaced is a typewritten text with handwritten corrections and insertions by Koestler. It is stored in the archive under the title "Rubashov: Novel" and is dated March 1940. Rubashov is the name of the protagonist of "Solar Eclipse." How the document found its way to the publishing house and thus to the archive is still unclear.

"It is interesting that about half of the supposedly back-translated German text is congruent with the original manuscript," Weßel reports. "Only in the second half is the text clearly divergent and, for example, certain terms in the translation first into English and then into German change their meaning slightly. This means that, contrary to his own account, Koestler must still have had some of the original text at his disposal."

According to Weßel, the original text has an "aesthetic added value" because it is of one piece. Above all, Germanists can now use the complete text to better understand its genesis as well as the author's creative ideas and appreciate the novel as part of German-language literature. Prof. Dr. Peter Seibert, Weßel's doctoral supervisor and a retired professor at the University of Kassel, calls Sonnenfinsternis "in many respects a key text of the exile, around which there has been a corresponding struggle for interpretation. All the more important that the original version has finally been found. It is now possible to trace the stages of creation up to the edition and translations, respectively."

Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Ms. Oprecht T 204.

In the holdings catalog of the "Verlagsarchiv Oprecht/Europa-Verlag," the text is listed with the following entry: "Koestler, Arthur. Rubashov : novel. Typescript, March 1940, 326 pages."

Photo by Matthias Weßel (Photo: Uni Kassel) at http://www.uni-kassel.de/uni/fileadmin/datas/uni/presse/anhaenge/2015/Wessel2.jpg

Contact:

Matthias Weßel
University of Kassel
Email: wessel[at]uni-kassel[dot]de
A cell phone number for Mr. Weßel is available to journalists upon request at the University of Kassel Press Office , presse[at]uni-kassel[dot]de, 0561 804-1961.  

Sebastian Mense
University of Kassel
Communication, Press and Public Relations
Tel.: +49 561 804-1961
Email: presse@uni-kassel.de