I think back on the past year and how much has changed for me. I have moved into a new stage of my life and leaving the old one has been kind of strange.
I put so much time and energy into my personal writing projects and trying to get them out and now it seems as if they are just lying there while I obsessively translate Hanns Heinz Ewers. What is going on!
Simply put, I thought about writing another metaphysical book, then realized that in Magister Templi and Modern Survivalism I had successfully said what I wanted to say. There was no real need for anything else. All that remained was to finish the Anarchist Knight trilogy and that still remains.
Ewers books Alraune, Vampire and Fundvogel are important to me because I wish to learn how to write that way. I am largely translating them to gain the writing skills needed to write my next two books.
Anarchist Knight Journeyman is a darker story and will need those things that I am now learning. It will be worth the wait. I am learning how to connect with my own dark nature in a positive and creative way. Each thing I translate stirs up emotions that I never knew existed. That is what is important because once they are stirred up I can capture them in words.
I am planning to publish Hanns Heinz EwersVolume I this spring. It will include many short stories and the first two chapters of Vampire, the first three chapters of Alraune.
It will only include material published by Ewers before 1923 so I can’t include chapters from Fundvogel or some of the short stories I have already translated. It will be 300-350 pages so look for it!
The Ewers estate apparently has no interest in talking with me about my translations. Both emails and letters go unanswered. Other than continuing the Fundvogel translation I will limit myself to only translating works that are in the public domain here in the United States. Things that are not in the public domain will remain on my website until I am asked personally by the estate to take them down. I will not attempt to make any money off them but offer them freely for fans to read.
Most of Hanns Heinz Ewers material was published before 1923 so I have a large assortment of material to work with including the novels The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Ghost Seer.
You can expect to see new translations of some short stories that have already been translated. The language in most of them sounds stilted and I’m itching to give it a try to see if I can do any better! The Spider will be the first of these that I will be translating fresh.
My translation skills are improving with each new page and I’m learning a lot. In a hard world taking a few hours each day to work on these is one of my greatest joys. I do it for love and because I want to find out what happens next.
bright blessings
-joe
