The End and the Beginning - Open Book Publishers

and identifying with others is the condition of her ability to create fictional
characters, the writer may find that her own life has been diminished as
well as enriched by her capacity for empathizing and living vicariously (“A
Secondary Happiness”).
Like everything Zur Mühlen wrote, these short pieces are rooted in her
own experience and that of her time. Thus, for instance, the three samples
from the collection entitled Der rote Heiland, which was published soon after
the First World War (the little dramatic scene that gave the collection its title,
together with “Confession,” and “High Treason”), reflect the widespread
pacifism, the revulsion against war, and the demand for radical social change
in Germany in the years following the country’s disastrous defeat. “Miss
Brington” and “The Señora,” both published in 1941, reflect the experience
of exile. The former evokes the characteristically drab, run-down English
boarding-house with which many exiles, who were accustomed to a very
different kind of life, became unhappily all too familiar after fleeing Hitler’s
Germany and Austria. At the same time, Zur Mühlen manages to transform
the watchful, frugal, hard-working, and worn-out landlady, Miss Brington,
who is always on the brink of falling from respectability into poverty, into
a universal figure of emotional and physical deprivation and loneliness.
“The Señora” dramatizes the dilemma faced by refugees, particularly those
who happen to be writers in a language other than that of their country of
asylum. Should they adapt to their new environment and risk losing the
anger and indignation, the passionate opposition to tyranny that is the core
of their identity, the most precious possession left to them? Or should they
nurture their hatred and risk losing their humanity?
To the feuilletons have been added two samples of the “socialist” fairy
tales for which Zur Mühlen achieved a degree of international renown –
one (“The Spectacles”) in a new translation by the editor, and one (“The
Sparrow”) in Ida Dailes’ translation (considerably revised by the editor)
for a collection of four of Zur Mühlen’s tales published by The Daily
Worker Publishing Company under the title Fairy Tales for Workers’ Children
(Chicago, 1925). A short essay by the editor on the fairy tale and its use for
propaganda purposes has also been included among these supplementary
on-line materials.
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Lionel Gossman, November 2010