The language of the birds.
A comedy by Adolf Paul.
Only Authorized English Translation.
by Arthur Travers-borgstroem*
Scenic Music by Jean Sibelius
Introduction by Henry C. Shelley
First English edition. Published by Alfred Montgomery, London, 1922.
Printed at the Curwen Press.
Hardback. Marbled paper covered boards over cloth spine. 71 pages. Weighs 109 grams. Roughly 4 x 6.5 inches.
Spine ends rubbed and boards worn with loss to paper covering and knocks to edges. Few marks and foxing to endpapers else contents clean and complete. Binding sound.
Scarce. No other copies found for sale or sold.
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Adolf Georg Wiedersheim-Paul (1863 – 1943) was a Swedish writer of novels and plays. He lived most of his adult life in Berlin, Germany, where he was a friend of Swedish writer August Strindberg, Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, Norwegian painter Edvard Munch and Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Paul is depicted in one of Edvard Munch’s paintings, The Vampire. The painting shows a red-haired woman bending her head over the neck of a man hiding his face in her lap.
In 1886, he began studying music at the Music Academy in Helsinki and became a friend of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Both studied with the famous Italian composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni, who brought them to Germany when he moved there from Helsinki in 1889. Collaborating with Sibelius, Paul discovered he was better at composing plays and novels than music and after a concert in Helsinki in 1891 focused on his writing.
In 1892 he published a collection of short stories called The Ripper, a title inspired by London serial killer Jack the Ripper. The Ripper was published by Grönlund in Turku, Finland, but the book was controversial and critics considered some of its content obscene. Many of Paul’s early novels challenged contemporary morals.
His En bok om en menniska was autobiographical and describes a man who is struggling to define and promote his identity. The main character passionately opposes the norms of the society, disdains the bourgeoisie and has a sense of spiritual superiority. Breaking with the norms and becoming an artist, he then faces an identity crisis and suffers a mental breakdown. This book was the first in a series of three and dedicated to Sibelius, who also appears in the book thinly disguised as Sillen.
The second novel in the En bok om en människa series titled Med det falska och det ärliga ögat (With the false and the honest eye) was published in 1895 and was mainly about free love and the conflict between the carnal and the intellectual, and contained characters based on Paul’s artist friends in Berlin. One of its inspirations was Edvard Munch and his art.
Several of Paul’s novels were considered obscene because of their violent and abnormal sexual content. In The Ripper, one of the stories was an imaginary diary of Jack the Ripper with graphic details. Another short story, Oidipus i Norden, was inspired by an 1889 murder in south Sweden, Yngsjömordet, where a mother and her son had an incestuous relationship and bludgeoned the son’s wife to death. The Ripper was not the only novel banned as obscene.
Paul’s artist friend Axel Gallén-Kallela created the cover for one of his novels, Ein gefallener profet (A fallen prophet) in 1895. This novel was well received and so were Paul's early plays.
In Sweden, Paul was overshadowed by August Strindberg, his older friend whom he greatly admired and whose work influenced Paul's early novels. When Strindberg relocated to Berlin in 1892 after his divorce from Siri von Essen, Paul was the one who introduced him to everyone worth knowing and to the hangout Zum schwarzen Ferkel, where the artist community gathered. For a while the two writers boarded together.
In 1894, Paul contributed to a book honoring Strindberg in which he especially highlighted Strindberg’s view of the battle between the genders, and revealed a familiarity with Nietzsche’s übermench ideal. In the mid-1890s Strindberg, who was now middle-aged, suffered from severe paranoia and, according to some sources, wrongly accused Paul of having based unsympathetic characters on him in two of his books. Other sources say, however, that both Strindberg and Paul populated their novels with miserable characters based on each other.[citation needed] Most of the artists in Paul’s group based fictional characters on each other and used each other in paintings.
As opposed to his on and off relationship with Strindberg, Paul remained a lifelong friend of Sibelius and cooperated with him on several occasions. In 1898 Sibelius composed music to Paul’s play Kung Kristian II (King Kristian II) and in 1911 for the wedding march in Die Sprache der Vögel. Paul also wrote lyrics for Sibelius’ Korsspindeln. Both Kung Kristian II and another play, Karin Månsdotter, were performed at the Stockholm Royal Theatre in 1898.
In the late 1890s, Paul's bohemian circle of artist friends dissolved and Paul settled down and started a family. Paul continued to work on plays and novels and his career waxed and waned over the years. Literature critics considered Paul's psychological portrayals of Voltaire in Ormen i paradiset and Napoleon in S:t Helena among his literary highlights.
Between 1914 and 1919 Paul worked as a screenwriter and wrote scripts for some 14 films, including Die Teufelskirche. In 1919 he wrote a movie script for Die Tänzerin Barberina starring Strindberg's third wife Harriet Bosse.
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The Language of the Birds was completed in 1911 and published the same year. In March 1911 Paul sent a telegram to Jean Sibelius asking for music for a new play that was to be performed at the Munich Hoftheater. The result was incidental music to Die Sprache der Vögel (The Language of the Birds). Sibelius composed it for large orchestra and gave it the name Hochzeitzug [sic] (Wedding March). For potential theatre use he also gave instructions concerning the use of smaller orchestral forces.
The world première performance of the play took place on Sunday 10 September 1911 at the Residenztheater in Munich. Three days before the première, Paul wrote to Sibelius: ‘Heartfelt thanks for your beautiful music, which I heard for the first time today. As the stage is small, we have only forty people in the procession, so we’ve had to “abort” the music – otherwise we would have needed to engage several hundred extras, and that isn’t possible.’
Therefore Sibelius’s music was played at rehearsals, but not during the production itself. The Language of the Birds has been performed in central Europe and England, but Sibelius’s music has never been performed together with the play. This was a disappointment for both Sibelius and Paul.
In the autumn of 1921 Paul wrote to Sibelius: ‘Did you know that Arthur Borgström has translated The Language of the Birds quite brilliantly into English; he’s received the most ample praise in London and is now working on getting it performed there with your music. Perhaps we’ll have an English première together this winter.’
*Arthur Travers-Borgström (1859–1927) was acquainted with both Paul and Sibelius. On his father’s side he came from a prosperous Helsinki family of industrialists and traders. In addition to his business activities, he wrote poems under the pseudonym Vagabond. Borgström had helped Sibelius out of his various financial predicaments. Adolf Paul, too, often asked Borgström for financial help, as his correspondence with Sibelius reveals: ‘If it wasn’t for our good friend Arthur Borgström, I would have gone under long ago.’
At that time Travers-Borgström was in England and gave financial support to attempts to have Paul’s play performed there with Sibelius’s music. In December Paul told Sibelius that, according to Borgström, the play had been accepted for performance in London and Birmingham.
The play’s first English-language performance took place at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre on 31 March 1923, and it was given fifteen times over a two-week period. It was directed by H. K. Ayliff, who also played the role of Solomon. The journal The Stage praised the stage design by Paul Shelving (1888–1968): ‘Special costumes and stage decorations have been designed by Mr. Paul Shelving. On the scenic side there is much splendour. The scenes, of course, have oriental richness of colouring. The wedding procession is most impressive’, and on the subject of music observed: ‘For the original performance Sibelius composed incidental music, but this is not used for the present revival in this country.
In 1930 Paul told Sibelius: ‘Now I’m in negotiations about making a film of The Language of the Birds. That’s the last lifeline I have. If anything comes of it, it will be on the condition that all of the music is written by you, and is handsomely rewarded.’ However, the screen version of Paul’s Language of the Birds never became a reality.
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Plot summary:
The play centres around two elements. The first of these comes from the beginning of 1 Kings in the Old Testament, set in the time of Solomon. This book starts with the story of Abishag the Shunammite, who is brought to Solomon’s father, the aged King David, to provide him with warmth. ‘So they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel, and found Abishag a Shunammite, and brought her to the king. And the damsel was very fair, and cherished the king, and ministered to him: but the king knew her not’ (1 Kings 1, 3–4). The second element is the Jewish legend that Solomon could understand the language of animals. The name of the play alludes to this ability, in particular to his knowledge of the birds’ language: ‘Solomon, it must be remembered, bore rule not only over men, but also over the beasts of the field, the birds in the air, demons, spirits, and the spectres of the night. He knew the language of all of them and they understood his language.’ The remaining thematic material of the play is Paul’s own invention.
The play has three main characters: King Solomon, Abishag and Sabud (Zabud). At the request of his brother Adonijah, Solomon has given Abishag to his friend and favourite Sabud to be his wife. Sabud may ask for an additional favour from Solomon but is unable to do so because in his opinion, having secured Abishag as his wife, he wants for nothing. Abishag urges Sabud to ask Solomon to reveal the secret of his wisdom – his understanding of the language of the birds. But first Solomon puts Sabud to the test: he must lie to his wife and tell her that he has already learned the secret but, on pain of death, he may not reveal it to anybody.
In Act II, Abishag attempts to find out the secret, and is offended and angry when Sabud refuses to tell. Just when Sabud has confessed that he does not know the secret, Solomon’s guards arrive and Abishag lies to them that Sabud has indeed revealed to her the secret of the language of the birds. Both are brought to be judged by Solomon.
In Act III, in the courtroom, Abishag wants Solomon to execute Sabud so that she can then marry him. Sabud, on the other hand, tries to kill Solomon with a dagger when he hears that Solomon plans to marry Abishag, who is just being prepared for the wedding. Abishag and the wedding procession arrive. Solomon does not execute Sabud, but demands that Abishag herself should give the command. But Abishag does not execute Sabud either; he forgives her for being prepared to have him killed. They flee the courtroom together. In the end Solomon gives the order to celebrate the wedding, even in the absence of the bride.
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The Curwen Press is best known for its work in the period 1919-1939. The Press's output included books, advertising posters and published ephemera which typically used three interrelated elements: typography, decoration, and publicity which together give the Press a unique and memorable style. The work of the Press provides important evidence that the fine printing of the interwar years was not confined to private presses.
The Curwen Press, under the management of Harold Curwen, John's grandson, was at the vanguard of the design revolution that saw expression in British printing in the early 20th century. An underlying ethos of the Curwen Press was that its craftsmanship could and should take both craftsman and consumer on an emotional and aesthetic voyage. Harold Curwen considered that using contemporary independent artists would significantly enhance printed matter for publicity purposes. His belief was that the imaginative skills of an artist could not be acquired through training and gave an artist an advantage in their design work. In return that applied artist-designer would acquire something from their commercial practice to take back into their fine art.
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