He could also recognize the field mice by listening to the sound they made whenever they ran back and forth on the short paths.” Anyone who has watched a doe on the edge of a field freeze and then turn her ear in the direction of some faint noise will see how right Salten has got it.Īnd anyone who has lived a life below the apex of his or her own society will recognize the coping mechanisms he describes. He describes the way Bambi learns to listen and smell, capturing the hyperalertness that is the birthright of prey: “He knew when a pheasant was running through the bushes he could exactly discern the delicate patter that stopped and started again.
His greatest desire was to be recognized as a dignified Austrian, a man of culture.” In this he succeeded, becoming one of the city’s most important journalists, and also something of a hack (his other famous novel, “Josephine Mutzenbacher,” was a pornographic saga written anonymously to make money).īambi’s birth launches the story he is an utterly helpless and guileless fawn, living in a forest filled with adventures and joys, but also dangers, by far the worst of which is “He,” the hunter who stalks the woods, and the imaginations of all who live within it. Young Salten became an ambitious and shrewd social climber. He grew up on the edge of poverty, from which he made his escape by pursuing high art in its many forms: “He went to the theater, attended exhibits at museums and sought out places where he might meet people of culture and wealth. The concentration of literary firepower in fin de siècle Vienna has few counterparts in human history: This transitional movement headlined by Arthur Schnitzler, Karl Kraus and the Young Vienna group that gathered at the Café Griensteidl eventually birthed modernist (and difficult) classics such as Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities.” It’s wonderfully ironic that the cultural production of this milieu that eventually reached the widest audience is a talking-animal story.įelix Salten was born Siegmund Salzmann in Hungary, but his family soon moved to Vienna, where he changed his name (according to his very able translator Jack Zipes) in order to “unmark” himself as a Jew. THE ORIGINAL BAMBI The Story of a Life in the Forest By Felix Salten Translated and introduced by Jack Zipes Illustrated by Alenka Sottler
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