now storm the uplands of eternity?
By the time these questions are resolved in the Epilogue, we have indeed reached the End of Time. The mortal foe is ultimately identified as an unholy alliance between “printer’s ink, technology, and death” (“Tinte, Technik, Tod”), represented by the journalistic Anti-Christ (Moriz Benedikt), the fanatical scientist Dr. Abendrot (alluding to Fritz Haber, pioneer of chemical warfare), and the Death’s Head Hussar (the German Crown Prince). Thus Kraus’s documentary drama culminates in apocalyptic allegory, sealed by the destruction of planet Earth by meteors from Mars. A symbolic coda is provided by the photograph placed at the end: the figure of the crucified Christ from a wayside shrine situated near the Western Front. The wooden cross has been shot away but the figure remains intact, arms uplifted as if in supplication.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to our friend Nicholas Jacobs, publisher of Libris, for encouraging our collaboration. Thanks are also due to Robert Baldock, Managing Director of Yale University Press in London, for guiding us towards the Margellos World Republic of Letters. The path towards publication has been smoothed by Elina Bloch, Margellos World Republic of Letters coordinator, and special gratitude is due to our Editor, John Donatich, for his constructive suggestions and expert guidance; and to Danielle D’Orlando as Publishing Coordinator.
Although our aim is to produce a completely fresh version, we have consulted previously published excerpts from The Last Days of Mankind, as translated by Alexander Gode and Sue Ellen Wright, and by Max Knight and Joseph Fabry. When the Gode-Wright edition, abridged and edited by Frederick Ungar, was published in New York, an anonymous review in the Times Literary Supplement of 6 December 1974 complained that the play had been so radically pruned that much of the complexity was lost. Looking back forty years later the author of that review, Edward Timms, wishes he had been more appreciative of a pioneering effort. Over the years he has found it helpful to exchange ideas with other experienced colleagues and translators, including Harry Zohn, Michael Rogers, Gilbert Carr, Christiane Reitter, Ritchie Robertson, and Patrick Healy. More recently, the journalist Jennifer Bligh has made spirited contributions to the fine-tuning of our text, while Julia Winckler produced high-resolution illustrations, Bill Nelson drew the map, and our manuscript editor Jeffrey Schier guided us so expertly through the copyediting process.
Our task as translators has been facilitated by reference to Les Derniers jours de l’humanité, the complete French translation by Jean-Louis Besson and Henri Christophe. Their version elucidates passages from Kraus’s original that might otherwise remain obscure, also providing a model for the Glossary that concludes our book. Further guidance has been derived from information incorporated in the excellent German editions of Die letzten Tage der Menschheit produced by Kurt Krolop and Christian Wagenknecht.
Anton Hölzer’s study of documentary photos from the First World War has enhanced our understanding of Kraus’s indictment of war crimes, especially those committed against ethnic minorities. Even more helpful have been the explanations in the Lexikon zu Karl Kraus, “Die letzten Tage der Menschheit”, by Agnes Pistorius, a model of precise scholarship that identifies not only obscure historical references but also a wealth of literary allusions. Following her lead, our Glossary entries on Goethe, Schiller, and Shakespeare elucidate a dazzling array of ironic effects. Long before the word “intertextuality” was coined, Kraus had evolved his own method of creative interpolation, which he designated “Einschöpfung.” As a tribute to this innovative technique we introduce an echo of Edgar Allan Poe into the play’s most haunting poem, “The Ravens” (V, 55).
References
Karl Kraus (editor), Die Fackel, Vienna, April 1899 to June 1936 (for the images of Benedikt and Northcliffe, see F 445–53, January 1917, p. 33; for the concept of “Einschöpfung”, see F 572–6, June 1921, page 62)
Karl Kraus, Die letztenTage der Menschheit, Vienna: Verlag Die Fackel, 1922
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That: An Autobiography, London: Jonathan Cape, 1929 (quotation from page 283)
Karl Kraus, The Last Days of Mankind, abridged and edited by Frederick Ungar, tr. Alexander Gode and Sue Ellen Wright, New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1974
Karl Kraus, In These Great Times: A Karl Kraus Reader, Montreaclass="underline" Engendra Press, 1976; contains “‘The Last Days of Mankind’: Selections arranged and translated by Max Knight and Joseph Fabry” (pages 157–258)
Karl Kraus, Die letztenTage der Menschheit, ed. Kurt Krolop, 2 vols., Berlin: Verlag Volk und Welt, 1978
Karl Kraus, “The Last Days of Mankind”, unpublished translation by Robert David MacDonald of selected scenes for the Edinburgh Festival production of 1982 (with Giles Havergal in the role of Kraus the Grouse)
Leo A. Lensing, “‘Kinodramatisch’: Cinema in Karl Kraus’s Die Fackel and Die letztenTage der Menschheit”, in German Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Nov. 1982), pages 480–98.
Karl Kraus, Die letztenTage der Menschheit, ed. Christian Wagenknecht, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986
Edward Timms, Karl Kraus — Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986
Fred Bridgham, The Friendly German-English Dictionary, London: Libris, 1996
Karl Kraus, Les Derniers jours de l’humanité: Version intégrale, tr. Jean-Louis Besson and Henri Christophe, Marseilles: Agone, 2005
Edward Timms, Karl Kraus — Apocalyptic Satirist: The Post-War Crisis and the Rise of the Swastika, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005
Fred Bridgham (editor), The First World War as a Clash of Cultures, Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006
Anton Hölzer, Das Lächeln der Henker: Der unbekannte Krieg gegen die Zivilbevölkerung 1914–1918, Darmstadt: Primus, 2006
Agnes Pistorius, “kolossal montiert”: Ein Lexikon zu Karl Kraus, “Die letzten Tage der Menschheit”, Vienna: Ibera Verlag, 2011
Edward Timms, Taking Up the Torch: English Institutions, German Dialectics and Multicultural Commitments, Brighton and Portland, Ont.: Sussex Academic Press, 2011
GLOSSARY AND INDEX
Unless otherwise specified, military, political, and diplomatic positions are Austrian or Austro-Hungarian, the location Vienna, and the war the First World War. An arrow indicates a separate entry. Significant examples from the play are denoted by act and scene in parentheses, while page references are given wherever possible. To identify locations, grid references in the form, for example, Plan B2 or Map C3 relate respectively to the Vienna City Plan (page vi) and the Map of European War Zones (page 646). The abbreviation F + issue number refers to Kraus’s revue Die Fackel.
ADRIATIC (Map D4/E6), branch of the Mediterranean giving the Austro-Hungarian Empire access to the sea, celebrated in 1913 by an exhibition in Vienna (→Prater); The Habsburg crown land of Trieste (1382–1919) and adjacent coastal villages had developed into the Austrian Riviera, linked by rail to Vienna in 1857. After 1915 control over the Adriatic was hotly disputed in naval engagements with the Italians: 42f, 62, 87, 142, 227ff, 456f.