Translating an American Tale: W. H. Auden's Paul Bunyan

ABSTRACT. In the Thirties, many European artists and intellectuals, who were trying to make sense of their art, under the constant threat of Nazi-fascist violence, eventually decided to leave their homeland for the United States. When the English poet and dramatist, Wystan Hugh Auden, moved to the States for good, in 1939, he had to confront the European values and the traumatic historical situation he had just left behind with a totally new way of life. Auden’s operetta Paul Bunyan, staged for the first time in New York, in 1941, testifies to this attempt at scrutinizing the new American cultural context through the lenses of an English intellectual, who was clearly both fascinated and somewhat puzzled by what the American Dream meant to Europe, especially to left-wing intellectuals. The image of Paul Bunyan, the giant logger of American folklore, is at the core of the operetta, which explores the birth of ‘civilization’, by enriching the myth of the giant logger—naïve, strong, stubborn, and innocent—with further meanings and implications directly drawn from the tragic experiences of Nazism and Fascism in Europe.