heidifrenchsequels

[heidifrenchsequels]

This is the only photo of Charles Tritten I’ve been able to find so far. I know he was Swiss and a Francophone.

He translated the Heidi into French and then created sequels to it based on some of Johanna Spyri’s other novels. The publisher then put them out in French simply using Spyri’s name.

I’m fascinated with these novels, and one thing I really want to explore is the ways in which Tritten’s unauthorized works were unethical. Obviously the plagiarism is messed up, as well as using her name. But I wonder if it was explicitly breaking with a stated intention of Spyri’s that there never be more Heidi stories. I also wonder how relevant it is that Spyri herself may have been building on the 1830 story, Adelaide: The Girl from the Alps (Adelaide, das Mädchen vom Alpengebirge).

[heidifrenchsequels]

A moment in my Heidi journey from last year.

After some unexpected tribulation, I have gotten my hands on a copy of the first French Heidi sequel, Heidi Grows Up (Heidi jeune fille).

Charles Tritten was the Swiss translator who rendered Johanna Spyri’s original German Heidi into French. After Spyri died, Tritten wrote his own sequels. There were five but only two of those have been translated into English.

Earlier this year, before I started into the Anne of Green Gables books, I read Heidi because I’m interested in how the 1974 Japanese TV anime, Heidi, Girl of the Alps (アルプスの少女ハイジ), was influenced by and, in turn, was an influence on the Showa era magical girl genre. And now, because I want to go even deeper, I’m going to read Tritten’s Heidi Grows Up and Heidi’s Children (Heidi et ses enfants)

[heidifrenchsequels]

Childhood series part 2

Heidi, Girl of the Alps

[heidifrenchsequels]

This project has two specific goals set against the backdrop of a general aim.

The first goal is to understand the relationship between Charles Tritten and Johanna Spyri in order to understand the context around Tritten's French-language Heidi sequels.

The second is to gain access to the two of Tritten's sequels that have not yet been published in English -- In the Land of Heidi (Au pays de Heidi) from 1938 and Grandmother Heidi (Heidi grand’mère) from 1941.

All of this, of course, is a part of my more general desire to understand Heidi overall.

Blaze

0 notes