Part of the authenticating mythology of
Siddhartha’s North American success is the story of how Henry Miller “discovered” the book and pestered a reluctant James Laughlin, founder and head of New Directions, to publish an English translation. In a letter to Hesse scholar Volker Michels in 1972, Miller claims to have pestered Laughlin for three years before he reluctantly agreed to publish an English translation. This narrative has woven its way into Miller’s and Laughlin’s autobiographies and biographies, Hesse scholarship, and subsequent translator introductions.
1Among many other examples, see Henry Miller, “Aus einem Brief Henry Millers vom 10.1.1973 an Volker Michels,” in Materialien zu Hermann Hesses Siddhartha vol. II, ed. Volker Michels (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975), 301; James Laughlin, The Way It Wasn’t (New York: New Directions, 2006), 290; and Ian S. MacNiven, “Literchoor is my Beat”: A Life of James Laughlin, Publisher (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), 289. The Hermann Hesse subject file (1946–1995) in the Houghton Library’s New Directions Publishing Archive is able to shed some light on both the role of Henry Miller and the process of selection of a translator for the English
Siddhartha. One particular piece of correspondence allows us to pinpoint Laughlin’s claim and test it against the newly discovered archival material. It comes in the form of a request from Hesse’s son, Heiner. Seeking artefacts for a touring exhibition of his father’s works in 1977, Heiner Hesse wrote to James Laughlin to request the original letter in which Henry Miller first made Laughlin aware of
Siddhartha. Laughlin’s reply allows us to locate the supposedly exact date and wording of the letter, yet we only get Miller’s words quoted within Laughlin’s letter:
I have found the letter. Henry wrote it to me in August of 1949 … It is a long letter, dealing almost entirely with our mutual business affairs. Then almost as an afterthought or postscript, written vertically on the side of one of the pages, is the following: “I give a title to look up. It expresses my innermost thoughts with accuracy—something that has been growing these last few years. Read it and see if anything happens to you:
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. In German and French—1922 and 1945 resp. Worth all the pains to dig it up. Henry.” Could you not just have this part of the letter typed up for the exhibition?
2Laughlin to Heiner Hesse, May 10, 1977. Box 403, bMS Am 2077 (2428), Folder 14 of 17. Hermann Hesse Subject File, 1946–1995. Houghton Library, New Directions Publishing Records, Harvard University (hereafter cited as Hesse File).After reading the book in French, Laughlin found
Siddhartha “a very impressive work which we ought to add to our list if a satisfactory translation can be obtained … Would there be any chance that you would be able to undertake the work yourself? … it would attract a great many of your regular following who would be sure to buy it.”
3Laughlin to Henry Miller, in Henry Miller and James Laughlin: Selected Letters, ed. George Wickes (New York: Norton, 1995), 77. What happened to the three years of nagging that Miller refers to in a letter to Volker Michels in 1972? If any nagging was done by Miller, it certainly did not last three years. The New Directions files reveal that Laughlin had been sent an English
Siddhartha translation during the Second World War, which suggests that Laughlin pretended he had not heard of the book. The wartime manuscript sent to Laughlin was the (now missing) manuscript by mathematician and game-theorist Harold Kuhn, then a twenty-four-year-old PhD student at Princeton. He wrote to Laughlin at the end of 1949: “In reply to your letter of 1 December, it is true that I submitted a translation of Hermann Hesse’s novel
Siddhartha to you in 1944 … your renewed interest in the novel stirs my curiosity.”
4Harold Kuhn to Laughlin, December 12, 1949. Hesse File, Folder 1. Another letter from a Hugo Gabriel of New York reveals that this was a co-translation and confirms that Laughlin had already been interested in
Siddhartha: “I am the one who more than five years ago sent you the translation of
Siddhartha: the Inward Path, which Harold Kuhn and I worked out, and of which you said it was excellent: ‘just the sort of stuff which you would want to publish.’ My friend Harold submitted the self-same translation … awaiting your decision.”
5Hugo Gabriel to Laughlin, June 8, 1950. Hesse File, Folder 1. Thus, we know that Laughlin was aware of
Siddhartha five years before claiming to have first heard about it from Henry Miller. The possibility that Laughlin simply forgot is undermined by another letter he received from Hesse’s American agent in early 1947: “We are very pleased to learn that you are interested in the publication of books by Hermann Hesse.”
6Liesl Frank to Laughlin, February 14, 1947. Hesse File, Folder 1. It is not hard to see why, in all of his public and private comments, Laughlin maintained this fiction. It seems that if Laughlin could not get Miller to translate it, he could at least consecrate
Siddhartha by anecdotally associating it with the cultural capital of a German-heritage Bohemian American novelist like Miller, still reasoning that Miller’s “regular following … would be sure to buy it.”
7Wickes, Henry Miller and James Laughlin: Selected Letters, 77.But what did Miller actually do? George Wickes, editor of the Miller-Laughlin Letters, claims that the novelist played a major role in selecting Hilda Rosner (who is supposed to have sent it directly to Miller) and in editing her translation. The archives do reveal that the translations by both Rosner and Kuhn and Gabriel were sent to Henry Miller in Big Sur, California. To Harold Kuhn, Laughlin writes: “Miller has very kindly offered to read over your translation and see whether it is faithful to the original. He is a great Hesse fan and of course knows German well.”
8Laughlin to Kuhn, February 10, 1950. Hesse File, Folder 1. But Laughlin refers to other assessors: “I have sent it out to various readers to get opinions, and they are all taking their time with it.” Faced with two candidates for the English
Siddhartha; Laughlin explains the decision in favor of the latter in separate letters to the co-translators. To Kuhn: “We have gotten the reports back from our readers and the verdict is in favour of the other one … I am disappointed about this, because I had hoped we would be able to use yours.”
9Laughlin to Kuhn, June 9, 1950. Hesse File, Folder 1. And to Gabriel: “Another translation … was sent to us by a woman in England, and the expert readers to whom we have submitted both versions seem to feel that hers is more promising.”
10Laughlin to Gabriel, June 15, 1950. Hesse File, Folder 1.The claim that Miller had a major role in editing
Siddhartha may be another of Laughlin’s embellishments. In a published letter from Laughlin to Miller in April 1951, he writes: “You will be glad to know that Hesse’s
Siddhartha has gone off to the printer. I didn’t have time to work over the translation … but I got a highly intelligent girl who is working out here at the lodge to do so, and she fixed it up in fine shape.”
11Wickes, Henry Miller and James Laughlin: Selected Letters, 85. It is not certain who this “highly intelligent girl” was, and the letter has the ring of masculine banter. The New Direction’s correspondence suggests that there was a significant editing role intended for Hilda Rosner herself, possibly in addition to some preliminary editing by Miller. Her letter to Laughlin of June 1950 reads: “I am prepared to undertake the polishing-up process which you suggest and it would, of course, be very helpful if you would indicate the passages you consider require this treatment.”
12Hilda Rosner to Laughlin, June 26, 1950. Hesse File, Folder 1. There is no evidence that Laughlin ever indicated which passages or that this “polishing up” ever took place. Rosner was also involved in reviewing the 1968 reprint and, at Laughlin’s request, submitted 118 of her own “suggested revisions,”
13Rosner to Laughlin, September 9, 1968. Hesse File, Folder 6. mostly minor shifts in emphasis or word order. To this day, none of those alterations has been made and Rosner’s text remains almost entirely unchanged. Even a spelling mistake remains, like a nostalgic memento, in New Directions’ latest
Siddhartha edition (“acording” on page 112).
14Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha, trans. Hilda Rosner (New York: New Directions, 2009), 112. The mistake was not Rosner’s and presumably crept into an earlier print reset—the first few editions do not contain it. This apparent lack of editing is most likely due to the unexpected demand for the book rather than sloppiness or neglect. New Directions was a small operation and internal memos reflect a constant struggle to stay ahead of printing schedules and incorporate corrections into resets. The production memo for the reprint in question (1968) reads in part: “piling up back orders at an alarming rate—20M to date with 30M left in stock. Afraid all the planning just can’t seem to cope with sales push and huge gains this fall.”
15Production memo to Dave Ford, June 8, 1968. Hesse File, Folder 5.But it does seem there was some connection between Miller and Rosner, since the former passed on a personal message to her. Robert MacGregor, New Directions Vice President, wrote to Rosner in February 1966, evidently in response to her inquiry about who had sent Miller her translation: “He sent his greetings to you and told me he couldn’t remember how it was that your manuscript came to his attention. He thought it was through some mutual friend in England.”
16MacGregor to Rosner, February 16, 1966, Hesse File, Folder 4. In another letter to a newspaper editor, MacGregor reveals that “someone had sent Henry Miller a translation of this short novel done as a labor of love (I think literally), by Hilda Rosner, who was working as a commercial correspondence translator for a Birmingham export firm.”
17MacGregor to Newspaper Editor, July 26, 1968. Hesse File, Folder 5. Rosner’s initial correspondence with James Laughlin paints a picture of an outsider suddenly forced to negotiate in unfamiliar territory:
I am a great admirer of Hesse’s books and my translation of
Siddhartha was essentially a labor of love. I should therefore like to make as good a job of it as possible … Regarding your enquiry about payment, do you think 100 dollars would be a reasonable amount?
18Rosner to Laughlin, June 26, 1950. Hesse File, Folder 1.But she seems to have quickly gained confidence. Before Laughlin could reply on the question of payment, she consulted PEN International and wrote again four days later, stating “it appears I have underestimated the rates paid for translations” and asking “could you kindly help me with the commercial aspect of this matter by commenting on PEN’s statement?”
19Rosner to Laughlin, June 30, 1950. Hesse File, Folder 1. This is the first of many letters that indicate a strong sense of trust between Rosner and Laughlin and, later, Robert MacGregor. Laughlin advised a fee of $150.00 and, fortunately for Rosner, a 2.5% royalty arrangement “if by any chance the book should become a bestseller, which I rather doubt.”
20Laughlin to Rosner, July 12, 1950. Hesse File, Folder 1. This arrangement turned out to be crucial, since it kept Rosner in the New Directions–Hesse correspondence network for the rest of her life and entitled her to annual royalty checks, the total of which I calculate to be around $51,000 between 1957
21I was unable to find the sales figures for the period between 1951 and 1957. and 1972 based on New Directions sales figures for the same period (equivalent to around $378,000 in 2022).
22MacGregor to Siegfried Unseld, June 1, 1970. Hesse File, Folder 7. Colombia Pictures also required her signature for their right to use her translation in the script of Conrad Rooks’ 1972 film
Siddhartha and paid her $2,500.
23Else Lorch to Rosner, February 9, 1970. Hesse File, Folder 6. The continuing correspondence afforded by this arrangement allows us to find out something about the mysterious Hilda Rosner.