Volume 31, Number 3 · March 1, 1984
The Two George Groszes
By John Willett
George Grosz: An Autobiography
translated by Nora Hodges
Imago/Macmillan, 312 pp., $19.95
George Grosz's autobiography is now appearing in English for the third time—a sign of the continuing interest in his life and work. When the book was first published in 1946, the German text was edited down somewhat and translated by Nola Sachs Dorin. It was decked out with a somewhat random selection of his drawings and paintings (including some in deplorable color), and put out under the title A Little Yes and a Big No. In 1955 Rowohlt of Hamburg published the original German, translating the title and restoring cuts (notably the very funny and none too flattering account of Grosz's trip to Russia in 1922), reshuffling the drawings and doing without the color. This caused little stir at the time, apart from a long and enthusiastic article in the Times Literary Supplement. The wide recognition of Grosz's genius as an artist came only in the mid-Sixties (with major exhibitions and the republication of Ecce Homo) and the Seventies (with books on his work by Hans Hess and Beth Irwin Lewis).[1] Last year, however, Allison and Busby, subsidized by the Arts Council of Great Britain, published a fresh translation of the autobiography made by Arnold J. Pomerans from the German edition of 1955, shuffling the pictures yet again to make a cramped and meanly laid-out book. And now we have yet another translation, with another title, and another mix of the pictures, with some fresh ones added and slightly more space.
Review, 3536 words
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