Original 'Bambi' was not a children's story, says a Minnesota folklore expert

If you thought it was rough to see Bambi's mother die in the 1942 Disney film, you should read the original story.

Before it became an animated classic movie for children, "Bambi" was a 1922 novel by Austrian writer and journalist Felix Salten. According to a new translation by Jack Zipes, it's a dark story of brutality, loss and, ultimately, loneliness.

As anthropomorphic tales of animals go, it's less "Charlotte's Web" and more "Animal Farm."

Zipes, a University of Minnesota emeritus professor of German and a leading authority on fairy tales and folk literature, said the story isn't an animal rights fable or an early ecological parable. "Bambi," he said, is an allegory of how badly humans can treat fellow humans.

Salten was a Jew who saw his books banned and burned by the Nazis and fled Austria to live in Switzerland.

In Bambi, he created "a brilliant and profound story of how minority groups throughout the world have been brutally treated, even when they try to live peacefully in their own environment," Zipes wrote in an introduction to his translation. "Read in the original language and in its sociohistorical context, 'Bambi' is, if anything, dystopic and sobering, for it reveals the cutthroat manner in which powerless people are hunted and persecuted for sport."

Zipes explained in an interview, edited for space and clarity, how the original Bambi more closely reflects Salten's melancholic life than a happily-ever-after Disney film. Like Bambi, Salten survived the violence of the wilderness, but ended up exiled and alone.

Q: What led you to take on a translation of Bambi?

A: The beginnings were somewhat of a serendipity. I was at the Modern Language Association meeting about two or three years ago. And two different editors came up to me and said, "2022 will be the 100th birthday of 'Bambi.' Would you like to do a translation?"

I had some memories from my childhood, I guess, of Bambi and had seen over the years Bambi books by the Disney corporation and so on. So I said "I don't think so. Why should I be interested in Bambi?" When I came back to Minneapolis, I began thinking maybe I should look into this. Bambi is pretty famous. And maybe there's a story there of some kind.

I realized, after doing some research, that I was quite stupid, because "Bambi" is really an amazing book. Nobody knows the author of "Bambi." And nobody really knows the true story. I read in German the original "Bambi." And I said, "Oh, my God, this is entirely different from what Disney showed."

Q: Disney made other films out of fairy tales, which you also have translated. What made Bambi different?

A: Well, Bambi is not really a fairy tale. It's a fable, an animal story. And what really interested me to a great extent was how morphologically Salten really wants to portray the difficulty I think that he had as an Austrian Jew. He dealt with a great deal of anti-Semitism, both open and sometimes very subtle. And so I think I came to realize, as I was doing my research, that what Salten was trying to do was try to work out his contradictory allegiance to his Jewishness.

Q: So there's a big difference between Salten's story and the Disney movie?

A: The differences are drastic between the film and his novel. I mean, we're talking about a very somber, almost existentialist view of the world. And it does parallel Salten's own life. He spent the last three years of his life — he died in 1945 — lonely, like just like the stag [the adult Bambi at the end of the book], very lonely, disregarded, nobody knew about him anymore. He was not living in his own country, and he was desolate.

Q: Did Salten see the movie?

A: When "Bambi" came out as a film in 1942, he was in Switzerland. He escaped the Nazis in 1938. He was living in Zurich and his wife had just died. He went to the movie theater by himself, and made only one short remark about the film. I think he was too old at that time to get into any type of controversy.

Q: In your translation, you include a warning: " 'Bambi' is a sad but truthful novel. It was never intended for children." Who did Salten write it for?

A: His intention was for a general adult audience. He was portraying, to a certain extent, his own life, his own difficulties of existing as a Jew, in an anti-Semitic climate.

Q: And he used a story about intelligent animals to talk about humanity?

A: In the '20s and '30s, for both for adult literature and children's literature, there's a slew of animal stories that were published. And there's no doubt in my mind that these various authors are using the animals to step back and tell a story about human beings. And it's fascinating to read those words.

Q: What do you hope people will get out of reading your translation of the original "Bambi"?

A: I think that it's going to be a more truthful display of how difficult it is to be a minority. When I talk about Jews, you can talk about other minority groups. ... So I think the message is to be aware of how we treat minority groups, no matter what the minority is, so that we can become a more compassionate people.