Tea at Trianon: Daniel Stein, Interpreter: A Novel in Documents

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Daniel Stein, Interpreter: A Novel in Documents

The phenomenal story of Holocaust survivor Oswald Rufeisen is fictionalized in Ulitskaya’s Daniel Stein, Interpreter. Rufeisen was able to save the lives of hundreds of fellow Jews while working as a translator for the Nazis. While hiding in a monastery he converted to the Catholic faith and later became a Carmelite priest. He eventually immigrated to Israel, where he lived at the Stella Maris monastery on Mt. Carmel and started a community for Jewish Christians. Called “Daniel Stein” in the novel, he is a character of great charity and integrity who devotes his life to bridging the chasms of hatred in a land torn by religious and ethnic divisions.

The book is composed of a series of letters, documents, and diary entries from a variety of characters that are all somehow connected to Brother Daniel. This makes the plot difficult to follow; as more characters are introduced, they become hard to keep track of. It is like reading through the scattered papers of an author that have yet to be organized into a novel. Anyone looking for religious orthodoxy of either the Jewish or Christian variety will be disappointed, since most of the characters appear to be confused as to what they believe. Brother Daniel himself, while insisting that he is a Catholic, denies basic Catholic doctrines such as the Trinity. The strength of the story is the moving depiction of how Holocaust survivors struggle to rebuild their lives when everything has been taken from them.

This review originally appeared in the August 2013 edition of the Historical Novels Review.

(*NOTE: This book was sent to me by the Historical Novel Society in exchange for my honest opinion.) Share