Text and Image: Conversation in Different Languages (Oscar Pletsch’s Book Graphics in Germany, England, and Russia)

Abstract

In the second half of the 19th century, children’s picture books became a mass phenomenon in European book publishing practice. The development of printing technology, the formation of psychology as scientific knowledge, the improvement of methods of educational interaction between adults and children led to the appearance of children’s books not only for reading them aloud, but also for looking at pictures in them. However, the connections between the textual and visual narratives of books were not yet strong. Often, for economic reasons, the same illustrations were used in combination with different texts, and translations and reprints added discrepancies. In the article, this is illustrated by materials from the analysis of German, Russian, and English editions with drawings by Oscar Pletsch: Die Kinderstube (Hamburg, 1860), Gute Freundschaft (Berlin, 1865), Kleines Volk (Berlin, 1865), Allerlei Schnik-Schnak (Leipzig, 1866); Malen’kie Lyudi (St. Petersburg, 1869), Tesnaya Druzhba (St. Petersburg, 1869), Pervye Shagi Zhizni (St. Petersburg, 187?), Yolka (St. Petersburg, 1874); Child- Land (London, 1873). The plots Pletsch created are compared with the texts in three languages. As a result of the analysis, significant differences between the texts and the visual range of the editions were revealed. The article identifies the options of transforming meanings and interpreting drawings, reveals the tendency of their use for didactic purposes. The album Gute Freundschaft (initially containing only short captions to the drawings) acquired detailed poetic texts—monologues or dialogues of depicted children—in the Russian translation. The English publisher “scattered” the visual series: in Child-Land, the same drawings were placed randomly and mixed with other illustrations without observing any logic. The London edition contained prosaic texts, many of which did not coincide in meaning with the storyline of the original. The author (translator) sometimes interpreted the images “taken out of context” in a neutral way and sometimes added other (including sharply negative) characteristics to children’s postures, gestures, and movements. In a number of cases, the texts emotionally “loaded” the images in a completely different way than the artist conceived: a gesture of greeting turned into a threat, expectation turned into boredom, and so on. It should be stressed that the Russian publisher Mauritius Wolf treated the German originals more carefully than his English colleagues from S.W. Partridge & C°. The analysis of publications and the comparison of their verbal and visual plots allowed identifying the nature of the interrelation of text and image as a “conversation in different languages”. The reason for the “discord” could be translation problems, general changes in the functional tasks of the publication (for example, towards a didactic purpose), the mismatch of cultural codes in the system of different European languages, and technical difficulties in printing. All this led to the emergence of new senses and meanings—sometimes unexpected, but always important, interesting and never accidental.