Although I didn’t count the precise number of times that the word “alone” appears in each chapter (yeah, I know: I should’ve - I could make a graph!), avid readers and book club members can now count for themselves the number of times this word appears in a newly published translation of this classic, The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest ( Princeton University Press, 2022: Amazon US / Amazon UK). This is plausible: According to my reading of the new translation, I can tell you that the word “alone” appears increasingly often as Bambi grows older. But the Nazis (never very astute readers), nevertheless decided that this novel was a compelling allegory for how Jews were treated in Europe under their rule, so they officially banned the book in 1935 and then publicly burned it after Hitler himself deemed it to be “the work of an undesirable”.Īccording to the new translation by Jack Zipes, a professor emeritus of German at University of Minnesota and a leading authority on fairy tales and folk literature, Bambi is a story of brutality, loss and, ultimately, loneliness.

Considering this interpretation, it seems unlikely that this novel would be transformed into a poignant animated film for children by Walt Disney.ĭespite the controversies that this somber novel inspired, it became popular in Germany, then in Austria, as soon as it was published, as well as in the United States a few years later (1928). Most people think it was a sociopolitical allegory that represents the author’s experiences with a childhood filled with anti-semitism, his premonition of the coming Nazi persecution of European Jews and the impending Holocaust. In this novel, Mr Salten tells a powerful adult story that made me wonder what his bleak novel really meant (he never offered an explanation).

This coming-of-age story about a wild deer realistically depicts the primitive beauty of nature and the astounding cruelty of man. This film was an animated adaptation by Walt Disney based on the novel, Bambi: A Life in the Woods, written and published in German by Austrian journalist Felix Salten in 1922.

Like most American children, I watched Walt Disney’s retelling of Bambi in one of the film’s frequent cinematic rereleases in the many decades after it originally premiered in 1942.

Bambi by felix salten