Decadence meets gothic in
Manfred Macmillan (1907), a carefully constructed tale of doppelgängers, magical intrigue, and the rootless scion of a noble house. This annotated, first-ever English translation presents an early queer novel long unavailable except in the original Czech. Author Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic (1871–1951) was a major cultural figure in his native Bohemia and cultivated ties with fellow artists from across Central Europe. In their extensive scholarly introduction, translator Carleton Bulkin and translation scholar Brian James Baer situate the novel within longer histories of gay literature, fascinations with the occult, and the cultural and linguistic politics of so-called peripheral European nations. They persuasively frame Karásek as a queer author and cultural disruptor in the fin de siècle Habsburg space.
Karasék rejected Czech translations of ancient Greek writers that bowdlerized gay themes, and he personally and vigorously defended Oscar Wilde in print, both on the grounds of artistic freedom and of private morality. He also published a cycle of homoerotic poems under the title Sodom, confiscated by the Austrian authorities but republished in 1905 and repeatedly afterward. A colonized subject, a literary decadent, and a sexual outlaw, Karasék’s complex responses to his own marginalization can be traced through his fantastically strange novel trilogy Three Magicians. As the first volume in that series, Manfred Macmillan is a gorgeous, compelling, and important addition to expanding canons of LGBTQI+ literature.
"The Introduction is an outstanding piece of scholarship: the authors bring their evident expertise in queer literature, in Czech literature and Czech modern journal culture, and in transnational literature of that particular era, together, and it makes for an erudite, readable, informative introduction that contextualizes the novel but also would be an excellent teaching text in thinking about the geopolitical parameters of queer literature."
—Michelle Woods, SUNY New Paltz
"Decadent Central European queer prose from the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is not very well known even in Central Europe and there are even fewer (if any) Central European historical queer literary texts available to international audiences. In addition to its artistic significance, this new translation of Manfred Macmillan offers interesting material for intellectual exploration as multiple layers and influences find their reflection and expression in Karásek’s novel. This new English-language edition of Manfred Macmillan is both compelling and important and timely.”
—Jan Seidl, member of Society for Queer Memory, Prague
Carleton Bulkin is an independent scholar and translator. His translations include Hidden History by Otokar Březina, A False Dawn by Ilona Lacková, The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch by Ladislav Klíma, and Marketa Lazarová by Vladislav Vančura. Among his publications is the first bidirectional Dari-English/English-Dari dictionary. He currently resides in Seattle.
Brian James Baer is professor of Russian and translation studies at Kent State University. His recent publications include Queer Theory and Translation Studies: Language, Politics, Desire (Routledge). He is founding editor of the journal Translation and Interpreting Studies and coeditor of book series on translation studies for Bloomsbury and Routledge.
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