Research Catalog

Title

The Stairway to the sun & Dance of the comets : four fairy tales of home and one astral pantomime / Paul Scheerbart ; translated by W. C. Bamberger.

Author

Scheerbart, Paul, 1863-1915

Publication

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Wakefield Press, [2016]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Bamberger, W. C.

Description

xii, 108 pages; 18 cm

Summary

• Stairway to the Sun contains four fairy tales of sun, sea, animals and storm, each set in a different, fantastical locale, from the giant palace of an astral star to a dwarf's underwater glass lair in the jellyfish kingdom. Scheerbart's sad, whimsical tales provide gentle though unexpected morals that outline his work as a whole: treat animals as one would treat oneself, mutual admiration will never lead to harm and if one is able to remember that the world is grand, one will never be sad.
• Dance of the Comets , though published as an "Astral Pantomime," was originally conceived as a scenario for a ballet, which Richard Strauss had planned to score in 1900 (and which Mahler accepted for the Vienna Opera). Though the project was never realized, Scheerbart's written choreography of dance, gesture, costume, feather dusters, violet moon hair and a variety of stars and planets outlines a sequence of events in which everyone--enthusiastic maid, temperamental king, indifferent executioner, foolish poet--seeks, joins and, in some cases, becomes a celestial body: a staging of Scheerbart's lifelong yearning for a home in the universe.

Alternative Title

• Stairway to the sun
• Dance of the comets

Subject

• Fairy tales > Germany
• Drama

Genre/Form

• Drama
• Théâtre.

Note

• "Originally published as Der Aufgang zur Sonne: Hausmärchen and Kometentanz (1903)." -- title page verso

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Translator's introduction -- The stairway to the sun: the splendor of the world; Jellyfish; The old rock castle; The new machine -- Dance of the comets: Act 1; Act 2.

ISBN

• 9781939663214
• 1939663210

OCLC

• 945950644
• SCSB-10846098

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library