Vasily Eroshenko was one of the most remarkable transnational literary figures of the early twentieth century: a blind multilingual Esperantist from Ukraine who joined left-wing circles in Japan and befriended the famous modernist writer Lu Xun in China. Born in a small Ukrainian village in imperial Russia, he was blinded at a young age by complications from measles. Seeking to escape the limitations imposed on the blind, Eroshenko became a globe-trotting storyteller. He was well known in Japan and China as a social activist and a popular writer of political fairy tales that drew comparisons to Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde.
The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales presents a selection of Eroshenko’s stories, translated from Japanese and Esperanto, to English readers for the first time. These fables tell the stories of a religiously disillusioned fish, a jealous paper lantern, a scholarly young mouse, a captive tiger who seeks to liberate his fellow animals, and many more. They are at once inventive and politically charged experiments with the fairy tale genre and charming, lyrical stories that will captivate readers as much today as they did during Eroshenko’s lifetime. In addition to eighteen fairy tales, the book includes semiautobiographical writings and prose poems that vividly evoke Eroshenko’s life and world.
Vasily Eroshenko (1890–1952) was a blind writer, translator, activist, and teacher who led an extraordinarily global life. After studying in Moscow and London, Eroshenko traveled to Japan, where he found fame for his fairy tales and public speaking. Deported from Japan in 1921 for his connections to political activists, Eroshenko moved to China, where well-known writers like Lu Xun were translating his stories to wide acclaim. The final decades of his life were spent in the Soviet Union under Stalin, and he died in obscurity.
Adam Kuplowsky is a translator based in Toronto.
Jack Zipes is a professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota.
Table of Contents
Foreword: The Piercing Truths of a Blind Storyteller, by Jack Zipes Acknowledgments Introduction, by Adam Kuplowsky Part I. Japanese Tales (1915–1921) 1. The Tale of the Paper Lantern 2. The Sad Little Fish 3. The Scholar’s Head 4. By a Pond 5. An Eagle’s Heart 6. Little Pine 7. A Spring Night’s Dream 8. The Martyr 9. The Death of the Canary 10. The Mad Cat 11. For the Sake of Mankind 12. Two Little Deaths 13. The Narrow Cage Part II. Chinese Tales (1921–1923) 14. From “Tales of a Withered Leaf” 15. The Tragedy of the Chick 16. Father Time 17. The Red Flower Appendix Easter Some Pages from My School Days My Expulsion from Japan Chukchi Pastoral Chukchi Elegy Bibliography
