The Forty Days of Musa Dagh - Initial Reception and Censorship

Initial Reception and Censorship

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh received much critical praise from Austrian and Swiss reviewers when the book, over 900 pages long, was first published in two volumes in November 1933. For several months, too, the novel could be read in Nazi Germany despite book burnings that included Werfel’s previous titles and the increasing number of proscribed Jewish authors and their books. In February 1934, however, with strong pressure by the Turkish government in Ankara, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh was finally banned in the Third Reich. Das Schwarze Korps, the official newspaper of the SS, painted Werfel as an agent who created the "alleged Turkish horrors perpetrated against the Armenians” and also denounced "America’s Armenian Jews for promoting in the U.S.A. the sale of Werfel's book." In Turkey itself, through a decree issued by Prime Minister İsmet İnönü in January 1935, the book was banned.

Despite being devastated by the loss of his German readership, the novel was soon published in an English translation in November 1934, which sold 34,000 copies in the first two weeks. Louis Kronenberger, the editor of the New York Times Book Review described The Forty Days of Musa Dagh as "A story which must rouse the emotions of all human beings. . . . Werfel has made it a noble novel. Unlike most other important novels, Musa Dagh is richest in story, a story of men accepting the fate of heroes. . . . It gives us the lasting sense of participation in a stirring episode of history. Magnificent." He also recognized the novel’s filmic qualities: "If Hollywood does not mar and mishandle it, it should make a magnificent movie." Few realized at the time, however, that the English translation had been abridged to fit one volume and that controversial passages had been omitted both to streamline the narrative and make the book less offensive to readers. Other translations, too, among the 34 produced also were redacted. Nevertheless, the book was never censored in a way that placated the Turkish government, which felt Werfel misrepresented what had happened in 1915. Indeed, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh posed a small public relations disaster for the modern, secular Republic of Turkey of its president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who sought to distance Turkey from the old Ottoman past and the Young Turks who lost most of the empire during World War I. A film version, however, posed an even greater threat.