The Question of Idioms in B. Traven's Writings

The following study is not new in its methodology. New are its scope and its conclusion, for this result of the first comprehensive investigation of the language used in the first-edition German texts of Traven's works is that an earlier speculation on who might have written the original manuscripts in English now suggests itself as the only possible solution to one aspect-to what I consider the major aspect-of the B. Traven mystery. (The other, minor aspect, the question of who Ret Marut was, has not yet been answered with finality.) For many participants, the single most significant fact to emerge from the international conference honoring the presumed centenary of the writer B. Traven at Pennsylvania State University (October 21-24, 1982) was that B. Traven, at no point in his career, knew English well enough to write fluently or at length in that language. This would have been nothing new for the American editors who had wrestled with the syntax and vocabulary of Death Ship (1934), Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1935), and Bridge in the Jungle (1937) fifty or so years ago,' when these novels were first published in the United States. In view, however, of public statements made by Traven's widow, Sefiora Rosa Elena Lujin, that Traven had spoken beautiful British that he had known eight languages and written in at least three (German, English, Spanish),2 and in view of the myth about how the works came into being that was launched and perpetuated by Traven himself in letters and statements saying he had written most of his works in English before translating them into German and that his native tongue was English because he was an American, 3 it is important that such a fact be recognized for what it is. The man who did most to establish this factand shatter the mythwas Charles Miller, one of the few American Traven fans to have met the writer

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