Bambi, a Life in the Woods (, ) is a 1923 Austrian coming-of-age novel written by Felix Salten, and originally published in Berlin by Ullstein Verlag. The novel traces the life of Bambi, a male roe deer, from his birth through childhood, the loss of his mother, the finding of a mate, the lessons he learns from his father, and the experience he gains about the dangers posed by human hunters in the forest. It is also seen as a parable of the dangers and persecution faced by Jews in Europe. and the novel has since been translated and published in over thirty languages around the world. Salten published a sequel, Bambi's Children, in 1939.

The novel was well received by critics and is considered a classic, as well as one of the first environmental novels. It was adapted into an animated feature film, Bambi, by Walt Disney Productions in 1942, as well as two Russian live-action adaptations in 1985 and 1986, a ballet in 1987, and a stage production in 1998. Another ballet adaptation was created by an Oregon troupe, but never premiered. Janet Schulman published a children's picture book adaptation in 2000 that featured realistic oil paintings and many of Salten's original words.

Plot

thumb|An illustration of [[Bambi (character)|Bambi, the titular character, by Hans Bertle]]

Bambi is a roe deer fawn born in a thicket in late spring. Over the course of the summer, his mother teaches him about the various inhabitants of the forest and the ways deer live. When she feels he is old enough, she takes him to the meadow, which he learns is a wonderful but also dangerous place, as it leaves the deer exposed and in the open. After some initial fear over his mother's caution, Bambi enjoys the experience. On a subsequent trip, Bambi meets his Aunt Ena and her twin fawns Faline and Gobo. They quickly become friends and share what they have learned about the forest. While they are playing, they encounter princes, male deer, for the first time. After the stags leave, the fawns learn that those were their fathers, but that the fathers rarely stay with or speak to the females and young.

As Bambi grows older, his mother begins to leave him alone. While searching for her one day, Bambi has his first encounter with "He"the animals' term for humanswhich terrifies him. The man raises a firearm and aims at him; Bambi flees at top speed, joined by his mother. After he is scolded by a stag for crying for his mother, Bambi gets used to being alone at times. He later learns the stag is called the "Old Prince", the oldest and largest stag in the forest, who is known for his cunning and aloof nature. During the winter, Bambi meets Marena, a young doe, Nettla, an old doe who no longer bears young, and two princes, Ronno and Karus. Mid-winter, hunters enter the forest, killing many animals including Bambi's mother. Gobo also disappears and is presumed dead.

After this, the novel skips ahead a year, noting that Bambi, now a young adult, was cared for by Nettla and that when he got his first set of antlers he was abused and harassed by the other males. It is summer and Bambi is now sporting his second set of antlers. He is reunited with his cousin Faline. After he battles and defeats first Karus, then Ronno, Bambi and Faline fall in love with each other. They spend a great deal of time together. During this time, the Old Prince saves Bambi's life when he nearly runs towards a hunter imitating a doe's call. This teaches the young buck to be cautious about blindly rushing toward any deer's call. During the summer, Gobo returns to the forest, having been raised by a man who found him collapsed in the snow during the hunt where Bambi's mother was killed. While his mother and Marena welcome him and celebrate him as a "friend" of man, the Old Prince and Bambi pity him. Marena becomes his mate, but several weeks later Gobo is killed when he approaches a hunter in the meadow, falsely believing the halter he wore would keep him safe from all men.

As Bambi continues to mature, he begins spending most of his time alone, including avoiding Faline though he still loves her in a melancholic way. Several times he meets with the Old Prince, who teaches him about snares, shows him how to free another animal from one, and encourages him not to use trails and avoid the men's traps. When Bambi is later shot by a hunter, the Prince shows him how to walk in circles to confuse the man and his dogs until the bleeding stops, then takes him to a safe place to recover. They remain together until Bambi is strong enough to leave the safe haven again. When Bambi has grown gray and is "old", the Old Prince shows him that men are not all-powerful by showing him the dead body of a man who was shot and killed by another man. When Bambi confirms that he now understands that "He" is not all-powerful, and that there is "Another" over all creatures, the stag tells him that he has always loved him and calls him "my son" before leaving.

At the end of the novel, Bambi meets with twin fawns who are calling for their mother, and he scolds them for not being able to stay alone. After leaving them, he thinks to himself that the girl fawn reminded him of Faline, and that the male was promising, and that Bambi hoped to meet him again when he was grown.

Publication history

thumb|[[Felix Salten, the author of Bambi, a Life in the Woods]]

Felix Salten, himself an avid hunter, penned Bambi: Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde after World War I, targeting an adult audience. The novel was first published in Vienna in serialized form in the newspaper the Neue Freie Presse from 15 August to 21 October 1922, and as a book in Germany by Ullstein Verlag in 1923, and republished in 1926 in Vienna.

Translations

Max Schuster, a German Jewish émigré and co-founder of Simon & Schuster, led the effort to publish Bambi in English. Clifton Fadiman, an editor there, engaged his Columbia University classmate Whittaker Chambers to translate it. Simon & Schuster published this first English edition in 1928, with illustrations by Kurt Wiese, under the title Bambi: A Life in the Woods. The New York Times Book Review praised the prose as "admirably translated" that made the book "literature of a high order." Simon & Schuster printed a first-run of 75,000 copies and sold more than 650,000 copies between 1928 and 1942.

Chambers' translation has been reprinted repeatedly with different illustrations. Bambi, along with Salten's Fifteen Rabbits and The City Jungle, all translated by Chambers, remain in print from Simon & Schuster.

In 2015, an Austrian scholar voiced objections to Simon & Schuster's "publication strategies" and "marketing strategy," as well as Chambers' translation for "opening the possibility for the story to be understood less as a human story about persecution, expulsion or assimilation and more as an animal story conveying a strong message about the protection of animals and the necessity of conservation." The translations have been reviewed in various newspapers and magazines. Zipes commented the conversation between animals is "reminiscent of Austrian German you'd hear in cafes around Vienna. The original translation didn't capture that and I hope mine does," while a grandson of Chambers countered that the 1928 translation is more poetic. One reviewer wrote:

<blockquote>Chambers and Zipes differ moderately in style, with Zipes cleaving more faithfully to the German ("polecat") and Chambers privileging his American audience ("ferret"). An aim of Zipes' translation is to restore Salten's more overt anthropomorphism, which Chambers softened. To a reader familiar with the 1928 translation, some of Zipes' more faithful anthropomorphic choices are jarring; it feels odd to read that a fawn "yelled," for example.</blockquote>

Zipes occasionally increases the anthropomorphism beyond that suggested by Salten, as when he uses the pronouns "he" and "she" in a conversation between two autumn leaves, which are genderless in the original text. The Zipes translation is also not quite complete: one reviewer noted omissions ranging from short phrases and individual sentences to an entire passage recounting Bambi's first meeting with the old roebucks. It has also been published in a variety of formats, including printed medium, audiobook, Braille, and E-book formats.

When Salten originally published Bambi in 1923, he did so under Germany's copyright laws, which required no statement that the novel was copyrighted. In the 1926 republication, he did include a United States copyright notice, so the work is considered to have been copyrighted in the United States in 1926. In 1936, Salten sold some film rights to the novel to MGM producer Sidney Franklin who passed them on to Walt Disney for the creation of a film adaptation.

The Twin Books decision is still regarded as controversial by many copyright experts. David Nimmer, in a 1998 article, argued that the Twin Books ruling meant that an ancient Greek epic, if only published outside the U.S. without the required formalities, would be eligible for copyright protection. Although Nimmer concluded that Twin Books required this finding (within the Ninth Circuit), he characterized the result as "patently absurd."

The American copyright of the novel expired on January 1, 2022. The young fawns interact with other deer, and are educated and watched over by Bambi and Faline as they grow. They also learn more about the ways of man, including both hunters and the gamekeeper seeking to protect the deer. Due to Salten's exiled statushe had lost his Austrian publisher Paul Zsolnay Verlagthe English translation of the novel was published first, in the United States in 1939 by Bobbs-Merrill; it would take a year before the sequel was published in the original German language in Switzerland by his new publisher.

Reception

In the United States, the 1928 translation of Bambi was "hugely popular", selling 650,000 copies by 1942. When Felix Salten visited the United States as a member of a European delegation of journalists in May–July 1930, he was greeted warmly because of Bambi wherever the delegation went, as was testified by the Finnish member of the delegation, Urho Toivola. In his own travel book, Salten did not boast about this; only when describing his visit to a "Negro college" of Atlanta, he mentions passingly that the children praised his books.

In 1936 Nazi Germany however, the government banned the original as "political allegory on the treatment of Jews in Europe."