Table of Contents
Editors Note on the Revised Edition
Gurdjieff wrote Beelzebubs Tales to His Grandson from 1924 through 1931, and continued in later years to make significant revisions. Before his death in 1949, he entrusted the book and his other writings to Jeanne de Salzmann, his closest pupil, with instructions for future publication. Mme de Salzmann had followed Gurdjieff for more than thirty years and played a central role in his decision in the 1940s to organize the practice of his teaching.
Gurdjieff wrote Beelzebubs Tales in Russian and Armenian, and the original manuscript was typed and revised in Russian.An English translation was produced in successive steps at the Prieur. It consisted initially of a word-by-word interlinear translation, with each word in English placed above the corresponding Russian word in the typescript. Reworked by different pupils at different times, the translation was finally edited by the well-known author and editor A. R. Orage, mostly in New York. Although he worked closely with Russian speakers and, indeed, Gurdjieff himself, Orage did not know Russian and was unable to read Gurdjieffs original text.
Orage said of his translation that the style and sense are Gurdjieffs. Nevertheless, the word-by-word translation required by the circumstances produced in many passages an awkward result because of differences between the two languages. Russian is a highly inflected language. Through word endings indicating gender, number, and case, it smoothly accommodates long sentences and needs few prepositions. English, in contrast, has little inflection and relies heavily on word order and prepositions. However brilliantly edited, the word-by-word English translation of Beelzebubs Tales inevitably produced passages that were unwieldy in style compared to the Russian text. They were needlessly complex and, for many readers, extremely difficult to read and understand.
The English version was first published in 1950, just a few months after Gurdjieff died. He had overruled objections that the translation needed more work, insisting that the time had come to launch his ideas into the mainstream of Western thinking. As the English text was the initial publication of the book in any language, it was assumed by many readers to have been written or specifically approved by Gurdjieff. Although a prefatory note stated that the original was written in Russian and Armenian, the significance of this was easily disregarded in the absence of a published edition of the original Russian text. The note also stated that the author had personally directed the translation and that Gurdjieff had often been present when the translation was read aloud to English-speaking pupils and visitors.
What few readers knew was that, in fact, all of Gurdjieffs work in completing the book was in Russian. His spoken English, like his spoken French, was effective and memo rably colorful for his purposes as a teacher in conversation with his pupils, but since his arrival in Western Europe in the early 1920s, he had not taken the time to master either language. He could not have judged, much less approved, the English text and had to rely on Mme de Salzmann, who was fluent in Russian and English, for reassurance that the meaning was preserved. Gurdjieff did not approve the writing style of the English translation.
Although before his death Gurdjieff had insisted on immediate publication, he reportedly acknowledged that the English book was a rough diamond and asked Mme de Salzmann to revise it at a later time. Her first priority was to prepare the French edition based on the Russian manuscript, a task that was not completed until 1956. Thereafter, she began work with selected American pupils to revise the English-language version. The primary aim was to bring it closer in substance to the Russian text, using the widely admired and well-accepted French edition as a model. A secondary but important aim was to have it correspond more faithfully in style to Gurdjieffs Russian writing, particularly to make it as clear and understandable as the Russian. Mme de Salzmann herself worked for a number of years with the editorial team and then left them to complete the project. The revision, despite interruptions, was finally completed more than thirty years later.
The revised English translation was published in 1992, two years after Mme de Salzmanns death. Many readers welcomed the new edition. Others had a strong preference for the original book and objected to allowing it to go out of print. They pointed out that Orages work was brilliant, that Gurdjieff had authorized its publication, and that it had been read and studied for more than forty years. Responding to this demand, Triangle Editions, Inc., which holds the copyright, took the unusual step of republishing the original translation in 1999 so that both versions would be available. Triangle also published the original Russian text in 2001. Welcomed by Russian readers, who confirmed the readability of the original text, the Russian edition provides an authentic reference for measuring the quality of the English translations.
This second edition of the revised translation contains further revisions that were discovered in work on the Russian book, particularly corrections in Gurdjieffs neologisms, called the special words. Readers wishing to pursue further study of these translations should refer to the Guide and Index to Beelzebubs Tales (Traditional Studies Press, 2nd ed., 2003), which has page references and comparative detail for both the original and revised translations, as well as Beelzebubs Tales to His Grandson in the original version (Penguin/Arkana 1999) and the Russian-language edition (Traditional Studies Press, 2001).
ALL AND EVERYTHING
Ten Books in Three Series
FIRST SERIES: Three books under the title of Beelzebubs Tales to His Grandson: An Objectively Impartial Criticism of the Life of Man.
SECOND SERIES: Two books under the common title of Meetings with Remarkable Men.
THIRD SERIES: Five books under the title of Life Is Real Only Then, When I Am.
All written according to entirely new principles of logical reasoning and directed toward the accomplishment of the following three fundamental tasks:
FIRST SERIES: To destroy, mercilessly and without any compromise whatever, in the mentation and feelings of the reader, the beliefs and views, by centuries rooted in him, about everything existing in the world.
SECOND SERIES: To acquaint the reader with the material required for a new creation and to prove the soundness and good quality of it.
THIRD SERIES: To assist the arising, in the mentation and in the feelings of the reader, of a veritable, nonfantastic representation not of that illusory world which he now perceives, but of the world existing in reality.
FRIENDLY ADVICE
(Written impromptu by the author on
delivering this book, already prepared
for publication, to the printer)
According to the numerous deductions and conclusions resulting from my research concerning the profit contemporary people can obtain from new impressions coming from what they read or hear, and also according to the thought of one of the sayings of popular wisdom I have just remembered, handed down to our days from very ancient times,
