HERMANN UND DOROTHEA

In the summer of 2019, I found a German manuscript from 1912 at an open market. It was written by Franciszek Lesczowski, a 17-year-old Polish boy. He summarized Goethe’s poem "Hermann und Dorothea." I typed it into the computer and used Google Translate to translate it from German to Polish. Since I barely know German, it was hard to recognize all the words. The translation process produced a ridiculous, pointless story. I corrected the grammar and gave it a coherent narrative. Then, I translated the new version from Polish to English and fixed it again. By the end, the story was very different from Goethe’s original. I bought figures from a second-hand shop to illustrate the characters and combined the illustrations with the text to make a book. I wanted to turn the book into a theater play. I wrote a script and organized an audition in my school, looking for people to play 10 characters, as well as trees, stones, and flowers. However, I couldn’t produce the play because of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of the academic year, I took the 10 figures to Mainz, Germany, where the original story was set, and left them by the river. I made a "road video" about the journey.