Elisabeth of Wied - Literary Activity

Literary Activity

As "Carmen Sylva", she wrote with facility in German, Romanian, French and English. A few of her voluminous writings, which include poems, plays, novels, short stories, essays, collections of aphorisms, etc., may be singled out for special mention:

• Her earliest publications were "Sappho" and "Hammerstein", two poems which appeared at Leipzig in 1880.
• In 1888 she received the Prix Botta, a prize awarded triennially by the Académie française, for her volume of prose aphorisms Les Pensees d'une reine (Paris, 1882), a German version of which is entitled Vom Amboss (Bonn, 1890).
• Cuvinte Sufletesci, religious meditations in Romanian (Bucharest, 1888), was also translated into German (Bonn, 1890), under the name of Seelen-Gespräche.

Several of the works of "Carmen Sylva" were written in collaboration with Mite Kremnitz, one of her maids of honor, who was born at Greifs-wald in 1857, and married Dr Kremnitz of Bucharest; these were published between 1881 and 1888, in some cases under the pseudonyms Dito et Idem. These include:

• Aus zwei Welten (Leipzig, 1884), a novel
• Anna Boleyn (Bonn, 1886), a tragedy
• In der Irre (Bonn, 1888), a collection of short stories
• Edleen Vaughan, or Paths of Peril (London, 1894), a novel
• Sweet Hours (London, 1904), poems, written in English.

Among the translations made by "Carmen Sylva" are:

• German versions of Pierre Loti's romance Pecheur d'Islande
• German versions of Paul de St Victor's dramatic criticisms Les Deux Masques (Paris, 1881–1884)
• and especially The Bard of the Dimbovitza, an English translation of Elena Văcărescu's collection of Romanian folk-songs, etc., entitled Lieder aus dem Dimbovitzathal (Bonn, 1889), translated by "Carmen Sylva" and Alma Strettell.

The Bard of the Dimbovitza was first published in 1891, and was soon reissued and expanded. Translations from the original works of "Carmen Sylva" have appeared in all the principal languages of Europe and in Armenian.