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Updated: May 10, 2025
After this, Bodenstedt yielded to the solicitations of friends to give in the pages of the popular German magazine Daheim a correct version of the whole affair.
Upon this foundation arose that delightful book, A Thousand and One Days in the Orient, which was the occasion of one of the most amusing mystifications and controversies that ever occupied the German literary world. Friedrich Bodenstedt was born at Peine in Hanover, April 21, 1819.
Is it really good psychology when Vauvenargues writes: “All men are born sincere and die impostors,” or, when Brillat-Savarin insists: “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you who you are”? Or can we really trust Mirabeau: “Kill your conscience, as it is the most savage enemy of every one who wants success”; or Klopstock: “Happiness is only in the mind of one who neither fears nor hopes”; or Gellert: “He who loves one vice, loves all the vices”? Can we believe Chamfort: “Ambition more easily takes hold of small souls than great ones, just as a fire catches the straw roof of the huts more easily than the palaces”; or Pascal: “In a great soul, everything is great”; or the poet Bodenstedt when he sings: “A gray eye is a sly eye, a brown eye is roguish and capricious, but a blue eye shows loyalty”? And too often we must be satisfied with opposites.
He appeared to comprehend intuitively the cause of the guest's presence, for he cast on Jussuf, who had become suddenly stricken with modesty, a glance of withering contempt, and was about giving vent to his emotions when Bodenstedt interposed with the words, "Mirza-Schaffy, wise man of Gjaendsha, what have my ears heard? You undertake to instruct me, and you can neither write nor sing!
During the winter there arrived another student from Germany, who, becoming acquainted with Bodenstedt, arranged to share with him the lessons in Tartar and Persian, which Mirza-Schaffy was pleased to call "hours of wisdom."
The music is of choice quality throughout, according to the criticism of Richard Pohl, and the dramatic climax is excellently worked up by the fact that each successive number is purposely made more effective than the one preceding it. The same power and beauty of expression shows itself in her later songs, written mostly for the poems of Bodenstedt.
One usually narrates one's experiences best in a circle of sympathetic listeners, and even under ordinary circumstances Bodenstedt was esteemed a good talker. Soon a spirit of cheerfulness prevailed, and as the friends sat far into the night, the tumult without, the burning suburbs, the beat of drums and the firing of cannons were forgotten.
An epic tendency, combined with great facility in depicting scenery and describing events, is the main feature of his metrical romances. He has been followed by Daumer, Bodenstedt, and others. The delicacy, wit, and humor of his writings, their cruel and cynical laughter, and their tender pathos, give him a unique place in the literature of his country.
Bodenstedt demurred, maintaining that the "art-hewn path from the head to the hand" was far more difficult to traverse than the natural one from the mouth to the ear. "Yes, but it leads farther," rejoined Auerbach, "and what pleases us, who listen, you may rest assured, with critical ears, cannot fail to please in more extended circles."
The details of the campaigns during this interval are highly interesting; and we regret that conditions of space forbid us to translate some of the exciting episodes recorded by Herr Bodenstedt. We may, however, extract the following account of the Caucasian hero, whose portrait, we believe, has never before been so fully exhibited to European readers;
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