United States or Sint Maarten ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Chamisso's well-known tale of Peter Schlemihl belongs to a widely diffused family of legends, which show that a man's shadow has been generally regarded not only as an entity, but as a sort of spiritual attendant of the body, which under certain circumstances it may permanently forsake.
We are thus carried at once into the supernatural, and here we find Cruikshank reigning supreme. He has invented in his time a little comic pandemonium, peopled with the most droll, good-natured fiends possible. We have before us Chamisso's "Peter Schlemihl," with Cruikshank's designs translated into German, and gaining nothing by the change.
In the Marshall group in the North Pacific, it may be inferred from Chamisso's description, that the reef, where islets have not been formed on it, slopes gently from the external margin to the shores of the lagoon; Flinders states that the Australian barrier has a similar inclination inwards, and I have no doubt it is of general occurrence, although, according to Ehrenberg, the reefs of the Red Sea offer an exception.
Sometimes it happened that he caught only his shadow, and in that case the man who had been nimble enough to do what Goethe pronounces impossible, became the most profound magician of his year. Hence our proverb of the Devil take the hindmost, and Chamisso's story of Peter Schlemihl. There is no end of such stories.
It is often said that his sense of isolation between interests of the land of his forefathers and the land of his adoption makes itself felt through all the wild playfulness of "Peter Schlemihl," which was at this time written, when Chamisso's age was about thirty-two. A letter of his to the Councillor Trinius, in Petersburg, tells how he came to write it.
He wrote several important books on botany, topography, and ethnology, but became even more famous through his poems, ballads and romances. "Peter Schlemihl," which was written in 1813 was published in the following year by Chamisso's friend Fouqué, and achieved so great a success that it was translated into most languages. Chamisso died in Berlin on August 21, 1838. I. The Grey Man
From the young who here surround me, I discover that I am grown older; I feel it not in myself. Chamisso's sons, whom I saw the last time playing here in the little garden with bare necks, came now to meet me with helmet and sword: they were officers in the Prussian service. I felt in a moment how the years had rolled on, how everything was changed and how one loses so many.
Chamisso's share in the voyage is recorded in the third volume of the account of it published at Weimar in 1821, and does honour to his spirit of careful observation and his accuracy. He now again fixed his residence at Berlin, from whose university he received the degree of doctor in philosophy.
The child who enjoyed it, and for whom she made the delicate translation which here follows next after Chamisso's "Peter Schlemihl," was that only daughter who became Lady Duff-Gordon, and with whom we have made acquaintance in this Library as the translator of "The Amber Witch."
Letter of June 25: "Besides the above private ships four large pancos and four small vintas have made their appearance in the straits of San Bernardino. * Their force amounts from four hundred and fifty to five hundred men. * Already they have killed sixteen men, kidnapped ten, and captured one ship." In Chamisso's time it was even worse.
Word Of The Day