Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics) (50 page)

‘The Time Saver’ (‘Der Zeitsparer’), by Ignaz Wrobel, aka Kurt Tucholsky, originally appeared in the author’s second book,
Der Zeitsparer. Grotesken
, in 1914.

Journalist, satirist, poet, sceptic, critic, the native-born Berliner
Kurt Tucholsky
(1890–1935) was as much the voice of 1920s Berlin as artist Georg Grosz was its eyes. Like his literary forebear and role model, the poet Heinrich Heine, Tucholsky was a reluctant lawyer by training and a Jewish convert to Christianity by expedience, who never practised either. A master of the short prose form called
Feuilleton
, Tucholsky dished out his acerbic wit under various pseudonyms (Ignaz Wrobel, Theobald Tiger, Peter Panter, Kasper Hauser, et al.), enlivening the pages of the left-liberal
Berliner Tagesblatt
, the weekly
Die Weltbühne
and other papers, until the Nazis appeared on the scene and laughter went out of fashion. Tucholsky fled to Sweden, and, in despair at the inability of words to combat the evil in his native land, took his own life. One of the last entries in his journal reads: ‘If I were to die now, I’d say to myself: “Was that all?” And: “I didn’t really get the point of it.” And: “It was a little loud.” ’

‘The Kiss’ (‘Der Kuß I’), by Robert Walser, first appeared in the journal
Deutsche Monatshefte
in April 1913.

Robert Walser
(1878–1956), one of the most enigmatic and elusive writers of the German language, was born in Biel, Switzerland, into a family with many children and a history of mental illness, to which his mother, two brothers and he himself finally succumbed. Never having completed his formal education, he worked at various low-level positions, including junior clerk, and trained to become a butler, writing all the while. Admired by Robert Musil, Kurt Tucholsky, Hermann Hesse and Franz Kafka, among others, Walser moved to Berlin, where he scraped together a modest living and enjoyed a brief period of limited acclaim for his novels and the short stories and whimsical reflections he regularly published in newspapers. Returning to Switzerland, he continued to write, especially reflections inspired by long solitary walks. A loner by temperament, Walser grew increasingly weary of worldly ways, and in 1929, suffering from acute anxiety, followed by a nervous breakdown, entered the mental home of Waldau, whence he was later moved, against his will, to the sanatorium at Herisau, where he died of a heart attack during a stroll in the snow. The man and his remarkable prose might best be characterized
by his own description of a character in his novel
Jakob von Gunten
: ‘He speaks like a bungled somersault and behaves like a big, bunched-up impossibility in human form.’ Or as Elias Canetti once wrote of him: ‘His writing is a tireless attempt to conceal fear.’

‘The Experiment or the Victory of the Children’ (‘Das Experiment oder der Sieg der Kinder’), by Unica Zürn, was among the stories she wrote from 1949 to 1955 for various Berlin newspapers.

Writer, novelist, poet, painter, draughtswoman, Nora Berta Unica Ruth Zürn, aka
Unica Zürn
(1916–70), lived a lifelong flirtation with madness that finally ended with a leap out of the window of a Paris apartment. Born in Berlin, she worked as a secretary and later as an advertising scenarist for UFA, the German film studio, before leaving regular employment behind to scrape together a meagre living writing short prose for newspapers and radio plays. Marrying the German surrealist artist Hans Bellmer, the two moved to Paris, where they frequented surrealist salons. Zürn began to paint and draw and exhibited her work. She also wrote anagrams. At one point she contemplated abandoning writing and devoting herself entirely to visual art. A stormy marriage was interspersed with several stays at sanatoria. At the time of his death, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was working on a movie based on her autobiographical short novel
Dunkler Frühling
(
Dark Spring
).

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to use the following copyrighted works:

Bachmann, Ingeborg, ‘The Secrets of the Princess of Kagran’ (‘Die Geheimnisse der Prinzessin von Kagran’), excerpted from
Malina
, a novel (Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1971), published with the permission of Suhrkamp Verlag and Holmes & Meier.

Borchert, Wolfgang, ‘The Dandelion’ (‘Die Hundeblume’), from
Die Hundeblume, Erzählungen aus unseren Tagen
(Hamburgische Bücherei, Hamburg, 1947);
Die Hundeblume
(Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbeck, 1986), published with the permission of Rowohlt Verlag and New Directions.

Celan, Paul, ‘Shadowlight’ (‘Gegenlicht’), from
Gesammelte Werke
(Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1983), published with the permission of Eric Celan and Suhrkamp Verlag.

Kaiser, Georg, ‘The Island of Eternal Life’ (‘Die Insel der Tausenjährigen Menschen’) (Ullstein Verlag, Berlin, 1943), published with the permission of Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH, Berlin.

Kisch, Egon Erwin, ‘The Tattooed Portrait’ (‘Das Tätowierte Porträt’), excerpted from
Marktplatz der Sensationen
(Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 1967), published with the permission of Aufbau Verlag.

Laederach, Jürg, ‘Conversation’, from
Laederachs 69 Arten den Blues zu spielen
(Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1984), published with the permission of Suhrkamp Verlag.

Mynona, aka Salomo Friedlaender, ‘The Magic Egg’ (‘Das Wunder-Ei’) and ‘A New Kind of Plaything’ (‘Neues Kinderspielzeug’), excerpted from Salomo Friedlaender/Mynona,
Gesammelte Schriften in 30 Bänden
, Band 7,
Grotesken I
(hrsg. von Hartmut Geerken and Detlef Thiel, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Kant-Forschungsstelle der Universität Trier, Waitawhile, 2008), published with the permission of Hartmut Geerken and Waitawhile.

Schwitters, Kurt, ‘The Onion’ (‘Die Zwiebel’, Merzgedicht 8), from
Anna Blume und ich
(Arche Verlag, Zürich, 1965), published with the permission of DuMont Buchverlag GmbH & Co., KG, Cologne.

Walser, Robert, ‘The Kiss’ (‘Der Kuß I’), from
Robert Walser, Kleine Dichtungen
(Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1980), published with the permission of Suhrkamp Verlag.

Zürn, Unica, ‘The Experiment or the Victory of the Children’ (‘Das Experiment oder der Sieg der Kinder’), from
Unica Zürn, Gesamtausgabe
in 5 Bänden (Verlag Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin, 1989), published with the permission of Verlag Brinkmann & Bose.

The following translations previously appeared in print: ‘Descent into the Mines’, by Heinrich Heine, in
Fiction
, 1996, and in
Travel Pictures
, by Heinrich Heine, translated by Peter Wortsman (Archipelago Books, 2008); ‘St Cecilia or the Power of Music’, by Heinrich von Kleist, in
Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist
, translated by Peter Wortsman (Archipelago Books, 2010); ‘Peter Schlemiel’, by Adelbert von Chamisso, in
Peter Schlemiel: The Man Who Sold his Shadow
, translated by Peter Wortsman (Fromm Publishing International, 1993); ‘The Seamstress’, by Rainer Maria Rilke, in
Fence
, 2009; ‘My Gmunden’, in
Telegrams of the Soul: Selected Prose of Peter Altenberg
, translated by Peter Wortsman (Archipelago Books, 2005); ‘The Blackbird’, by Robert Musil, in
Posthumous Papers of a Living Author
, translated by Peter Wortsman, now in its third edition (Eridanos Library, 1987; Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics, 1995; Archipelago Books, 2006), excerpted yet again in
Flypaper
, by Robert Musil (Penguin Mini Modern Classics, 2011); ‘The Lunatic’, by Georg Heym, in
Formations
, 1987; ‘The Onion’, by Kurt Schwitters, in
Fiction
, 1992, and
The Cambridge Literary Review
, 2010; ‘The Magic Egg’, by Mynona, in
The Spitting Image
, 1996; ‘Conversation’, by Jürg Laederach, in
Fiction
, 1989, and in
69 Ways to Play the Blues
, by Jürg Laederach, translated by Peter Wortsman (Semiotext[e] Foreign Agents Series, 1990).

I would like to express my gratitude to the Fulbright Association for enabling my initiation into the wit and wisdom of German
Märchen
on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1973 at the Albert Ludwig Universität in Freiburg im Breisgau. I would also especially like to thank the American Academy in Berlin, its trustee Stefan von Holtzbrinck and the Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, whose family name I bore as an honorific title, as a Holtzbrinck Fellow, and in particular, its director
Gary Smith, for allowing me the time and leisure in 2010 and the peace of its charmed digs on the shore of the Großer Wannsee to complete this project. I would also like to mention my profound appreciation for the editorial acumen of Anna Hervé, the sharp and insightful editorial skills of Linden Lawson, and the support of all the members of the staff at Penguin Classics.

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This edition first published in Penguin Classics 2012

Translation, selection and editorial material © Peter Wortsman, 2012

Cover: Melancholy of the Mountains, 1929, Coloured woodcut by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (photograph: AKG Images)

All rights reserved

The moral right of the authors, editor and translator has been asserted

The Acknowledgements on
pp. 359
–
361
constitute an extension of this page

ISBN: 978-0-14-119881-1