Einhundert Fabeln: Von der Antike bus zur Gegenwart

Abstract

This 72-page pamphlet is a jewel. It focusses very well on presenting one hundred fable texts for classroom study. Pages 68-69 give a bit of information about each fabulist, and 70-72 offer a very brief overview of fable. Other than the beginning T of C, this booklet then is all fables. They are very well chosen! They come from around the world but especially from Germany. I enjoyed trying five new fables. Poggio's #36 tells of a man who wanted to get out of the custom that, when one slaughters a pig in winter, he holds a feast for the whole town. He goes to an old man and asks him how to do it. The man answers Just claim tomorrow morning that your pig has been stolen. That night the old man steals the fellow's pig. The next morning, the robbed man comes to the old man and tells him that he has been robbed. The old man congratulates him on making the claim well. The more urgently the fellow tries to tell the truth, the more the old fellow congratulates him on lying well. Greed and lying punish themselves. Lessing's #58 asks what one should say to poets whose texts seem to fly way over the heads of most of their readers. Perhaps we should say what the nightingale once said to the lark: Do you fly so high in order not to be heard? Seidel's #77 presents the toad who looks at a mole hill and says proudly My, how huge the great wide world is! Etzel's #83 presents a gnat who is about to bite a stag when the stag takes off in a hurry. The gnat, proud to be so feared, pursues the stag but does not notice the lion behind him pursuing the stag too. When the stag finally is caught in the branches of the forest and the lion pounces on him, the gnat tells the lion that he has the gnat to thank for this booty. The lion does not even glance at him. The mighty know no gratefulness the gnat says, and promises never again to hunt a stag. In Kafka's #85, a mouse has run into walls and then complains about the walls coming together in a corner where there is a trap. Just change the direction in which you run says a cat and eats her. Do not miss the seventeen versions of GA in #100.