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David Wilson's Literary Quiz
A new literary quiz each week or so, usually with a theme. This week: A pleasant encounter the other day with a schnitzel
suggested to me the theme for this Quiz: Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans. I therefore present to you ten extracts
from assorted Teutonic texts. Two of them are metrical, and are given first in the original, and then Englished by Google
Language Tools. The other eight are more conventionally translated. Vorwärts!
The quotations in these quizzes reflect my own tastes - Dead White Males, for the most part (Jane Austen,
of course, counts as an honorary DWM). There will never be anything wilfully obscure. If you're the sort of person who sneers
at the naïveté of the reviewers in the TLS and New York Review of Books, you'll recognize them at once.
I welcome suggestions and insults. You'll find an e-mail tag lying around somewhere. Please put QUIZ in the subject line.
David J Wilson.
Quiz No. 92
1)
When I began writing down these memories, the biography of Adrian Leverkühn, there existed with
reference to its author as much as to the art of its subject not the faintest prospect of its publication. But now that the
monstrous national perversion which then held the Continent, and more than the Continent, in its grip, has celebrated its
orgies down to the bitter end; now that the prime movers have had themselves poisoned by their physicians, drenched with petrol
and set on fire, that nothing of them might remain - now, I say, it might be possible to think of the publication of my labour
of love. But those evil men willed that Germany be destroyed down to the ground; and one dares not hope it could very soon
be capable of any sort of cultural activity, even the printing of a book. In actual fact I have sometimes pondered ways and
means of sending these pages to America, in order that they might first be laid before the public in an English translation.
To me it seems as though this might not run quite counter to the wishes of my departed friend. True, there comes the thought
of the essentially foreign impression my book must make in that cultural climate and coupled with it the dismaying prospect
that its translation into English must turn out, at least in some all too radically German parts, to be an impossibility.
Answer
2)
At Schneidermühlen-Gasse we turned left. The Hevelius-Platz, to which the little street led, was blocked
off by SS Home Guards standing about in groups: youngsters and grown men with the armbands and rifles of the security police.
It would have been easy to make a detour around the cordon and get to the post office from the Rähm. Jan Bronski went straight
up to the SS men. His purpose was clear: he wanted to be stopped under the eyes of his superiors, who were certainly having
the Hevelius-Platz watched from the post office, and sent back. He hoped to cut a relatively dignified figure as a thwarted
hero and return home by the same Number 5 streetcar that had brought him.
The Home Guards let us through; it probably never occurred to them that this well-dressed gentleman
leading a three-year-old child by the hand meant to go to the post office. They politely advised us to be careful and did
not shout “Halt” until we were through the outside gate and approaching the main entrance. Jan turned irresolutely.
The heavy door was opened a crack and we were pulled inside: there we were in the pleasantly cool half-light of the main hall.
Answer
3)
Ha, Freche du! Frevelst du mir?
Wer bist du, als meines Willens
blind wählende Kür?
Da mit dir ich tagte, sank ich so tief,
daß zum Schimpf der eignen
Geschöpfe ich ward?
Kennst du, Kind, meinen Zorn?
Verzage dein Mut,
wenn je zermalmend
auf dich stürzte sein Strahl!
In meinem Busen berg' ich den Grimm,
der in Grau'n und Wust wirft eine Welt,
die einst zur Lust mir gelacht:
wehe dem, den er trifft!
Trauer schüf' ihm sein Trotz!
Drum rat' ich dir, reize mich nicht!
Hectare, impudent one you! Frevelst you me? Who are you, as my will blindly selecting Kür? Since with
you I met, I sank so deeply that to the insult of the own Creatures I ward? Do you, know child, do mean anger? Verzage your
courage, if ever crushing on you its jet fell! In my bosom berg' I the Grimm, that in Grau'n and mass throws a world, those
once to the desire to me laughed: blows that, which it meets! Mourning schüf' it its defiance! Drum rat' I you, does not provoke
me!
Answer
4(Names changed)
Then they all three left the apartment together, which was more than they had done for months, and
went by tram into the open country outside the town. The tram, in which they were the only passengers, was filled with warm
sunshine. Leaning comfortably back in their seats they canvassed their prospects for the future, and it appeared on closer
inspection that these were not at all bad, for the jobs they had got, which so far they had never really discussed with each
other, were all three admirable and likely to lead to better things later on. The greatest immediate improvement in their
condition would of course arise from moving to another house; they wanted to take a smaller and cheaper but also better situated
and more easily run apartment than the one they had, which Philo had selected. While they were thus conversing, it struck
both Mr. and Mrs. Klova, almost at the same moment, as they became aware of their daughter's increasing vivacity, that in
spite of all the sorrow of recent times, which had made her cheeks pale, she had bloomed into a pretty girl with a good figure.
They grew quieter and half unconsciously exchanged glances of complete agreement, having come to the conclusion that it would
soon be time to find a good husband for her. And it was like a confirmation of their new dreams and excellent intentions that
at the end of their journey their daughter sprang to her feet first and stretched her young body.
Answer
5)
It was his custom on his morning walk, between seven and eight o'clock, to look into the windows of
every book shop which he passed. He was thus able to assure himself, with a kind of pleasure, that smut and trash were daily
gaining ground. He himself was the owner of the most important private library in the whole of this great city. He carried
a minute portion of it with him wherever he went. His passion for it, the only one which he had permitted himself during a
life of austere and exacting study, moved him to take special precautions. Books, even bad ones, tempted him easily into making
a purchase. Fortunately the greater number of the book shops did not open until after eight o'clock.
Answer
6)
«Du liebes Kind, komm, geh mit mir!
Gar schöne Spiele spiel' ich mit dir;
Manch bunte Blumen sind an dem Strand,
Meine Mutter hat manch gülden Gewand.»
You dear child, come, go with me! Beautiful plays spiel' I with you; Some multicolored flowers are
at the beach, my nut/mother have some gülden garb.
Answer
7(Part of diary entry for 13 February 1945.)
Big explosions. Again the window in the wall opposite burst open, again it was bright as day, again water was pumped. Then
an explosion at the window close to me. Something hard and glowing hot struck the right side of my face. I put my hand up,
it was covered in blood. I felt for my eye, it was still there. A group of Russians - where had they come from? - pushed out
of the door. I jumped over to them. I had the knapsack on my back, the grey bag with our manuscripts, and Eva's jewellery
in my hand, my old hat had fallen off. I stumbled and fell. A Russian lifted me up. To the side there was a vaulting, God
knows of what already half-destroyed cellar. We crowded in. It was hot. The Russians ran on in some other direction, I with
them. Now we stood in an open passageway, heads down, crowded together. In front of me lay a large unrecognizable open space,
in the middle of it an enormous crater. Bangs, as light as day, explosions. I had no thoughts, I was not even afraid, I was
simply tremendously exhausted, I think I was expecting the end. After a moment I scrambled over some vaulting or a step or
a parapet into the open air, threw myself into the crater, lay flat on the ground for a while, then clambered up one side
of the crater, over the edge into a telephone kiosk.
Answer
8(One name changed - but it's a hint.)
He had now turned slightly from the window and was observing Beineberg, who was rolling himself a
cigarette. And again he felt the queer repugnance, the dislike of Beineberg, that would at times rise up in him. These slim,
dark hands, which were now so deftly rolling the tobacco into the paper, were really - come to think of it - beautiful. Thin
fingers, oval, beautifully curved nails: there was a touch of breeding, of elegance, about them. So there was too in the dark
brown eyes. It was there also in the long-drawn lankiness of the whole body. To be sure, the ears did stick out more than
would quite do, the face was small and irregular, and the sum total of the head's expression was reminiscent of a bat's. Nevertheless
- Robert felt this quite clearly as he weighed the details against each other in the balance - it was not the ugly, it was
precisely the more attractive features that made him so peculiarly uneasy.
Answer
9(Name changed.)
When Wotan appeared in the writing room at the usual hour that morning, he found the knight in boots,
vest, and girdled sword, instead of the slippers and housecoat he usually wore while they wrote. At once he knew the meaning
of this.
“Put on your cap,” said the knight. “I have a walk to take with you.”
Wotan took his cap from the nail and followed his master down the stairs, across the courtyard, and
out of the gate. Their soles made crunching noises on the slightly frozen snow; the sky was still red with dawn. The knight
walked ahead in silence; the young man followed. Several times he looked back at the house, at the window of his room, at
the steep, snow-covered roof, until all disappeared and there was nothing more to see. He would never see that roof, those
windows again, never again the study, the bedroom, the two sisters. He had so often toyed with the thought of sudden departure.
Now his heart contracted with pain, and it hurt bitterly to leave this way.
Answer
10)
Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations. - For someone
might object against me: “You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said
what the essence of a language-game, and hence of language, is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them
into language or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you yourself
most headache, the part about the general form of propositions and of language.”
And this is true. - Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying
that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all, - but that they are related to
one another in many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all
“language”. I will try to explain this.
Answer
1)
Doctor Faustus, Thomas Mann. As a whole, the list of Nobel Prize-winners for Literature is a sorry one: but occasionally
the Academy has got it right. 1929 was one of those occasions. Even more occasionally, the Laureate produces fine work after
his recognition, as in this case.
Back to Question 1
2)
The Tin Drum, Günter Grass. And the Swedish Prize was rightly awarded in Mr Grass's case, too, although one wonders
if the Academy mightn't have looked elsewhere if it had been known in 1999 that the author was himself, however unwillingly,
an SS man for a short time.
Back to Question 2
3)
Die Walküre, Richard Wagner. Wotan shows his heart and then his wrath to his beloved daughter Brünnhilde,
Act 2, Scene 2. I think that this is a triumph for machine translation. The machicolated texture of Wagner's magnificent lines
is preserved, even though something of the sense has been lost.
Back to Question 3
4)
Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka. The easiest one of the set, I think. This is the final paragraph. Gregor is dead, and the
surviving Samsas are, if not exactly celebrating, certainly not in mourning.
Back to Question 4
5)
Auto da Fé, Elias Canetti. Another good choice by the Swedish Academy, this time in 1981. Professor Kien's difficulty
in walking past a bookshop without going in will be shared by many of those who attempt this Quiz, I suspect.
Back to Question 5
6)
Erlkönig, J.W. von Goethe. This time the computer misses the flavour of Goethe's lines, I feel. But it's no better
than the poet deserves! Every schoolboy knows how Goethe failed to respond when Schubert sent him some settings of his lyrics:
less well-known is the unfortunate fact that Goethe had been equally dismissive years earlier when sodding Beethoven
had done the same ....
Back to Question 6
7)
I Will Bear Witness, Victor Klemperer. Professor Klemperer, the son of a rabbi, remained in Dresden during the interesting
years 1933 to 1945. He lived in increasing discomfort and danger - but he lived, until he was saved from certain death
by the firestorm. If he had been merely diligent, his diaries (whose survival was as unlikely as his own) would have been
of incalculable value. But he was not only an excellent diarist, but a first-rate writer ....
Back to Question 7
8)
Young Törless, Robert Musil. A semi-autobiographical novel by one of the greatest half-dozen prose writers of
the Twentieth Century. His masterwork, The Man Without Qualities, is still an almost secret book. Where is Oprah when
you need her?
Back to Question 8
9)
Narziss and Goldmund, Herman Hesse. Another masterpiece. I quite like Umberto Eco, but N and G has more
of the mediaeval world in each of its sentences than The Name of the Rose has in its entirety.
Back to Question 9
10)
Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ludwig's father Otto, a singing waiter in his youth, was a self-made
squillionaire - he was known as the Carnegie of Europe. Foreseeing the Great War, he put his vast fortune into American securities,
where it became a stupendous fortune. Ludwig's sisters survived the Anschluss in reasonable comfort: almost
the only human characteristic of the Nazis was their susceptibility to bribery.
Back to Question 10
Don't bottle up your contempt and fury. Mail to davidjw@mindspring.com
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Last Updated: 24 November 2006
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