Born from a weekly column in the "Sunday Telegraph" said literary critic Dexter the origin of book titles whose meaning can not be open directly from content and action. 50 works are discussed, in short chapters 4-6 pages of classics such as Thomas More's "Utopia" on "Hamlet" to modern times with "The Picture of Dorian Grey", "Ulysses," "The Postman Always Rings Twice" "1984" or "A Clockwork Orange". The lyrics are not only well written, but also (as far as I can tell) well researched and provided with references and quotations. And with footnotes (arranged as endnotes at the end of each chapter) - for many uneducated reader's nightmare par ;-). I like footnotes. [/ Commitment]
The emphasis in the selection is understandably in English works. Some foreign language are: Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata", Chekhov's "Seagull", Rabelais' "Gargantua et Pantagruel", etc. Originally German only Johann David Wyss' 'The Swiss Family Robinson "(" The Swiss Family Robinson ") and Sigmund Freud's" The Ego and the Id "(" The Ego and the Id ").
Some were under their German titles not incomprehensible, about Plato's "State", which carries the erklärungsbedürftigeren entitled "The Republic" in English, or "Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper", in which the analysis primarily to the origin and Meaning of glass shoe in the French and English version turns - in "Cinderella" He is not made of glass; This detail came with us until the 20th century. on the Disney films from America.
The selection of works runs through all genres: novels and plays, collections of poems ("Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell" of the Brontë sisters), fairy tales, children's books ("Winnie-the-Pooh"), Fantasy (CS Lewis '"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe") and even "pornography" or what was then held it, because John Cleland's "Fanny Hill", originally "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure", you'd no longer in this pigeonhole. Neither Nabokov's "Lolita"; Here too, the debate about the origin of the name and basic motif turns: Nabokov has a German Nazi author plagiarized or not? Perhaps the most obscure works in this book is "The SCUM Manifesto" by Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot at Andy Warhol and her life was sorry to have missed him fatally. The "SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto" calls for the abolition of the men, which of course in the medium term lead to the extinction of Homo sapiens. Towards the end of their concoction, the author seems to recognize that it has maneuvered itself into a corner: "Why produce even females Why should there be future generations What is Their purpose??"
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "Sonnets from the PORTUGUESE"
It is known in general that it is not is translated from Portuguese poems, as the title suggests, but for the love poems that Elizabeth 1845-1846 wrote to Robert Browning, in the time before they were married and before Elizabeth's father by half Europe fled.
What I did not know: Elizabeth has the poems at first kept secret from Robert and she showed him until 1849 in Bagni di Lucca. He persuaded then, the texts in her book "Poems" (1850) record, and she did so on the condition that they were issued as translations of foreign works.
Why "Portuguese"? An insider joke between the two hearts. Even before he met Elizabeth personally, Robert had read her "From Catarina to Camoens" that reflects the thoughts of a dying Portuguese named Catarina and allegedly moved him to tears. "My little Portuguese" was then became Roberts nickname for Elizabeth.
So therefore "Sonnets from the Portuguese", which may just as well in English called "Sonnets from the Portuguese" as "Sonnets from the Portuguese", a play on words that, unfortunately, does not work in other languages, including German.
Elizabeth had initially entitled "Sonnets translated from the Bosnian" considered ...
Alexandre Dumas DJ: "Lady of the Camellias"
I have never read. Here I will supply not only the summary of the story, but also with the autobiographical backgrounds.
As Dumas the Younger was buried in 1895, some mourners took flowers from his coffin and carried them to the not distant grave of Alphonsine Plessis, the true model of the "Lady of the Camellias" Marguerite Gautier. Which misunderstanding.
The Story: The celebrated Parisian courtesan Marguerite Gautier carries on five days of red camellias, the other white, and apparently no one knows why - the author claims. (He knew it very well: the white camellias signaled their sexual availability on these days.) From aristocratic lovers swarmed and endured, she loves in fact the writer Armand Duval [Alexandre Dumas]. The kidnapped the sufferer to the countryside, where it starts from consumption to recover in the fresh air and under special diet. But Armand's father visited her secretly and persuades her, Armand abandon to the good name of the family's sake. She finally agrees to play Armand before, she was tired of him and leaves him. Sick and lonely she dies in Paris until last Armands name to himself in a whisper. As Armand later learns the truth, he gets bitter accusations. He visits her grave, which is being opened to them to convict in a marble tomb, and describes the gruesome sight of the body, which is the opposite of loving, enthusiastic description of her looks, with which began the book. High tragic and romantic so the whole.
The truth is as always a little bit different:
Was hired by her father already with 12 or 13 years for sex to friend Alphonsine Plessis (* 1824) to Paris, where they Marie Duplessis called himself himself to read and write and taught for their beauty and their spirit with a well-known courtesan 16 had become, which moved in the highest circles. For a time she was sustained by seven aristocrats, each of which had reserved a week with her. 1844 she met Alexandre Dumas d. J., but the relationship failed after 11 months. After the composer Franz Liszt to have been the love of her life, but in 1846 she married, perhaps for financial reasons, the Comte Edouard de Perregaux. In the same year she became ill, languished and died in February 1847 for 23 years. Neither Dumas nor Liszt had them during their illness even visited.
In June 1847 Dumas was heavily in debt to the search for the material for a bestseller. Life of Marie was verwursten for obvious; he took the opportunity and wrote his story down within three weeks. Dexter said: "The" Lady of the Camellias ", Which has survived Because it is a beautifully crafted novel of love, is in thruth, beneath its glittering surface, a novel of Exploitation One might almost say betrayal.."
Mary Shelley: "FRANKENSTEIN, OR THE MODERN PROMETHEUS"
On September 2, 1814 the Shelleys had the on their trip to Germany from the Rhine at Gernsheim from a look at the ruins of Castle Frankenstein, the home of a certain Konrad Dippel von Frankenstein (1673-1734), who had operated as an alchemist and for grave desecration of University of Strasbourg was expelled. But there is no evidence that Mary has heard these stories. Maybe she liked only the name. Dexter adds a little quote, in which Mary, the German rural population describes as very disgusting - she calls them "animals" and "monsters". These little anecdotes and contextual-sensitive information are a major attraction of the book.
Jules Verne "In 80 days around the world" is almost been something like a plagiarism. The model was probably the megalomaniac American railroad magnate George Francis Train (who really was so;)), the world as a traveler made his name and repeatedly broke his own record, he managed to circumnavigate the globe in 60 days. When he tried it for the first time - while he was a candidate in 1870 against Grant for the presidency - he missed 80 days around a good two months. At the same time Verne began writing his novel, which appeared in installments in "Le Temps" from 1872. Train has always seen as a model for Phileas Fogg and Verne has never ruled on.
HEMINGWAYS "The Sun Also Rises" is a quotation from the Bible - here with sexual connotations. The protagonist is impotent. Hem wrote to F. Scott Fitzgerald, the title should actually read "The Sun Also Rises (Like your Cock If You Have One)". Hemingway had a good laugh: With his injury in World War 1, he had received more than 200 shrapnel wounds in the lower body - including 2 in the scrotum, the testicles but himself and his penis had remained undamaged. [His testicles were stored in the recovery phase on a special cushion. As Dexter tells this in a footnote, this pillow in the Hemingway Museum can be visited in Key West _not_. Is also among the Fakten-über-Weltliteratur-die-ich-noch-nicht-kannte-und-auch-nicht-vermißt-hätte-die-aber-kuriose-Anekdoten-abgeben. Pretentious words: Here can be the difference between a historical background information and an edge information illustrate. Hemingway's injury is the former, the Notice on the Nichtausgestelltsein his testicles cushion is the latter.] In the hospital he could watch what happened to people who had not been so lucky, then it was given the theme by means of literature.
Whether it is time to give a German translation of Dexters little work? Probably not, because the content is so strongly linked to the English language and some puns remain untranslatable. In addition, some books carry the Germans completely different title. James M. Cain's "The Postman Always Rings Twice" was in 1950 translated as "reckoned without his host." As a 1981 remake starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange was released in theaters, she was awarded the most stupid in many respects German translation titles in film history: "The Postman Always Rings Twice", and since then the book under the title sold. Apart from that there is no "Postman" are in German - "postman" is simply postman or postman - the title is already incomprehensible because in the entire book (and movie) not a postman occurs and no one will ring twice. A correct translation would indeed "The postman always rings twice", but that the reader / viewer for lack of background knowledge do anything. How did the original "The Postman Always Rings Twice," Dexter explained with reference to a quote from Cain, who had this idea in conversation with a colleague, but even this quote still leaves questions unanswered.
A pleasantly written, informative and handy booklet, well suited by the independent, short chapter as in-between reading. I've already one or two people in mind, I'm going to give it for his birthday. Despite its pocket-size, it is solidly bound in relatively strong cardboard - might suspect the publisher that it will be used as a travel journal.
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