Authors, German -- 19th century -- Biography; May, Karl Friedrich, 1842-1912
countries of the globe, calling out loudly and lamenting loudly,
but never receiving an answer. It has seen people of violence by
the millions, fighting, mangling, and annihilating one another,
but it never saw a person with a noble soul, who was like the
inhabitants of Jinnistan and lived by their wonderful law, that
everyone had to be his neighbour's angel, so that he shall not
become his own devil. But eventually, mankind must and will
nonetheless rise to such a hight, that this question, which had
been asked in vain before that time, will receive its bliss
bringing answer from somewhere: "Here I am. I am the first nobly
spirited person, and others will follow after me!" Thus, Old
Shatterhand also travels and thus Kara Ben Nemsi also travels
through those countries, to look for nobly spirited people. And
wherever he finds none, he gives an example through his own nobly
spirited behaviour, how he thinks such a person would have to be
like. And this fictional Old Shatterhand, this fictional Kara Ben
Nemsi, this fictional "I", does not need to remain fictional, but
has to manifest himself, has to become reality in my readers, who
are experiencing in their minds and souls everything just as he
does, and who therefore, like my characters, are rising up and
ennobling themselves. In this manner, I am contributing my part
to solve this great task of enabling the violent people, who are
the people on a low level, to develop into the nobly spirited
people.
[a] In "Through the Desert" the main character is introduced by
his sidekick to a third person by this name. The first
person narrator then explains it like this: "The good man
had at one time before asked me for my name and actually
kept the word Karl in his memory. But since he was unable
to pronounce it, he, without thinking much of it, turned it
into Kara and added Ben Nemsi, meaning descendant of the
Germans."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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