The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 09: Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig
General
The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 09: Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig
German literature -- 19th century -- Translations into English; German literature -- 20th century -- Translations into English
The little garden lies between the dwelling-house and the slate shed;
whoever goes from one to the other must pass it. As you go from the
house to the shed it is on your left; on the right there is a yard
with a woodshed and a stable, separated from the neighboring house by
a trellis-fence. Every morning the house opens twelve green shutters
onto one of the busiest streets of the town, the shed opens a large
gray door on a back street; the roses on the bushes that have been
trained to grow like trees in the little garden can look out into the
lane which connects its two larger sisters. On the other side of the
lane stands a tall house which, in elegant seclusion, does not deign
to bestow a glance on the smaller one. Its eyes are open only to the
doings of the main street; if you look nearer at its closed eyes
facing the narrow street, you soon see the reason for its eternal
sleep--they are only a sham, painted on the outer wall.
Not all sides of the house that belongs to the little garden look as
decorative as the one on the main street. There, a pale rose-colored
tint contrasts not too sharply with the green window-shutters and the
blue slate roof. The weather side of the house, on the narrow street,
looks as if it were clad in an armor of slate from top to toe; the
other gable-end joins directly on to the row of houses of which it is
the beginning or the end; at the back, however, it is an example of
the proverb that everything has its weak point. There, an upstairs
piazza has been built onto the house, not unlike half a crown of
thorns. Supported by roughly-hewn wooden posts it runs along the upper
story and expands toward the left into a little room. There is no
direct entrance to it from the upper story of the house. To reach the
"gallery chamber" from there one must leave the house by the back
door, walk perhaps six steps along the wall, past the dog-kennel, to
the wooden stairs, resembling those of a henhouse, and after climbing
these must wander the whole length of the piazza to the left.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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