Translations from the German (Vol 3 of 3): Tales by Musæus, Tieck, RichterCarlyle, Thomas
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Translations from the German (Vol 3 of 3): Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter
Carlyle, Thomas
German fiction -- Translations into English
With a vehement emotion, I threw myself on the pith-heart of my Berga,
and, with a still more vehement one, tore myself away: in her, however,
this our first marriage-separation seemed to produce less lamentation
than triumph, less consternation than rejoicing; simply because she
turned her eye not half so much on the parting, as on the meeting, and
the journey after me, and the wonders of the Fair. Yet she threw and
hung herself on my somewhat long and thin neck and body, almost
painfully, being indeed a too fleshy and weighty load, and said to me:
"Whisk thee off quick, my charming Attel (Attila), and trouble thy head
with no cares by the way, thou singular man! A whiff or two of ill luck
we can stand, by God's help, so long as my father is no beggar. And for
thee, Franz," continued she, turning with some heat to her brother, "I
leave my Attel on thy soul: thou well knowest, thou wild fly, what I
will do, if thou play the fool, and leave him anywhere in the lurch."
Her meaning here was good, and I could not take it ill: to you also, my
Friends, her wealth and her open-heartedness are nothing new.
[Note 1: The more Weakness the more Lying: Force goes straight; any
cannonball with holes or cavities in it goes crooked.]
Melted into sensibility, I said: "Now, Berga, if there be a reunion
appointed for us, surely it is either in Heaven or in Flaetz; and I hope
in God, the latter." With these words, we whirled stoutly away. I looked
round through the back-window of the coach at my good little village of
Neusattel, and it seemed to me, in my melting mood, as if its steeples
were rising aloft like an epitaphium over my life, or over my body,
perhaps to return a lifeless corpse. "How will it all be," thought I,
"when thou at last, after two or three days, comest back?" And now I
noticed my Bergelchen looking after us from the garret-window. I leaned
far out from the coach-door, and her falcon eye instantly distinguished
my head; kiss on kiss she threw with both hands after the carriage, as
it rolled down into the valley. "Thou true-hearted wife," thought I,
"how is thy lowly birth, by thy spiritual new-birth, made forgettable,
nay remarkable!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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