Fontane Works of Freytag and Fontane

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4553-9221-6
Verlag: Seltzer Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 368 Seiten

This collection includes works by Gustav Freytag and Theodor Fontane. The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 1, edited by Kuno Francke.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fontane, Theodor

Leseproben

WORKS OF FREYTAG AND FONTANE
  THE GERMAN CLASSICS OF THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES, VOLUME 12   Published by Seltzer Books established in 1974, now offering over 14,000 books feedback welcome: [e-mail]     German classics in English translation available from Seltzer Books: Poetry and Drama by Goethe Elective Affinities, Essays and Letters by Goethe Works of Schiller German Romantics Later German Romantics Heine, Grillparzer, Beethoven Moerike, Hegel, Gutzkow, ad Other German Authors The German Novel of Provincial Life Works of Hebbel and Ludwig Works of Bismarck, Moltke, and Lassalle Works of Spielhagen, Storm, and Raabe Works of Freytag and Fontane Henry of Ofterdingen by Novalis Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque Undine Retold for Children Wilhelm Hauff, 4 books Sigmund Freud, 7 books Immanuel Kant, 4 books Frederick Engels, 5 books on economics and socialism Karl Marx, 4 books Nietzsche, 8 books The Art of Literature by Schopenhauer   1914   EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kuno Francke, Ph.D., LL.D., Litt.D.   ALBANY, N.Y. J.B. LYON COMPANY PUBLISHERS   GUSTAV FREYTAG   The Life of Gustav Freytag. By Ernest F. Henderson   The Journalists. Translated by Ernest F. Henderson   Doctor Luther. Translated by E.H. Babbitt   Frederick the Great. Translated by E.H. Babbitt   THEODOR FONTANE   The Life of Theodor Fontane. By William A. Cooper   Effi Briest. Translated by William A. Cooper   Extracts from "My Childhood Days." Translated by William A. Cooper   Sir Ribbeck of Ribbeck. Translated by Margarete Muensterberg   The Bridge by the Tay. Translated by Margarete Muensterberg   GUSTAV FREYTAG
  THE LIFE OF GUSTAV FREYTAG  By ERNEST F. HENDERSON, PH.D., L.H.D.
  Author of A History of Germany in the Middle Ages; A Short History of Germany, etc.    It is difficult to assign to Gustav Freytag his exact niche in the hall of fame, because of his many-sidedness. He wrote one novel of which the statement has been made by an eminent French critic that no book in the German language, with the exception of the Bible, has enjoyed in its day so wide a circulation; he wrote one comedy which for years was more frequently played than any other on the German stage; he wrote a series of historical sketches--Pictures of the German Past he calls them--which hold a unique place in German literature, being as charming in style as they are sound in scholarship. Add to these a work on the principles of dramatic criticism that is referred to with respect by the very latest writers on the subject, an important biography, a second very successful novel, and a series of six historical romances that vary in interest, indeed, but that are a noble monument to his own nation and that, alone, would have made him famous.   As a novelist Freytag is often compared with Charles Dickens, largely on account of the humor that so frequently breaks forth from his pages. It is a different kind of humor, not so obstreperous, not so exaggerated, but it helps to lighten the whole in much the same way. One moment it is an incongruous simile, at another a bit of sly satire; now infinitely small things are spoken of as though they were great, and again we have the reverse.   It is in his famous comedy, The Journalists, which appeared in 1853, that Freytag displays his humor to its best advantage. Some of the situations themselves, without being farcical, are exceedingly amusing, as when the Colonel, five minutes after declaiming against the ambition of journalists and politicians, and enumerating the different forms under which it is concealed, lets his own ambition run away with him and is won by the very same arts he has just been denouncing. Again, Bolz's capture of the wine-merchant Piepenbrink at the ball given under the auspices of the rival party is very cleverly described indeed. There is a difference of opinion as to whether or not Bolz was inventing the whole dramatic story of his rescue by Oldendorf, but there can be no difference of opinion as to the comicality of the scene that follows, where, under the very eyes of his rivals and with the consent of the husband, Bolz prepares to kiss Mrs. Piepenbrink. The play abounds with curious little bits of satire, quaint similes and unexpected exaggerations. "There is so much that happens," says Bolz in his editorial capacity, "and so tremendously much that does not happen, that an honest reporter should never be at a loss for novelties." Playing dominoes with polar bears, teaching seals the rudiments of journalism, waking up as an owl with tufts of feathers for ears and a mouse in one's beak, are essentially Freytagian conceptions; and no one else could so well have expressed Bolz's indifference to further surprises--they may tell him if they will that some one has left a hundred millions for the purpose of painting all negroes white, or of making Africa four-cornered; but he, Bolz, has reached a state of mind where he will accept as truth anything and everything.   Freytag's greatest novel, entitled Soll und Haben (the technical commercial terms for "debit" and "credit"), appeared in 1856. Dombey and Son by Dickens had been published a few years before and is worth our attention for a moment because of a similarity of theme in the two works. In both, the hero is born of the people, but comes in contact with the aristocracy not altogether to his own advantage; in both, looming in the background of the story, is the great mercantile house with its vast and mysterious transactions. The writer of this short article does not hesitate to place Debit and Credit far ahead of Dombey and Son. That does not mean that there are not single episodes, and occasionally a character, in Dombey and Son that the German author could never have achieved. But, considered as an artistic whole, the English novel is so disjointed and uneven that the interest often flags and almost dies, while many of the characters are as grotesque and wooden as so many jumping-jacks. In Freytag's work, on the other hand, the different parts are firmly knitted together; an ethical purpose runs through the whole, and there is a careful subordination of the individual characters to the general plan of the whole structure. It is much the same contrast as that between an old-fashioned Italian opera and a modern German tone-drama. In the one case the effects are made through senseless repetition and through tours de force of the voice; in the other there is a steady progression in dramatic intensity, link joining link without a gap.   But to say that Debit and Credit is a finer book than Dombey and Son is not to claim that Freytag, all in all, is a greater novelist than Dickens. The man of a single fine book would have to be superlatively great to equal one who could show such fertility in creation of characters or produce such masterpieces of description. Dickens reaches heights of passion to which Freytag could never aspire; in fact the latter's temperament strikes one as rather a cool one. Even Spielhagen, far inferior to him in many regards, could thrill where Freytag merely interests.   Freytag's forte lay in fidelity of depiction, in the power to ascertain and utilize essential facts. It would not be fair to say that he had little imagination, for in the parts of The Ancestors that have to do with remote times, times of which our whole knowledge is gained from a few paragraphs in old chronicles and where the scenes and incidents have to be invented, he is at his best. But one of his great merits lies in his evident familiarity with the localities mentioned in the pages as well as with the social environment of his personages. The house of T.D. Schroeter in Debit and Credit had its prototype in the house of Molinari in Breslau, and at the Molinaris Freytag was a frequent visitor. Indeed in the company of the head of the firm he even undertook just such a journey to the Polish provinces in troubled times as he makes Anton take with Schroeter. Again, the life in the newspaper office, so amusingly depicted in The Journalists, was out of the fulness of his own experience as editor of a political sheet. A hundred little natural touches thus add to the realism of the whole and make the figures, as a German critic says, "stand out like marble statues against a hedge of yew." The reproach has been made that many of Freytag's characters are too much alike. He has distinct types which repeat themselves both in the novels and in the plays. George Saalfeld in Valentine, for instance, is strikingly like Bolz in The Journalists or...