Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Title

en_US Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Description

en_US Language note: Bilingual: English/German

en_US Signed

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Creator

en_US Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim See all items with this value

Contributor

en_US Weissenborn, Hellmuth

Date

2022-11-07T16:12:55Z

2022-07

en_US 1979

Date Available

2022-11-07T16:12:55Z

Date Issued

en_US 1979

Abstract

en_US Here is a lovely addition to the collection, found at a much better price than I had been ready to pay. Lessing is always witty. Weissenborn is up to the task of rendering him well with the fourteen illustrations here. "Die Erscheinung" makes for an excellent introduction to Lessing's prose fables. "Okay, I told you a fable-like story; do you want to accept it or not?" (Something like: "You cannot accuse me both of being poetic in this story and prosaic in my fables!") Many of his fables involve an extra turn of the screw. The snake king is about to devour one of the frogs. "I did not want a snake king." "All the more reason to have to devour you!" The blind hen finds few grains, but the seeing hen following her profits from her turning up the heap. Lessing adds: the German makes literary research and the smart Frenchman exploits it. Among Weissenborn's best figures here, I think, are the frog-devouring snake; the thornbush with his spiky hair; the swine challenging whether the oak produced the acorns for the swine; and the miser lamenting not so much that he lost his treasure but that another acquired it! On the colophon page at the end, an ass reads a book, no doubt a book of fables. 48 pages. Boxed. 5½" x 9¼".

Identifier

en_US 13155 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/139329

Language

en_US eng|ger

Publisher

en_US The Acorn Press

en_US London

Subject

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing See all items with this value