7.51 Eichendorff — «Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts» (chapter 1) — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the first chapter of Joseph von Eichendorff's novella Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (1826), complete: a miller's lazy son sets out into the world with his violin, becomes a gardener's boy at a palace near Vienna, and falls in love with a lady he believes far above him. Recognise the themes and images of German Romanticism: wandering, music, the open road, longing, and the unreachable beloved. Follow a cheerful, naive first-person narrator who tells more than he understands. Understand the old form of address with Er : Spring er nur hinten mit auf . Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the German aloud; all of them come back below. German English Wem Gott will rechte Gunst erweisen, Whom God wishes to show true favour, Ich kann Dich hier nicht länger füttern. I can't feed you here any longer. daß ich mich nicht auf ein anderes Handwerk gelegt, that I had not taken up another trade, Zuletzt kam endlich der Gärtner, At last the gardener finally came, wie ich nur fein nüchtern und arbeitsam seyn, how I should be nice and sober and hard-working, Der Gärtner schalt mich einen faulen Bengel, The gardener scolded me as a lazy lout, Prerequisites : 7.50 — you need the periods of literature from 11.7 Background and the verse forms of 2.40 Grammar . About this text Joseph von Eichendorff (1788–1857) came from a Catholic noble family in Silesia and worked for most of his career as a Prussian civil servant. In his free time he wrote some of the best-loved poems in German, many of them set to music by Schumann and Mendelssohn, and stories in which the world is full of music, longing and quiet magic. Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts , From the Life of a Good-for-Nothing , appeared in 1826 and became the most popular prose work of German Romanticism. In this course you have met the dark side of Romanticism in Hoffmann's Der Sandmann in 7.18 Reading ; here is its bright side. The text here is the first of ten chapters, complete, about 3,100 words, from the first edition of 1826 in the transcription of German Wikisource. The hero has no name; he calls himself what his father calls him, a Taugenichts . He tells his story himself, happily and without much reflection, and the reader soon sees more than he does. Two songs are woven into the chapter, one of them sung twice. The first, Wem Gott will rechte Gunst erweisen , is still sung as a hiking song. Grammar in the text Addressing someone as Er . The ladies and their maid speak to the young man in the third person singular, Er (the 1826 edition also prints it with a small e): Spring er nur hinten mit auf , fahr’ Er uns doch an das jenseitige Ufer , das sing Er nur . In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century this was the way social superiors addressed servants and young people of lower rank. It sounds condescending today and has disappeared. A naive narrator. The Taugenichts reports everything with the same cheerful surprise and draws his own, often wrong, conclusions. When a young gentleman with glasses praises the folk song in grand Romantic phrases, gesungen vom Volk in freiem Feld und Wald , the Taugenichts passes the words on without comment; the reader can smile at how inflated they are. A string of proverbs. Es wird keinem an der Wiege gesungen, was künftig aus ihm wird, eine blinde Henne find’t manchmal auch ein Korn, wer zuletzt lacht, lacht am besten, unverhofft kommt oft, der Mensch denkt und Gott lenkt : the narrator strings five proverbs together as if each explained the next. All five are still in use. The spellings of 1826. seyn , Brodt , Thüre , bey , kömmt for kommt , and many elisions in the songs: mein’ Sach’ auf’s Best’ . Reading it a second time, section by section Setting out (paragraphs 1–17). The mill wheel is turning, spring has come, and the miller tells his lazy son to go out into the world and earn his own bread. The son takes his violin and walks off singing Wem Gott will rechte Gunst erweisen : the lazy at home know only worry, while he leaves everything to God. The carriage (paragraphs 18–20). Two ladies in a fine travelling carriage hear him sing. The older, laughing, tells him to jump up behind: they are going to W., which is Vienna. He falls asleep on the step and wakes in front of a splendid palace. The palace (paragraphs 21–22). A lady's maid asks him whether he wants to serve as a gardener's boy. The gardener lectures him on sobriety and hard work. Whenever he is alone, he smokes his pipe and thinks of polite speeches for the younger of the two ladies, who seems to him the most beautiful. Songs and wine (paragraphs 23–36). He sings as he passes the summer house, sees two bright young eyes sparkling behind the blinds, and runs off to his work in fright. One Saturday evening the maid leaves a bottle of wine on his window sill. Every morning he sees the beautiful lady at her window, until the window stays shut and he grows sad and idle. On the lake (paragraphs 37–59). On a Sunday a party of ladies and gentlemen asks him to row them across the pond. The maid asks him to sing the song of the beautiful lady. He sings it, ending with a stanza in which he digs his own grave. The young gentlemen mock him, the beautiful lady says nothing, and when they have gone he lies down in the grass and weeps bitterly. Full translation An English translation of the whole text, made for this course and kept close to the original. The numbers are the paragraph numbers of the original text, so you can move between the two. The wheel of my father's mill was roaring and rushing quite merrily again, the snow was dripping busily from the roof, the sparrows were twittering and romping about in between; I sat on the doorstep and wiped the sleep from my eyes, I felt so very comfortable in the warm sunshine. Then my father came out of the house; he had been rummaging about in the mill since daybreak, with his nightcap askew on his head, and he said to me: "You good-for-nothing! There you are sunning your