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„Anecdote from the last Prussian War“
A
Latin translation of Heinrich von Kleist’s „Anecdote from
the last Prussian War“, with a glossary and a philological source
analysis made by Reinhold Steig, from German translated into Latin by
Nikolaus Groß.
The
most famous of Kleist’s anecdotes deals with a fearless Prussian
rider who, during the battle of Jena, while bullets from all sides are
peppering down into the village, coolly and calmly drinks three liquors
at the innkeeper, stuffs his tobacco pipe, pushes three French
chasseurs off their horses, with which picked up he gallops off.
The
breathlessly rapid changing of speech and reply in the dramatic
dialogue between the innkeeper and the guest is undoubtedly a
masterpiece of Kleist’s narrative art.
The
Latin translation faithfully renders special liveliness of the
direct speech: for every of the numerous swearwords hurled by the upset
innkeeper at his guest, one can find in the translation a Latin
equivalent extracted from ancient literature (esp. Plautus and
Terence).
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