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Flegeljahre
Flegeljahre. Eine Biographie Ein reicher Mann aus Haßlau hat sein verklausuliertes Testament mit aberwitzigen Auflagen für die Erben versehen. Mindestens eine Träne muss dem Verstorbenen nachgeweint werden, gemeinsame Wohnung soll bezogen werden und so unterschiedliche Berufe wie der des Klavierstimmers, Gärtner und Pfarrers müssen erfolgreich ausgeübt werden, bevor die Erben an den begehrten Nachlass kommen.
752 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1805
About the author
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter
1,545 books67 followersHumorous and sentimental novels of German writer Jean Paul Friedrich Richter under pen name Jean Paul include
Titan
(1800-1803) and
Years of Indiscretion
(1804-1805).
In the Fichtelgebirge mountains of Bavaria, his father worked as an organist. This fathre served in 1765 as a pastor at Joditz near Hof and in 1767 at Schwarzenbach but died on 25 April 1779, leaving the family in great poverty. After attending the gymnasium at Hof, Jean Paul went in 1781 to the University of Leipzig. His original intention was to enter his father's profession, but theology did not interest him, and he soon devoted himself wholly to the study of literature. Unable to maintain himself at Leipzig, he returned in 1784 to Hof, where he lived with his mother. From 1787 to 1789 he served as a tutor at Töpen, a village near Hof; and from 1790 to 1794 he taught the children of several families in a school he had founded in nearby Schwarzenbach.
Jean Paul began his career as a man of letters with Grönländische Prozesse ("Greenland Lawsuits", published anonymously in Berlin) and Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren ("Selections from the Devil's Papers", signed J. P. F. Hasus), the former of which was issued in 1783-84, the latter in 1789. These works were not received with much favour, and in later life Richter himself had little sympathy for their satirical tone. A spiritual crisis he suffered on 15 November 1790, in which he had a vision of his own death, altered his outlook profoundly. His next book, Die unsichtbare Loge ("The Invisible Lodge"), a romance published in 1793 under the pen-name Jean Paul (in honour of Jean Jacques Rousseau), had all the qualities that were soon to make him famous, and its power was immediately recognized by some of the best critics of the day.
Encouraged by the reception of Die unsichtbare Loge, Richter composed a number of books in rapid succession: Hesperus (1795), Biographische Belustigungen unter der Gehirnschale einer Riesin (1796), Leben des Quintus Fixlein (1796), Der Jubelsenior (1797), and Das Kampaner Tal (1797). Also among these was the novel Blumen- Frucht- und Dornenstücke, oder Ehestand, Tod und Hochzeit des Armenadvokaten Siebenkäs in 1796-97. The book's slightly supernatural theme, involving a Doppelgänger and pseudocide, stirred some controversy over its interpretation of the Resurrection, but these criticisms served only to draw awareness to the author. This series of writings assured Richter a place in German literature, and during the rest of his life every work he produced was welcomed by a wide circle of admirers.
After his mother's death in 1797, Richter went to Leipzig, and in the following year to Weimar, where he started work on his most ambitious novel, Titan, published between 1801-02. Richter became friends with such Weimar notables as Herder, by whom he was warmly appreciated, but despite their close proximity, Richter never become close to Goethe and Schiller, both of whom found his literary methods repugnant; but in Weimar, as elsewhere, his remarkable conversational powers and his genial manners made him a favorite in general society. In 1801 he married Caroline Meyer, whom he had met in Berlin the year before. They lived first at Meiningen, then at Coburg; and finally, in 1804, they settled at Bayreuth.
Here Richter spent a quiet, simple and happy life, constantly occupied with his work as a writer. In 1808 he was fortunately delivered from anxiety about outward necessities by Prince Primate Karl Theodor von Dalberg, who gave him a pension. Titan was followed by Flegeljahre (1804-5), two works which he himself regarded as his masterpieces. His later imaginative works were Dr Katzenbergers Badereise (1809), Des Feldpredigers Schmelzle Reise nach Flätz (1809), Leben Fibels (1812), and Der Komet, oder Nikolaus Marggraf (1820-22). In Vorschule der Aesthetik (1804) he expounded his ideas on art; he discussed the principles of education i
In the Fichtelgebirge mountains of Bavaria, his father worked as an organist. This fathre served in 1765 as a pastor at Joditz near Hof and in 1767 at Schwarzenbach but died on 25 April 1779, leaving the family in great poverty. After attending the gymnasium at Hof, Jean Paul went in 1781 to the University of Leipzig. His original intention was to enter his father's profession, but theology did not interest him, and he soon devoted himself wholly to the study of literature. Unable to maintain himself at Leipzig, he returned in 1784 to Hof, where he lived with his mother. From 1787 to 1789 he served as a tutor at Töpen, a village near Hof; and from 1790 to 1794 he taught the children of several families in a school he had founded in nearby Schwarzenbach.
Jean Paul began his career as a man of letters with Grönländische Prozesse ("Greenland Lawsuits", published anonymously in Berlin) and Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren ("Selections from the Devil's Papers", signed J. P. F. Hasus), the former of which was issued in 1783-84, the latter in 1789. These works were not received with much favour, and in later life Richter himself had little sympathy for their satirical tone. A spiritual crisis he suffered on 15 November 1790, in which he had a vision of his own death, altered his outlook profoundly. His next book, Die unsichtbare Loge ("The Invisible Lodge"), a romance published in 1793 under the pen-name Jean Paul (in honour of Jean Jacques Rousseau), had all the qualities that were soon to make him famous, and its power was immediately recognized by some of the best critics of the day.
Encouraged by the reception of Die unsichtbare Loge, Richter composed a number of books in rapid succession: Hesperus (1795), Biographische Belustigungen unter der Gehirnschale einer Riesin (1796), Leben des Quintus Fixlein (1796), Der Jubelsenior (1797), and Das Kampaner Tal (1797). Also among these was the novel Blumen- Frucht- und Dornenstücke, oder Ehestand, Tod und Hochzeit des Armenadvokaten Siebenkäs in 1796-97. The book's slightly supernatural theme, involving a Doppelgänger and pseudocide, stirred some controversy over its interpretation of the Resurrection, but these criticisms served only to draw awareness to the author. This series of writings assured Richter a place in German literature, and during the rest of his life every work he produced was welcomed by a wide circle of admirers.
After his mother's death in 1797, Richter went to Leipzig, and in the following year to Weimar, where he started work on his most ambitious novel, Titan, published between 1801-02. Richter became friends with such Weimar notables as Herder, by whom he was warmly appreciated, but despite their close proximity, Richter never become close to Goethe and Schiller, both of whom found his literary methods repugnant; but in Weimar, as elsewhere, his remarkable conversational powers and his genial manners made him a favorite in general society. In 1801 he married Caroline Meyer, whom he had met in Berlin the year before. They lived first at Meiningen, then at Coburg; and finally, in 1804, they settled at Bayreuth.
Here Richter spent a quiet, simple and happy life, constantly occupied with his work as a writer. In 1808 he was fortunately delivered from anxiety about outward necessities by Prince Primate Karl Theodor von Dalberg, who gave him a pension. Titan was followed by Flegeljahre (1804-5), two works which he himself regarded as his masterpieces. His later imaginative works were Dr Katzenbergers Badereise (1809), Des Feldpredigers Schmelzle Reise nach Flätz (1809), Leben Fibels (1812), and Der Komet, oder Nikolaus Marggraf (1820-22). In Vorschule der Aesthetik (1804) he expounded his ideas on art; he discussed the principles of education i
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 8, 2014
This is not a review. This is therapy.
Concerning the easy and uninterrupted flow of reading, this book is the next thing to a medieval drama in Sanskrit for a sophomore. Unless one is extremely well provided with the currency of names and ideas of the late Enlightenment, one feels like a very soft worm inside a huge rock of fossilized notions.
JP stretches syntax to a point of complete entanglement. While he warms up, reading his sentences is like playing snake, enjoying those little snacks of sense, growing, feeling your brain move, unfurl, until the next zeugmatic splash and crumble. Every sentence is a speleological expedition, with the guide getting agitated and hurriedly rounding a corner with his torch somewhere ahead, leaving you in the darkness, and although in the flare he seems to be floating, I think I heard him stumble a couple of times. Where Jean Paul stumbles, I lay in a heap of rubble.
He makes Gargantuan leaps with you on his shoulder, now head over the clouds with most of the landscape obscured from view, now merrily plunking his arse into a muddy puddle, now composing strange poetry he calls polymeter, now hurling at the reader sordid double, triple, quadruple entendres and mixing his metaphors into thick indigestible verbal dough.
I lived with him for at least half a year like one lives with an unexpected noisy relative, who keeps his shampoo in your fridge for some obscure and highly mutable reason, and wants you to cheer up and party when you are exhausted and want to lie down and drift away with a solid good book. I pushed him through 550 pages with his bloating smorgasbord of inconceivable possessions and out into the abyss of the long cold afterword and I miss him so much I could cry.
Concerning the easy and uninterrupted flow of reading, this book is the next thing to a medieval drama in Sanskrit for a sophomore. Unless one is extremely well provided with the currency of names and ideas of the late Enlightenment, one feels like a very soft worm inside a huge rock of fossilized notions.
JP stretches syntax to a point of complete entanglement. While he warms up, reading his sentences is like playing snake, enjoying those little snacks of sense, growing, feeling your brain move, unfurl, until the next zeugmatic splash and crumble. Every sentence is a speleological expedition, with the guide getting agitated and hurriedly rounding a corner with his torch somewhere ahead, leaving you in the darkness, and although in the flare he seems to be floating, I think I heard him stumble a couple of times. Where Jean Paul stumbles, I lay in a heap of rubble.
He makes Gargantuan leaps with you on his shoulder, now head over the clouds with most of the landscape obscured from view, now merrily plunking his arse into a muddy puddle, now composing strange poetry he calls polymeter, now hurling at the reader sordid double, triple, quadruple entendres and mixing his metaphors into thick indigestible verbal dough.
I lived with him for at least half a year like one lives with an unexpected noisy relative, who keeps his shampoo in your fridge for some obscure and highly mutable reason, and wants you to cheer up and party when you are exhausted and want to lie down and drift away with a solid good book. I pushed him through 550 pages with his bloating smorgasbord of inconceivable possessions and out into the abyss of the long cold afterword and I miss him so much I could cry.
August 2, 2022
telenovela vibes
August 3, 2011
«Mi soffermerò sui vaccini, sul commercio dei libri e della lana, sui collaboratori delle pubblicazioni periodiche, sulla metafora magnetica ovvero sul doppio sistema di Schelling, sui cippi di confine di recente introduzione, sulla scarsità degli spiccioli, sui topi campagnoli, sulla tigna degli abeti e sul Bonaparte: ma su quest’ultimo solo di sfuggita e poeticamente, beninteso.
Dirò la mia sul teatro di Weimar, ma anche su quello non meno modesto del mondo e della vita.
Vi figureranno degnamente l’autentica arguzia e l’autentica religione, benché questa sia attualmente rara come una bestemmia in convento o una barba a corte.
Vitupererò con energia, nei limiti in cui auspicabilmente l’eccellentissimo consiglio mi autorizzerà a espormi, la malvagità, ma senza scendere in dettagli personali o insinuazioni, tanto più che i cuori neri e gli occhi neri, a guardar meglio, sono per lo più soltanto bruni, e che ogni semidio e che ogni mezza bestia hanno dopo tutto in comune l’altra metà, l’umana. E chi dice poi che la frusta debba essere fatta di cuoio più spesso e più duro della pelle su cui s’abbatte?
I recensori più arcigni saranno inteneriti e si tenterà (con le dovute riserve) di commuoverli sino alle lacrime rammentando loro l’aurea gioventù e altre cose perdute, un po’ come si suole invocar la pioggia ricorrendo a certe consunte reliquie.
Del diciassettesimo secolo si parlerà con libertà, del diciottesimo con umanità, sul più recente si rifletterà, in silenzio ma molto liberamente. […]
Simile ai manuali e ai sussidiari, il libro offrirà consigli medici, suggerimenti vari, personaggi, dialoghi e storielle, ma in quantità tale da poter essere allegato come sussidiario a ogni manuale e viceversa, a titolo di ampio compendio e appendice, perché ogni opera espositiva deve potersi molare come uno specchio di cui si voglia fare un occhiale, alla stessa stregua con cui una scheggia di specchio veneziano può essere utilizzata per ricavarne un’autentica lente.
Agli svarioni tipografici non mancheranno dosi d’intelligenza, né briciole di verità agli errori di composizione.
E giorno dopo giorno l’operetta si arrampicherà più in alto, dai circoli di lettura alle biblioteche circolanti, e da queste alle biblioteche municipali, e poi su su fino alle più belle dimore onorarie e di rappresentanza delle vedove muse.»
Queste le intenzioni (in realtà non quelle dell’autore ma del personaggio incaricato di scrivere una cronaca che col romanzo finisce quasi per coincidere). Nei fatti Jean Paul si fa prendere la mano dalle arguzie, dai giochi di parole, dai riferimenti obliqui e ammiccanti ai fatti del tempo ecc. (Costringendo, tra l’altro, il traduttore-curatore a seminare un sacco di note in fondo al libro.) Si perdono per strada sia l’invenzione più brillante sia la storia (un giovane riceve un’eredità ma potrà ottenerla solo dopo aver superato le prove impostegli dal defunto; nel frattempo ritrova il fratello scappato anni prima di casa, si innamora ecc.).
Forse Jean Paul non regge la distanza?
(Perché di cosette interessanti ce ne sono, nel romanzo: riflessioni sulla scrittura e sull’editoria, sui rapporti fra creditori e debitori, il perpetuo contrasto fra i caratteri speculari dei fratelli, scenette umoristiche, personaggi bizzarri ecc.; solo che sono un po’ nascoste dentro una macchina fin troppo sferragliante.)
Dirò la mia sul teatro di Weimar, ma anche su quello non meno modesto del mondo e della vita.
Vi figureranno degnamente l’autentica arguzia e l’autentica religione, benché questa sia attualmente rara come una bestemmia in convento o una barba a corte.
Vitupererò con energia, nei limiti in cui auspicabilmente l’eccellentissimo consiglio mi autorizzerà a espormi, la malvagità, ma senza scendere in dettagli personali o insinuazioni, tanto più che i cuori neri e gli occhi neri, a guardar meglio, sono per lo più soltanto bruni, e che ogni semidio e che ogni mezza bestia hanno dopo tutto in comune l’altra metà, l’umana. E chi dice poi che la frusta debba essere fatta di cuoio più spesso e più duro della pelle su cui s’abbatte?
I recensori più arcigni saranno inteneriti e si tenterà (con le dovute riserve) di commuoverli sino alle lacrime rammentando loro l’aurea gioventù e altre cose perdute, un po’ come si suole invocar la pioggia ricorrendo a certe consunte reliquie.
Del diciassettesimo secolo si parlerà con libertà, del diciottesimo con umanità, sul più recente si rifletterà, in silenzio ma molto liberamente. […]
Simile ai manuali e ai sussidiari, il libro offrirà consigli medici, suggerimenti vari, personaggi, dialoghi e storielle, ma in quantità tale da poter essere allegato come sussidiario a ogni manuale e viceversa, a titolo di ampio compendio e appendice, perché ogni opera espositiva deve potersi molare come uno specchio di cui si voglia fare un occhiale, alla stessa stregua con cui una scheggia di specchio veneziano può essere utilizzata per ricavarne un’autentica lente.
Agli svarioni tipografici non mancheranno dosi d’intelligenza, né briciole di verità agli errori di composizione.
E giorno dopo giorno l’operetta si arrampicherà più in alto, dai circoli di lettura alle biblioteche circolanti, e da queste alle biblioteche municipali, e poi su su fino alle più belle dimore onorarie e di rappresentanza delle vedove muse.»
Queste le intenzioni (in realtà non quelle dell’autore ma del personaggio incaricato di scrivere una cronaca che col romanzo finisce quasi per coincidere). Nei fatti Jean Paul si fa prendere la mano dalle arguzie, dai giochi di parole, dai riferimenti obliqui e ammiccanti ai fatti del tempo ecc. (Costringendo, tra l’altro, il traduttore-curatore a seminare un sacco di note in fondo al libro.) Si perdono per strada sia l’invenzione più brillante sia la storia (un giovane riceve un’eredità ma potrà ottenerla solo dopo aver superato le prove impostegli dal defunto; nel frattempo ritrova il fratello scappato anni prima di casa, si innamora ecc.).
Forse Jean Paul non regge la distanza?
(Perché di cosette interessanti ce ne sono, nel romanzo: riflessioni sulla scrittura e sull’editoria, sui rapporti fra creditori e debitori, il perpetuo contrasto fra i caratteri speculari dei fratelli, scenette umoristiche, personaggi bizzarri ecc.; solo che sono un po’ nascoste dentro una macchina fin troppo sferragliante.)
May 10, 2013
Ein Bildungsroman der schelmischen Art. Erfordert etwas Geduld, da die Sprache nicht die einfachste ist.
November 27, 2021
"(...) vergebens schreibe ich außen ans Glas meinen Charakter mit leserlichen Charakteren: du kannst doch innen, weil sie umgekehrt erscheinen, nichts lesen und sehen als das Umgekehrte. Und so bekommt die ganze Welt fast immer sehr lesbare, aber umgekehrte Schrift zu lesen." (S. 604)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews