Wilhelm Hauff - everything that he said or did was held to be excellent

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Theodor Storm referred to a novel and writer I'd never heard of, Wilhelm Hauff. Poor Hauff, dead at the age of 25, author of Lichtenstein, the first Scott-style historical novel in German (unEnglished since 1839, apparently).

Hauff also wrote children's stories and fairy tales (he was employed as tutor for a Baron's children). That's why, when on a whim I typed Hauff's name into the library computer, I found myself directed to the Juvenile section. Honestly, I was expecting to find nothing. Instead, I found Little Long-Nose:

What's the story? A youngster is kidnapped by a witch and turned into a squirrel When the witch lets him go, she lets him be human but, unfortunately, gives him a bizarrely squat frame, big head, and long nose; fortunately, she has trained him to be a gourmet chef. Adventures ensue. A number of the illustrations are food or kitchen related:



The illustrations in this little Candlewick Press edition are by Laura Stoddart. They're fantastic. I love that overhead view of the park. There's an earlier translation called Dwarf Long-Nose with illustrations by Maurice Sendak, but I don't see how it could be better than this. Strongly recommended to Lemony Snicketers, or kids who have become obsessed with cooking shows.

What else did I find? A genuinely funny story called The Young Foreigner, in which an orangutan is trained to speak, and dance, and go to parties. He becomes very popular. The lesson is, don't act like an ape just because someone else is, because the someone else might, in fact, be an ape, and then you would feel stupid:

"He had read nothing, studied nothing, and the priest would often shake his head over the young man's extradordinary ignorance. And yet everything that he said or did was held to be excellent, for he was brazen enough always to insist that he was right, and the end of all his remarks was, 'I know better.'" (p. 79)

I found this story in a 1924 translation by Christopher Morley, accompanied by a not quite as good Alfred de Musset fable, and surrounded by this distracting "German" (note the steins) border on every page:



There was a third tale, The Adventures of Little Mouk. It was pretty good, too, a playful Arabian Nights variation. The mysterious ways that books persist; the mysterious things one finds in libraries.

Another Storm tale - A Quiet Musician - Instead of the keys, I was reaching for his ghostly hands

I guess the title of Theodor Storm's A Quiet Musician (1875) is not exactly a paradox. But a musician should not be too quiet. The center of this story is an episode of stage fright:

"My fingers felt paralyzed all of a sudden, but attempted to play a few more bars. Then a helpless sense of indifference overwhlemed me and I was at that moment transported to another time and place far in the past. All at once I felt that the piano stood in its old place in my parents' living-room, and that beside me stood my father. Instead of the keys, I was reaching for his ghostly hand." (p. 66)

The pianist finds himself ("without knowing why") seated on a rock by the stream; the stream lulls him towards sleep, but a fragment of a Schubert lieder, apparently entirely imaginary, returns him to the world. There must be some German Novellen that do not have at least one uncanny scene. This is very mild stuff compared to E. T. A. Hoffmann, but still, there it is.

Meine Frau has a couple of German collections of Storm, one quite thick, and neither contains this story. Is this minor Storm, not one of the good ones? The English translator likes it well enough, obviously, and so do I. It does seem slight relative to Immensee. But if lesser Storm is as good as A Quiet Musician, I'm going to read everything I can find by him.

Here's a funny thing. The narrator of this story becomes acquainted with the musician because they frequent the same bookstore. They share an enthusiasm for Hauff's Lichtenstein; the musician says "I find I can read it over and over again." Hauff's Lichtenstein, you don't say. It's the first historical novel in German, it turns out, published in 1826. You can visit the Lichtenstein Castle and see a bust of Hauff. There is also a collection of arms and armor, and a Fog Cave. The thing one learns.