Transcriber's Note:

1. Page scan source: http://www.archive.org/details/flowerfruitthorn00jeanuoft

BOHN'S STANDARD LIBRARY.

RICHTER'S

FLOWER, FRUIT, AND THORN PIECES.

FLOWER, FRUIT AND THORN PIECES;

OR, THE

WEDDED LIFE, DEATH, AND MARRIAGE

OF

FIRMIAN STANISLAUS SIEBENKÆS,

PARISH ADVOCATE

IN THE BURGH OF KUHSCHNAPPEL.

(A GENUINE THORN PIECE.)

BY

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER.

Translated from the German

BY

ALEXANDER EWING.

LONDON

GEORGE BELL AND SONS

1897

[Reprinted from Stereotype plates.]

PREFACE

TO THE

SECOND EDITION.

What advantage shall I reap in giving to the world this, my new edition of 'Siebenkæs,' embellished and perfected as it is with all the additions, corrections, and improvements which it has been in my power to make? Can I expect to be any the better for it? People will, I daresay, buy it and read it; but not give much of their time to the study of it, nor be sufficiently detailed and thorough in their criticism of it. The Pythia of Criticism has hitherto been chary of her oracles to me, as the Greek Pythia was to other inquirers; she has chewed up my laurels, instead of crowning me with them, and prophesied little or nothing. The author very distinctly remembers setting to work, for instance, at the second edition of his 'Hesperus,'^[1] with his pruning-saw in his left hand and his oculist's knife in his right, and applying both instruments to the work to an extraordinary extent; it was in vain, however, that he looked for anything like an appreciative notice of it, either in literary or non-literary publications. Similarly, in all his new editions (those of 'Fixlein,' the 'Preparatory School,' and 'Levana,' are proofs and witnesses^[2]), however he may set to work, hanging up new pictures, turning some of the old ones' faces to the wall--marching off some ideas, relieving them by others--making characters conduct themselves better, or worse, or hit upon better, or upon worse, ideas, as the case may be,--the deuce a reviewer takes the least notice of it, or says a word to the world on the subject. But in this way I learn little, am not told where I have done pretty well, or the reverse, and am minus, perhaps, some little bit of praise and encouragement which I may deserve.

This is how the question stands, and several consequences follow as matters of course; the indifferent class of readers consider the author incapable of making any critical emendations, while the enthusiastic class think none are necessary--their common point of agreement being the supposition that he absorbs and emits the whole thing with the same natural, matter of course, ease and absence of effort as the Aphides, the plant-lice, do the honey-dew, which is in such request with the bees, though, unlike the said bees, ho is not very clever at making the wax for it.

Then there are a good many who think every line should be left in the condition in which it first flowed, or burst, spontaneously from its author's fancy--just as it corrections were not themselves spontaneous outbursts as well as the other. Other readers prefer to belong to none of the above factions and consequently belong, to some extent, to all. Were it my object to express myself briefly, I should merely have to do so as follows:--firstly, they say, it would be much better if he simply spoke artlessly out whatever he finds it in his heart to say! and (if this is just what one happens to have done), secondly, how much better would be the effect of that which he finds it in that heart of his to say, and how much it would be improved, were it to be done according to the canons of taste and criticism! I can express these ideas likewise in a more roundabout form, as follows:--If a writer curbs himself too closely, if he thinks less about the strong throb of his heart than about the delicate arterial network and plexus of taste, and breaks up its broad stream into fine, minute, dew-drops of the invisible perspiration of criticism--then they say--"the fact is, that the thicker and more powerful a jet of water is, the higher it shoots, penetrating the atmosphere, and overcoming its resistance; whilst a more delicate jet is dissipated before it gets half as far." But, when the author does just the reverse of the above; when he presses out all his overflowing heart in one gush, and lets the blood-billows flow when and how they will, then the critics point the following moral--doing it, however, in a metaphor other than I should have expected of them--"A work of art is like a paper kite, which rises the higher the more the boy pulls and holds back the string, but falls the moment he lets it go."

We return at last to our book. The most important of the emendations made upon it are, perhaps, the historical; for, since the first edition appeared, I have had the good fortune--partly because I have had an opportunity of visiting and seeing Kuhschnappel itself, the scene of the story (as was some time since stated in Jean Paul's letters), partly from my correspondence with the hero of it himself--of becoming acquainted with family circumstances and occurrences which, probably, I could not have got at in any other way, unless I had sat down and coolly invented them. I have even made prize of some fresh Leibgeberiana, which I am happy to be able now to communicate to the public.

The new edition is also improved by the banishment of all those foreigners of words which occupied places more appropriately to be filled by natives of the country; also by a critical cleansing away of all the genitive final s's of compound words. But really the labour of sweeping and striking out letters and words all through four long volumes can be estimated so highly by nobody, not even by Posterity, as by the sweeper and striker-out himself.

Another of the improvements made in the Second Edition is, that I have placed both the "Flower-pieces" at the end of the second volume^[3] (for in the former edition they came both at the beginning of the first), and that it is no longer the first volume, but, much more appropriately, the