Leon Battista Alberti Fabeln
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Authors
Alberti, Leon Battista
Münchhausen, Barbara von
Nardini, Bruno
Issue Date
1980
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Type
Book, Whole
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Abstract
Bodemann #551.1 is the Italian original for this German translation. Bodemann also mentions this German work there, which uses the work of the original visual artist. Curiously, the other three mentions of Alberti in Bodemann (#221, #296, and #347) are all of him as source for or element in a collection. Alberti was apparently something of a broad if not universal genius born in Genoa in 1404. Here are 100 of his fables. In many of them, objects like lanterns and arrows and flutes do the talking. I think it hard to sustain such fables fashioned around inanimate objects. At any rate, my attention flags here after reading about a third of them. Let me mention some typical and some unusual pieces I have seen so far. The ball and the anvil (21) are ready to be changed into each other's forms (or at least different forms) when they suddenly think better of it. The lily refuses to yield to the flooding river's rush: it would rather die than bow its head (22). The footless earthworm--who looks the same at the front and back--asks the many-legged woodlouse for a few feet. Answer: I'll give you two feet, but you have to give me in trade one of your heads (28). This kind of joke-fable may work best for Alberti. Let me mention two other examples. In one, the shipwrecked trader sues the sea for his losses. The sea's answer: Come down and take back everything I took from you (31). In Der Narr und der Bernstein (62), a fool asks the amber through what hole the worm got into it. The amber in response asks the fool through what hole his folly got into him. Among those fables that make me stop and think is Der Sarkophag (35). Typical of Alberti's unusual thought patterns might be Das Buch und die Mäuse (37). Library mice start eating a noble book on how to make paper. This book, outraged, calls on them to stop. If he is lost, so is papermaking! But his voice is lost as the mice eat up the book. Der Jagdhund (41) is unusually pointed and apt: the faithful hunting dog is chained up, while bastard dogs run around free. This is a pretty edition; it reminds one of the Leonardo edition on which Nardini and Mazza also collaborated: Die Fabeln des Leonardo da Vinci (Arena-Verlag, 1973). I had found a copy of this Alberti book six years earlier but had not yet read or catalogued it. Now I see I got it from the same firm in a different city!
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Publisher
Verlag Urachhaus Johannes M. Mayer BmbH
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DOI
Identifier
3896 (Access ID)