Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
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Authors
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim
Issue Date
1979
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Abstract
Here is a lovely addition to the collection, found at a much better price than I had been ready to pay. Lessing is always witty. Weissenborn is up to the task of rendering him well with the fourteen illustrations here. "Die Erscheinung" makes for an excellent introduction to Lessing's prose fables. "Okay, I told you a fable-like story; do you want to accept it or not?" (Something like: "You cannot accuse me both of being poetic in this story and prosaic in my fables!") Many of his fables involve an extra turn of the screw. The snake king is about to devour one of the frogs. "I did not want a snake king." "All the more reason to have to devour you!" The blind hen finds few grains, but the seeing hen following her profits from her turning up the heap. Lessing adds: the German makes literary research and the smart Frenchman exploits it. Among Weissenborn's best figures here, I think, are the frog-devouring snake; the thornbush with his spiky hair; the swine challenging whether the oak produced the acorns for the swine; and the miser lamenting not so much that he lost his treasure but that another acquired it! On the colophon page at the end, an ass reads a book, no doubt a book of fables. 48 pages. Boxed. 5½" x 9¼".
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The Acorn Press
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Identifier
13155 (Access ID)