Heinrich Pestalozzi: Fabeln

Abstract

This nice publication was a Christmas gift of Huber's publishing house and bookshop for Christmas, 1979. I count 42 fables on 9-25. These are followed by an essay by Walter Muschg: Der Schriftsteller Pestalozzi (29-54). The first fable here has the proud mushroom proclaim to the pasture (Gras) that he sprouts up in a moment, while the pasture needs a whole summer. The pasture answers It is true that I need a summer before I am worth something, while your unworthiness grows up a hundred times and a hundred times passes away. Says the glass to the silver beaker: Since I was discovered, people drink no longer out of you but rather out of me. The beaker answers I am happy to let you say so, for from my restful vantage point I see daily how fragile you are and how easily people throw you away. A dwarf wanted to appear tall and so he sat on the tallest horse he could find. A human being encountered him and mistook him for a child, saying You must have no father, since someone put you on a tall horse. Come, let me help you down before you fall to your death. The shore asks the wave why the latter harms him, and the wave answers that the force of the current throws him to destruction against the shore. These examples suggest a distinctive antagonistic one-upping pattern in Pestalozzi's fables.