Jean de Lafontaine: Ausgewähte Fabeln in Französisch und Deutsch

Abstract

This is a pretty and refined book. Bissinger writes that he picked up a lovely illustrated La Fontaine and wanted to put next to it on his shelf a German translation. He learned that no German translation of La Fontaine's fables was available in German bookstores. So why not publish a bilingual edition with the lovely engravings he found in his treasured book? There lies one of the surprises of this lavish book. It never identifies the art. I seem to find individual pieces that are after Barlow or Hollar, but I am unsure. The publisher's sense of La Fontaine in the introductory comment is, I think, very helpful, just because it is highly interpretative. It does communicate a sense of La Fontaine's life and art. I may use it the next time I teach La Fontaine. Some thirty fables are presented in facing centered French (left) and centered German (right). I count fifteen illustrations, the weakest of which is the first, GA. There is a final comment on the genre of fable. High quality paper, binding, and construction. The German translations are taken from Ernst Dohm's edition published by George Bondi in Berlin in 1913.