Claire Gebben

In my research this last couple of days, I came across an article written in the Atlantic Monthly magazine from 1869 about Walter Mitchell’s travels in Germany and his growing appreciation for old German songs. He wrote:

“You think, don’t you, that the German is harsh? And you have an idea that the Italian is musical … But did you ever hear German gentlemen or ladies conversing, or Neapolitan fishwomen squabbling? There is another side of the case to be heard, may it please your Honor.

The German language flows into rhythmic and rhyming order without effort. Our English is stiff and rigid, with its inevitable couplets, in comparison.

… German verse twists its rhymes easily this way and that, as a child bends its pliant little body and limbs. There is many and many a song I know of which has a musical subtlety of composition perfectly inimitable, and no more to be translated than a pun out of English into French.

You thought German poetry was mystical and in the clouds? … No more than French cookery is all pepper and mustard. … German prose is mystical when it treats of mystical things, but the German language has a greater power of precise statement than our own. The very obscurity of German thought arises out of the fine capacity of German words for hair-splitting definitions.

Here’s a drinking song:

Here I come out of the tavern all right.
Street, thou presentest a wonderful sight;
Right hand and left hand, now this side, now that,
Street, thou ‘rt in liquor, — I see it, that’s flat!

What a squint countenance, moon, hast thou got;
One eye he opens and one keeps he shut;
Clearly I see it, moon, thou must be mellow:
Shame on thee, shame on thee, jolly old fellow.

There go the lamp-posts, which used to stand still,
Spinning around like the wheel of a mill,
Dancing and prancing to left and to right;
Seems to me everything’s tipsy tonight.

All topsy-turvy, both little and great;
Shall I go on and endanger my pate?
That were presuming. No, no, it is plain,
Better go back in the tavern again.

I’m hoping as I learn more German, I’ll understand the lyrics to this song I found on Youtube. I’m really starting to like this German folk music. It’s growing on me.

Who could imagine that asparagus would vary from country to country?

When I traveled to Germany in 1988, it was springtime. The asparagus was just coming up and ready for harvest. Der Spargel, they called it when I pointed rudely and asked what the vegetable was. At first, I thought the pale yellowish-white spears were something new. Then it dawned on me: Asparagus.

“Warum ist es nicht grün? Why isn’t it green?”

Grün?! My relatives were horrified. “Nein, nein.” Apparently asparagus is only green if you grow it the wrong way, exposed to the sun. When grown properly, der Spargel is kept hidden under the dirt. As it pokes up its spears, you keep piling dirt over it, never letting the clorophyll see the sunlight. When harvested, your asparagus will be pale as a ghost, the best way to eat it.

Maybe you’ve heard of white asparagus, but I never had. Just yesterday, though, in the spirit of globalization, I saw some for sale at the grocery store.