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Then We Take Berlin
Arriving at Berlin, my passport is subjected to more scrutiny than it receives anywhere else. The humble requests of laissez-passer by a European partner are subjected to close reading. The intricate cross-hatching of the paper is checked for tampering, the reflective devices made to reflect light first at this angle and then that. Although the passport is invisibly laden with all my...
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The Peculiar Melancholy of Nations
The Portuguese are very jealous of their saudade and you will frequently be told that the word is untranslatable. Similar claims are made for Czech litost, Turkish hüzün, Ethiopian tezeta, German sensucht, Bosnian sevdah, and, for that matter, the blues. They all express some sort of melancholy at the heart of the national character. It is unsurprising that no satisfactory equivalent can be...
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Text 160
The alienness of a written and a spoken foreign language is different. When hearing an unknown language it is difficult to distinguish one word from the other. When seeing it written, it is difficult to join up the words to make a whole utterance.
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Jean Paul: Sculmeisterlein Wutz
What stories hide within your letters, what adventures within your words, mysterious Schoolmaster Wutz! Pompous and mocked you make your entrance: a rustic pedant with eyes on the greater world, re-imagining the wisdom of ages at the kitchen table. The volumes in your library bind fancied epics, elaborated rumours of ideas and histories—a matchstick model of the soul!
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Jean Paul: Schulmeisterlein Wutz
What wonders hide within your letters, what adventures within your words, mysterious Schoolmaster Wutz! Pompous and mocked you make your entrance: a rustic pedant with eyes on the greater world, re-imagining the wisdom of ages at the kitchen table. The volumes in your library bind fancied epics, elaborated rumours of ideas and histories—a matchstick model of the soul! Since that day when I was...