Wednesday, January 30, 2008

German literature

Nerdy awesomeness: Tonight I went to Borders and bought Im Westen nichts Neues (you may know it as All Quiet on the Western Front), a book of poems by Goethe, and a big new German-English dictionary (time to suck up and start learning the reformed spelling).

I'm going to give All Quiet on the Western Front the old college try, although I really don't think my language skills are up to it...I'll probably be able to follow the plot, but you might not want to question me too deeply on how the narrator feels about events.

The Goethe book has German on the left side and English on the right - I actually wish it didn't have the English, because it's so tempting to look over at it. Even though I don't understand every word (ok, sometimes I don't understand most of the words), it's fun to read the poems and follow his rhyme and meter. I already know two of them - I had to memorize "Der Erlkönig" in 11th grade and I sang a Schubert setting of "Heidenröslein" in college.

(Bonus video: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing "Der Erlkönig." Awesome. I did *not* sing this in college.)

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Is that a snake in your purse? Or possibly green pinecones? Did you cut the very long braid off someone with green hair?

towwas said...

It's my dorky new hat. I got it in Denver. It's kind of awesome, in a knit-hippie-ski-hat kind of way.

Annie said...

Erlkönig rocks, esp. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau!!!!

Annie said...

Youtube rocks for bringing us the video of DFD singing Schubert!!!!