If you have already been in our shop, you might have noticed two pictures of two boys in comic style (see the picture on the right). Those two guys are famous in Germany. They are inventions of Wilhelm Busch, a German caricaturist, painter, and poet and a pioneer of comic-style books. All Max and Moritz stories are blackly humorous and entirely written in rhymed couplets. They were published in 1865 and ever since then told, respectivley read to children in order to teach them what they shouldn't be like.
This is the first of a series of posts in which I will tell you the stories of Max and Moritz.
Ah, how oft we read or hear of
Boys we almost stand in fear of!
For example, take these stories
Of two youths, named Max and Moritz,
Who, instead of early turning
Their young minds to useful learning,
Often leered with horrid features
At their lessons and their teachers.
Look now at the empty head: he
Is for mischief always ready.
Teasing creatures - climbing fences,
Stealing apples, pears, and quinces,
Is, of course, a deal more pleasant,
And far easier for the present,
Than to sit in schools or churches,
Fixed like roosters on their perches
But O dear, O dear, O deary,
When the end comes sad and dreary !
'Tis a dreadful thing to tell
That on Max and Moritz fell !
All they did this book rehearses,
Both in pictures and in verses.
Translated from the German original by Robert Godwin-Jones, Dept. of Foreign Languages, Virginia Commonwealth Univ.
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