Aus Dem Leben Eines Taugenichts: Novelle
1826
Aus Dem Leben Eines Taugenichts: Novelle
Joseph, Freiherr von Eichendorff
1826
The good-for-nothing son of a miller has no interest in honest work. When his father despairs of him, the young man takes up his violin and walks out into the world, following nothing but the call of the open road and his own restless heart. Through enchanted forests and moonlit encounters with two mysterious noblewomen traveling to Vienna, through fortune and famine, thieves and strange good luck, he drifts through life as if dreamed into being. Eichendorff's 1826 masterpiece pulses with the lyrical melancholy and fierce joy of German Romanticism - a prose poem to wanderlust, to youth unburdened by consequence, to the peculiar freedom of having nothing and desiring everything. It is the novel that gave the German language its word for wanderlust, and it remains the most tender portrait of someone who simply cannot stay still.
Editions
X-Ray
“And the world suddenly appeared to me as such an awfully large place, with I so totally alone in it that I could have cried from the bottom of my heart.””
— Joseph, Freiherr von Eichendorff
“Everybody is so happy, and no one has a thought for you. And this is what happens to me everywhere and always. Everyone has marked out his own little spot on the Earth, his warm stove, his cup of coffee, his wife, his glass of wine in the evening, and is quite content with that;[...]I don't feel at ease anywhere. It is as if I always arrive a second too late, as if all the world had utterly failed to take me into account.””
— Joseph, Freiherr von Eichendorff
“Mir ist’s nirgends recht. Es ist, als wäre ich überall eben zu spät gekommen, als hätte die ganze Welt gar nicht auf mich gerechnet.””
— Joseph, Freiherr von Eichendorff
“At last the gardener arrived, mumbling something about rascals and country bumpkins, and took me out into the park, giving me a lengthy lecture as he did so. I was instructed to be sober and industrious, and not to wander about aimlessly or waste my time in unproductive activities: if I heeded this counsel, he said, I might in time achieve something. He gave me much other useful and well-phrased advice too, but I have since forgotten almost all of it.””
— Joseph, Freiherr von Eichendorff
“Das tut gar nichts... ich möchte gar nicht so reisen: Pferde und Kaffee und frischüberzogene Betten und Nachtmützen und Stiefelknecht vorausbestellt. Das ist just das Schönste, wenn wir frühmorgens heraustreten, und die Zugvögel hoch über uns fortziehn, dass wir gar nicht wissen, welcher Schornstein heut für uns raucht, und gar nicht voraussehen, was uns bis zum Abend noch für ein besonderes Glück begegnen kann.””
— Joseph, Freiherr von Eichendorff
