Gaudeamus! Humorous Poems
Late 19th-century German humor at its most disarming: poems that treat geological epochs like society gossip and prehistoric creatures like characters in a comic opera. Von Scheffel writes with a twinkling eye, letting ancient granite lament its fallen dignity and ichthyosaurs roast the mammals who forgot them. The Tazzelworm - that impossible, invented beast - gets a full dramatic monologue. This is learned silliness, the kind where a man who knows his paleontology can't resist turning it into absurdist theater. The humor is gentle, affectionate, entirely without bite. No cynicism here, just the pure pleasure of a clever Victorian gentleman making rock jokes. It feels like discovering a dusty volume of inside jokes from another century, and finding they still land.
