Der Struwwelpeter

This morning I found Tadzio in his room trying to wedge a key into the electrical socket. Observing him, I reflected on how I used to do the same thing as a child, and how scary and exciting the electrical shock feels when it runs up your fingers. I hastily interrupted his work and we had a long talk about how nous ne jouons pas avec l'électricité! In the end we hugged and he agreed not to play with the electrical socket, and asked if it was okay if he jammed the key into the phone outlet instead?

All of this made me think of Der Struwwelpeter, the famous book by the German psychologist Heinrich Hoffman. Various people have written about this book over the years and in 2006 it was reinterpreted and illustrated as Struwwelpeter and Other Disturbing Tales for Human Beings. Nothing is quite as terrorizing as the original stories, however, where mischievous actions have disastrous consequences.

The title story, Struwwelpeter, describes a boy who does not groom himself properly and is consequently unpopular. In "The Very Sad Story of the Matches" a girl plays with matches and burns to death. In "The Story of Thumb-Sucker", a mother warns her son not to suck his thumbs. However, when she goes out of the house he resumes his thumb sucking, until a roving tailor appears and cuts off his thumbs with giant scissors. The Story of Soup-Kaspar begins as Kaspar, a healthy, strong boy, proclaims that he will no longer eat his soup. Over the next five days he wastes away and dies.

My own personal favorite is "The Story of Flying Robert." In the story, a boy goes outside during a storm. The wind catches his umbrella and sends him to places unknown, and presumably to his doom.

I'm not sure how Tadzio would feel about this book. He tends to be a worrier, like his parents.

evocations of childhood

It has taken me a while to pick up my copy of Le Grand Meaulnes. The story of the book is simple and myth-like, set in the bleak Sologne, in central France, around the turn of the last century. I'm glad I finally got around to it. It's a book that casts a spell, even in the late days of summer. It is a powerful evocation of childhood, particularly the magical nature of some of our experiences in that period. I've often thought that these experiences color our entire lives with a sweet feeling of nostalgia. Here is a passage:

The whole morning is mine, to explore the outskirts of the wood, the coolest, most hidden places thereabouts, while my big brother is on a journey of discovery. It is like a dried-up riverbed. I am walking beneath the low branches of trees that I do not know by name; they must be elms...

Sometimes, for a few steps, my feet are resting on a bank of fine sand. And in the silence, I can hear a bird; I think it's a nightingale, but I must be wrong because they only sing in the evenings... This bird relentlessly repeating the same phrase; voice of the morning, a recital in the shade, a delicious invitation to a journey between the elms. Invisible and obstinate, it seems to be accompanying me through the leaves.

For the first time, I too am on the road to adventure... I am looking for the passage that they write about in books, the one with the entrance that the prince, weary from travelling, cannot find. This is the one you find at the remotest hour of morning, long after you have forgotten that eleven o'clock is coming, or midday. And suddenly, as you part the branches in the dense undergrowth, with that hesitant movement of the hands, held unevenly at face height, you see something like a long, dark avenue leading to a tiny circle of light...

image found here