FIRST MAN OF LETTERS: And, above all, you now understand why he is standing there like that. He was once one of these choirboys.14 The last time we sat together in Kameke’s garden, he described it to me for hours on end, how in snow and rain they waited, crammed close together on the street, until a messenger brought word that in some house or another singing was required. How they then all crowded into the room and, perched one on top of the other, sang an aria or motet and expressed their happiness when someone offered them a glass of wine or coffee and cake.
Din of falling chairs, disgruntled shouting:
I beg your pardon, but the impertinence, my good man!
PASTOR GRUNELIUS: Distinguished Scholar, you don’t seem very steady on your feet today.
FIRST MAN OF LETTERS: Maybe he’s had one too many.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: Keep your insinuations to yourself, esteemed colleague. The ascent to our local river Spree Olympus is icy, as you no doubt have noticed.
MORITZ: If you mean by that that the steps to the Café Kranzler are a little slippery, then you’re right. But your speech is sufficiently florid.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: My speech is nothing in comparison with the blooming flower I bear.
PASTOR GRUNELIUS (in a low voice): I can’t find much on him that’s blossoming besides his nose.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: So then guess, gentlemen, how many books I have with me.
FIRST MAN OF LETTERS: Your collected poems, I suspect — I have yet to see you without them.
PASTOR GRUNELIUS: That would not yet even make one.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: Thirty-eight books, venerable sirs.
PASTOR GRUNELIUS: You are not to be taken seriously.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: Wager? For a bottle of champagne?
FIRST MAN OF LETTERS: Stop talking nonsense.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: Then, please, see for yourself.
We hear a progressively louder “Ah, ah, ah” from all parties. The titles can be altered at will and should be divided among the various speakers in turn:
Almanac of German Muses, Almanac for Noble Souls, Calendar of the Muses and the Graces, Genealogy of the Braunschweig-Lüneburg Electorate, Almanac for Health Fanatics, Church and Heresies Almanac, Handbook of Social Amusements, Almanac for Children and Youth, Almanac for the Promotion of Domestic Happiness.
PASTOR GRUNELIUS: Almanac for the Promotion of Domestic Happiness. Yes, we were lacking that. Since nine tenths of all domestic distress derives from just this damned reading of Almanacs — by way of which every wench fancies herself a Chloe or even an Aspasia.
MORITZ: Yes, that is an accursed collection you have put together. And a poor schoolteacher such as myself wonders how he could rival so much erudition. — I reproach these calendars with their rhymes, anecdotes, songs, excursions, and dances, little essays and notices, geographical maps and small copperplate engravings and costumes for diverting even the educated public from serious works.
PASTOR GRUNELIUS: That’s exactly it, Deputy Headmaster. Everything is fragment, shadow, and sampler. I can see the day coming when they will even trivialize the Holy Scriptures, and fill the Old Testament with cartoons of the Patriarchs.
MORITZ: We are caught in the middle. The better public are devoted to dalliances, amorous verses, maudlin novels; and the simpler folk — insofar as they read — are in the clutches of the colporteurs who bring robber and ghost stories directly to their house by the sheet. In this you have it better, Pastor: Heaven and Hell have something to say to every class of society.
PASTOR GRUNELIUS: If you think that my sermons are a match for those fashionable new tales of chivalry, then you are mistaken. One would have to be an Abraham a Santa Clara to hold people’s attention.15 And it just gets worse from one Mass to the next.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: One moment, gentlemen. That must be Unger there, sitting right behind you. He surely has the most recent catalog for the book fair, so we’ll see right away. — One moment, please, my esteemed Unger.
UNGER: Oh, it’s you, my dear man. To be honest, had I known, I would have had my coffee elsewhere. You are right to remind me. But ask all of my authors, ask Moritz, I can’t print anything until I resolve the question of the new typeset with my colleague Didot in Paris.16
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: But I beg of you, I will not press you. It’s not at all about that. Set aside your Berlin Monthly17 for a moment, reach in your pocket and pull out the new book fair catalog. — You see, my gentlemen, we’ve already got it.
PASTOR GRUNELIUS: Gentlemen, one moment’s peace! Listen to this! You will blush for shame. Have you ever heard of the Widtmann Press in Prague? Neither have I. And wrongly so, gentlemen, wrongly so. To this publishing house we will soon owe the masterpiece of the following title: “The Little Jewish Grandmother, or, The Terrifying Specter of the Woman in the Black Robe.”18 But Mr. Widtmann has competition in Prague. What do you say to: “The Night Watchman, or, the Ghost Encampment at Saaz in Bohemia. A Horrifying Tale from the Age of Gruesome Sorcery.”19—Or listen to this — no, you won’t believe it possible, my esteemed Deputy Headmaster. Step over here and take a look: Adelmar von Perlstein, the Knight of the Golden Key; or, The Twelve Sleeping Maidens, Protectors of the Enchanting Young Man. Knight’s Tales and Ghost Stories from the Middle Ages as Companion to Knight Edulf von Quarzfeld.,20
FIRST MAN OF LETTERS: Clearly, Mr. Waldner, who wrote that, need not fear any competition from our good Mr. Vulpius.
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: And what dross is he coming out with this time? He will certainly not fail to weigh in.
PASTOR GRUNELIUS: But, of course. Here it is: “Rinaldo Rinaldini, Robber Captain.”21 By the way, this Vulpius …
MORITZ: Just don’t tell me that he is the future brother-in-law of Mr. von Goethe. First of all, we’re not that far along. Second, I hold the composition of robber stories to be a thoroughly honest profession. Yes, Pastor, you will contradict me. But I must tell you, these are all completely harmless things in comparison to that worthless trash put out by this Mr. Spieß, for example, who decks his miserable products in all manner of prettifying or cloying trappings.22
UNGER: Yes, our Spieß is edifying: in him you lost a colleague,
Though Spieß is an historical figure, his name also connotes “one who is narrow-minded, pigheaded, petit-bourgeois,” and this sense plays throughout the ensuing dialogue. [Trans.]
Pastor. Sometimes one would really sooner believe one was reading a high-minded book of meditations from 1650. But in the end there’s really only one of these tearful domestic stories behind it all. I haven’t actually read any of them. The title of his last was enough for me … What was that thing called again?
SECOND MAN OF LETTERS: The Injustice of Humankind, if I’m not mistaken. The Injustice of Humankind or the Journey through Dens of Woe and Chambers of Misery.23 In truth, a disgusting mess.
MORITZ: Allow me to return to this once more, gentlemen. What strikes me as reprehensible is the hypocrisy with which such scribblers, with their comfortable earnings, behave as though their sole concern were the enlightenment of the human race, civic-mindedness, and the promotion of propriety. Of course, these things have already penetrated into the schools. Look here, please! Less than three hours ago, during a Greek lesson, I caught a rascal with this book under the bench.
UNGER: No, really, Deputy Headmaster, let me see! I’ve never read a word of this Spieß.—Biographies—No, listen to this: Biographies of the Insane.24