Max and Maurice E-Book

Wilhelm Busch

• Herausgeber: Paperless
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

"Max and Moritz (A Story of Seven Boyish Pranks)" (original: "Max und Moritz - Eine Bubengeschichte in sieben Streichen") is a German language illustrated story in verse. This highly inventive, blackly humorous tale, told entirely in rhymed couplets, was written and illustrated by Wilhelm Busch and published in 1865. It is among the early works of Busch, nevertheless it already features many substantial, effectually aesthetic and formal regularities, procedures and basic patterns of Busch's later works. Many familiar with comic strip history consider it to have been the direct inspiration for the "Katzenjammer Kids" and "Quick & Flupke". The German title satirizes the German custom of giving a subtitle to the name of dramas in the form of "Ein Drama in ... Akten" ("A Drama of ... acts"), which became dictums in colloquial usage for any event with an unpleasant or dramatic course, e.g. "Bundespräsidentenwahl - Drama in drei Akten" ("Federal presidential Elections - Drama in Three Acts").

Leseprobe

Max and Maurice

A Juvenile History in Seven Tricks

Preface.

Ah, how oft we read or hear ofBoys we almost stand in fear of!For example, take these storiesOf two youths, named Max and Maurice,

Who, instead of early turningTheir young minds to useful learning,Often leered with horrid featuresAt their lessons and their teachers.Look now at the empty head: heIs 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 tellThat on Max and Maurice fell!All they did this book rehearses,Both in pictures and in verses.

Trick First.

To most people who have leisureRaising poultry gives great pleasureFirst, because the eggs they lay usFor the care we take repay us;Secondly, that now and thenWe can dine on roasted hen;Thirdly, of the hen's and goose'sFeathers men make various uses.Some folks like to rest their headsIn the night on feather beds.

One of these was Widow Tibbets,Whom the cut you see exhibits.

Hens were hers in number three,And a cock of majesty.Max and Maurice took a view;Fell to thinking what to do.One, two, three! as soon as said,They have sliced a loaf of bread,

Cut each piece again in four,Each a finger thick, no more.These to two cross-threads they tie,Like a letter X they lieIn the widow's yard, with careStretched by those two rascals there.

Scarce the cock had seen the sight,When he up and crew with might:Cock-a-doodle-doodle-doo;—Tack, tack, tack, the trio flew.

Cock and hens, like fowls unfed,Gobbled each a piece of bread;

But they found, on taking thought,Each of them was badly caught.

Every way they pull and twitch,This strange cat's-cradle to unhitch;

Up into the air they fly,Jiminee, O Jimini!

On a tree behold them dangling,In the agony of strangling!And their necks grow long and longer,And their groans grow strong and stronger.

Each lays quickly one egg more,Then they cross to th' other shore.