V.V. (2) Eulenspiegel (Owlglass), Rachel

[Otto Sell]

Eulenspiegel is the "Wise Fool" who is showing the mirror to authorities and
society. One of his "techniques" is that he can draw the real logic out of
statements, returning and reversing it and applying it back on the original
statement, deconstructing it this way (-and getting the laughter in the
end).  He belongs to the bigger context of the
"world -turned-upside-down"-idea from Carneval, Fasching or Fastnacht in the
middle ages.
DDR-writers Christa and Gerhardt Wolf brought him in contact with the
"Bauernkriege" (formerly termed as "frühbürgerliche Revolution" -Max
Steinmetz, Günter Vogeler- before the Berlin Wall fell) in their 1972 "Till
Eulenspiegel" (Aufbau Verlag, Berlin und Wismar, DDR 1972, Luchterhand
Verlag, Neuwied und -Darmstadt, BRD 1973, Fischer TB, Hamburg 1976). He had
been mentioned on  pamphlets during that early German revolutionary
movement.
Three phases:
1. 1476-1517 - increasing class-war.
2. 1517-1525/26 - Martin Luther
3. until 1535 - Thomas Müntzer, who is the hero of Werner Tübke's monumental
picture (14x123 meters) in Bad Frankenhausen. Whoever visits Nordhausen
should not miss seeing this too:
http://www.panorama-museum.de/index.html

Otto

----- Original Message -----
From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: David Morris <fqmorris at hotmail.com>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 12:00 AM
Subject: Re: V.V. (2) Eulenspiegel (Owlglass), Rachel

Eulenspiegel, Till. The name [...] of a 14th Century villager of Brunswick
who became the subject of a large number of popular tales of mischievous
pranks and crude jests, first printed in 1515. The work was translated into
many languages (first in to English c. 1560) and rapidly achieved wide
popularity. Till Eulenspiegel is the subject of Charles de Coster's
picaresque novel *Ulenspiegel* (1867), of various operas and of a tone poem
by Richard Strauss, *Till Eulenspiegels Lustige Streiche* ('Till
Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks') (1895)

from *Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable* (1999)

best
----------
>From: "David Morris" <fqmorris at hotmail.com>
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: VV (2) - Owlglass/Mirror
>Date: Wed, Oct 25, 2000, 10:14 AM
>

> Just to make sure no one missed this detail in that earlier post.
> Owlglass = Mirror
>
> Any comments from the crowd?
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/65/eu/Eulenspi.html
>
> Eulenspiegel, Till
>
> (tl oi´ln-shp´´gl) (KEY) [Ger.,=owl-mirror, hence English Owlglass], a
north
> German peasant clown of the 14th cent. who was immortalized in chapbooks
> describing his practical jokes on clerics and townsfolk. The first Till
> chapbook (c.1500) was probably in Saxon, but the story it told spread all
> over Europe and North Britain. Till is the hero of a tone poem by Richard
> Strauss and of many novels, poems, and stories. Tyll Ulenspiegel is one of
> the variant spellings. 1
>
> See K. R. H. MacKenzie's adaptation in English, Master Tyll Owlglass
(1890).