The Tale of Gockel, Hinkel & Gackeliah [antikvár]

CLEMENS BRENTANO was born in 1778, in Ehrenbreitstein on the Rhine, and died in 1842, in the small Germán town of Aschaffenburg. Although he is very little known in other parts of the world, in German-speaking countries his name is closely linked, and the best of his works ranks, with the greatest exponents of romanticism. His sister Bettina was a recognized poet in her own right. Together with her husband, Áchim von Arnim, Brentano brought out the monumental collection of Germán folk poetry known as The Youth's Magic Horn} which is the most ambitious, and except for his own poems and The Tale of Gockely Hinkel and Gackeliah> the most widely known of all his works. Brentano was deeply religious and always concerned, in a personal, sometimes intensely painful way, with the problem of good and evil. At the opposite pole, but equally important in his creative life, were his unbridled inventiveness and his halfserious, half-humorous preoccupation with language. The result was elaborate fancy heightened by intricate verbal playfulness. These two opposing elements were not always easily reconciled. In fact, for the major part of his life, he took a severe, condemning view of the lighter, what he considered trivial and even sinful, sides of his talent. He ruthlessly suppressed them, and in so doing produced works which, while they may be commendable for their high morál earnestness, are of little interest and certainly no appeal to readers today. But there were times when he allowed his light side and his seriousness to blend. It was then he gave us his greatest poems and fairy tales, of which Gockely Hinkel and Gackeliah is the best beloved. It is the most sustained and the most grandly fanciful originál fairy tale I know of. Certainly all of Brentano's diversified powers combined here to create its unique fascination