Wednesday, July 20, 2016

 

Fanfare

Dear Mike,

I thought you might enjoy this anecdote. It's from Michele Feo's Persone: Da Nausicaa a Adriano Soffri (Florence, Il Grandevetro, 2012), vol. 2, p.556. He cites his source as Schmidt's Die Faszination lateinischer Verskunst. Rede anläßlich des 65. Geburtstags von Franco Munari gehalten am 8.2.1985, Berlin 1985, p.1. Unfortunately neither I nor UC Berkeley own that volume.
Raccontò una volta Paul Gerhard Schmidt la storia di un filologo tedesco dell'età di Goethe, geniale e bizzarro, Karl Reisig, che, dopo essersi spremuto il cervello per dare un senso a un passo corrotto di autore classico, quando finalmente trovò la soluzione, corse a prendere la tromba, aprì la finestra dello studio e si diede a suonare lo strumento per annunciare l'evento ai concittadini.

Paul Gerhard Schmidt once told the tale of a brilliant and eccentric German philologist from the time of Goethe, Karl Reisig, who, having wracked his brains to make sense of a corrupt passage in a classical author, when he finally arrived at the solution, rushed to get his trumpet, opened the window of his study, and began to play the instrument to announce the event to his neighbors.
As ever,

Ian [Jackson]



Cf. Hermann Paldamus, Narratio de Carolo Reisigio Thuringo (Greifswald: C.A. Koch, 1839), p. 23:
Audivique ipsum quum diceret Ienae sibi morem fuisse, ubi per noctem litteris vacans aliquid sibi invenisse visus esset, id ut fenestra aperta buccinae clangore vicinis quasi indicaret.
Ienae = at Jena, where Reisig (1792-1829) taught.



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