Reading acts as a ready transport vehicle and certainly influences our perception of time. In my case, it is often a question of which century I happen to land in. Recently, I have been straddling 18th and 19th-century stages. Starts and stops mark memories with tougher and longer tasks leaving a stronger trace and more in their wake. More than a month has elapsed since I began reading cover to cover Vom Kriege - Carl von Clausewitz. Diving in, it felt like as logical a moment as any to tackle an ambitious 19th century manual on military strategy (Ein Warum nicht Moment). The German side of the text was likely the most challenging that I have read so far. Nonetheless, I felt in touch with the flow of writing and was very appreciative of how openly and clearly Clausewitz articulated his thoughts. The theatre of war is a heck of a theatre. I could see how modern military students might find this work as a bear though, especially if they were forced to tackle it in the normal compressed timeframe of an academic calendar. That I am not tested on the content is also helpful giving me the luxury to map and link my understanding how I see fit. The dual-language focus also had the usual benefits of facilitating awareness and allowing for reflection at important junctures. Intertwined with the many other lessons learned, Clausewitz was strongly influenced by Napolean and Friedrich der Große and the text stimulated quite a bit of interest in the related historical era in which they lived. What it lacked was equally tantalizing. So much focus on strategy really gives me the urge to find equivalent material on tactics to provide a sort of counterbalance.
I'll share a few quotes from the book that I particularly enjoyed:
/* Clausewitz - On War */
DE - Das bloße Motiv der Wahrheit ist in dem Menschen nur äußerst schwach, und darum immer ein großer Unterschied zwischen dem Erkennen und Wollen, zwischen dem Wissen und Können.
EN - Truth in itself is rarely sufficient to make men act. Hence the step is always long from cognition to volition, from knowledge to ability.
DE - Neid, Eifersucht, Besorgnis, auch wohl hin und wieder Edelmut sind die natürlichen Fürsprecher des Unglücklichen, sie werden ihm auf der einen Seite Freunde erwecken, auf der andern das Bündnis seiner Feinde schwächen und trennen.
EN - Envy, jealousy, anxiety, and sometimes perhaps even generosity are the natural advocates of the unsuccessful. They will win new friends for him as well as weaken and divide his enemies. Time, then, is less likely to bring favor to the victor than to the vanquished.
--No book is complete without a touch of humour
DE - August 1796 in der rauhen Alb gegen Moreau lieferte, bloß in der Absicht, sich den Rückzug zu erleichtern, wiewohl wir gern gestehen, daß wir das Räsonnement des berühmten Feldherrn und Autors hier nie ganz verstanden haben.
EN - On 11 August 1796 Archduke Charles fought Moreau in the Rauhe Alp for no other reason than to facilitate his own retreat. We must confess, however, that in this instance we have never entirely understood the reasoning of the famous general and writer.
Der Schimmelreiter
Last week, I also read Der Schimmelreiter von Theodor Storm. Marshland, the ineluctable force of nature, superstition, spectral white. This was a short and much more accessible novel that left a good impression on me after reading it. While On War needs the right audience and interest and thus it might not be the best book for 'general language learning', the reverse is true of The Rider on the White Horse. Despite its status as a 19th-century work, it is very approachable. I appreciated the writing style and was inclined to the backdrop and setting from the outset.
Database Updates
I updated the database records that I am housing informally to include both new books. Probably the most interesting comparison from limited analysis is that Clausewitz used on average notably longer sentences than Mann (a bit surprising, but I think this was a notable part of what made the book harder to wade through, sometimes feeling as relentless as the wars he was describing) but less than half the distinct words (not totally surprising given Mann's penchant for detail and vocab compared with the disdain that Clausewitz often expressed against pedantic detail). They are presented in the order I read them below and from my perspective, the native Schimmelreiter, though offering a very different character, looks about as approachable as Erikson's Malazan translated selection. At least the jump from one to another might not be too rough.
As a side note, I have started using LF-Aligner for making my parallel texts and it has performed admirably as a console app on my local Windows 10 operating system.