Dave's log, (German and French)

[cjareck]

I've got Polish edition of Peter Kilduff's biography. This one seems to be very good. Recently in Poland Alicja Sułkowska wrote a book about Manfred von Richthofen. I was a consultant there

[DaveAgain]

18. second reading of Dienstanweisung für einen Unterteufel by CS Lewis, 239 pages. Running total: 239 + 2,804 = 3,043 pages

I read each chapter first in English, and then read and listened to the same chapter in German.

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Some relevant links I've used are:
Une vie, une oeuvre: CS Lewis (french)
Screwtape quotes. One nugget from this page was that Mr Lewis had a Latin penpal

Five years after The Screwtape Letters appeared, it was read in translation by an Italian monk called Don Giovanni Calabria, who sensed a peculiar talent for promoting Church reunion. He wrote a Latin letter of appreciation and a correspondence followed – all in Latin – which lasted for years. (On a 1947 photograph of Lewis the Italian Screwtape, or Lettere di Berlicche, can be seen to lie on his desk in the foreground; this photo was used as a cover illustration for Walter Hoooper’s C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide, 1994.) Lewis’s letters to Calabria were first published in 1989 with parallel English translation by Martin Moynihan and are now contained in Lewis’s Collected Letters, vols. II and III. In both cases Calabria’s surviving letters to Lewis were included. A much fuller Italian edition was published in 1995 as Una gioia insolita: Lettere tra un prete cattolico e un laico anglicano.

[MorkTheFiddle]

[and curse you Red Baron,

Well, if Manfred von Richthofen is mentioned, he also wrote a book "Der Rote Kampfflieger", that was the first book I read in German I'm pretty sure that there is also an English edition. Please only make sure that they are the same since the original book from 1917 differs from the one from the thirties

"Curse you, Red Baron" is a reference to the American cartoon series called "Peanuts." In it the beagle dog Snoopy fantasizes he is in a dogfight with Von Richthofen. Snoopy always loses, of course, and he often ends up shaking his fist at the sky and crying out, "Curse you, Red Baron." No idea whether the series "Peanuts" goes out beyond the borders of the USA, but here is a short clip. But in this clip Snoopy does not say, "Curse you, Red Baron" at the end, unfortunately. .

Oh and thanks for the reference to Der Rote Kampfflieger.

Edited one time to add thanks for the book reference.

[DaveAgain]

19. third reading of Dienstanweisung für einen Unterteufel by CS Lewis, 239 pages. Running total: 239 + 3,043 = 3,282 pages

For each chapter, I first listened to an English audiobook while reading along to the German text, then read and listened to the same chapter in German.

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New toys!

I've bought a parallel text of The Importance of Being Earnest (ISBN: 9783946571537), that I'm hoping will match up to an amateur performance on YouTube (German title: Bunbury).

AND a DVD of A Man for all Seasons. This has audio tracks in English, French, German and Spanish, and subtitles for those and other languages.

I may try to follow the instructions to rip the DVD to my computer.

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =14&t=6013

[MorkTheFiddle]

I may try to follow the instructions to rip the DVD to my computer.
https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =14&t=6013

Our Peerless Leader created a series of Youtube videos about this process. The first describes the use of Handbrake well.

[DaveAgain]

20. Hornblower wird Kommandant by CS Forester, 222 pages. Running total: 222 + 3,282 = 3,504 pages.

I just read through the German text (ISBN: 3548004628), but memory supported my understanding throughout. I read all the books in Mr Forester's Hornblower series many times as a teen, so I knew the story well.

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It turns out that there are German language dubs of the old Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon adventures, hurrah!

[DaveAgain]

21. Die Abenteuer des Brigadiers Gerard. Erster Band, Zweiter Band, by Arthur Conan Doyle, 400 pages. Running total: 400 + 3,504 = 3,904 pages.

I read these on an eReader with a pop-up dictionary, looking words up whenever I felt lost.

I had read the stories in english some time ago, but I only remembered one or two scenes.

One story, Wie der Brigadier gegen Millefleurs zog reminded me of the plot of Bernard Corwell's Sharpe's Enemy, but Mr Cornwell says that it was based on historical events rather than being inspired by Doyle/Gerard.

This is one of the few books in which the action is entirely fictional. Yet the book does have some basis in fact, very odd fact. By 1812 a lot of men had deserted from the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese armies and some of them, too many of them, had banded together in the border mountains where they were led by a renegade Frenchman nicknamed Pot-au-Feu. They formed a semi-military group of bandits

I like to think he got the idea while reading Etienne Gerard's memoirs though

The English titles are The Adventures and Exploits of Brigadier Gerard. In the preface of Adventures, Mr Doyle lists some sources:

Setting aside historical works or the biographies of the leaders there is a mass of evidence written by the actual fighting men themselves, which describes their feelings and their experiences, stated always from the point of view of the particular branch of the service to which they belonged. The Cavalry were particularly happy in their writers of memoirs.

Thus De Rocca in his “Memoires sur la guerre des Francais en Espagne” has given the narrative of a Hussar, while De Naylies in his “Memoires sur la guerre d'Espagne” gives the same campaigns from the point of view of the Dragoon. Then we have the “Souvenirs Militaires du Colonel de Gonneville,” which treats a series of wars, including that of Spain, as seen from under the steel-brimmed hair-crested helmet of a Cuirassier. Pre-eminent among all these works, and among all military memoirs, are the famous reminiscences of Marbot, which can be obtained in an English form. Marbot was a Chasseur, so again we obtain the Cavalry point of view.

Among other books which help one to an understanding of the Napoleonic soldier I would specially recommend “Les Cahiers du Capitaine Coignet,” which treat the wars from the point of view of the private of the Guards, and “Les Memoires du Sergeant Bourgoyne,” who was a non-commissioned officer in the same corps. The Journal of Sergeant Fricasse and the Recollections of de Fezenac and of de Segur complete the materials from which I have worked in my endeavour to give a true historical and military atmosphere to an imaginary figure.

[DaveAgain]

22. Joseph Fouché by Stefan Zweig, 291 pages. Running total: 291 + 3,904 = 4,195 pages.

I read each chapter first in French, then read and listened to the German.

Books/writers mentioned in the text include:

Eine dunkle Geschichte, by Balzac (German | French)
Geistliche Übungen by Ignatius of Loyola, (German | French)
Pietro Aretino

23. Hornblower auf der Hotspur, by CS Forester, 399 pages. Running total: 399 + 4,195 = 4,594 pages

I just read through the German text but as I know the book well, I was never lost.

[DaveAgain]

24. Der rote Kampfflieger by Freiherr von Manfred Richthofen 99 pages. Running total, 99 +4,594 = 4,693 pages

I read this as a parallel text, German in one browser window, English in another.

Books mentioned in text included; Max und Moritz by Wilhelm Busch. (German | English).

The tone of the book was weirdly similar to Brigadier Gerard. The two characters having the same cheerful, jovial bravery. Given that one is a fictional comic character and the other a real life war hero that just seems odd.

25. Der Kapitän by CS Forester. 245 pages. Running total: 245 + 4,694 = 4,939 pages.

I just read through the text, but I know the book well.

Books/writers mentioned in the text include:

Verfall und Untergang des Römischen Reiches. by Edward Gibbon. (German | English & Italian | French)
Jonathan Swift

26. Leutnant Hornblower by CS Forester, 326. Running total: 326 + 4,939 = 5,255 pages

I just read through the German text, but I know the story well.

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Project Gutenberg Canada have many of Mr Forester's books (he died in the 1960s). I read (in English) Long Before Forty, in that he mentioned two books that are available in German:

Kaiserbiographien by Sueton. (German | English | French)
Römische Geschichte by Theodor Mommsen.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Books mentioned in text included; Max und Moritz by Wilhelm Busch. (German | English)

Have you had a chance to read Max und Moritz. It was a childhood favorite of a friend whose German parents met and married in the USA. I myself took a glance at it, but it holds no attraction for me.