the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up
confidently and state in German that the bird is staying
in the blacksmith shop “wegen (on account of) DEN Regen.”
Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark
that whenever the word “wegen” drops into a sentence,
it ALWAYS throws that subject into the GENITIVE case,
regardless of consequences–and therefore this bird stayed in
the blacksmith shop “wegen DES Regens.”
N.B.–I was informed, later, by a higher authority,
that there was an “exception” which permits one to say “wegen
DEN Regen” in certain peculiar and complex circumstances,
but that this exception is not extended to anything
BUT rain.
There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome.
An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime
and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column;
it contains all the ten parts of speech–not in regular order,
but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed
by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any
dictionary–six or seven words compacted into one,
without joint or seam–that is, without hyphens;
it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects,
each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and
there extra parentheses, making pens with pens: finally,
all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together
between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed
in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other
in the middle of the last line of it–AFTER WHICH COMES
THE VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man
has been talking about; and after the verb–merely by way
of ornament, as far as I can make out–the writer shovels
in “HABEN SIND GEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN,”
or words to that effect, and the monument is finished.
I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the
flourish to a man’s signature–not necessary, but pretty.
German books are easy enough to read when you hold them
before the looking-glass or stand on your head–so as
to reverse the construction–but I think that to learn
to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing
which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner.
Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks
of the Parenthesis distemper–though they are usually so mild
as to cover only a few lines, and therefore when you at
last get down to the verb it carries some meaning to your
mind because you are able to remember a good deal of what
has gone before. Now here is a sentence from a popular
and excellent German novel–which a slight parenthesis
in it. I will make a perfectly literal translation,
and throw in the parenthesis-marks and some hyphens
for the assistance of the reader–though in the original
there are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader
is left to flounder through to the remote verb the best way he
can:
“But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-
now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed)
government counselor’s wife MET,” etc., etc. [1]
1. Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide
gehu”llten jetz sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode
gekleideten Regierungsrathin begegnet.
That is from THE OLD MAMSELLE’S SECRET, by Mrs. Marlitt.
And that sentence is constructed upon the most approved
German model. You observe how far that verb is from
the reader’s base of operations; well, in a German
newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page;
and I have heard that sometimes after stringing along the
exciting preliminaries and parentheses for a column or two,
they get in a hurry and have to go to press without getting
to the verb at all. Of course, then, the reader is left
in a very exhausted and ignorant state.
We have the Parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one
may see cases of it every day in our books and newspapers:
but with us it is the mark and sign of an unpracticed
writer or a cloudy intellect, whereas with the Germans
it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced pen
and of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual