Mr. Beethoven by Paul Griffiths

Author:Paul Griffiths
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2021-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

She pushed the dismal booklet away from her and said: “Not one of Mr. Ballou’s best inspirations, no.”

“May I?” she added, and the composer gave her a quick nod. She reached for the English Bible and quickly found the relevant section, which she also read out:

Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?

 or loweth the ox over his fodder?

Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt?

 or is there any taste in the white of an egg?

“I think I see what has happened here,” she said. “your author”—to name Mr. Ballou would have seemed too much to blame him—“has found an almost regular line at the beginning of the first verse, and then has twisted and cramped the rest to complete the quatrain. With rhymes, of course.”

The composer, looking at her fixedly all this while, said: “What can I do?”

Mrs. Hill did not directly respond, but instead asked: “May I see what Martin Luther made of this same passage?”

Again the composer nodded.

Mrs. Hill reached for the German Bible, turned the pages to Job 6, and once again read from the chapter out loud, for there was no need for her to fear making some error in pronunciation:

Das Wild schreit nicht, wenn es Gras hat; der Ochse blökt nicht, wenn er sein Futter hat.

Kann man auch essen was ungesalzen ist? Oder wer mag kosten das Weiße um den Dotter?

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.