The voice imitator, who had been invited as the guest of the surgical society last evening, had declared himself—after being introduced in the Palais Pallavinci—willing to come with us to the Kahlenberg, where our house was always open to any artist whatsoever who wished to demonstrate his art there—not of course without a fee. We had asked the voice imitator, who hailed from Oxford in England but who had attended school in Landshut and had originally been a gunsmith in Berchtesgaden, not to repeat himself on the Kahlenberg but to present us something entirely different from what he had done for the surgical society; that is, to imitate quite different people from those he had imitated in the Palais Pallavinci, and he had promised to do this for us, for we had been enchanted with the program that he had presented in the Palais Pallavinci. In fact, the voice imitator did imitate voices of quite different people—all more or less well known—from those he had imitated before the surgical society. We were allowed to express our own wishes, which the voice imitator fulfilled most readily. When, however, at the very end, we suggested that he imitate his own voice, he said he could not do that.

Character Assassination

CHARACTER ASSASSINATION

Two philosophers, about whom more has been written than they themselves have published, who met again—after not seeing one another for decades—in, of all places, Goethe’s house in Weimar, to which they had gone, in the nature of things, separately and from opposite directions—something that, since it was winter and consequently very cold, had presented the greatest difficulties to both of them—simply for the purpose of getting to know Goethe’s habits better, assured each other, at this unexpected and for both of them painful meeting, of their mutual respect and admiration and at the same time told each other that, once back home, they would immerse themselves in each other’s writings with the intensity appropriate to, and worthy of, those writings. When, however, one of them said he would give an account of his meeting in the Goethe House in the newspaper that was, in his opinion, the best and would do so, in the nature of things, in the form of a philosophical essay, the other immediately resisted the idea and characterized his colleague’s intention as character assassination.

Fourati

FOURATI