Stories

Voltaire’s brilliant parody of the ideological notion that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds [1], ironically sub-titled "Optimism", that was written in three incredibly productive days(!) and has retained its charm, its venom and its Enlightenment message for mankind ever since.
This 34,000-word English translation was done by an unidentified translator for an edition of Candide that was printed in New York in 1908.
An e-book, with the original text in an annex, is (…)

In this stark investigation of the feminine condition in a rigid society ruled by pitiless moral strictures, the young widow Marquise of O... finds herself in an unexpected condition with no idea of how or why this situation came to be, and courageously puts an ad in the local paper proposing marriage to the person responsible for this state of affairs. We then flash back, in rapid succession, to a violent military assault on the fortified town of which her father was the governor, to an (…)

In the midst of the campaign of racial extermination of the thousands of white-skinned people left on Haiti (then called St. Domingo) after the successful uprising of slaves there in 1804, a young officer desperately seeks shelter and food for his small company of civilians in a wayside house, where he is lured into a very false sense of security by the family of the local killer-in-chief. We follow the ups and downs of the attempts of the officer to survive in the face of (…)

Ludwig Tieck was one of the leading figures in the German romantic movement at the beginning of the 19th century, a movement that brought themes of the mysterious, the magical, the fantastic and the unexplainable into German-language letters at the time.
It was in a way a precursor of the fantasy and science-fiction themes in the literature of our own times!
Here we have a tender love story featuring notably a magnificent young woman, her ardent but too-poor lover and an alchemist who (…)

The brothers Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859), co-authors of an extremely monumental modern German-language dictionary, are first and foremost renowned in the academic circles of their homeland as two of the main founders of German philology.
But of course among us lesser mortals they are best known for their remarkable collection of popular tales that they published in two volumes in 1812 and 1815.
We present here three of the best tales in their original, (…)

A traveling salesman discovers that his hotel room leads directly to a private lodge in the neighbouring theatre, where a performance of Mozart’s opera “Don Juan” is about to be given. Delighted, the music lover rushes over to the lodge, where not only is the performance exceptional, but where he also has a quasi-supernatural encounter with Donna Anna herself, the outraged and distressed victim of the infernal charmer Don Juan.
The story enables the future author of The Life and Opinions (…)

At the very beginning of this justly-famous story the young Peter Schlemihl becomes so alarmed by the amazing powers of a very strange man at a social gathering that he runs away, only to be pursued by the man in question, who insistently offers him an ever-renewable purse in exchange for his shadow.
When he finally succumbs to the insistency of the diabolical fellow he discovers that in spite of his unlimited supply of money he is an object of ridicule and abhorrence to one and all (…)

Nathaniel has vivid memories of being terrified in his childhood of the Sandman, an evil being who punished children who didn’t want to go to bed by sprinkling sand over their eyes and then taking their eyes out to feed to his own monstrous brood (!). And of the fearsome advocate Coppelius who visited his father every evening just after Nathaniel had to go to bed, and who had a most nefarious and eventually catastrophic influence on both his parents.
Things go from bad to worse when in (…)

Marie’s godfather is a very talented watchmaker who gives his grandchildren a castle with a marvellous set of animated figures on Christmas Eve – and a strangely realistic little figure with a large head that can crack nuts with its teeth. These presents are carefully put away by the parents for safekeeping out of reach of the children in a large showcase in the front hall, and Marie lingers there at midnight to admire them when she sees a group of mice led by their strange seven-headed king (…)

The Court Counsellor Reutlinger organizes an elaborate festival on his grounds every three years to which everyone in the area, young and old, is invited – on the condition that they put on the clothes and accoutrements of the year 1760, a particularly important moment in the Counsellor’s life, as he explains to a distinguished lady of his own age some forty years afterwards as they stroll through his grounds among the revelry – and resolves a lifelong dilemma in doing so.
A charming tale (…)