Peter Andreas Munch

“ With which estimate the Baron bowed his guests out of the room, and with a placid smile on his face, shook hands with himself.
“Mr. and Mrs. Ananias are charming people,” he chuckled, “but amateurs both—deadly amateurs.”
IX
DECORATION DAY IN THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS “Uncle Munch,” said Diavolo as he clambered up into the old warrior’s lap, “I don’t suppose you could tell us a story about Decoration Day could you?”
“I think I might try,” said Mr. Munchausen, puffing thoughtfully upon his cigar and making a ring with the smoke for Angelica to catch upon her little thumb. ”

“ By preference Munch selects his themes among the poor and the middle class. He can paint an empty room traversed by a gleam of moonlight and set one to thinking a half day on such an apparently barren theme. He may suggest the erotic, but never the lascivious. A thinker doubled by an artist he is the one man north who recalls the harsh but pregnant truths of Henrik Ibsen. ”

“ Munch had a phenomenal memory, marked talent for music and drawing, playful humor, incredible capacity for work, rare intuition for epoch-making discoveries. In a speech in 1892 Björnson placed Munch by the side of Wergeland (see Note 78) as a fosterer of national self-consciousness and faith in the future: "We can remember when we were young, how P. A. Munch's History came out in parts, and how he fought with the Danish professors, to get Norway brought home again from Danish captivity in history also, —we can remember how eventful it was for us, and how it had its share in molding us. ... ”

“ The silk hat (and Goya was the first among modern artists to prove its value as a motive) plays a rôle in the Munch plates. His death-room scenes are unapproachable in seizing the fleeting atmosphere of the last hour. The fear of death, the very fear of fear, Maeterlinck has created by a species of creeping dialogue. (The Intruder is an example) , but Edvard Munch working in an art of two dimensions where impressions must be simultaneous, is more dynamic. The shrill dissonance in his work is instantly reflected in the brain of the speaker. ”

“ Dance and merriment; the curtain falls.
NOTES 1. "William Russel." An original historic tragedy, found upon the career of the ill-fated Lord William Russell, by Andreas Munch, cousin of the historian P. A. Munch. It was produced at Christiania in 1857, the year of Ibsen's return from Bergen, and reviewed by him in the Illusteret Nyhedsblad for that year, Nos. 61 and 52. Professor Johan Storm of Christiania, to whose kindness I owe these particulars, adds that "it is rather a fine play and created a certain sensation in its time; but Munch is forgotten." ”

“ The Land of the Munchkins is full of surprises, as our travelers had already learned, and although Mount Munch was constantly growing larger as they advanced toward it, they knew it was still a long way off and were not certain, by any means, that they had escaped all danger or encountered their last adventure. ”

“ Her smooth voice became vibrant as she pointed triumphantly at the portrait. He followed her with dull eyes from which all fire had fled.
"The echo," he said, drinking a tumbler of brandy. "The echo! I have it now: they see the echo in that picture back of me. Munch is the first man who painted tone; put on canvas that ape of music, of our souls, the ape which mocks us, leaps out after our voice, is always ready to follow us and show its leering shape [Pg 278] when we pass under dark, vaulted bridges or stand in the secret shadow of churches. ”

“ Steam-yachts are not much good to swing in under an apple tree, and very few piazzas that I know of are big enough—”
“Oh, now, you know what I mean, Uncle Munch,” Diavolo retorted, tapping Mr. Munchausen upon the end of his nose, for a twinkle in Mr. Munchausen’s eye seemed to indicate that he was in one of his chaffing moods, and a greater tease than Mr. Munchausen when he felt that way no one has ever known. “I mean for horse-back riding, which would you rather have?” ”

“ Peter Munk had now reached the highest point of the Tannenbühl, and stood before a pine of enormous girth, for which a Dutch ship-builder would have given many hundred florins on the spot. “Here,” said he, “the treasure-keeper (Schatzhauser) no doubt lives,” and pulling off his large hat, he made a low bow before the tree, cleared his throat, and said, with a trembling voice, “I wish you a good evening, Mr. Glass-mannikin.” ”

“ Henceforth Peter Munk became an industrious and honest man. He was content with what he had, carried on his trade cheerfully, and thus it was that he became wealthy by his own energy, and respected and beloved in the whole forest. He no longer quarrelled with his wife, but honoured his mother, and relieved the poor who came to his door. When, after twelvemonths, Fran Elizabeth presented him with a beautiful little boy, Peter went to the Tannenbühl, and repeated the verse as before. But the glass-mannikin did not show himself. ”

“ Munch, after all. Old Dr. Munch, who had been Mr. Ashurst's immediate predecessor, was as bad a specimen of the old-fashioned, nothing-doing, sinecure-seeking pedagogue as could well be imagined; a rotund, red-faced, gouty-footed divine, with a thick layer of limp white cravat loosely tied round his short neck, and his suit of clerical sables splashed with a culinary spray; a man whose originally small stock of classical learning had gradually faded away, and whose originally large stock of idleness and self-gratification had simultaneously increased. ”

“ And when Peter Munk appears washed, clean, and dressed out in his father’s best jacket with the silver buttons and bran new red stockings—if then, any one walking behind him, thinks to himself, ‘I wonder who that smart fellow is?’ admiring, all the time, my stockings and stately gait;—if then, I say, he passes me and looks round, will he not say, ‘Why, it is only Peter Munk, the charcoal-burner. ”

“ He was a faithful snake, and that is why when I hear people running down all snakes I tell the story of Wriggletto.”
“He used to wind his tail about a fan and he’d wave it to and fro by the hour.” Chapter XIII.
There was a pause for a few moments, when Diavolo said, “Uncle Munch, is that a true story you’ve been giving us?”
“True?” cried Mr. Munchausen. “True? Why, my dear boy, what a question! If you don’t believe it, bring me your atlas, and I’ll show you just where Para is.” ”

“ Such in brief outline was the career of Rudolph Erich Raspe, scholar, swindler, and undoubted creator of Baron Munchausen.
The merit of Munchausen, as the adult reader will readily perceive, does not reside in its literary style, for Raspe is no exception to the rule that a man never has a style worthy of the name in a language that he did not prattle in. But it is equally obvious that the real and original Munchausen, as Raspe conceived and doubtless intended at one time to develop him, was a delightful personage whom it would be the height of absurdity to designate a mere liar. ”

“ But people do live there, just the same. The top of Mount Munch is shaped like a saucer, broad and deep, and in the saucer are fields where grains and vegetables grow, and flocks are fed, and brooks flow and trees bear all sorts of things. There are houses scattered here and there, each having its family of Hyups, as the people call themselves. The Hyups seldom go down the mountain, for the same reason that the Munchkins never climb up: the sides are too steep.
In one of the houses lived a wise old Hyup named Bini Aru, who used to be a clever Sorcerer. ”

“ But when he took off his jacket, and his mother turned out the pockets before putting it away, four large rolls of money fell out; and when they opened them, they found them all good and new Baden dollars, and not one counterfeit, and these were the intended godfather’s gift for little Peter, from the little man in the Tannenbühl. Thus they lived on, quietly and cheerfully; and many a time Peter Munk, when gray-headed, would say, “It is indeed better to be content with little, than to have wealth and a cold heart.” ”

“ THE SPORTING TOUR OF MR. MUNCHAUSEN “Good morning, Mr. Munchausen,” said the interviewer of the Gehenna Gazette entering the apartment of the famous traveller at the Hotel Deville, where the late Baron had just arrived from his sporting tour in the Blue Hills of Cimmeria and elsewhere.
“The interests of truth, my dear Ananias,” replied the Baron, grasping me cordially by the hand, “require that I should state it as my opinion that it is not a good morning. In fact, my good friend, it is a very bad morning. Can you not see that it is raining cats and dogs without?” ”

“ Although, like "Gulliver's Travels," "Munchausen" might at first sight appear to be ill-suited, in more than one respect, for the nursery, yet it has proved the delight of children of all ages; and there are probably few, in the background of whose childish imagination the astonishing Munchausen has not at one time or another, together with Robinson Crusoe, Jack-the-Giant-Killer, and the Pied Piper of Hamelyn, assumed proportions at once gigantic and seductively picturesque. ”

“ Why it’s like finding money in the street, Ananias. She wasn’t worth more than fifty thousand dollars, and in six months I’ll be ten thousand ahead.”
I could not but admire the cheerful philosophy of the man, but then I was not surprised. Munchausen was never the sort of man to let little things worry him.
“But that whale business wasn’t a circumstance to my catch of three tons of trout with a single cast of a horse-whip in the Blue Hills,” said the Baron after a few moments of meditation, during which I could see that he was carefully marshalling his facts. ”

“ Now the stories mainly relate to sporting adventures, and it has been asserted by one contemporary of the baron that Munchausen contracted the habit of drawing such a long-bow as a measure of self-defence against his invaluable but loquacious henchman, the worthy Rösemeyer. But it is more probable, as is hinted in the first preface, that Munchausen, being a shrewd man, found the practice a sovereign specific against bores and all other kinds of serious or irrelevant people, while it naturally endeared him to the friends of whom he had no small number. ”

“ William West the bookseller and numerous followers have stated that Munchausen owed its first origin to Bruce's Travels, and was written for the purpose of burlesquing that unfairly treated work. Pierer boldly stated that it was a successful anonymous satire upon the English government of the day, while Meusel with equal temerity affirmed in his "Lexikon" that the book was a translation of the "well-known Munchausen lies" executed from a (non-existent) German original by Rudolph Erich Raspe. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1856 calls the book the joint production of Brger and Raspe. ”

“ The Little Glass-Man then instructed Peter in what he was to do, and gave him a small cross of clear crystal. "He can not harm you while you live, and he will let you go free if you hold this up before him and pray at the same time. And if you should get back your heart, then return to this place, where I shall be awaiting you."
Peter Munk took the cross, impressed on his memory all the words he was to say, and went to Dutch Michel's ravine. He called him three times by name, and immediately the giant stood before him. ”

“ The horses were all fast, record-breakers anyhow. I never hire a horse that isn’t.”
And with that I left the old gentleman and walked blushing back to the office. I don’t doubt for an instant the truth of the Baron’s story, but somehow or other I feel that in writing it my reputation is in some measure at stake.
Note—Mr. Munchausen, upon request of the Editor of the Gehenna Gazette to write a few stories of adventure for his Imp’s page, conducted by Sapphira, contributed the tales which form the substance of several of the following chapters. ”

“ Munchausen's travels have in fact been ascribed to as many different hands as those of Odysseus. But (as in most other respects) it differs from the more ancient fabulous narrative in that its authorship has been the subject of but little controversy. Many people have entertained erroneous notions as to its authorship, which they have circulated with complete assurance; but they have not felt it incumbent upon them to support their own views or to combat those of other people. ”

“ In common with a large number of other great men in history Baron Munchausen has suffered because he is not understood. I have observed with wondering surprise the steady and constant growth of the idea that Baron Munchausen was not a man of truth; that his statements of fact were untrustworthy, and that as a realist he had no standing whatsoever. Just how this misconception of the man’s character has arisen it would be difficult to say. ”

“ When travellers are solicitous to be the heroes of their own story, surely they must admit to superiority, and blush at seeing themselves out-done by the renowned Munchausen: I doubt whether any one hitherto, Pantagruel, Gargantua, Captain Lemuel, or De Tott, has been able to out-do our Baron in this species of excellence: and as at present our curiosity seems much directed to the interior of Africa, it must be edifying to have the real relation of Munchausen's adventures there before any further intelligence arrives ”