Talk:Peter Schlemihl
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Etymology edit
Schlemihl = derivative of Yidish "schlemiel"? Roscelese 20:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Name edit
The character's name is "Schlemihl", not "Schlemiel", and the article should be (uncontroversially) moved. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 08:21, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
Name (2) edit
The inconsistency in spelling (probably due to cultural differences in orthography) needs to be sorted out and clarified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.70.89 (talk) 07:24, 9 February 2012
Later retellings edit
The following material, including the image, was removed on 6 November 2017:
Peter Schlemihl and his lost shadow are mentioned in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories "The Intelligence Office" (1844) and "A Virtuoso's Collection" (1842) from Mosses from an Old Manse.
In Hans Christian Andersen's 1847 fairy tale The Shadow, the main character loses his shadow on a journey, and is afraid of being taken as an imitator if he tells his story.
Kuno Fischer foolishly compared Max Stirner to Peter Schlemihl in his 1847 essay, "The Modern Sophists", which led Stirner to point out in "The Philosophical Reactionaries" (1847) "How unfortunate, when someone chooses an image by which he is most clearly defeated."
The story is alluded to in Karl Marx's 1851 essay, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon".
The character is directly referenced in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's 1870 novella, Venus in Furs.
Ernest Gellner in Nations and Nationalism uses Chamisso's story as a metaphor of a man without a shadow.
In the third act of Jacques Offenbach's 1881 opera, The Tales of Hoffmann, the character Peter Schlémil has also given up his shadow. The third act is very loosely based on A New Year's Eve Adventure.
The 'tall man',[1] or the Devil, is referenced by Judge William in Kierkegaard's Either/Or.[2]
The story is referred to by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations (Section 339), published posthumously in 1953.
In Robertson Davies' 1972 novel The Manticore, the story is referred to by the character Dr. Von Haller, in a discussion about the significance of losing one's shadow.
Oscar Wilde's "The Fisherman and his Soul" demonstrates a familiarity with the story. In the Wilde story, however, the fisherman does not sell his soul, but cuts it from him with a magic knife and leaves it to wander the world.
The character Peter Schlemihl is referenced by Imre Kertész in his 2003 novel Liquidation (Felszámolás).
Alain Corneau's 1989 film Nocturne Indien features a character called Peter Schlemihl, a concentration camp survivor and expat living in India, played by Austrian actor Otto Tausig. The film is a loose adaptation of Antonio Tabucchi's novella Notturno Indiano, though Schlemihl's character, which doesn't appear in that novella, is the main subject of another of Tabucchi's stories, I treni che vanno a Madras, where the character, with the assumed name, an Israeli passport, a gift for intelligent conversation, and an encyclopedic knowledge of Indian culture, turns out to be an assassin.[3]
References
- ^ Peter Schlemihl's wundersame Geschichte by A. von Chamisso, Chap. 1. Werke, IV, p. 276
- ^ Either/Or vol. II by S. Kierkegaard, trans. Walter Lowrie, p. 10. Doubleday and Company Inc., Garden City, New York, 1959
- ^ Fountain, Clarke (1989), Nocturne Indien (1989), Rotten Tomatoes, retrieved 12 September 2014
That material widens the readers' understanding of the character and should be restored. Apart from the last three entries (Wilde, Kertész, Corneau), it's not original research and is largely self-sourcing. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:03, 6 November 2017 (UTC)