[lit-ideas] Re: German help yet again
- From: Chris Bruce <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 13:41:44 +0100
Re:
Would some kind Germanic soul please tell me what
geschichtsklitternd means?
It is difficult to give a definition without knowing context, but I
believe that the following is reasonably accurate. The noun
'Geschicht' (in this case) means 'history', the verb 'klittern' means
'to concoct'; a 'Geschichtsklitterung' is a(n) 'historical
misrepresentation'. So the adjective 'geshichtsklitternd' is far
stronger than 'contentious' (German: 'umstritten').
Example: David Irving's fabrications regarding the Holocaust are not
merely 'umstritten' (contentious); they are 'geschichtsklitternd'. [He
is welcome to try to sue me for making such a remark; we all know the
results from his last attempt to sue someone over such a claim.]
When I asked my resident German expert for another example of an
adjective ending in 'nd' she offered (without any idea of the context)
'abfuhrend' (roughly: 'having a laxative effect'). I suppose that one
must retain an 'open mind' concerning historical accounts which are
'umstritten'; about accounts such as Irving's which are most decidedly
'geschichtsklitternd' one can retain an 'open mind' only in the
following sense:
... an open mind, to be sure,
should be open at both ends, like the foodpipe,
and have a capacity for excretion as well as intake.
- Northrop Frye , _ The Great Code_
Chris Bruce
Kiel, Germany
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