* * * * *
                                        
                          “A bird of arts and letters”
                                        
> Dr. Fuchs's Donald was no ordinary comic creation. He was a bird of arts
> and letters, and many Germans credit him with having initiated them into
> the language of the literary classics. The German comics are peppered with
> fancy quotations. In one story Donald's nephews steal famous lines from
> Friedrich Schiller's play “William Tell”; Donald garbles a classic Schiller
> poem, “The Bell,” in another. Other lines are straight out of Goethe,
> Hölderlin and even Wagner (whose words are put in the mouth of a singing
> cat). The great books later sounded like old friends when readers
> encountered them at school. As the German Donald points out, “Reading is
> educational! We learn so much from the works of our poets and thinkers.”
> 
> …
> 
> But even the “adult” ducks end up sounding more colorful than they do in
> English. Fuchs applied alliteration liberally, as, for example, in Donald's
> bored lament on the beach in “Lifeguard Daze.” In the English comic, he
> says: “I'd do anything to break this monotony!” The über-gloomy German
> version: “How dull, dismal and deathly sad! I'd do anything to make
> something happen.”
> 

Via Tim Carmody [1] (filling in for Jason Kottke [2]), “Why Donald Duck is
the Jerry Lewis of Germany - WSJ.com [3]”

I've heard that Donald Duck & Co. comic books were always more popular in
Europe than here but I never quite understood why until this article. The
dialog wasn't dumbed down, it was cranked up! And it outsold Superman.

Who'd a thunk it?

[1] http://kottke.org/11/05/donald-
[2] http://www.kottke.org/
[3] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240529702037719045741817220750622

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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