Dear Bill, you have put your finger on something significant. There are two
opposing strands to the infamous article: the clichés about the Germans, hedged
around by authorial awareness that they are just that: clichés and as
such ‘boringly predictable’. But then there is the telling line about ‘the old
certainties’ that are rapidly slipping away, with New Labour as the key
example. The stable mindset that is here reproduced in a distorting mirror
turns out to be anything but stable. I hold no brief for the author of the
article, and whatever the outcome did not set out to write an apology for what
may or may not be a personal view.
Those of you who mailed me to say that German is only perceived to sound
unpleasant through the association with jackboots are referred to the sixteenth-
century Italian Cosimo Bottegari, famous for his setting of the then popular
poem:
“Mi stare pone Totesche
Et fare sempre rason;
Trinche coraus bon compagnon.
Mi mangero tante le suppe,
Bon plat ais stinche di kraut,
Hobren, muesse, stochfisc auch …“ (Oiseau-lyre 12BB 203-6)
Those who objected to my reference to Mark Twain might substitute Frederick II,
Charles V, or any of a number of others whose opinions predate the present era
and are sufficiently well known. Goethe lamented the roughness of his language
(‘den schlechtesten Stoff’) and wished he had been born an Italian. But I shall
now leave Julie to her critics and withdraw from further public discussion.
od/ukc
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