The railway parable
The railway allegory is one of the more well-known poems that Erich Kästner wrote for cabaret . Although called “parable” in the title, the work is more precisely a parable .
Release history
A first print version appeared on August 10, 1931 in the journal Simplicissimus . The line “ A fat man sits proud” is formulated even less sharply here with “A fat man sits proud”. Later it was the opening poem in Doctor Erich Kästner's Lyrische Hausapotheke (1936)
parable
Kästner compares the life and coexistence of people with a common train ride to an unknown or non-existent destination; after all, only the dead get out. Class differences are also taken into account ( the majority sits on wood ; the second class sat on wood at the time when train journeys were made - according to Kästner, the first class is almost empty ) or social problem areas, such as unhappy life planning (we are all on the same train / and many in the wrong coupé) included in the parable. The poem is exemplary of the often quite pessimistic worldview of the successful children's book author in his works for adults.
The railway can be seen here as a symbol of the established world (of uniformity, immutability and senselessness), which is in need of improvement, but can hardly be improved. It is thus a more pessimistic view than that of Voltaire Candide's satirical novel or optimism .
"The conductor looks in at the door and smiles to himself - he doesn't know where he is going either", which means that the guilty party is also blameless, as the development takes place without human intervention and without politics.
Settings
The poem was brought to the cabaret as a chanson as early as the 1930s . In 1969 Uwe Friedrichsen recorded it in a modern setting by Bert Grund .
Web links
- The railway parable , text of the poem on Mittelschulvorendung.ch (PDF file, 164 kB)
- Erich Kästner: A poet provides information: 121 poems in the Google book search
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bernhardt, Rüdiger: King's Explanations Kästner Das lyrische Schaffen, Hollfeld, 2010, pp. 153–154
- ↑ Bernhardt, Rüdiger: King's Explanations Kästner Das lyrische Schaffen, Hollfeld, 2010, pp. 153–154
- ↑ Image at Discogs