My friend the wizard
Mein Freund der Zauberer ( My Friend Mr. Leakey , 1937) is a children's book by the British biologist and geneticist J. BS Haldane that was first published in Germany in 1974 .
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My Friend the Wizard contains three stories that deal with the narrator's absurd experiences with the magician Mister Leakey.
Dinner at the Wizard's
The first-person narrator accidentally saves a little old man from being hit by a car on London's Haymarket. He introduces himself as Mister Leakey and, out of gratitude, invites his rescuer to dinner, which takes place around two weeks later in his apartment near the Haymarket. The narrator is amazed. Not only do the motifs move and transform on the embroidered curtains that Mister Leakey has on the walls instead of wallpaper - the entire facility is strange: a glass bookcase, a copper table with a large crystal ball , glowing potted plants. A giant polyp named Oliver helps Mister Leakey as a servant and sets the table, the host pours the soup from his cylinder onto the plates, a little green cow named Phyllis gives fresh cream, and a little dragon named Pompejus grills the fish. Mister Leakey explains to the astonished visitor that he is a wizard and that many of the animals used to be human before he transformed them. For example, the beetle Leopold, who carries a salt keg across the table on his back, was a thief and a cheater who would rather be voluntarily transformed for seven years than go to prison. After his winged demon Abdu'l Makkar has served the two fresh strawberries from New Zealand and Mister Leakey has grown fruit trees from the four corners of the table with his magic wand , he brings his guest back home with the help of a magic carpet and takes the promise from him, yes to spend a whole day with him once.
A day in the life of a magician
On St. Nicholas' Day , Mister Leakey surprises the narrator with a sock that hangs on his bed in the morning as if by magic and contains various gifts and an invitation for Christmas Day . When the day came, the first-person narrator went to Mister Leakey's apartment and received a cloak of invisibility from him so that he could accompany him on his activities, invisible to others. The narrator notes that Mister Leakey uses his magical powers very useful and for the good of the people, for example by taming a wild dog or by conjuring the pimples away from the acne- ridden taxi driver who drives them through London. When he tries to pay it, it turns out that Mister Leakey can only pay with gold pieces - because his magic wallet was invented long before the art of printing . After turning the vicious dog's teeth into rubber, he tampered with the paper documents of a usurer so that he can no longer force the people who had to borrow money from him at high interest rates to pay. For lunch, the two of them travel to India on the magic carpet and face several dangerous situations together. Later they visit the Montagne Pelée volcano in Martinique and travel on around the world. Back in London they discover a burglar in Mister Leakey's apartment, whose nose sticks to the door handle and stretches like rubber. Mister Leakey frees him and puts a curse on him should he ever break into someone's apartment again. Before doing this, however, he insulted him: "I am not holding you against the fact that you are a bad person, but you must be an idiot that you have chosen such a badly paid profession as breaking in." Back in his own apartment, the narrator compares his occupation (which seems to match that of the author) with that of Mister Leakey and finds "calculations of how to breed new varieties of cowslips and cats " almost as eccentric as the little's magic old man.
Mister Leakey gives a company
The last narration of the tape is three months after the second. The narrator is sitting in his bathtub one evening before going to bed when a goldfish appears from the tap, inviting him to a tea party planned as a masked party at Mister Leakey's. When the narrator enters the apartment next Saturday, he does not see the host in everyday clothes, as usual, but for the first time in a long, flowing robe and a high, conical hat covered with runes and rodent feet . The tea party consists of the most varied of people and beings: among others, a physicist , the archangel Raphael , several boys and girls, a Tibetan lama , a cleaning lady , an elegant lady, a devil who is driving out of the ground, and a sailor in uniform . Mister Leakey enchants every guest of his tea party in his dream creature, in butterflies , elephants , giant tortoises, icosahedra , a Rolls-Royce or a fairy . The narrator can be transformed into a comet that circles the ceiling lamp. Together they play Journey to Jerusalem and finally pose for a group photo, then the guests go home in their usual guise. Here ends the story of the nameless biologist and geneticist: "I haven't seen Mister Leakey since then. When I meet him again, I'll tell you."
Broadcast on television
A reading by My Friend Mr Leakey was broadcast on the first 5 episodes of season 10 of the British children's television program Jackanory on September 5 and 7-10, 1971 on the BBC .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ JBS Haldane: My friend the wizard. With drawings v. Quentin Blake . From d. Engl. V. Ursula Lehrburger, Otto Maier , Ravensburg 1974, ISBN 9783473392902
- ↑ JBS Haldane: My Friend Mr. Leakey . Illustrated by Leonard H. Rosoman, Cresset Press, London 1937
- ↑ JBS Haldane "[...] was mainly concerned with genetics. In the last paragraph of the story 'A Day in the Life of a Wizard' he even mentions his own work." (Ursula Lehrburger: "Foreword of the translator". In: JBS Haldane: My friend the magician . With drawings by Quentin Blake. From the English by Ursula Lehrburger, Otto Maier, Ravensburg 1974, p. 7 f., Here S. 7.)
- ↑ http://www.imdb.de/title/tt0783001/