The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin Page A

Kaiser Wilhelm on it
    Tara zing da
    My mother became a soldier.
    My mother became a soldier
    She got a shotgun for that
    And so she shoots here and there
    Tara zing da
    My mother became a soldier.
    My mother became a soldier
    So then she went into the trenches
    And there she got kohlrabi
    Tara zing da
    My mother became a soldier.
    My mother became a soldier
    She got put in a military hospital
    She got put in a canopy bed
    Tara zing da
    My mother became a soldier.
    If I stand in the dark midnight
    So lonely on the hunt for lice
    And I think of my silent home
    That thinks of me in the moonlight.
    Little Marie
    You silly little cow
    I will pull up one of your little legs
    Then you must limp
    On your ham
    Then you will go to the city hospital
    Then you’ll be operated on
    You will be smeared with soft soap
    Then the German men’s choir will come
    And sing a little song for you.
    Some counting rhymes:
    On a rubber-rubber-mountain,
    There lives a rubber-rubber-dwarf,
    Has a rubber-rubber-wife.
    The rubber-rubber-wife
    Has a rubber-rubber-child.
    The rubber-rubber-child
    Has a rubber-rubber-ball,
    Threw it in the air.
    The rubber-rubber-ball
    Broke.
    And you are a Jew.
    *      *      *
    10, 20, 30,
    Girl, you work hard,
    40, 50, 60,
    Girl, you are blotchy,
    70, 80, 90,
    Girl, you are alone.
    Some constructivist feats:
    Last glove I lost my autumn.
    I went finding for three days, before I looked for it.
    I came to a peep, there I peered through.
    There sat three chairs on a man.
    Now I took off my good day and said:
    â€˜Hat, Sirs’.
    Lovely father from my greeting. Here would be
    Soles to beboot. He does not need to money for his fear.
    If he would come in, he would pass by.
    An old cloister joke from children’s lips:
    Dear parish of Pig Mountain!
    Stand up or remain seated.
    We read in the book of Pitchfork,
    Six prongs and thirty-five gaiter buttons,
    Where it is written:
    In my earliest youth I perpetrated my boldest deed.
    With ice-cold water I burnt out the eyes of children.
    And with a blunt rasp I cut off their fingers.
    After the deed was done the broom handle arrested me.
    This brought me to the higher regional court Burglary.
    Here I received fourteen days detention, afterwards freedom.
    Now receive the blessing of the Lord!
    The hat-maker makes hats for you,
    The umbrella-maker makes covers for you,
    The roof-maker lets his roofs shine over you.
    We are singing song number three hundred:
    Big clump, we plane you!
    Hallelujah!
    Hopefully all those who are interested in researching children’s creativity need not wait too long for a complete publication of the Wehrhan collection.
    â€”
    Translated by Esther Leslie .
    First published Frankfurter Zeitung , 16 August 1925; Gesammelte Schriften IV , 792–6.

CHAPTER 33
Fantasy Sentences

    Portrait Sketch of a Costumed Lady (Bildnisskizze einer kostümierten Dame) , 1924.
    F ormed by an eleven-year-old girl from words given to her.
    Freedom – garden – faded – greeting – crazy – eye of a needle
    Since freedom cannot be attained as quickly as the leaves in the garden have faded, its greeting is all the stormier, and even the crazy people, who believe the eye of a needle to be larger than a monkey, take part.
    Table cloth – sky – pillow – continent – eternity
    The table in front of him was covered by a table cloth and it stood under the open sky. He lay on the pillow on the continent remote from the world, as if he did not want to wake up for eternity.
    Lips – bendy – dice – rope – lemon
    Her lips were so rosy, like bendy roses, when one infected them while playing with dice or during a tug of war with a rope, but her gaze was bitter like the peel of a lemon.
    Corner – emphasis – character – drawer – flat
    On the corner – he said it with emphasis – I saw a character that was flat like a drawer.
    Pipe – border – booty