PAUL WANNER - THE MAGIC THREAD, ORIGINS?

The version in the Book of Virtues and that in Hey, Listen to This (both from the early 1990s) are direct English translations of the Paul Wanner version, illustrated in English (and more languages, like Spanish and Swedish) by Nikolai Ustinov in the 1980s. The original German was published by Schreiber Esslingen. It's the same text (A later, shorter version appears in The Monk who Sold his Ferrari, abridged by Robin Sharma, from 1996).

Previously the same tale, with the same text by Paul Wanner, was published in German by Schreiber Esslingen in 1971 with illustrations by Severino Baraldi. 

During the next five years, Schreiber and Ustinov stayed in contact and developed a series of children’s books together. Due to not only the VAAP bureaucracy, but also the illustrator’s time-consuming work, the first collection of six tales, re-told by the author Paul Wanner (1895–1990), did not come out until 1984, under the title Die schönsten Kindergeschichten. In 1985, it was expanded with another six tales, first issued as Die schönsten Märchen für das ganze Jahr, and then under the serial title, Die schönsten Kindergeschichten Europas. The series consisted of an unusual collection of lesser-known tales from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, England, Finland, Sweden – and the USSR.

Already in 1971, Schreiber had issued a series by Wanner, entitled Die schönsten Märchen Europas, with illustrations by the Italian artist Severino Baraldi, but the new series with Ustinov differed from the previous both in form and content. The aesthetic style and design of the series were striking. It was issued both as one collected hardcover edition and as single stories in thin booklets of 16 pages each, with a 20 x 27 cm format and “look” reminiscent of the characteristic cheap, mass-printed, paper booklets for children by the Soviet children’s book publisher Children's Literature (Detskaya Literatura). The Italian edition of these booklets was published by AMZ in 1985. Previously, Giunti Marzocco had published the Baraldi-illustrated edition of the same tales as a collected hardcover containing "Il filo magico" in 1983.

Gerhard Schreiber held the international rights to Ustinov’s illustrations and eventually the book series and collection were published in several European languages. 

Ustinov, Nikolai (ill. to) Wanner, Paul. Die schönsten Kindergeschichten. Neu erzählt von Paul Wanner. Gemalt von Nikolai Ustinov. Esslingen 1984. Ustinov, Nikolai (ill. to) Wanner, Paul: Die schönsten Kindergeschichten Europas (Reihe). Erzählt von Paul Wanner. Gemalt von Nikolai Ustinov. Esslingen 1985/1986. Inhalt: Aus Deutschland: Zwergenkönig Rübezahl; Aus Frankreich: Der Zauberfaden; ...

“The Magic Thread” from Fairy Tales, illustrated by Nikolai Ustinov. Translation copyright 1985 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.; also published by Random House in 1987

In both the Ustinov and Baraldi versions, "The Magic Thread" is seen as a French tale, likewise in the English versions (translator?) lifted from Wanner (published by Doubleday) in the Book of Virtues (1993) and in Hey, Listen to This (1992). But I have found no source material in French, no matter how much I googled the title. It appears to be a GERMAN tale, though SET IN FRANCE (in the Loire Valley).

The earliest version I could find, "Der Zauberfaden," is written in German, its author and year of publishing unknown, but it is surely a literary tale (Kunstmärchen): the characters have proper names, the scope is cautionary, using hyperbole (if you could skip all your waiting/unpleasant times you would only miss one or two decades, NOT an entire lifetime!), and there is a lot of worldbuilding (ie the main character's time doing military service, etc). 

http://www.kuk-verlagsanstalt.com/German/Literatur/Geschichten/Zauberfaden.html

In the Wanner version, the names of the antihero and his love interest/wife were changed from Hans and Marie to Peter and Lise, but otherwise the story is nigh identical to the Wanner version.

Timeline:

• Time unknown, "Der Zauberfaden," anonymous literary tale, written in German but set in France
• 1971: Paul Wanner, Severino Baraldi, Esslingen (German). First introduced as a French tale
• 1983: Wanner-Baraldi published in Italy by Giunti Marzocco
• 1984: Wanner, Nikolai Ustinov, Esslingen (German)
• 1985: Wanner-Ustinov published in Italy by AMZ, / Wanner-Ustinov published in English by Doubleday
• 1987: Wanner-Ustinov published in English by Random House
• 1992: Wanner version from Doubleday recollected in Hey, Listen to This (no illustrations) 
• 1993: Wanner version from Doubleday recollected in The Book of Virtues (no illustrations) 
• 1996: Abridgement by Robin Sharma recollected in The Monk who Sold his Ferrari. / Episode "Self-Discipline season 1," Adventures from the Book of Virtues
• 2006: Click (film, existential comedy)

AUROR AU GAIDEN: ZODIAC AUROR SWAT SQUAD

ZODIAC AUROR SWAT SQUAD

Is a new gaiden set in the (Hogwarts AU) world of El semen de los ahorcados, decades after the main storyline (Catherine Pontmercy, Kinu Sohma, and Juliet Butler among others appear as side characters), but focusing on five 20-something Aurors after they left Hogwarts and went through Auror training. A ragtag "armata Brancaleone" with much in common with Enjolras' AS-SORTED (and Giorno Giovanna's branch of Passione), they were originally the Aloof Ally West Coast Team in the magical girl warrior comics Zodiac Starforce. 

The quintet, under the leadership of top brass Colonel "Capricorn" (her real name unknown), are made a SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) team (given zodiac codenames and custom uniforms) and sent on suicide missions because they're too powerful and talented to be given typical new-meat missions, and also because the Ministry wants them out of the picture. However, when they find out that another, rival SWAT team of Aurors, the Ministry's only SWAT team until the Zodiac Squad was established (a veteran team who are in cahoots with organized crime), La Squadra di Esecuzioni led by Risotto Nero (first appearance of La Squadra in a StrixAlluka AU since Twilight Robbery AU As the Luck Would Have It!), are planning a war and a coup d'état to take over the Ministry from within... of course no one believes the Zodiac Squad at first, and soon both teams are interlocked in a deadly struggle...

And of course Tiziano and Squalo are there as a Greek chorus/Those Two Bad Guys who also are lovers (think Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!), just like in As the Luck Would Have It!

Moreover the members of the Zodiac SWAT Squad will turn out to be the reincarnations of some really special people, from the same universe, who share their personalities (and sometimes something more), which factors into the plot...

The main inspirations were Vento Aureo, the 007 franchise, and 1990s action series like SWAT Kats (the SWAT team idea came from there) and TaleSpin, ExoSquad, Valerian & Laureline (the animesque series), and the Batman and X-Men animated series, among others.

The members of the Zodiac SWAT Squad are (their weapons were taken from the original Zodiac Starforce, and they take the weapons out of their own chests/hearts Utena style like in the original. Also the weapons here were given a wizarding twist, their Hogwarts wands were melded with the weapons):

Capricorn

South Asian, mentor (not part of the team, real name unknown). Colonel. Left-handed. Fights using a rapier.
Jack Novak, Leo

(Polish-British). Lieutenant, Gryffindor, half-blood, ex-Quidditch captain, descendant of Jack the Giant Slayer (the hero of the Beanstalk and other tales, who was real in this universe). Fights using a flaming greatsword. Thinks he is a shonen protagonist and acts like one. Left-handed. Reincarnation of Courfeyrac.
Álex Pérez, Aquarius

(Latina). Lieutenant, pure-blood, Ravenclaw, ex-prefect and Quidditch captain, omniglot, rival and avatar of the author (Ravenclaw, omniglot, child of two worlds and only child of divorced parents, genki girl with ADHD and autism, etc). Fights with a bow (in spite of her sign) and ice powers, firing ice arrows. Right-handed. Reincarnation of Combeferre.
Lux Han, Sagittarius

(South Korean) Ensign, Muggle-born, self-taught, the only one who didn't go to Hogwarts, fallen ex-Kpop star and ex-girlfriend of Romance Saja. Serious substance abuse issues... Fights with a whip and light powers. Reincarnation of Grantaire.
Samson "Sam" Walker, Cancer

(Afro-Caribbean) Ensign, Hufflepuff, pure-blood, Voodoo priest, orphan with massive number siblings, super strong, healing hands, stoic with a heart of gold. Pacifist. Reincarnation of Lesgles/Bossuet.
Jenny Clark, Virgo
(British) Ensign, Slytherin, goth of unknown parentage, suffers from autism and OCD, another avatar of the author, turns out to be someone very special, inferiority complex. Fights with two kunai, dual wielding (ambidextrous) and electric powers. Reincarnation of Enjolras. In a romantic relationship with Lux/Sag.

THE FORETRUCK AND THE CROW'S NEST (POLISEMO)

 Me escribe Rolando diciéndome que lo han invitado a la Brigham Young University y aceptó la invitación, y le contesto, ¡logo!, que «That is the weight of the purple», añadiendo lo que sigue: «Traduciendo del español al inglés me parezco a Borges traduciendo del inglés al español. No, en serio, viejo, traduciendo Borges a Whitman, el fragmento de «Space and Time» que comienza diciendo I ascend to the foretruck, / I take my place late at night in the crow’s-nest, / We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light enough lo perpetró como «Asciendo en la carreta / y en la alta noche tomo mi lugar en el nido del cuervo. / Divisamos el Océano Ártico, hay bastante luz»… sin darse cuenta de que subiéndose a una carreta y metiéndose en el nido del cuervo –un tipo tan grande como Whitman, arriesgando que el cuervo le sacase los ojos–, en esas condiciones es en verdad difícil divisar [We sail = ¿Divisamos?] el océano Ártico. Cuando lo lógico es que se trate de un barco y que el «foretruck» sea el palo del trinquete y el «crow’s nest» la cofa del vigía. Diríase que Borges jamás leyó a Julio Verne. ¡¡¡Peor!!!, ¡¡¡jamás leyó a R. L. Stevenson!!! (digo en el original inglés). Vamos a ver si resumimos: Borges fue un escritor incomparable en la lengua de Castilla, un interlocutor delicioso para despellejar hijueputamente al prójimo. y una catástrofe como traductor. Ni siquiera entendía el inglés cuasi materno, pero se las daba de entender el islandés. ¿Qué islandés, a no ser el que él se inventaba? Un abrazo, y jódete con el peso de la púrpura, como decimos los clásicos».

Esto lo decía un catedrático que tradujo bien a Whitman (foretruck=trinquete, crow's nest=cofa del vigía) en El Ojo de Polisemo 2015 (Polifemo, "mucha fama", es el cíclope bruto y estúpido; Polisemo, "muchos significados", es el astuto Ulises), conferencia de traducción literaria en la década de 2010 a la que asistí como estudiante de Traducción de la UJI. Durante la pausa para comer, bastante inspirada y achispada de champán, le pregunté a ese catedrático:

"Could you please tell me an F word that rhymes with duck?"

¡La cara de sorpresa y un poco de asco que puso el catedrático! Ni corta ni perezosa, yo digo:

"Foretruck."

"Aaah, foretruck!" dice él golpeándose la frente. Los dos rompemos a carcajadas hasta que le respondo:

"Hitherto I only knew two F words that rhyme with duck; that F word and firetruck (camión de bomberos). Now with foretruck, I know three!"

Más carcajadas.

Como decía Goethe, nunca jamás te acostarás sin saber una cosa más.

RUNAWAY PENGUINS SIGHTED IN LA FONTETA

Three penguins, two males and a female, who disappeared from L'Oceanogràfic this Palm Sunday, have been found wandering the streets of Fonteta de Sant Lluís and the nearby countryside.

The waterfowl, who bear the names Frodo, Sam, and Arwen, were found refreshing themselves in a water canal (acequia) near Mrs. Elena Primera Broma's vegetable plot.

Her grandson Rodrigo and his boyfriend Jinu, both students at the University of Valencia, had already spotted the penguins in the Turia riverbed, not far from the Palace of the Arts (Opera House) and taken them home to Rodrigo's maternal grandmother Elena, who, after feeding them with fish sticks from her fridge, has just dialled 112 and is waiting for Oceanogràfic staff to take the penguins home to the Antarctic habitat.

"Penguins in our acequias is the kind of thing that you see once in a blue moon, and I saw in the news that these three have disappeared. It will be great for them to return home from their travels," the old lady says.

JEAN MINEUR: A FRENCH CINEMA ICON

Not long ago, I watched a Karambolage episode on YouTube that taught me a lot more on a character I had only hitherto seen on social media. I had been to France more than once, but never watched a cinema show there, so obviously I knew nothing of Jean Mineur and all his lore before this:

With his rosy skin and nutbrown hair, he cannot be any more French. His name, Jean, calls to mind for instance Jean Valjean, it is like Jack, Juan, Gianni, Ivan, or Sean, the average male character of that nationality. His outfit and trademark ice pick as well as his surname mark him as a (child) miner from the Pas-de-Calais, the mining region in northern France (like Asturias, Cornwall, or Dalecarlia/Dalarna). Yet mineur means both miner and minor, someone who is underage, bringing child labour to mind.

Jean Mineur has appeared since the interbellum period on the silver screen, in both France and the Benelux countries, always before the cinema show and right after the trailers (except for a short hiatus in the 1980s). To some epic, dramatic music by René Cloërec, the little Northern French miner throws his ice pick at the centre of a target marked 1000, the number becoming 0001, the last digits of Mediavision's phone number in Paris (and also those of the real Jean Mineur in Heaven: his gravestone says EDEN 0001!).

But where did Jean Mineur come from?

Like Frankenstein, the character is named after his creator, a real-life publicist who came to Paris from the Pas-de-Calais. Created in the 1920s as a pretty ugly black-and-white middle-aged adult, to pay tribute to the real-life Jean Mineur's northern ancestry.

After the World War, the character got his rebranding as a technicolour child in 2D, wearing the outfit of a Pas-de-Calais miner, to make a more positive image and appeal more to children (but now being Jean the Minor, and unfortunately evoking child labour).

Following his 1980s retirement, Jean Mineur returned to the cinemas in the 90s, as a 3D/CGI character (at a time when CGI was something very rare, the purlieu of vanguard studios like Pixar or DreamWorks!). Some French people find him cute or kawaii, others find him scary and even have a phobia of the character, in spite of all the merchandise (Jean Mineur dolls, plushies, keychains, etc: you name it). Mediavision even gives the annual Mineur d'Or (Golden Mineur), a golden statuette of Jean Mineur as award for Best Cinematic Advertising!

The character has also advertised a great deal of products and services on the silver screen (from soft drinks to spectacles/glasses to gasoline) and rubbed elbows with many French celebrities in his ads. Only before Star Wars films does he don a completely different outfit, a padawan's braid, Jedi kimono, and lightsaber, and become Jean Padawan. He has no other cosplay outfit, whether as a Hogwarts student (he would be a Gryffindor), a hobbit, or in any other fandom.

If the Great Heidelberg Tun had a stroke...

Les Misérables is the Great French Novel - I would also say Gargantua and Pantagruel fits the bill, but that one is a pentalogy saga, and Les Mis is a standalone. And I adore the Friends of the ABC and especially Courfeyrac and Grantaire <3 kyun (I am in the Les Mis fandom for a reason).

Courf is basically your garden-variety shonen protagonist crossed over with a 007 or similar British man of wealth and taste, and a little with Quentin Tarantino. A keet with a kitten motif, a Gascon who truly embodies the regional stereotype - he even has the sword cane for a musketeer or knight in shining armour! - and with a great sense of humour (always with a quip or pun on his lips). Add a little Mercutio to the Courf formula, and you have a character I completely identify with...

but, if Courfeyrac is my idealistic side, Grantaire is my cynical side, a depressed alcoholic artist (from Marseille in my headcanon), in unrequited love with the ephebe of a leader (I coined the term "Enjolsexual" for a good reason), an epicure and a comedian like Courf but it's only a mask in R's case (he signs only with a capital R, une grande R!).

In the dramatis personae "A Group which Failed to Become Historic," Hugo introduces us to R by mentioning his good taste in food and beverages, his knowledge of the Parisian nightlife...

Among all these passionate hotheads and true believers, there was one

cold-blooded skeptic. How did he get to be there? By juxtaposition. This skeptic’s name

was Grantaire and he normally signed with this rebus: R, for grand R,

capital R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in

anything. And he was one of the students who had got the most out of his

studies in Paris; he knew that the best coffee was in the Café Lemblin and

that the best billiard table was in the Café Voltaire; that you got good pancakes

and good wenches at L’Ermitage on the boulevard du Maine, the best fried

chickens at mère Saguet’s, excellent eel stews at the barrière de la

Cunette, and a certain light white wine at the barrière du Combat. For

everything, he knew all the best places; he also knew how to kickbox, both savate and chausson marseillais, and

make his way around a tennis court, a gymnasium, and a dance floor, and he was a natural

with a singlestick in stickfighting. A big drinker to boot.

And him being an "Enjolsexual:"

Still, this skeptic was fanatical about one thing. This one thing he was

fanatical about was neither an idea nor a dogma, neither an art nor a

science; it was a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated

Enjolras. Who did this anarchic doubter rally to in this phalanx of

absolutists? To the most absolute. In what way did Enjolras enthrall him?

Through ideas? No. Through character. A phenomenon frequently

observed. A skeptic sticking to a believer—it is as elementary as the law of

complementary colours. What we lack attracts us. No one loves daylight

more than the blind. The dwarf girl adores the drum major. ...

Grantaire, in whom

doubt lurked, loved to see faith soar in Enjolras. He needed Enjolras.

held spellbound by that chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard, candid

character. He admired, instinctively, his opposite. His limp, wavering,

disjointed, sick, deformed ideas attached themselves to Enjolras as to a

backbone. His moral spine leaned on that firm frame. Beside Enjolras,

Grantaire became somebody again. He was himself, in any case, composed

of two apparently incomptible elements. He was ironic and warmhearted.

His indifference was loving. His mind could do without faith, but his heart

could not do without friendship. A profound contradiction—for an

affection is a conviction. That was his nature. Some people seem born to be

the verso, the reverse, the flipside. They are Pollux, Patroclus, Nisus,

Eudamidas, Hephaestion, Pechméja. They can live only on condition of

leaning on someone else; their name is a sequel; their existence is not their own; it is the

other side of a destiny that is not theirs. Grantaire was one of these men. He

was the flipside of Enjolras.

Grantaire, as a true satellite of Enjolras, dwelt in this circle of young

men; he lived there, he was only happy there, he followed them

everywhere. His great delight was to see those silhouettes coming and

going in the haze of wine. They put up with him because of his good

humour.

The believer in Enjolras looked down on the skeptic Grantaire, and the teetotaller

looked down on the drunk. He would dole out a dose of pity from on high.

Grantaire was a Pylades who did not pass muster. Always treated roughly

by Enjolras, pushed away harshly, rejected yet coming back for more, he

would say of Enjolras: “Such a beautiful slab of marble!”

But it is R's first words, his Establishing Character Moment and the start of his epic rants, that truly solidifies his character. Grantaire is introduced using a very surrealistic metaphor (is it the absinthe or his own creativity)?

“I’m so thirsty! Mortals, I have a dream: that the Great Heidelberg Tun has a stroke,

and that I am among the dozen leeches they apply to it. I want

to drink. I want to forget life. Life is a hideous invention of who knows

who. It doesn’t last two ups and it’s not worth two ups. You break your neck

trying to stay alive. Life is a stage set where nothing much actually works.

Happiness is an old theatre decor, painted on one side only. Ecclesiastes says:

Omnia vanitas, ‘All is vanity.’ I couldn’t agree more with the poor bastard, if he ever

existed..."

The Great Heidelberg Tun is the biggest barrel in Europe, located in the cellars of Schloss (Palace) Heidelberg, and always full of good wine. Its size is 7 m long and 8,5 m wide, and its volume is 220,000 litres. There is even a dancefloor on top, and young people dance on it during certain festivals! 

The Tun appears so often in the literature of Romanticism that it has become a meme. For instance, in Moby-Dick, the spermaceti gland of a sperm whale is compared to the Great Heidelberg Tun, being around the same size and also full of a costly liquid. Heidelberg being the Capital of Romanticism, many Romantics either visited the town or studied at its university, the Ruperto Carola, and they had surely danced on the Tun and the image stuck with them:

The Tun is referenced in Rudolf Erich Raspe's The Surprising Adventures of Baron Münchhausen, Jules Verne's novel Five Weeks in a Balloon, Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (in Grantaire's rant, here), Washington Irving's The Specter Bridegroom, Mary Hazelton Wade's Bertha, Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad and Wilhelm Busch's Die fromme Helena. It can also be found in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick as well as in Lyrisches Intermezzo by Heinrich Heine, later used in the song cycle Dichterliebe by Robert Schumann for the final song "Die alten, bösen Lieder (The Old Evil Songs)". 

(Great Heidelberg Tun. Notice the dancefloor on top!)

Leeches were used then to cure multiple diseases, the prevalent theory of disease being the four humours (fluids): these worms were used to "leech" away superfluous fluids that made the patient ill. Stroke victims in particular were treated with leeches, although this was mostly ineffectual...

If the Great Heidelberg Tun, personified, had a stroke, think of how many wine-thirsty leeches, eager for fine Rhine wine, would be applied to it! And obviously our lovely cynic Grand'R would loooove to be one of them!

ANDREW MARVELL, ON POSITIVE EMOTIONS

 À LA SHMOOP

... the cramp of hope does tear:

• First off we've got hope, compared to a cramp, ... Notice how the metaphor fits the feeling: hope nestles inside you like a cramping muscle ...

The pestilence of love does heat:

• In the same way, it makes sense that love is a pestilence, some kind of aggressively infectious disease like the black plague. Anyone who's ever had a Bella-on-Edward-style crush will know that love is definitely a full-body condition, delivering heat and plenty of it.

Joy's cheerful madness does perplex:

• Joy's actually not so bad, although the mental giddiness it produces can be confusing and distracting. That's why happy people tend to be goggle-eyed ditzes. (No offense, all you smilies out there.)

The poem spins a tangled web of metaphor, making the pains of emotion and memory vivid and understandable by comparing them to bodily diseases.

• Line 33: Hope is compared to a cramp, a small nagging pain that grows the more you move that muscle.
• Line 35: The poem describes love as a pestilence, which means an aggressively infectious disease. Marvell was probably thinking of the black plague—because nothing says love like swelling pus-filled buboes—but the metaphor holds for all diseases. Love makes you hot and cold, flushed and dizzy. (And this "love" is obviously eros, erotic love: that for a parent for their child or a pet owner for their pet should BY NO MEANS be a heating pestilence!)
• And joy in like 37 (note that all the positive emotions are in the odd-numbered lines!) is described as a "cheerful madness" or mania, the mental giddiness it produces can be confusing and distracting. 
• The problem is, there's no cure for feelings like futile hope and despairing love. You can't Advil that stuff up and expect to zonk out in blissful non-awareness in thirty minutes. You have to find other solutions, like a new love interest or a new career. -- MISS DERMARK ADDS: But for Pete's sake, no addictions, whether drugs (that includes legal drugs like alcohol and caffeine), gambling, or shopping, or pyromania... I've been through a dark time with addictions myself and I know what it's like!

According to Shmoop: Emotional pain is easier to endure than physical pain because it can't result in death. No matter if it's "the cramp of hope" that tears, "the pestilence of love (eros)" that heats and chills, or "joy's cheerful madness" that perplexes or causes mental giddiness, positive emotions, even seen through Baroque poets by Marvell, are not as lethal as war, abuse, genocide, let alone poisons, torture, or some physical diseases (though some of them, like syphilis and strychnine poisoning, would make death seem like a welcome respite)!

But Marvell also has a naughty side: In To his Coy Mistress (read: To his Shy Girlfriend), he paints a picture of the titular ladylove dead and decaying, her hymen being eaten by maggots (ewww!!), and even uses the C-word of his day and age:

Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace. 

"Quaint" in the seventeenth century meant not only "whimsical," but also "C. U. Next. Tuesday." Like "gay" (once "merry"), "queer" (once "strange"), "nunnery" (once "brothel"), and "fishmonger" (once "pimp"), the word has been the unfortunate victim of semantic change...