Friday, November 07, 2014

Perception

To make a clever man believe
That you are different than you seem
   Is harder still than to assume
The form you wish him to perceive

I've been reading (very slowly) through Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Sudelbücher, and came across the following aphorism, which I liked and—lacking the sense of a wiser man—decided to recast as a poem in English.

Kluge Leute glauben zu machen man sei, was man nicht ist, ist in den meisten Fällen schwerer als wirklich zu werden, was man scheinen will.

2 comments:

The Happy Glad Creek Gang said...

Ah, yes! Life is complicated and the Germans would try to make it worse by writing difficult sentences in German that even the Germans have trouble understanding but which my brother can manage to not only understand but be humored by and translated not only into English but also into poesy! I love you big brother! Not for your head but for your heart! Love your little sis lost in a sea of Germans!

ac the oblong said...

All German sentences are difficult for me, so I don't notice the difference between hard and easy as readily.
Wish we lived closer to each other, so we could visit more conveniently. I miss you, and your sea of Germans.