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Rating: 
Summary: Refreshing
Review: Lichtenberg truly observes and thinks, forgive my cliched phrase, with a child's wonder. Thinking and Observing are, for him, downright entertainment not, as for most of us, labour-work. Even such strict critics as Schopenhauer and Nietszche have to off-cap to this unusual man. Readers who have German can consult the 4-vol. "Schriften und Briefe" edited by Wolfgang Promies (with 2 useful vol.s of "Kommentar"; Hanser Verlag, 1967). There seems to me a drawback (a strange one) of this translation: Mr. Hollingdale sometimes omits some part of an aphorism without obvious reasons. Just take the first aphorism as an example: the translation reads:'the great artifice of regarding small deviations from the truch as being the truth itself is at the same time the foundation of wit...'; while the original is 'Der grosse Kunstgriff, kleine Abweichungen von der Wahrheit fur die Wahrheit selbst zu halten, worauf die ganze Differentialrechnung gebaut ist, ist auch zugleich der Grund unserer witzigen Gedanken...'; why the phrase 'worauf die ganze Differentialrechnung gebaut ist' is not translated? It is quite inexplicable to me. And there are instances where only one sentence is rendered when the aphorism comprises two or three, again, with no obvious reasons. All the same, this edition is a valuable one, supplementing the "Lichtenberg Reader" translated, edited and introduced by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield. I guess any lover of Lichtenberg would oft murmur to him/herself: 'May this wonderful man be better know!' Amen.
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