The Travels and Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Melville House)

201 Pages·2012·6.57 MB·English

by  Raspe Rudolf Erich

THE TRAVELS AND
SURPRISING ADVENTURES OF
BARON MUNCHAUSEN
RUDOLF ERICH RASPE (1736–1794) was born in Hanover, Germany
of humble parentage. He studied natural sciences at the
universities in Leipzig and Göttingen before becoming a
university librarian and professor. He first gained fame for his
poetry, translations, and scholarly papers, one of which Goethe
called “a milestone of German science,” and another of which
led to his election to the Royal Society of London. His expertise
in mineralogy also led to his appointment as curator of a
gemstone collection held by the local count. But in 1775 he fled
to England after it was discovered that he had been secretly
selling the count’s jewels to support his lavish lifestyle. In
London he befriended many notables, including Benjamin
Franklin and Horace Walpole … and continued to pursue
schemes that often led to trouble, such as industrial spying in
the nascent business of steam-engine manufacturing, and
planting precious stones in supposed mineral fields he
“discovered” and sold to speculators. He wrote The Travels and
Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen in Cornwall, in the
southwest of England, having moved there to pursue his
geological research. It is presumed he had met the real-life
Baron Munchausen (who lived in Göttingen), but the book
would later be seen as less a (terribly) exaggerated portrait than
a defiant spoof of the prevalent rationalism of the
Enlightenment. Soon after its completion, however, Raspe was
forced to flee to Scotland when it was discovered that he had
fleeced another employer. He later moved to Ireland, where he
died in Kilarney of typhoid.
DAVID REES is a comedian and former political cartoonist whose
books include Get Your War On and How to Sharpen Pencils.
THOMAS SECCOMBE (1866–1923) was a writer and assistant editor
of the Dictionary of National Biography.
WILLIAM STRANG and J.B. CLARK were renowned artists who
collaboratively illustrated Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba and the
Forty Thieves. Strang was also a noted portraitist whose subjects
included Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, and Vita Sackville-
West.
THE NEVERSINK LIBRARY
I was by no means the only reader of books on board the
Neversink. Several other sailors were diligent readers, though their
studies did not lie in the way of belles-lettres. Their favourite
authors were such as you may find at the book-stalls around Fulton
Market; they were slightly physiological in their nature. My book
experiences on board of the frigate proved an example of a fact
which every book-lover must have experienced before me, namely,
that though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless
contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove
most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up
by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by
Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much.
—
HERMAN MELVILLE, WHITE JACKET

THE TRAVELS AND SURPRISING ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN
Originally published by Rudolf Erich Raspe, London, 1785; this edition is based on the text
published by Lawrence and Bullen, London, 1895
© Melville House 2012
Introduction © 2012, David Rees First Melville House printing: September 2012
Melville House Publishing
145 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
www.mhpbooks.com
eISBN: 978-1-61219124-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012947875
v3.1
INTRODUCTION
BY DAVID REES
The book in your hands proves it’s possible to be bludgeoned half to
death by whimsy.
Readers who have never before encountered Baron Munchausen, or
know him only from Terry Gilliam’s 1988 film, may be surprised by the
chaotic extent of his exploits—and the fathomless absurdity that serves
as catalyst, obstacle, and handmaiden throughout this text.
The first item in Munchausen’s extensive travelogue is the description
of an elderly couple in a tree. (Why were they in a tree? They were
harvesting cucumbers—“in this part of the globe that useful vegetable
grows upon trees.”) A terrible storm tosses the tree—and its occupants—
high into the air. How high? I was expecting an answer of twenty feet or
so. In fact, they were tossed “at least five miles above the earth.” This is
our first indication that the Baron’s is not a typical itinerary.
The brief saga of the storm-tossed cucumber enthusiasts is perhaps the
least outrageous event in the entire work, but it displays many of the
qualities you will come to recognize as typical of the Baron’s narrative:
unusual botany; extreme weather; a keen eye for the quantifiable
(“considerably larger than twenty full-grown vultures;” “as near as I can
calculate, I was near four hours and a half confined in the stomach of
this animal”).
And, of course: death. (When the cucumber tree falls back to earth it
crushes a despot, upending the local political order.) Make no mistake:
The Travels and Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a
surprisingly violent book.
How violent? Animals are turned inside out (when they’re not being
cut in half); a man’s decapitated head flies through the air, decapitating
other men; a bridge of Munchausen’s design is adorned with skulls;
communities are decimated. “When they all lay dead before me, I felt
myself a second Samson, having slain my thousands.” According to my
back-of-envelope calculations, the body count in this book is
approximately fifty billion lives.
As he traipses from one catastrophe to the next, trailing clouds of gory
as he comes, the Baron earns his place among other titans of fiction.
About halfway through the Surprising Adventures—shortly after
Munchausen grabs a bear’s paws and simply waits for the creature to
starve to death—I finally realized which classic character Munchausen
most resembles, thanks to his omnipotence, the relentless forward thrust
of his twin impulses to build and destroy, and the casual cruelty of his
chaos-making: God. (“[W]e saved as many of the white people as possible,
but pushed all the blacks into the water again.”)
We rarely worry about Munchausen’s fate: Even as he’s fighting
crocodiles, dispelling lions with loose gunpowder, or hitching a lift on
the back of a drunk eagle, we trust in his capacity for the narrow escape
and the eventual triumph. You may find yourself, in fact, vaguely
resenting the good Baron for his invincibility, and wishing the stakes
were a little higher for the man.
Perhaps it’s best to think of Munchausen not as a protagonist in the
traditional sense, but as the personification of a proactive psychological
attitude. If, like me, you sometimes see the universe as a cheerless
conspiracy to deny oneself peace of mind, you may take inspiration from
the Baron’s nonchalance and good humor even as he’s sold into slavery,
or confronted with vast islands of ice, or with a wolf chewing its way
through the horse that leads his sled, or with Gog and Magog in the
flesh.
Indeed, it’s the Baron’s sanguineness as much as the specifics of his
adventures that lend this book so much of its strange charm, and we
wonder how much of this charm was to be found in the original (that is,
actual) Baron Munchausen. Is the man’s personality refracted within
these pages? It’s hard to tell, as the particulars of The Travels and
Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen are almost as surprising as the
adventures themselves (see this edition’s Afterword). The book’s messy,
peripatetic provenance recommended it to amendation, corruption, and
confusion as authors piled on and scores of enthusiasts tried to make a
little money off the good Baron’s back.
Tall tales, like our merry baron, pay little heed to international
borders; don’t be surprised if some of the adventures recounted herein
sound familiar. To take just one example: I first learned of the
phenomenon of frozen speech—a musical equivalent is encountered by
the Baron in Chapter VI—from the stories of Pecos Bill I read as a child.
(Pecos Bill was the legendary American cowboy celebrated for lassoing a
tornado—an exercise so culturally and meteorologically specific that one
can almost forgive Munchausen for not attempting it himself.) Such is
the genius of tall tales—like obscene playground rhymes and urban
legends, the best ones sacrifice pedigree in favor of ubiquity, and
become more powerful thereby.
A word of caution: As intimated above, this is not a book to be read in
one sitting, or even in long stretches. The cacophony of destruction, the
surreal lack of scale— not to mention the absence of any narrative logic
—may fatigue even the hardiest of readers. The intensity of The
Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen recommends that it be
consumed in bursts. This is not consommé to be sipped in deference to
its subtlety; it’s tequila to be slammed, shot and shared with enthusiasm.
Did I mention the man can speak nine hundred and ninety-nine
languages?