/lit/ - Literature

>>21031306
Stay cozy Pepe

ANECDOTE FROM THE RECENT WAR by Heinrich von Kleist, translated by Matthew Spencer

The most horrendous joke to ever pass human lips, perhaps since the world began, was made in the course of the recent war by a drummer; a drummer, I believe, of the erstwhile Puttkamer regiment; a man for whom, it will be heard shortly, neither Greek nor Roman history provides a counterpart. This fellow, after the Prussians were demolished at Jena, managed to scare up a rifle, with which he continued the war singlehandedly; to such an extent that, having struck down and plundered every highwaygoing Frenchman within range, he was tracked and seized by a passel of gandarmes, dragged into town, and as befitted his conduct, sentenced to death by firing squad. But once he arrived at the execution grounds, and realized that nothing more could be said in his defense, he begged the colonel commanding the detachment for one last request; and when the colonel, his officers gathering about him in tense expectation, asked the man his wish, he pulled down his trousers and requested they shoot him in the asshole, so as to not tear him a new one. Attention must be paid to the Shakespearian virtue of the drummer, who in making this joke remained true to his vocation, that of saving his own skin.