Gesammelte Schriften von Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1/10) : Erster Band: Aphorismen. Parabeln, Märchen und Gedichte.

"Gesammelte Schriften von Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1/10)" by Ebner-Eschenbach is a collection of aphorisms, parables, and poems written in the late 19th century. It assembles incisive, humane reflections and short moral tales that probe character, conscience, love, art, and society with wit and ethical clarity. Expect sharp maxims and fable-like vignettes rather than a single storyline or protagonist, blending irony with compassion. The opening of this volume delivers several hundred aphorisms that distill observations on virtue and vice, pride and humility, freedom and necessity, women and men, art and duty—pithy, paradox-aware, and morally exacting. It then shifts to brief parables: a fugitive in a land of determinists (“Die Mußmenschen”) finds wrongdoing treated as illness, yet still meets execution when he claims free will; a “Maulwurfshügel” mocks a volcano and exposes petty self-importance; “Zwei Gräber” contrasts a forgotten street singer—the true poet—with a lauded author called a mere day-laborer by Poetry itself. Other pieces show Prometheus still chained by memory, Pride shattering against true merit, a city’s statue of Justice turning into the emblem of self-defense, and a wind-tossed leaf mistaking drift for mastery. “Die Siegerin” crowns Goodness as the only undefeated combatant among battling virtues and vices, “Verlorene Zuversicht” laments luck without trust, and “Am Ziel” has a secret benefactor question the vanity of preserving a record of his alms. The section reads as a lucid mosaic of moral insight and narrative sketches that sharpen the book’s overarching themes. (This is an automatically generated summary.)