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WONDERFUL JOURNEY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2019

Esther Pasztory*
Affiliation:
Lisa and Bernard Selz Professor Emerita of Pre-Columbian Art History and Archaeology, Department of Art, Columbia University, 2690 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
*
E-mail correspondence to: eszpasz@aol.com

Extract

When I was a child, my favorite book was Wonderful Journey by Selma Lagerlof in Hungarian translation. The story is about a boy who is turned into a Tom Thumb for bad behavior. He joins a flock of wild geese and travels with them on the back of a goose on a series of adventures through towns and forests, even under the sea to an “Atlantis.” He speaks the language of the animals and learns good behavior. As a reward, after a year, he is transformed back into a regular boy and goes home. He looks up wonderingly at the flock of geese going on another adventure but can no longer understand the language of animals. He is sad. At this point, I always cried. (I did not know that the story, written in 1907, took place in Sweden and was a geography lesson of Sweden, specifically. It is available now in English as the Wonderful Adventures of Nils. Selma Lagerlof received the Nobel Prize.)

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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