Charles

Dickens

Oliver Twist

or The Parish Boy’s Progress

Übersetzt von Christine Hoeppener, Lizenz der Aufbau Verlagsgruppe
Synchronisation und Ergänzungen © Doppeltext 2022

TITELBLATT

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII

CHAPTER XXXIX

CHAPTER XL

CHAPTER XLI

CHAPTER XLII

CHAPTER XLIII

CHAPTER XLIV

CHAPTER XLV

CHAPTER XLVI

CHAPTER XLVII

CHAPTER XLVIII

CHAPTER XLIX

CHAPTER L

CHAPTER LI

CHAPTER LII

CHAPTER LIII

IMPRESSUM

CHAPTER I

TREATS OF THE PLACE WHERE OLIVER TWIST WAS BORN AND OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING HIS BIRTH

Among oth­er pub­lic build­ings in a cer­tain town, which for many reas­ons it will be prudent to re­frain from men­tion­ing,
and to which I will as­sign no fic­ti­tious name, there is one an­ciently com­mon to most towns, great or small:
to wit, a work­house; and in this work­house was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble my­self to re­peat,
inas­much as it can be of no pos­sible con­sequence to the read­er, in this stage of the busi­ness at all events;
the item of mor­tal­ity whose name is pre­fixed to the head of this chapter.
For a long time after it was ushered into this world of sor­row and trouble, by the par­ish sur­geon,
it re­mained a mat­ter of con­sid­er­able doubt wheth­er the child would sur­vive to bear any name at all;
in which case it is some­what more than prob­able that these mem­oirs would nev­er have ap­peared;
or, if they had, that be­ing com­prised with­in a couple of pages, they would have pos­sessed the in­es­tim­able mer­it
of be­ing the most con­cise and faith­ful spe­ci­men of bio­graphy, ex­tant in the lit­er­at­ure of any age or coun­try.
Al­though I am not dis­posed to main­tain that the be­ing born in a work­house,
is in it­self the most for­tu­nate and en­vi­able cir­cum­stance that can pos­sibly be­fall a hu­man be­ing,
I do mean to say that in this par­tic­u­lar in­stance, it was the best thing for Oliv­er Twist that could by pos­sib­il­ity have oc­curred.
The fact is, that there was con­sid­er­able dif­fi­culty in in­du­cing Oliv­er to take upon him­self the of­fice of res­pir­a­tion,
— a trouble­some prac­tice, but one which cus­tom has rendered ne­ces­sary to our easy ex­ist­ence;
and for some time he lay gasp­ing on a little flock mat­tress,
rather un­equally poised between this world and the next: the bal­ance be­ing de­cidedly in fa­vour of the lat­ter.
Now, if, dur­ing this brief peri­od, Oliv­er had been sur­roun­ded by care­ful grand­moth­ers, anxious aunts, ex­per­i­enced nurses, and doc­tors of pro­found wis­dom,
he would most in­ev­it­ably and in­dubit­ably have been killed in no time.
There be­ing nobody by, however, but a pau­per old wo­man, who was rendered rather misty by an un­wonted al­low­ance of beer;
and a par­ish sur­geon who did such mat­ters by con­tract; Oliv­er and Nature fought out the point between them.
The res­ult was, that, after a few struggles, Oliv­er breathed, sneezed,
and pro­ceeded to ad­vert­ise to the in­mates of the work­house the fact of a new bur­den hav­ing been im­posed upon the par­ish, by set­ting up as loud a cry
as could reas­on­ably have been ex­pec­ted from a male in­fant who had not been pos­sessed of that very use­ful ap­pend­age, a voice, for a much longer space of time than three minutes and a quarter.
As Oliv­er gave this first proof of the free and prop­er ac­tion of his lungs,
the patch­work cov­er­let which was care­lessly flung over the iron bed­stead, rustled; the pale face of a young wo­man was raised feebly from the pil­low;
and a faint voice im­per­fectly ar­tic­u­lated the words, ‘Let me see the child, and die.’
The sur­geon had been sit­ting with his face turned to­wards the fire: giv­ing the palms of his hands a warm and a rub al­tern­ately.
As the young wo­man spoke, he rose, and ad­van­cing to the bed’s head, said, with more kind­ness than might have been ex­pec­ted of him:
‘Oh, you must not talk about dy­ing yet.’
‘Lor bless her dear heart, no!’ in­ter­posed the nurse, hast­ily de­pos­it­ing in her pock­et a green glass bottle,
the con­tents of which she had been tast­ing in a corner with evid­ent sat­is­fac­tion.
‘Lor bless her dear heart, when she has lived as long as I have, sir, and had thir­teen chil­dren of her own,
and all on ’em dead ex­cept two, and them in the wurkus with me, she’ll know bet­ter than to take on in that way, bless her dear heart!
Think what it is to be a moth­er, there’s a dear young lamb do.’
Ap­par­ently this con­sol­at­ory per­spect­ive of a moth­er’s pro­spects failed in pro­du­cing its due ef­fect.
The pa­tient shook her head, and stretched out her hand to­wards the child.
The sur­geon de­pos­ited it in her arms. She im­prin­ted her cold white lips pas­sion­ately on its fore­head;
passed her hands over her face; gazed wildly round; shuddered; fell back — and died.
They chafed her breast, hands, and temples; but the blood had stopped forever.
They talked of hope and com­fort. They had been strangers too long.
‘It’s all over, Mrs. Thing­ummy!’ said the sur­geon at last.
‘Ah, poor dear, so it is!’ said the nurse, pick­ing up the cork of the green bottle,
which had fallen out on the pil­low, as she stooped to take up the child. ‘Poor dear!’
‘You needn’t mind send­ing up to me, if the child cries, nurse,’ said the sur­geon, put­ting on his gloves with great de­lib­er­a­tion.
‘It’s very likely it will be trouble­some. Give it a little gruel if it is.’
He put on his hat, and, paus­ing by the bed-side on his way to the door, ad­ded,
‘She was a good-look­ing girl, too; where did she come from?’
‘She was brought here last night,’ replied the old wo­man, ‘by the over­seer’s or­der. She was found ly­ing in the street.
She had walked some dis­tance, for her shoes were worn to pieces; but where she came from, or where she was go­ing to, nobody knows.’
The sur­geon leaned over the body, and raised the left hand.
‘The old story,’ he said, shak­ing his head: ‘no wed­ding-ring, I see. Ah! Good-night!’
The med­ic­al gen­tle­man walked away to din­ner;
and the nurse, hav­ing once more ap­plied her­self to the green bottle, sat down on a low chair be­fore the fire, and pro­ceeded to dress the in­fant.
What an ex­cel­lent ex­ample of the power of dress, young Oliv­er Twist was!
Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only cov­er­ing, he might have been the child of a no­ble­man or a beg­gar;
it would have been hard for the haught­i­est stranger to have as­signed him his prop­er sta­tion in so­ci­ety.
But now that he was en­vel­oped in the old calico robes which had grown yel­low in the same ser­vice, he was badged and tick­eted,
and fell into his place at once — a par­ish child — the orphan of a work­house — the humble, half-starved drudge
— to be cuffed and buf­feted through the world — des­pised by all, and pit­ied by none.
Oliv­er cried lust­ily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mer­cies of church-war­dens and over­seers,
per­haps he would have cried the louder.

Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist
Zweisprachige Ausgabe
Übersetzt von Christine Hoeppener

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Die Übersetzung erschien erstmals 1970 in Charles Dickens: Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben im Verlag Rütten & Loening, Berlin. Rütten & Loening ist eine Marke der Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG.
Übersetzung © Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin 1970, 2008

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