Poetry · A way to begin
Reenert
Renert oder de Fuuß am Frack an a Ma'nsgrëßt
Michel Rodange · 1872
Synopsis
Around Whitsun, the Lion King summons all the beasts; the fox Renert, who has just killed a hen, does not appear. The bear, then the cat, sent to fetch him, are brutally turned away; only the badger, his cousin, manages to bring him to court. Condemned to death, Renert gets himself out of trouble at the foot of the gallows by telling the king of a treasure and a plot hatched against him. Each beast speaks the dialect of its region and represents a notable of the grand duchy.
Context
The poem adapts Goethe's Reineke Fuchs, read in the Cotta edition of 1858: the twelve German cantos become fourteen cantos and more than six thousand lines, which mock the greed of the ironmasters and the selfishness of the leaders. Printed in a thousand copies by Jean Joris, partly without the author's name, it sold only three hundred and thirteen in thirty years. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the twentieth century thanks to the lectures of Nik Welter and Caspar Mathias Spoo, then at the centenary of 1927, adapted for the theatre in 1945 and translated into English in 2022.
Who it is for
For readers who like animal fables and want to see how the old story of the fox was used to mock the notables of a small country.
Prizes and reception
Unnoticed when it appeared, it is now regarded as the national epic of Luxembourg.