The Ape.
A Brief Fable.
One night an ape set a grove | of cedars on fire, | and was then very pleased with himself, | as he found it so enlightening [(hell)]. | "Come, brethren: see what I can
do; | I, — I [can] change night into day!"
His brethren came, great and small, | admired the glare, | and all began to praise [him] clamorously in song [(singen an zu
schrein)]: | ["]Long live brother Hans! | Hans [the] ape is worthy of renown, | [for] he has enlightened [(aufgeklärt)] the
[whole] region."
Berlinische Monatsschrift 4, no. 11 (November 1784): 480, translation mine. I was put onto this by Rémi Brague, The kingdom of man: genesis and failure of the modern project, trans. Paul Seaton, Catholic ideas for a secular world (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018), 213, who, following Peter Pütz (Die deutsche Aufklärung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978), 31-32), treats it as a commentary on the Enlightenment.
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