by Maria Tatar
The closeness of the poetry to the earliest and simplest forms of life accounts for its widespread diffusion. There is not a single culture that does without it. Even the Negroes of West Africa entertain their children with stories, and Strabo expressly says the same thing about the Greeks. (In the end, one will find similar attestations among others, which goes to show just how highly these tales were esteemed by those who understand the value of a voice speaking directly to the heart.) This explains another most remarkable circumstance, and that concerns the widespread diffusion of the German tales. In that respect, they not only match the heroic stories of Siegfried the dragon slayer, but even surpass them, for we find these tales, and precisely these tales, throughout Europe, thus revealing a kinship among the noblest peoples. In the north, we know only the Danish heroic ballads, which contain much that is pertinent here, even if in the form of songs, which are not quite appropriate for children since they are meant to be sung. But here too the dividing line can hardly be drawn with greater precision than for the more serious historical legend, and there are actually areas of overlap. England has the Tabart collection, which is not very rich, but what treasures of oral narratives must still exist in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland! Wales has a real treasure just in its Mabinogion (now in print). Similarly, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have retained their riches; the southern countries less so. We know of nothing from Spain, but a passage from Cervantes leaves no room for doubt about the existence and telling of tales.3 France must surely have more than what was published by Perrault, who treated them as children’s tales (not so his inferior imitators, Aulnoy, Murat); he gives us only nine, although these are the best known stories and also among the most beautiful. The merit of his work rests on his refusal to add things and on his decision to leave the stories unchanged, aside from minor details. His manner of presentation deserves special praise for being as simple as was possible for him. There is really nothing more difficult than using the French language to tell children’s stories in a naïve and simple manner, that is, without any pretentiousness, for the language in its current state transforms itself almost spontaneously into epigrammatic remarks and finely honed dialogue (just look at the conversation between Riquet à la houpe and the stupid princess, as well as at the end of “Petit Poucet”); sometimes the tales are unnecessarily long and drawn out. A study about to be published holds that Perrault invented these tales and only through him (born 1633, died 1703) did they reach the people. It also maintains that an imitation of Homer appears in the story of Tom Thumb, which allegedly has the aim of making Ulysses’ plight when confronted with Polyphemus understandable to children. Johanneau had a more accurate view on this matter. The older Italian collections are richer than all the others. First and foremost the Nights of Straparola, which contains many good things, but especially The Pentamerone of Basile, as well known and beloved in Italy as it is rare and unknown in Germany. Written in the Neapolitan dialect, it is in every respect an excellent work. The content is almost entirely without gaps and without inauthentic additions. The style is replete with fine turns of phrase and sayings. To translate it in a lively way requires a Fischart4 and his age; we plan to make all this clear in the second volume of the present collection, in which everything furnished by foreign sources will find a place.
We have tried to collect these tales in as pure a form as possible. In many, the narrative flow is interrupted by rhymes and lines of verse which sometimes clearly alliterate but are never sung during the telling of a tale. Precisely these are the oldest and best tales. No details have been added or embellished or changed, for we would have been reluctant to expand stories already so rich by adding analogies and allusions. They cannot be invented. A collection of this kind has never existed in Germany. The tales have almost always been used as the stuff of longer stories, which have been expanded and edited at the author’s pleasure. To be sure, they had some value for that purpose, but what belonged to children was always torn out of their hands, and nothing was given back to them in return. Even those who kept children in mind could not resist mixing in mannerisms of contemporary writing; there was hardly ever enough diligence in collecting so that only a few tales, picked up by chance,5 were published. Had we been fortunate enough to be able to tell the stories in a specific dialect, then they would no doubt have gained much; here we have one of those cases where a high degree of development, refinement, and artistry in language misfires, and where one feels that a purified literary language, as effective as it may be for other purposes, has become brighter and more transparent, but also more insipid and would have failed to capture the essentials.
We bequeath this book to well-meaning hands and cannot help but think of the powerful blessing that dwells in them. We hope that the book will remain completely unknown to those who begrudge poor and modest souls these small morsels of poetry.
KASSEL, October 18, 1812
endnotes
1. Fischart, Gargantua, 129b, 131b.
2. The situation appears here often and is probably the first cloud to rise on each child’s horizon, evoking the first tears, which people fail to see, but that angels count. Flowers have even acquired their names in this way; the Viola tricolor is called “little stepmother” because each of its yellow leaves has a slender green leaf beneath it that holds it up. Those are said to be the chairs given by a mother to her own happy children; the two stepchildren stand mournfully above in dark violet, and they have no chairs.
3. —y aquellas (cosas) que à ti te deven parecer profecias, no son sino palabras de consejar, ocuentos de viejas, como aquellos del cavallo sin cabeça, y de la varilla de virtudes, con que se entretienen al fuego las dilatadas noches del invierno. Colloq. Entre cip. Y Berg.
4. With the language of his day and with his admirable memory, what a much better book of tales he could have produced had he recognized the value of a true, unadulterated recording.
5. Musäus and Naubert used as material what we have called local legends; the far more admirable Otmar used only those; an Erfurt collection of 1787 is weak, a Leipzig collection of 1799 hardly belongs here, even though it is not all bad; a collection from Braunschweig of 1801 is the richest of these, although in a very different tone. There was nothing for us to take from the latest Büsching collection, and it should be expressly noted that a collection published a few years ago by our namesake A. L. Grimm in Heidelberg under the title Children’s Tales was not done very well and has absolutely nothing to do with us and with our work.
The recently published Winter Tales by Father Johann (Jena at Voigt 1813) only has a new title and actually appeared ten years ago.
They have the same author as the Leipzig collection. Peter Kling is his name, and he has written both books in the same manner. Only the sixth and part of the fifth tale are of value; the others have no substance and, apart from a few details, are hollow inventions.
We ask those who have the opportunity and the desire to help us to improve the details of this book, to complete its fragments, and especially to collect new and unusual animal fables. We would be most grateful for such information, which is best sent to the publisher or to bookstores in Göttingen, Kassel, and Marburg.
THE MAGIC OF FAIRY TALES
he German philosopher Walter Benjamin once pondered the idea of writing a book that would consist entirely of quotations from other writers. The notion of quilting together snippets of text—passages so moving that they affect our lives long after we have put down a book—is an inspired one, and one that many have considered as a possible adventure, one that turns the voracious reader into the producer, if not necessarily the writer, of a text. Over the years, I have collected passages that have the power to arouse thought and rouse to action, passages that move us to think about the deeper meaning of fairy tales and how they have affected our own lives and those of others.
CHARLES DICKENS
“We may assume that we are not singular in entertai
ning a very great tenderness for the fairy literature of our childhood. What enchanted us then, and is captivating a million of young fancies now, has, at the same blessed time of life, enchanted vast hosts of men and women who have done their long day’s work, and laid their grey heads down to rest. It would be hard to estimate the amount of gentleness and mercy that has made its way among us through these slight channels. Forbearance, courtesy, consideration for the poor and aged, kind treatment of animals, the love of nature, abhorrence of tyranny and brute force—many such good things have been first nourished in the child’s heart by this powerful aid. It has greatly helped to keep us, in some sense, ever young, by preserving through our worldly ways one slender track not overgrown with weeds, where we may walk with children, sharing their delights.”
“Frauds on the Fairies.” In Household Words: A Weekly Journal. New York: McElrath and Barker, 1854. Vol. 8: 97–100.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
“The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially ‘escapist,’ nor ‘fugitive.’ In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. . . . It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the ‘turn’ comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality.”
“On Fairy-Stores.” In The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine, 1966. Pp. 33–44.
ERNST BLOCH
“Toward dusk may be the best time to tell stories. . . . A remote realm that appears to be better and closer approaches. Once upon a time: this means in fairy-tale manner not only the past but a more colorful or easier somewhere else. And those who have become happier there are still happy today if they are not dead. To be sure, there is suffering in fairy tales; however, it changes, and for sure, it never returns. The maltreated, gentle Cinderella goes to the little tree at her mother’s grave: little tree, shake yourself, shake yourself. A dress falls to her feet more splendid and marvelous than anything she has ever had. And the slippers are solid gold. Fairy tales always end in gold. There is enough happiness there.”
“Better Castles in the Sky at the Country Fair and Circus, in Fairy Tales and Colportage.” In The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays. Trans. Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996. Pp. 167–85.
PETER RUSHFORTH
“In fairy-tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, the innocent and the pure in heart always seemed to triumph, even after much fear and suffering: Hansel and Gretel outwitted the witch and escaped; the seven little kids and their mother destroyed the wolf; the three sisters in ‘Fitcher’s Bird’ overpowered even death itself to defeat the murdering magician. But he could still remember the mounting desolation with which he read some of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tales when he was little. He had read them over and over again, hoping that this time the ending would be a happy ending, but the endings never changed: the little match-girl died entirely alone, frozen to death on New Year’s Eve, surrounded by burned-out matches; the little mermaid melted into foam after bearing her suffering bravely. . . . He had been drawn, compulsively, to read them with engrossed attention, and had wept as he found himself realizing what the inevitable and unchanged end of the story would be.”
Kindergarten. New York: Avon Books, 1979.
ITALO CALVINO
“The storyteller of the tribe puts together phrases and images: the younger son gets lost in the forest, he sees a light in the distance, he walks and walks; the fable unwinds from sentence to sentence, and where is it leading? To the point at which something not yet said, something as yet only darkly felt by presentiment, suddenly appears and seizes us and tears us to pieces, like the fangs of a man-eating witch. Through the forest of fairy tale the vibrancy of myth passes like a shudder of wind.”
“Cybernetics and Ghosts.” In The Uses of Literature. Trans. Patrick Creagh. New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1986. Pp. 3–27.
P. L. TRAVERS
“I shall never know which good lady it was who, at my own christening, gave me the everlasting gift, spotless amid all spotted joys, of love for the fairy tale. It began in me quite early, before there
was any separation between myself and world. . . . This undifferentiated world is common to all children. They may never have heard of the fairy tales but still be on easy terms with myth. Saint George and King Arthur, under other names, defend the alleyways and crossroads, and Beowulf’s Grendel, variously disguised, breathes fire in the vacant lots. Skipping games, street songs, lullabies, all carry the stories in them. But far above these, as a source of myth, are the half-heard scraps of gossip, from parent to parent, neighbor to neighbor as they whisper across a fence. A hint, a carefully garbled disclosure, a silencing finger at the lip, and the tales, like rain clouds, gather.”
“Afterword.” In About the Sleeping Beauty. New York: McGraw Hill, 1975. Pp. 47–62.
BRUNO BETTELHEIM
“Each fairy tale is a magic mirror which reflects some aspects of our inner world, and of the steps required by our evolution from immaturity to maturity. For those who immerse themselves in what the fairy tale has to communicate, it becomes a deep, quiet pool which at first seems to reflect only our own image; but behind it we soon discover the inner turmoil of our soul—its depth, and ways to gain peace within ourselves and with the world, which is the reward of our struggles.”
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Vintage Books, 1976. P. 309.
WANDA GÁG
“Every child goes through many phases of development, each phase with its own needs and interests. I know I should now feel bitterly cheated if, as a child, I had been deprived of all fairy lore; and it does not seem to me that we have the right to deprive any child of its rightful heritage to Fairyland. In fact, I believe it is just the modern children who need it, since their lives are already overbalanced on the side of steel and stone and machinery—and nowadays, one might well add, bombs, gas-masks and machine guns.”
“I Like Fairy Tales.” Horn Book. 15 (1939): 75–76.
GRAHAM GREENE
“Perhaps it is only in childhood that books have any deep influence on our lives. In later life we admire, we are entertained, we may modify some views we already hold, but we are more likely to find in books merely a confirmation of what is in our minds already. . . . But in childhood all books are books of divination, telling us about the future, and like the fortune teller who sees a long journey in the cards or death by water they influence the future. I suppose that is why books excited us so much. What do we ever get nowadays to equal the excitement and revelation in those first fourteen years?”
“The Lost Childhood.” In The Lost Childhood and Other Essays. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1961. Pp. 13–17.
TRINA SCHART HYMAN
“The Grimms’ tales . . . I turned to for comfort, inspiration, and just plain enjoyment. There is very little mention of God or the devil in these stories. People usually go to the sun, or the moon, or the winds for advice. Or to the animals—birds are great omen-bringers and advice-givers. Nature is full of power.
Morality—in the form of ‘good’ or ‘evil’—is not so clearly drawn in Grimm and almost never pointed out. Heroes and heroines often pull some pretty rotten, nasty, or self-serving tricks in order to get what they want.”
“Cut It Down, and You Will Find Something at the Roots.” In The Reception of Grimms’ Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions, ed. Donald Haase. Detro
it, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1993. Pp. 293–300.
JANE YOLEN
“What I am suggesting is not to ban or censor the stories. They are great and important parts of the Western folk canon.
But what I am asking for is that we become better readers. That we read below the surface. That we teach our children to think about what Puss does for his master, why Rumpelstiltskin is destroyed, how Rapunzel treats her mother-substitute. I want our children to wonder about Goldilocks’ casual destruction of the Bears’ lovely cottage and talk about whether the princess deserves to marry the frog-prince and to figure out what Cinderella’s father was doing all the while his new wife and step-daughters are mistreating her.
There are many layers inside the old tales, like nesting Matrushka dolls. Examining the layers does not wreck the story, but shows us how rich and fascinating they really are.”
“Killing the Other.” In Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood. Little Rock, Ark.: August House Publishers, 2002. Pp. 105–9.
C. S. LEWIS
“I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it.”
Dedication to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. New York: Macmillan, 1950.
MARINA WARNER
“Storytelling can act as a social binding agent—like the egg yolk which, mixed up with the different coloured powders, produces colours of a painting. A story like ‘Rashin Coatie,’ collected in Scotland in the last century, relates to similar tales of wronged orphan girls all over the world, but it has particular Scottish resonances and emphases—this Cinderella meets her prince at the kirk, not the palace. Of course there are fairy tales unique to a single place, which have not been passed on. But there are few really compelling ones that do not turn out to be wearing seven-league boots. The possibility of holding a storehouse of narrative in common could act to enhance our reciprocal relations, to communicate across space and barricades of national self-interest and pride. We share more than we perhaps admit or know, and have done so for a very long time. . . . The Brothers Grimm proclaimed their fairy stories the pure uncontaminated national products of the Volk or German people, but we now know that many of their tales have been traveling through the world for centuries before the Grimms took them down.”