The Classic Fairy Tales_Norton Critical Edition

by Edited by Maria Tatar

  Now the new king decided to search for his brother and sister. He wandered through many towns but found nothing. At last he arrived at a town that was made all of iron. He entered, but there was not a living soul there; all the houses were locked and there was no one in the street. He found only one big house standing open. As soon as he entered it, he saw a big dragon roasting a lamb on a spit. He went up to it and gave it a respectful greeting. The dragon made no reply. The young king became angry and struck the dragon a blow, and a bloody struggle broke out between them.

  Only what is essential to the plot is mentioned; nothing is stated for its own sake, and nothing is amplified. As a rule only one attribute goes with each noun: a town made all of iron, a big house, a big dragon, the young king, a bloody struggle. Thanks to this true epic technique of merely naming things, everything that is named appears as a definitively understood unit. Any attempt at detailed description gives rise to the feeling that only a fraction of all that could be said has in fact been told. A detailed description lures us into the infinite and shows us the elusive depth of things. Mere naming, on the other hand, automatically transforms things into simple, motionless images. The world is captured in the word; there is no tentative amplification that would make us feel that something has been left out. The brief labels isolate things by giving them sharp outlines. Not only human beings and otherworld beings, but also all the objects and places of the folktale are designated in this way. The forest in which the folktale hero loses his way is always simply named, never described. The Grimm brothers lose touch with the style of the genuine folktale when they speak of the red eyes and wagging head of the witch and of her long bespectacled nose (KHM Nos. 15, 69, 193). Genuine folktales only speak of an “ugly old hag,” an “old witch,” an “evil witch,” or simply an “old woman.” Gerhart Hauptmann has remarked that “Whatever one adds to the plot is at the expense of the characters.”2 This rule applies to the folktale as well, for the folktale consistently forgoes any individualizing characterization. This is no loss to its construction, but gain. The brief labels impart to all of the elements of the tale that definitive form to which the folktale style aspires by its very nature.

  Among the most frequently named things in folktales are objects that are distinguished by sharp contours and that consist of solid material. Rings, staffs, swords, hair, nuts, eggs, coffers, purses, and apples pass as gifts from otherworld beings to the inhabitants of this world. Unlike the subterranean creatures of legendry, these otherworld beings rarely live in the impenetrable thickets of the forest or in caves; the folktale gives them solid houses or castles or splendid underground lodgings. The forest witch in Hansel and Gretel lives in a small house that is sharply set off from its surroundings, just as both Frau Holle and the underworld devil of the Latvian folktale about Kurbads live in “a little house” in a luminous subterranean realm. The Nordic troll can be the lord of a castle;3 even the gnome Rumpelstiltskin lives in his own little house. Again and again, the hero enters towns, castles, or rooms within whose four walls the action takes its course. “The brave youth left the chambers of white stone, walked out of the town, and went on and on, whether it was near or far, low or high—and there stood a huge barn.” It is this barn that provides the setting for the following adventure.4 How often the folktale calls up the scene in which the protagonist stays behind alone in an otherworld palace and then enters all of its rooms, one by one, even the forbidden twelfth! With what readiness it locks up the hero or the heroine in a tower, palace, trunk or chest! The human beings and the otherworld creatures of the folktale are self-contained figures with nothing indefinite about them. Even people who are sentenced to death and are torn apart by horses are not bloodily dismembered and torn to pieces, but are split neatly in two; they fall “into pieces.” “At once the prince ordered his servants to tie each of the sisters to a pair of horses, one leg to each horse, and to whip the horses and drive them apart. This was done, and the sisters of the princess were thus torn into two pieces.”5 John the Bear “split the giant in two.”6 Sick princesses are cured by means of a purely mechanical treatment: they are cut into pieces and then flawlessly reassembled. Rumpelstiltskin tears himself “right in two.” We see the symmetrically and sharply sundered halves, from which no blood flows and which lose none of their precision of form.

  In much the same way, the folktale tends to render things and animate beings in metallic or mineral terms. Not only are towns, bridges, and shoes made of stone, iron, or glass, and houses and castles made of gold or diamonds, but forests, horses, ducks, or people can be made of gold, silver, iron, or copper, or they can suddenly turn to stone. Gems and pearls, or metal rings, keys, or bells, or golden gowns, hair, or feathers occur in almost every folktale. Golden apples are especially favored. Golden and silver pears, nuts, or flowers, tools of glass, or golden spinning wheels are some of the folktale’s regular accessories. Hands, fingers, feet, or hairs are turned to silver or copper. Certain folktale heroes have a golden star on their forehead or knee. The daughter of the South Slavic emperor has a star on her forehead, a sun on her bosom, and a moon on her knee.7 A downpour of golden rain gilds the heroine of the tale of Frau Holle: “Here comes our golden girl!”8 But the antiheroine, as well, is showered with pitch or enclosed in a wooden dress that is then coated with pitch.9 Instead of the supple human figure, we see a rigid, black hull. Garments made of stone, or a waistcoat10 or trousers11 made of marble also occur. This predilection of the folktale for anything metallic or mineral, for inflexible materials in general, contributes in large measure to giving it a fixed form and well-defined shape. This becomes especially apparent when the folktale renders living organisms in metallic or mineral terms.

  Among the metals, the folktale prefers the precious and rare: gold, silver, copper. The flying ship is made “all of gold, the masts of silver, but the sails of silk.”12 The rare, precious object is set off against its environment and stands alone. In addition, there is the great radiance of precious metals and the stars. A golden or copper horse not only seems unrealistic because it cannot occur in the real world, but the sheer brilliance of its color alone strongly contrasts with any horse in real life.

  The real world shows us a richness of different hues and shadings. Blended colors are far more frequent than pure tones. By contrast, the folktale prefers clear, ultrapure colors: gold, silver, red, white, black, and sometimes blue as well. Gold and silver have a metallic luster, black and white are nonspecific contrasts, and red is the least subtle of all colors and the first to attract the attention of infants. The only blended color to appear is gray, but in the folktale gray, too, is of a metallic character. Instead of telling of a “little gray man” (Graumännchen), the folktale sometimes speaks of a “little iron man” (eisernes Männchen). Green, the color of living nature, is strikingly rare. The folktale forest is a “large forest,” sometimes a “dark forest,” practically never a “green forest.” The more subtle shadings such as brown and yellowish are not found at all. Snow White is as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony. The sun, the moon, and the stars color and adorn the clothes and even the bodies of princesses. The horses of folktales are black, white, or red;13 there are also red sheep,14 black men15—in Bulgarian folktales, as in The Arabian Nights, the Negro is a figure much favored16—and black and white wolves, billy goats, and roosters. All the same, the folktale does not overvalue colors. A rich profusion of bright colors would interfere with its strict linearity. Only a few things and persons are distinguished by a color term, and so they contrast all the more strongly with those that are colorless.

  The story line of the folktale is just as sharply defined and distinct as are the outlines, substance, and color of its characters. The action of the folktale, unlike that of the legend, does not take place in a circumscribed domestic environment among an indefinite number of participants. It reaches out resolutely toward the distance and leads its few protagonists over great expanses to faraway realms—realms that stand
before us as brightly illuminated and sharply outlined as does everything else. After long wanderings, a Norwegian folktale hero finally comes “in the winter to a country where all of the streets were straight and had no turnings whatsoever”17—a true fairy-tale landscape of wintry clarity and geometrical linearity!

  Among the gifts given by otherworld helpers to folktale heroes, means of transportation are especially frequent. Fabulous horses, carriages, shoes, or overcoats carry the hero to faraway places, or a ring conveys him wherever he wishes to go. All sorts of motives are found to enable the hero or antihero to wander abroad.18 The folktale hero is essentially a wanderer. The line of the plot unfolds before us untrammeled and clear. It is sustained by individual characters, and in the true folktale each individual character is significant to the story line. The hero is almost always alone when he sets out, even though he may be a prince or a king. He may be accompanied by a single servant, but this servant too has a function of his own,19 and as a separate figure he is set off from his surroundings as visibly as is the hero.

  A complete perspective is afforded by the juxtaposition and succession of narrative events rather than by their interlacement. Whatever in the real world forms an unfathomable whole or unfolds in slow, hidden development takes place in the folktale in sharply divided stages. The hero must accomplish three tasks in order to win the princess, but after that she is his once and for all: “And they lived happily ever after.” “From that day forth the prince and princess lived without danger or harm.”20 Alternatively, the hero may lose his bride again, but not through her gradually turning away from him. Thanks to a certain infraction of form, usually the violation of a prohibition, she is stolen from him out of the blue, and then he takes to the road to find her again. Just as he lost her through a single mistake, he wins her back through a stroke of luck, usually at the third attempt after failing twice. No hesitation, vacillation, or half measures impede his progress or the folktale’s sharp delineation of form. Right reactions or wrong reactions result in determined advances or equally determined evasions and retreats. Everything psychological is externalized onto the level of actions or objects (for example, as gifts that objectify a relationship) and thus is made distinctly and impressively manifest. Nothing remains vague or enigmatic.

  Internally as well, this clear and purposeful conduct of the folktale, with its strongly colored, sharply outlined characters and its clean, ever-progressing story line, is distinguished by the most pointed effects. Its protagonists are assigned very specific tasks: they are to cure sick princesses, guard magic cows, build a golden bridge or a magnificent garden overnight, or spin a roomful of straw into gold; or they must fetch faraway magic objects, win fights against dragons and giants, defeat an enemy army, ride up a glass mountain, or ride through the air to take a golden apple from the hand of the king’s daughter. Whereas the antiheroes regularly fail and often pay with their lives—for the task is usually bound up with extreme forms of reward and punishment, such as the princess and the kingdom or death—the hero succeeds in doing the impossible. He always meets precisely those otherworld beings who know or are able to do just what is necessary to accomplish the task at hand. And while, with improbable certainty, his brothers treat the otherworld beings wrongly (not always evilly!), the hero, with equal certainty and without any vacillation, treats them correctly (not always benevolently!),21 whereupon they give him the gifts that most precisely fit the special tasks with which he is confronted. If he later must fill up one or three bowls with seeds or lentils that have been scattered, he first meets some ants who now come to his assistance, or he knows—nobody tells us why—a charm that has the power to summon pigeons, as in the Grimms’ version of Cinderella (KHM No. 21). If he has to fetch a little ring out of the sea, the one who is indebted to him is a fish; if he has to tend colts that run away in all directions, he previously—long before he knew the difficulties that he would encounter—made friends with a fox, a wolf, and a bear whose powers are just sufficient to round up the herd.22 If he sets out to search for a magic horse or for his lost sisters and brothers, along the way he meets a hermit or some old women who are able to give him the exact advice he needs. For all that, these advisers are by no means omniscient, but they always know whatever needs to be known at the given stage of the plot.23

  If the hero must accomplish several tasks, the folktale frequently gives him a special helper or special charm for each. All-encompassing magic objects that can conjure up practically anything desired are rare. The hero comes in possession of a table that sets itself with food, a donkey that drops gold, or a cudgel that leaps from the sack when summoned—without exception, things endowed with a single, specific faculty. If he does happen to receive an all-encompassing magic object, he never makes full use of it.24 The magic objects of the folktale are not meant to be used playfully, to amuse the hero or provide him with amenities or riches; rather, they are to help him get through certain very specific situations that arise in the course of the plot. Often they are made available to the hero only when he is in urgent need of them. Often he gets them long before, but even then he uses them just once or three times, at the moment when an otherwise unsolvable task calls for it. Before and after, the magic object remains unused. Sometimes the hero completely forgets what he possesses, and only in the face of the urgent task does he remember it. Once he has accomplished the task, the magic device is usually no longer mentioned; it disappears from the story. It was merely an expedient without any intrinsic value and without interest for its own sake. For the characters of the folktale not only lack a geographical and personal frame of reference; they also lack a material environment. The gifts they receive are not everyday possessions but merely flash upon the scene when the plot calls for them. Whenever the story requires, at specific turning points, they show up without fail.

  In the folktale everything “clicks.” The antihero falls asleep at the very moment when the crucial reconnaissance has to be made, whereas the hero wakes up just in time—not a moment too early nor a moment too late.25 He arrives in the royal city on the very day on which his bride, after long refusals, is to be married to another man. Not until the flames of the pyre are licking about their sister do the twelve brothers rush up to save her, for at that very moment the seven years of enchantment have elapsed and the brothers are free.26 Every time limit tends to be either exactly used up or exceeded by a narrow margin.27 At the risk of having his head cut off and impaled on a stake—extreme and starkly graphic punishments are in accord with the folktale style, sharply defined and averse to all nuances—the boy who has to watch over the herd of foals and bring them back in time delays so long each night that he does not get back to the witch’s courtyard until the stroke of the bell. “When the bell struck eight he was in at the gateway, and as the old woman slammed shut the portals of the gate they all but cut off his heels. ‘That was just in time,’ the boy breathlessly exclaimed as he entered the house.…”28 Expressions such as “no sooner had he …” (kaum hatte er) or “no sooner were they …” (kaum waren sie) are idiomatic expressions that continually recur in the folktale. In French tales a favorite phrasing is, “The giant was before him in a trice” (Le géant ne tarda pas à paraître devant lui) or “His wife was about to …” (Sa femme venait de …).29 In Rhaeto-Romanic, it is “Bagn tgi …”. The marvelous runner who goes to fetch the hero the water of life falls asleep on the way back, and it is only shortly before the expiration of the allotted time that the hero’s other helper, the marksman, spots the runner and awakens him, so that he arrives in the very nick of time.30

  Not only moments of time are marked out with the utmost precision. The hero, the antihero, subordinate characters, and props also precisely accomplish or fail to accomplish the specific narrative task that is assigned to them. Objects and situations fit together to a T. “Everything fit her as if it had been tailor-made”—the marble trousers, the shirt of dew, and the shoes of pure gold, which actually were not woven or forged for the pri
ncess at all.31 The youngest son sets out: “He wandered on and on without asking the way, until he came and stopped at the very spot where his brothers had rested years before.”32 The coffer that is destined to fall into the hands of the hero is offered to him for 500 piasters—exactly the amount he has saved. When he later throws his wife into the river, fishermen have just cast their nets and pull the woman out of the water instead of fish. Instantly a Turk appears, the heroine tricks him out of his horse, and she rides “hour after hour, from mountain to mountain,” until at nightfall she comes “unawares” to—of all places—the distant kingdom of her royal father. Her father has just died, and since he has left no legitimate heir but the lost daughter, the officers of the kingdom decide that “in this night of such severe snow and cold that anyone lying outdoors would perish, the first person to be found outside the gates of the city should be made king.” The princess has just arrived there in her fisherman’s clothes, and still unrecognized, she is crowned king.

  There is nothing truly magical in this Albanian folktale,33 but the abstract stylization by which the different situations dovetail is just as miraculous as any physical magic; in fact, it is far more unrealistic. Attempts at magic and a belief in magic are part of the real life of human beings. In contrast, the folktale favors abstract composition in drawing its lines.

  Rounding out the abstract style34 of the folktale are a number of other characteristics. Since most of these are familiar and have been studied for a long time, they will merely be touched on here.