The donkey
The donkey is a fairy tale ( ATU 430). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm at number 144 (KHM 144) and is based on a lost manuscript from the 14th century called Asinarius .
content
A queen complains that she will not have a child and gives birth to a donkey. She wants to drown it, but the father brings it up as his heir. It has a particular passion for music and despite its donkey feet it learns to play the lute from a minstrel through perseverance and diligence. When it sees its reflection in the water, it wanders away sadly and comes to a king's castle, where it is admitted because of its masterly lute-playing. It demands to sit at the table of the king, who also shows him his daughter and, thanks to his fine demeanor, comes to love it over time. After a while he would like to leave again and neither gold nor jewelry nor half the kingdom can persuade him to stay, so that the king finally fulfills his only wish and gives him his daughter as a wife. On the wedding night it strips its donkey skin and is a handsome man. The king has hidden a servant in the chamber. The following night he sees the transformation himself and burns the skin. The young man wants to flee, but the king makes him his heir and later he also inherits his father's kingdom.
origin
Jacob Grimm excerpted the fairy tale in 1814 from a Latin poem in elegiac syllable proportions (only a partial copy is preserved). In the note he compares Amor and Psyche , Melusine and Swan Knight , where the broken magic brings bad luck, mentions fairy tales in Wuk nos. 9 and 10, in Old German Forests 1, 165-167 and Firdusi in Görres 2, 441, 442 . He refers to the note on KHM 108 Hans mein Igel , which is very similar.
interpretation
Friedel Lenz (1980) understands the fairy tale as a confrontation with animal instincts and as the development of something spiritual and emotional . She interprets the figure of the donkey as a symbol for the body, which Francis of Assisi had already called "brother donkey" (p. 129). In the fairy tale, the "lower passions " (symbolized in the shape of the donkey) are purified through music and the fire of the spirit (ibid., P. 134). Steps on this path require a master from whom one can be guided (lute teacher) as well as certain qualities such as patience and diligence (ibid.). The winning of the king's daughter symbolizes the achieved individuation , the wedding the self-development (ibid., P. 136f). In order for this to be achieved, this must be more important to the protagonist than wisdom (gold), beauty (jewelry) and reign (half the empire).
Linda Briendl (2001) interprets the fairy tale under the aspect of guilt and redemption . A path of development is described, "in which a person from the hopeless situation of being rejected as a donkey by his mother, seeks ways to master his difficult fate" (p. 11). Similar to Lenz, she interprets the donkey as an “animal level” in humans that needs to be overcome and integrated. While she sees the mother's rejection of the donkey as a repression of sexuality , the father keeps the consequences within limits through his recognition (p. 24). The archetype of the anima is awakened and promoted through the love of the king's daughter , she understands the burning of the donkey's skin as overcoming the burden of a family inheritance. This requires the support of others such as the figure of the king. She understands the donkey's need to learn to play the lute on the one hand as a “sense of tenderness”, on the other hand as the attempt “to get love through performance” (p. 24).
Mirjam Gille (2010) interprets the fairy tale under the aspect of “redemption through acceptance” (p. 46). The princess release the future husband from the enchantment as a donkey. The redemption does not happen here by changing the partner, but by accepting the “unsightly appearance” and “being kind to animals”, the motif of “being determined for one another” also resonates (ibid.).
Rosemarie Tüpker (2011) examines the fairy tale using a depth psychological association process and finds two different strands of interpretation in the test subjects' association chains . While some perceive the fairy tale as a “story of a disabled child” (p. 81), others experienced it as a story of “finding one 's own identity and becoming oneself” (p. 86). Both versions focus on questions of recognition and the creation of leeway (symbolized in learning and playing the sounds). She states that the subject of sexuality hardly played a role in the test subjects' ideas (p. 92) and that the associations with the donkey testified to a change in the perception of today's listeners of the fairy tale, in the sense of a clearly more positive connotation (p. 93f). She puts these differences in the context of the fact that the psychological themes involved in the listener or reader of the fairy tale changed and the intersubjective meaning of the fairy tale was thereby subject to historical changes.
literature
- Brothers Grimm: Children's and Household Tales. Last hand edition with the original notes by the Brothers Grimm. With an appendix of all fairy tales and certificates of origin, not published in all editions, published by Heinz Rölleke. Volume 3: Original Notes, Guarantees of Origin, Afterword. Pp. 239–240, 499. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-15-003193-1 .
- Rölleke, Heinz (Ed.): Grimm's fairy tales and their sources. The literary models of the Grimm fairy tales are presented synoptically and commented on. 2., verb. Edition, Trier 2004, ISBN 3-88476-717-8 . Pp. 170–183, 562. (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier; series of literature studies, vol. 35.)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Friedel Lenz: Visual language of fairy tales . Stuttgart: Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1980
- ↑ Linda Briendl: ... rather no child than a donkey. In: RheinReden. Melanchthon Academy Cologne: Melanchthon Academy, 2001/2, pp. 5–26.
- ↑ Mirjam Gille: The adolescent virgins in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm. Typology of underrated fairy tale women , Dissertation University of Dortmund 2010
- ↑ Rosemarie Tüpker: Music in Fairy Tales , Reichert, Wiesbaden 2011, 76-96
