The fairy tale (Goethe)

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Goethe's fairy tale is an art fairy tale . It appeared for the first time in 1795 in thejournal Die Horen, editedby Friedrich Schiller ,as the last contribution to Goethe's cycle of novels Conversations of German Emigrants .

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Belvedere “ Schöne Höhe ” by Johann Gottlob von Quandt with frescoes on Goethe ballads by Carl Gottlieb Peschel : The fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily: “There are three who rule on earth: wisdom, appearance and violence. "

"On the great river", two wanton will-o'-the-wisps have the old ferryman translate and reward him with gold pieces. The ferryman is afraid that the metal will fall into the water and stir up the waves. As usual, he would like to have nine fruits of the earth as payment, and the will-o'-the-wisps must promise him this in order to be able to break away from the ground and move on. He brings the dangerous gold into the mountains and throws it into a deep chasm where the "beautiful green snake" lives. It wakes up to the sound and devours the metal, becomes transparent and shines on it. In order to enjoy her light, she goes on a wandering and meets the will-o'-the-wisps, who are on their way to the palace of the lily, which is on the other side of the river. The snake advises you to use the snake or shadow bridge to cross, as the ferryman is not allowed to bring you back according to the rules. She crawls on to the dark underground sanctuary to contemplate the four statues of kings with their light. There she meets an old man. After a puzzling question and answer game with the kings, he shouts that it is time. Then the scene changes: the snake disappears to the east, the old man to the west. After he has returned to his hut with his magic lamp, his wife tells him about the visit of the two naughty gold-eating and wasting will-o'-the-wisps, whom she promised to bring fruit to the ferryman. Your pug ate pieces of gold and died. He transforms the dog into an onyx, sends his wife with vegetables to the ferryman and with the petrified pug to the lily, which on the one hand can bring the dead back to life, but on the other has to kill the living by touch. On her way, the giant steals some of her fruit, and the ferryman, who has just overtaken a young man, the prince, is dissatisfied with the incomplete delivery because he has to give it to the river. She vouches for a replacement and gives him her hand as a pledge. Together with the unfortunate prince, who was robbed of his strength by the lily's gaze, she now crosses the river over a bridge formed by the serpent at noon. Then the snake crawls after them and they move together to the lily, which hopes for redemption in the prophesied time with a new bridge and temple on the river. Her canary has just died from contact with her because he fled to her for fear of an attacking hawk. Now she revives the dog and plays with him, whereupon the prince touches the lover jealously and she has to watch desperately and helplessly as he dies. The rescue must come before sunset, before the body decomposes. That is why the hawk catches the sun's rays high in the air, reflects them to the earth and thus guides the old man, informed by the spirit of his lamp, to the garden. Now they carry the dead youth to the river and over the Serpent Bridge to the other bank. At the instruction of the old man, the lily grasps the snake and the young man with her hands, and since the snake is ready to sacrifice itself, it becomes a solid bridge, in return the young man and the canary get their lives back. Now the will-o'-the-wisps lead them to the underground sanctuary, where with the third exclamation of the old man that it is time, the temple appears and transformations take place: the ferryman's hut becomes an altar. The old kings hand over their powers to the young man: wisdom, appearance and power, and the lily is raised to queen by the fourth power, by love: “[She] does not rule, but she educates; and that's more ”. The old woman not only saves her hand by bathing in the river, but is also rejuvenated, as is her husband, who accompanies the new king with the ferryman. The giant stomping across the bridge, populated by wagons and hikers, freezes to a stone statue in the forecourt of the temple. The hawk catches the sunlight with its mirror and directs it as a heavenly glow over the royal couple standing at the altar, who are surrounded by the praying people.

characters

  • Ferryman
  • Two will-o'-the-wisps
  • Green snake
  • Beautiful lily
  • Great giant
  • Golden king
  • Silver King
  • King made of ore
  • King of gold, silver and ore
  • Age
  • Old
  • youth
  • hawk
  • three girls
  • people

Notes on understanding

Historical background

The historical background of the fairy tale, published in 1795, is the French Revolution and all despotic forms of rule from antiquity to Louis XVI.

Location

Due to clear information in the fairy tales, some interpretative approaches agree that ancient Rome with ferry Gianicolo (Janiculum) and the Pantheon is the real model for the scene of the fairy tale.

title

The title fairy tale deserves special attention in many ways. On the one hand, it is the only story from the conversations of German emigrants that Goethe has given its own heading. On the other hand, the title Märchen is extraordinary in that it is not preceded by an article in the first edition. However, if one looks at the titles of some of Goethe's other works, such as the novella or the ballad, the author can be assumed to have a certain intention in the omission.

Interpretative approaches

Since the fairy tale was published in 1795, innumerable interpretations have emerged that often contradict each other fundamentally. An overview drawn up by André Renis gives an overview of the various approaches to interpretation, which is based on a similar table already drawn up by Goethe himself.

literature

  • Friedrich Schiller: The hearing. Cottaische Buchhandlung, Tübingen 1795 (photomechanical reprint of the copy of Cotta's manuscript collection in the Schiller National Museum Marbach am Neckar. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1959.)
  • Friedrich Ohly: Roman and Biblical in Goethe's fairy tales . In: Ders .: Selected and new writings on the history of literature and research on meaning . Stuttgart 1995, pp. 217-235 [first in ZfdA 1961].
  • Norbert Oellers: "Effect of an assessment of form in the play of many sensations": Goethe's little fairy tale , dematerialized. In: Romanticism and Folk Literature . Edited by Lothar Bluhm and Achim Hölter. Heidelberg 1999, pp. 17-30.
  • Hans Laufenberg, Jochen Klaus (ed.): Myth. Goethe's fairy tale laid out. Friends of the Goethe National Museum eV, Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-027766-5 .
  • Christian Clement: "Revealed Secret" or "Secret Revelation"? Goethe's fairy tales and the apocalypse. In: Goethe-Yearbook 17 (2010), pp. 239-257.
  • Lothar Bluhm: 'hostile takeover'. Notes on the apocalypse reception in Goethe's Mährchen . In: The German language, culture and literature in Polish-German interaction . Edited by Franciszek Grucza u. a. Warsaw 2011, pp. 273–286.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ André Renis: Table (PDF; 142 kB) on: goethe-mythos.de , 1997.
  2. ↑ Johann Wolfgang Goethe: All works based on the epochs of his work. Munich edition . Ed .: Karl Richter u. a. tape 4.1 . Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1988, p. 1053-1055 .

Web links

Wikisource: Das Mährchen (Goethe)  - Sources and full texts