The water of life

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Illustration by George Cruikshank , 1876

The water of life is a fairy tale ( ATU 551). It is in the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm in place 97 (KHM 97).

content

Illustration by Otto Ubbelohde , 1909

The king is terminally ill. An old man tells his grieving sons about the water of life that would heal him. The elder wants to find it so that he may inherit the kingdom. On the way he is rude to a dwarf, who therefore curses him into a narrow ravine, as does the second who moves out after his absence. The youngest, on the other hand, comes through his advice to an enchanted castle, opens the gate with an iron rod and calms two lions with two loaves of bread. Inside he finds enchanted princes whom he pulls the rings off their fingers, then a sword and bread and a redeemed virgin who wants to marry him in a year. He falls asleep in a bed. He only wakes up a quarter to twelve and quickly takes the water of life from the well with him before the castle gate slams shut at twelve. It's still chopping off its heel. The dwarf tells him that the sword strikes entire armies and that the bread never runs out and releases the brothers upon request. The youngest rides with them through three realms, which he saves from trouble with bread and the sword. On a boat trip, his brothers swap water for seawater while he sleeps. When he gives this to his father at home, which makes him even sicker, they accuse him of wanting to poison him and heal him with the water of life. They mock the youngest. The father wants to have him shot while hunting, but the hunter warns the prince, who then flees. When three chariots full of gold and precious stones come from the saved realms, the king is glad to learn that his order has not been carried out. The king's daughter recognizes him by the fact that, in thought of her, he rides to her on the golden road, while the brothers did not want to damage the road. They marry. The brothers left.

origin

Illustration by Otto Ubbelohde , 1909
Illustration by Otto Ubbelohde , 1909

According to Grimm's comment, they combined their version from a Hessian and a Paderborn niche. In the former there is no princess, the king recognizes the innocent youngest because he rides a golden blanket instead of a silver one and an ordinary one. In the Paderbörnische, on the advice of a fisherman, the three have to collect three raven feathers and kill a seven-headed dragon in front of the black-clad court (see KHM 121 ) (see KHM 91 ). Only the youngest wins and lets the princess heal his petrified brothers with the water (cf. KHM 62 ). In a third Hannöverschen the youngest runs from rabbits and giants to fire and wind until the north wind (cf. KHM 88 ) brings him to the castle between eleven and twelve o'clock. There he sleeps with the princess and fetches the water of life from the cellar with her three keys. He buys his run-down brothers free, who then betray him, but the princess recognizes him (like KHM 57 ). The Grimms still name KHM 96 De Drei Vügelkens , KHM 57 Der goldene Vogel , in Konrad von Würzburg's Trojan War “V. 10651 " Medea cooks rejuvenation drink from paradise water ," in the Erfurt collection the fairy tale of Queen Wilowitt "( Wilhelm Christoph Günther's child fairy tales collected from oral stories ), The King's Daughter in the Muntserrat Mountains in Wolf's German House Tales , in Danish at Etlar " S. 1 ”, in Serbian by Wuk “ No. 2 ", in Swedish by Cavallius " S. 191 ". You compare the black dog, which you are not allowed to look for, with black stones, in which you are transformed into 1001 Nights and the bloody knife in KHM 60 The Two Brothers .

Wilhelm Grimm heard the Paderbörn version in 1813 from the von Haxthausen family . The Hannöversche probably came from Georg August Friedrich Goldmann . Jacob Grimm had already excerpted Queen Wilowitte with her two daughters in 1811 from Wilhelm Christoph Günther's baby fairy tale from 1787. Hans-Jörg Uther notices how the search for the water of life, according to the title, is the starting point of the plot, but the focus is on the youngest brother. What is unusual is the lack of a clear punishment for the wicked (“sailed away and never came back”). The mockery "you had the trouble and we got the wages" belongs to the 1st edition. For the third edition, the youngest “speaks” to the dwarf, the hunter “couldn't bring it up”, as in KHM 15 , 60 , 135 . From the 6th edition onwards, the youngest is available for “questions and answers”, and finally “a load fell from the king's heart”, as in KHM 31 , 53 . To "dear hunter, let me live ..." cf. KHM 60 The two brothers .

The more well-known, similar in plot, KHM 57 Der goldene Vogel , was perhaps also included in the Bökendorfer fairy tale circle in connection with this. Water of life also have KHM 121 The King's Son who is not afraid of anything and a text in Grimm's comment on KHM 6 The faithful John . Grimm's fairy tales have a preference for fairy tales about the despised youngest brother, such as KHM 64 The Golden Goose , KHM 106 The Poor Miller's Boy and the Kitten . Other similar fairy tales: In Giambattista Basile's Pentameron V, 4 Der goldene Stamm , in Ludwig Bechstein's German Fairy Tale Book No. 40 The Three Musicians , in the edition of 1845 also Fippchen Fäppchen , for feeding the dog Die Hoffärtige Braut .

interpretation

Illustration by Arthur Rackham , 1916

The old man only speaks of making him healthy, the eldest says that water alone could heal him.

According to Rudolf Meyer , it is about the mystery of healing that we receive in every deep sleep. The initiation must therefore take place between sleep and waking. The elemental force of volitional nature must first be appeased. For Edzard Storck , the sick king is the misery of people caught in the transience of the old creation, the streams of blessings from the new well up in the hidden center of being ( Jn 7.38  EU ), Novalis ' "heart of the heart". Rod and bread are will and willingness to make sacrifices, the lions are powers of the heart ( Ps 104.15  EU , Sir 17.5  EU ), the miraculous gifts represent images of the power of divine wisdom ( Joh 6.51  EU , Joh 7.38  EU ), the golden road the Enlightenment ( Ps 119,105  EU ). Storck also refers to The Meditation of the Heart in Alfons Rosenberg's Die christliche Bildmeditation , 1955.

Wilhelm Salber observes paradoxical confusion in this fairy tale, in particular a volatility between traffic jams and eruptions, a juxtaposition of constraints and openness. This is often found in around 40-year-olds, in German post-war culture or in Dostoevsky .

parody

Janosch wrote two parodies: In one the princess has a deadly disease, a prince marries her for supposed water of life, then she dies. In the other, she is spoiled and the disease is only imagining, so she says no to any suitor until someone brings her the water, and it will be over 100 years.

Movie

literature

  • Grimm, brothers. Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 486-491. Düsseldorf and Zurich, 19th edition 1999. (Artemis & Winkler Verlag; Patmos Verlag; ISBN 3-538-06943-3 )
  • Grimm, brothers. 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. 188–191, 484. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )
  • Lecouteux, Claude: Water of Life. In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales. Volume 8. Berlin / New York 1996. pp. 838-841.
  • Lothar Bluhm and Heinz Rölleke: “Popular sayings that I always listen to”. Fairy tale - proverb - saying. On the folk-poetic design of children's and house fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. New edition. S. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1997, ISBN 3-7776-0733-9 , p. 112.
  • Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbook to the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. de Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 , pp. 221-222.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ 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. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-15-003193-1 , p. 484.
  2. ↑ Hans-Jörg Uther: Handbook on the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm. de Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 , pp. 221-222.
  3. ↑ Lothar Bluhm and Heinz Rölleke: “Popular speeches that I always listen to”. Fairy tale - proverb - saying. On the folk-poetic design of children's and house fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. New edition. S. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1997, ISBN 3-7776-0733-9 , p. 112.
  4. ^ Rudolf Meyer: The wisdom of German folk tales. Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1963, p. 47.
  5. ↑ Edzard Storck: Old and new creation in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Turm Verlag, Bietigheim 1977, ISBN 3-7999-0177-9 , pp. 251-255.
  6. ^ Wilhelm Salber: fairy tale analysis (= work edition Wilhelm Salber. Volume 12). 2nd Edition. Bouvier, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-416-02899-6 , pp. 118-121, 164.
  7. ↑ Janosch: The water of life. In: Janosch tells Grimm's fairy tale. Fifty selected fairy tales, retold for today's children. With drawings by Janosch. 8th edition. Beltz and Gelberg, Weinheim and Basel 1983, ISBN 3-407-80213-7 , pp. 219-221.
  8. ↑ www.imdb.com/title/tt0298091
  9. ↑ www.imdb.com/title/tt7012646

Web links

Wikisource: The Water of Life  - Sources and full texts