The winter fairy tale (Wieland)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The winter fairy tale is a story by Christoph Martin Wieland . It was probably created at the end of 1775 and was published in the January and February 1776 issues of the Wieland magazine Der Teutsche Merkur . The last edition appeared in 1796 in Volume 18 of the Complete Works . The story is based on a story from the Arabian Nights .

action

In a short prologue , Dinarzade asks her sister Scheherezade to tell her and the Sultan another story.

1st part: The fisherman and the ghost

A fisherman has caught nothing all night and laments his poverty. He throws out his net again, but only pulls a donkey's skull ashore. When the sun comes up, he finds new hope, tries again and pulls an iron vessel out of the water. He opens it and a ghost emerges from him. Out of gratitude, the ghost leads the fisherman to a lake in which he is now allowed to fish every day to feed his family. He catches four big fish and goes to the Sultan, who buys them from him at a high price. But when the sultan's cook is frying the fish, a beautiful sorceress appears in the kitchen to remind the fish of their duty. The fish briefly come to life and begin to sing. After that, the sorceress throws them into the embers, where they immediately turn into coals. The Grand Vizier orders the fisherman to appear again the next day with such fish. He actually fishes four fish again and brings them to the palace. This time the Grand Vizier stays in the kitchen and witnesses the exact repetition of the previous day's play. So you report it to the sultan and order new fish from the fisherman. On the third day the Grand Vizier himself prepares the fish in the presence of the Sultan, again the same thing happens, except that a "Moor" appears instead of the beautiful sorceress. In order to solve the riddle of this miracle, the sultan lets the fisherman lead him to the lake, and the whole court is to accompany him. The Sultan circles the lake and discovers a castle.

Part 2: The King of the Black Isles

The castle is surrounded by beautiful gardens but abandoned, which is scary to the Sultan. He heard a groan, followed the noise and found a cathedral looming in a pond, and in the cathedral a king who had frozen into a marble statue. His body is covered in wounds and scars, and he moans in pain. He tells the Sultan how he got into this situation:

For five years he ruled the kingdom of the Black Isles alongside his beautiful wife. One day he sits half asleep in his garden and overhears a conversation between two servants who think he is asleep. He learns that his wife is cheating on him by giving him a sleeping potion (which he thinks is water) every night to sneak up on her lover at night. The following night he only apparently drinks the sleeping potion and sneaks after her. He meets her in the garden in the arms of a "Moor". He hears his wife's vows of love, and in a maddened rage he draws the saber and slays the rival. The woman, who now turns out to be a sorceress, is beside herself and swears cruel revenge. Invisible servants take the king prisoner. The next day the sorceress announced her verdict: where she passes away in mourning for her lover, no one else should be happy either. Therefore, she will turn the whole city into a lake and the inhabitants into fish. The king, however, should not be punished with death, but with eternal torture: every morning she comes to scourge him until her arms become weak. Transformed into a statue, he cannot defend himself.

The Sultan is shocked by this story and swears to blow out "the light of life" from the sorceress. He learns from the king that she lives with her lover, whom she is kept in a state between life and death by magic, in a "palace of tears [= tears]". He sets out for this palace, kills them both and returns with their heads to the king, whose thanks he awaits. Instead, the king is now even more desperate as the sorceress was the only one who could have broken the spell again. The only other object that could break the spell is a donkey's head that had belonged to the king's family for centuries and was prophesied to be the fate of the house. Any spell loses its effect in its presence, which is why the sorceress had it sunk into the sea before her act of revenge. The Sultan then orders fishermen across the country to look for the donkey's head. And it is - the circle is full - the skull that the poor fisherman pulled out of the sea at the beginning of the story. As soon as the king touches him, his city emerges from the lake again, and the fish turn back into people.

Machining

The opera in two acts The Queen of the Black Islands is based on Wieland's story (premiered in 1801 in Vienna, music: Anton Eberl , libretto: Johann Schwaldopler)

Web links

source

  • Wieland's works in four volumes. Third volume. Selected and introduced by Hans Böhm. Aufbau-Verlag Berlin and Weinar 1967, pp. 51–94.