The spirit in the glass
The spirit in the glass is a fairy tale ( ATU 331). In the children's and house tales of the Brothers Grimm from the 2nd edition of 1819 it is at position 99 (KHM 99), previously at position 9 of the second volume.
content
A poor, hard-working wood chopper sends his only son to high school from his savings. He is studying hard and well there, but has to go home early because his father is running out of money. The father is very sad about this, but the son is in good spirits.
He accompanies his father to chop wood, although he has concerns about the heavy work. He goes for a walk during his lunch break, even though his father thinks he should rest. He looks for bird nests and finally finds a big old oak. He hears a voice pleading to be let out and finds a frog-like thing in a glass bottle under the tree roots. When he lets it out, it becomes a gigantic ghost that threatens to kill him. He was said to be the great Mercurius and locked up here as a punishment. But the son is not afraid and tricked the ghost into going back into the bottle so that he could see that he was the right one. When the ghost promises to reward him richly, he lets him out again. The spirit gives him a little rag that can heal wounds and turn metals into silver.
When he comes back to his father, he is angry that he was gone for so long and when the son broke the ax that his father had borrowed from the neighbor by wiping it with the rag beforehand. The son asks the father to go home with him and, according to his instructions, sells the broken ax. Then he shows him the amount of money he got for it and tells him how it came about. He goes back to school and becomes the most famous doctor.
language
From the 2nd edition onwards, the storyline was embellished with dialogues and sayings. Some later found their way into others of Grimm's fairy tales: “Acquired with sour sweat” (cf. KHM 164 , 179 , note on KHM 88 ); “Do you think I wanted to put my hands on my lap?” (Cf. KHM 186 ).
Grimm's note
The fairy tale comes from "From Paderborn". An “ Appenzell folk tale” from Morgenblatt 1817, p. 231: Paracelsus frees the devil from a fir tree, where he is held in place by a cone with incised crosses. A black spider comes out and becomes a gaunt, cross-eyed man in a red coat. He gives Paracelsus a medicine that heals all sick people and a tincture that turns everything into gold. Because he now wants to take revenge on whoever banned him, Paracelsus flatters him on how he could become the spider and locks him up again. As in KHM 19 Vom Fischer und his wife, the Grimms notice the similarity to A Thousand and One Nights "1, 107" ( The Fisherman and the Dschinni ), in Gaal No. 11 Der Weltlohn , a Greek legend of Virgilius and the magician Savilon, "Reinfr. from Braunschweig. Hanov. Hs. Bl. 168–171 ", Dunlop in Liebrecht " S. 186, 187 “, the little hangman , to the ruse of how he is defeated, your comment on KHM 81 Brother Lustig .
On the Paracelsus story, cf. Jeremias Gotthelf's novella The Black Spider .
origin
Hans-Jörg Uther states that the ghost can only be let out of the glass here for something in return, due to curiosity or at his request. The relationship is therefore more complicated than with ghosts in other fairy tales, which are also called with objects (KHM 91 , 116 , 193 ), but are not tied to a specific location. The fight against otherworldly beings is always done by cunning, e.g. B. entrapment (KHM 4 , 161 , 196 ), whereby they lose their power. The fairy tale goes back to the story of the fisherman and the demon from the Arabian Nights , first translated by Antoine Galland . Probably the oldest evidence for the use of spirits is the apocryphal Testamentum Salomonis , in which Salomon et al. a. forced the demon Ornias to build a temple and then put it in a vessel. Reports from the European Middle Ages then connected such motifs with famous magicians such as Paracelsus or Virgil. The present version now represents a further bourgeoisisation and rationalization in that a student negotiates with Mercury, who is only called that here, like at the same time. Mercurius was the god of merchants, of profit or even of magic. He is outwitted here like the stupid devil in fairy tales like KHM 81 Bruder Lustig or KHM 81a The Blacksmith and the Devil . Cf. KHM 85d The good cloth , from Grimm's German legends No. 85 Spiritus familiaris , No. 86 The Bird's Nest , from Grimm's Irish fairy tale No. 9 The bottle .
interpretation
Edzard Storck understands Holzhacker and son, iron and silver as analytical-separating and connecting-healing thinking. The experience with the force of the excessive, as the demonic side of knowledge, is ultimately self-examination of ancient guilt, to harden the spiritual selfishly, to narrow it down to the sensible. The homeopath Martin Bomhardt compares the fairy tale with the remedy picture of Mercurius . Wilhelm Salber sees polarity here in the sense of a demand for supplementation, back and forth, which causes development and deviation from models.
Receptions
Hans-Jörg Uther names Alain-René Lesages Le Diable boiteux (1707) and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Bottle Imp (1891). In caricatures the escaped genie often symbolizes thoughtless decisions with fatal consequences, as in Goethe's The Sorcerer's Apprentice .
cartoon
- Gurimu Meisaku Gekijō , Japanese cartoon series 1987, episode 38: The spirit in the bottle .
literature
- Grimm, Brothers: Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 493-497. 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. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. pp. 191–193, p. 485. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )
- 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. 223-227.
Individual evidence
- ↑ 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. 113.
- ↑ 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. 223-227.
- ↑ Edzard Storck: Old and new creation in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Turm Verlag, Bietigheim 1977, ISBN 3-7999-0177-9 , pp. 52-55.
- ^ Martin Bomhardt: Symbolic Materia Medica. 3. Edition. Verlag Homeopathie + Symbol, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-9804662-3-X , p. 899.
- ^ Wilhelm Salber: fairy tale analysis (= work edition Wilhelm Salber. Volume 12). 2nd Edition. Bouvier, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-416-02899-6 .
- ↑ 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 , p. 227.
