The carnation
The carnation is a fairy tale ( ATU 652). From the 2nd edition of 1819 onwards, it is in place 76 (KHM 76) in the children's and house tales by the Brothers Grimm .
content
A childless queen has a son from God at her request, whose thoughts come true. The cook steals him while she sleeps and her blood drips onto the dress, whereupon the king has her walled up. But two angels bring her food as white doves. The cook leaves with the son and makes him wish a castle with a garden and a companion. The son and she love each other. The cook is scared and wants to force her to murder him. She doesn't do it, deceives him with heart and lungs about a doe. The son curses the cook in a black poodle with a gold chain that eats coals. He looks after his mother with the maiden as a carnation in his pocket, who otherwise doesn't want to go with him, and the poodle. Then he lets himself be employed as a hunter, asks for a lot of game, and is put at his side by the king for the festival. He lets a servant speak to his mother and clears everything up by letting the poodle and carnation show their shape. The queen is fetched, but she does not eat anything and dies. The king follows her out of grief. The son marries the virgin.
Other versions
The first edition tells the fairy tale (based on the Hassenpflug family ) in such a way that the gardener sneaks into the church for the baptism and hears what gift the godfather bestows on the child, steals them and lets them grow up with a hunter. The son returns to father's farm as a journeyman hunter with the beloved hunter's daughter as a carnation and the gardener as a poodle. He puts the carnation in front of the window, except when he is alone. Finally his journeymen report it to the king. The note recounts this version, with reference to the saying if my darling were a clove stick, / I put him in front of the window so that everyone could see him , also a song in Des Knaben Wunderhorn (2, 11.12) and in the Pentameron ( 1, 2).
From the second edition, the story from Zwehrn (i.e. by Dorothea Viehmann ) comes with a Hessian variant of the beginning: the king asks the godfather who he meets first (cf. KHM 42 , 44 , 126 ). It is a poor man who gives the son that from the age of 18 all his wishes come true. A dwarf hears it, robs him, accuses the queen, who is walled in, and marries a merchant's daughter who is then supposed to kill the eighteen-year-old.
Comparisons
The motif of the innocent convicted and the humble stranger ( “I'm a bad hunter's boy” ) is reminiscent of many fairy tales, especially KHM 65 Allerleirauh or KHM 179 Die Gänsehirtin am Brunnen . It is particularly suitable for the Christianization undertaken here. Compare especially KHM 96 De Drei Vügelkens and KHM 198 Jungfrau Maleen . In addition to angels as white doves ( Mk 1:10 , 1 Kings 19,5 ), the childless woman who is prophesied of a son recalls the wife of Abraham in the Old Testament . The cook soars to the Lord in a double sense when he lets the son give him a wife ( “It is not good that you are so alone” ), who is then supposed to spoil him (cf. Genesis ). Carnations are symbols of Mary , passion and death . For the poodle as the devil, cf. Goethe's Faust . Cf. in Giambattista Basiles Pentameron IV, 5 The Dragon .
Hans-Jörg Uther finds echoes of the Middle Dutch couplet seal Esmoreit from the 14th century .
KHM 76 The Carnation: Kathrin Schmidt wrote a parody.
literature
- Grimm, brothers. Children's and Household Tales. Complete edition. With 184 illustrations by contemporary artists and an afterword by Heinz Rölleke. Pp. 397-401. 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. 137-138, 475. Revised and bibliographically supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1994. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-003193-1 )
- Pisarek, Janin: "There she wore the carnations on her bosom" The symbolism of the carnation and its meaning in folk tales. In: fairytale mirror. Journal for international fairy tale research and fairy tale care, Volume 28, Issue 4/2017, pp. 24–33.
- Uther, Hans-Jörg: Handbook to the children's and house fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Berlin 2008. pp. 176-178. (de Gruyter; ISBN 978-3-11-019441-8 )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kathrin Schmidt: The carnation. In: Die Horen . Vol. 1/52, No. 225, 2007, ISSN 0018-4942 , pp. 52-55.
