The little mermaid (fairy tale)

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First illustration by Vilhelm Pedersen (1849)
Illustration by Bertall (1856)
Illustration by Anne Anderson (1920s)

The Little Mermaid ( Danish Den lille Havfrue ) is an art fairy tale by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen from 1837. It is based on the legend of Undine .

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The little mermaid is the youngest and most graceful of the six daughters of the sea king. Like all sea men, she has no feet, but a fish tail. She is the only one who owns the marble statue of a youth that has sunk in the sea. With stories from the surface (“The flowers smell and the fish [= birds] sing wonderfully”), her grandmother continues to awaken her longing for the human world. At fifteen, the daughters are allowed to go up and on the beach at night - the older sisters tell their wonderful things about the noisy, illuminated city, the birds, the sunset, children and icebergs. When she finally reaches old age herself, she climbs up and watches the sailors on a ship - but what she likes best is the prince with the dark eyes, who is just celebrating his sixteenth birthday. When the ship sinks because of a storm, the mermaid remembers that humans can only get to the bottom of the sea dead, and brings the prince to the beach.

She watches a girl find him and is sad that they smile at each other - after all, the prince doesn't know who saved him. The mermaid finds out where the castle is and keeps visiting the area. She learns that, unlike normal people, merpeople do not have a soul that goes up into the air after they die - the only way to get one is to be loved by a human being. So she goes to the sea witch, whom she has always feared, and has a drink brewed that makes her legs grow instead of her fishtail. However, the transformation is irreversible - she will never be able to return to her father and sisters. If the prince does not fall in love with her, she will not have an immortal soul and will turn to foam on the sea. She also has to give up her voice. So she meets the prince in silence and is led into his castle by him.

There she stays with him, but the prince only loves the unknown girl he saw on the beach and who thinks he is his savior. Later it turns out that this girl is the princess of the neighboring kingdom, and the prince marries her. Since the first ray of sunshine after his wedding night is supposed to bring the little mermaid's death, her sisters give her the advice to kill the prince: That would turn her into a sea creature again and save her. But she can't do it, jumps into the water and dissolves in foam . However, it does not die in the process, but transforms into an air spirit . This gives her the opportunity to acquire an immortal soul through good deeds and thus to participate in the "eternal happiness of people".

interpretation

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The fairy tale is about a love that cannot be returned because it cannot reveal itself. Her ability to love, also and especially unrequited, makes her appear righteous before God and leads to eternal salvation for the protagonist.

Hans Mayer postulates homoerotic tendencies for the author and names Edvard Collins as Andersen's secret lover, from whose wedding he fled when he wrote the fairy tale. Assuming this, one can dare the following interpretation:

Both in fairy tales and in reality, it was impossible to confess love to the dream prince. In fairy tales because the vote was taken, in reality because homosexuality is taboo. Both in fairy tales and in reality, the beloved married someone else.

If in the fairy tale the sea dwellers do not have an immortal soul - i.e. no prospect of being accepted into the afterlife after their death - then according to the consensus at the time, people with homosexual inclinations do not (compare Bible texts on homosexuality ). However, the mermaid accepts the sacrifice of lovesickness and thus receives a soul in spite of her nature - probably according to the biblical quote that no one has a greater love than someone who sacrifices himself for his friends (John 15:13). According to this interpretation, Andersen hoped to find grace in God because of his pain for his homosexuality. The future task of the mermaid or the fairy tale poet is to make children smile.

Receptions

literature

Oscar Wilde was The Little Mermaid was inspired by Andersen to his mermaid fairy tale: The fisherman and his soul in the collection A pomegranate House published (A House of Pomegranates) by Wilde 1,891th In addition to Oscar Wilde, there are also remarkable literary continuations of Andersen's The Little Mermaid: Gerhart Hauptmann : The Sunken Bell , Gerhart Hauptmann: The Sea Wonder , Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa : The Siren , to name just a few. Alexander Sergejewitsch Pushkin wrote a Rusalka based on Slavic myths of mermaids , which unfortunately remained a fragment. There are also mixed forms between this Rusalka and Andersen's Little Mermaid: One example is the sea girl picture in Antonín Dvořák's opera Rusalka based on the libretto by Jaroslav Kvapil .

music

  • Eugen d'Albert : Mermaids. Op. 15 (1897)
  • Antonín Dvořák : Rusalka . Op. 114 (1900)
  • Alexander von Zemlinsky : The Mermaid. Fantasy for orchestra (1902/03; WP Vienna 1905)
  • Germaine Tailleferre : La Petite Siréne. Opera in three acts based on the libretto version of the Andersen material by Philippe Soupault from 1957
  • Lera Auerbach : The Little Mermaid. Ballet from 2004/2007
  • Lior Navok : The Little Mermaid for narrator and chamber ensemble / orchestra 2006
  • EXO (South Korean boy group): In their song Baby don't cry from their album XOXO (2013) they address the Danish fairy tale of the little mermaid.
  • Corvus Corax : Havfru in the album Sverker (2011)
  • Akos Hoffmann: The Little Mermaid. Music fairy tale based on the text by Hans Christian Andersen.
  • FoLLoW (Japanese band): The song Ningyohime (人魚 姫) from the album Yougenkyou - West - Vol. 3 - Survive as an Innovator (2016) is inspired by the little mermaid.
  • Bijan Azadian : The Little Mermaid. Variety musical (WP: 2017 Wintergarten Varieté Berlin)
  • Jherek Bischoff, Andersen's stories. Drama Opera (Premiere: Theater Basel September 27, 2019)

Visual arts

The Little Mermaid sculpture in Copenhagen harbor
Paul Gauguin: Undine (1889)

Film adaptations

There are many cinematic adaptations of this material, for example:

  • 1961: The Little Mermaid , USA, directed by Robert B. Sinclair with Shirley Temple
  • 1975: Anderson Dowa Ningyo Hime Little Mermaid , Japan, directed by Takuo Noda and Tomoji Katsumata. This film adaptation sticks closely to the original by Hans Christian Andersen.
  • 1976: The Little Mermaid or The Little Mermaid (Malá mořská víla) , ČSSR, director: Zdeněk Liška with Miroslava Šafránková as the mermaid and Libuše Šafránková . In this fairy tale film , the mermaids appear in long, blue robes. The Sea King mentions that the existence of tails in mermaids is a stupid misconception of the people. However, the transformation of the mermaid with human legs, as with Andersen, is a great sacrifice. The tragic content of the fairy tale is presented appropriately, similar to the film adaptation by Bychkov.
  • 1976: The Sad Mermaid or The Little Mermaid (Russalotschka , also Rusalka) , Bulgaria / USSR, director: Vladimir Bychkov; The little mermaid with Vika Novikova as a mermaid . In the framework story, 6 people ride in a carriage. One of the passengers tells about the legendary mermaids. The travelers are then projected into the characters of the fairy tale. In contrast to Andersen, the witch, as the victim of the incarnation of the sea girl, does not demand the voice of the mermaid, but her seductive green hair. These hairs have the power to bewitch everything here. Dubbed versions of the film exist in English, Czech and German.
  • 1984: Splash , USA, the comedy with Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah is only vaguely based on the fairy tale.
  • 1989: Ariel the Mermaid - USA, cartoon made by Walt Disney Studios . In contrast to the fairy tale, this film has a decisive battle and a classic happy ending in which the mermaid and the prince come together.
  • 2007: Alisa, the sea girl (Rusalka) , Russia, directed by Anna Melikjan
  • 2009: Ponyo - The Great Adventure by the Sea , Japan, anime film by Studio Ghibli , contains only a few elements of the fairy tale.
  • 2010: SimsalaGrimm , German cartoon series, season 3, episode 46: The Little Mermaid
  • 2013: The Little Mermaid , Germany, fairy tale film of the 6th season from the ARD series Six in one fell swoop

Radio plays

Comparisons

  • 14th century: Legend of the Stauffenberger. Elf in love with a human man. The knight Stauffenberg grows up with the Elbin until she becomes his lover. It stipulates that he must never marry. He even disdains the king's niece, but then comes under social pressure. He dies three days after the wedding.
  • 19th century: Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué wrote the story Undine . In this story, too, a water woman marries a person, namely the knight Huldbrand. She talks about her water world in colorful and touching words and warns Huldbrand that her people would kill him if he were to be unfaithful to her. Although that happens, she tries to protect him, but to no avail.
  • 20th century: Peter Huchel wrote a natural poem about Undine, the diction of which is reminiscent of Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué.
  • 20th century Undine goes by Ingeborg Bachmann describes modern marital problems using the Undine, which is symbolic of women. The man appears in many forms.

literature

See also

Web links

Commons : The Little Mermaid  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Den lille Havfrue  - Sources and full texts (Danish)

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  1. ↑ Edvard Munch: The sea girl
  2. ↑ Illustration to "The Little Mermaid" by Heinrich Lefler and Joseph Urban. spiritoftheages.com, accessed October 31, 2010 ( reference page ).
  3. ↑ A picture from Wülfing's mermaid illustrations
  4. ^ The Staufenberg saga , accessed on April 18, 2014