Theodora Elucubrare

I'd been eying "German Literary Fairy Tales" for a while. It's always interesting to see attempts to write fairy tales, because they hardly ever work. A while ago, I read Goethe's attempt, simply called "The Fairy Tale,"* which is beautiful and strange, but fails as a fairy tale because it's too complicated. It's part of the nature of fairy tales that there are strange things, but that not everything is strange, and very little is symbolic. In Goethe's fairy tale nearly everything is fantastic: the ferryman can't accept gold as a fee, but only living things; the old woman can't carry living things, as they appear heavy to her, but stones are light.

The earlier tales are similar to Goethe's. Novalis' Klinsohr's Tale is evidently a response to the Goethe, but is not nearly as well translated, so it seems weaker. A common theme is the need to reject the worlds show in the stories. In "The New Melusine," the hero marries an elf princess** and puts on her magic ring, which makes him minuscule like her, but grows tired of his life as an elf prince, saws off the magic ring with a file, and goes back to his life as a poor layabout. In several of the stories the hero is presented with a choice between a supernatural woman and a good peasant girl. The supernatural woman is invariably the wrong choice.

Two stories stand out: Theodor Storm's "Hinzelmeier: A Thoughtful Story" and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's "Tale of the 672nd Night." In the first, a young man grows up with apparently ageless parents. He discovers the secret of their eternal youth: his mother is a Rose Maiden, and his father has fallen in love with her and found her, which grants him her immortality. There are certain men who are destined to be Rose Lords, and fall in love with the Rose Maidens, if they can find them. If he doesn't, both he and the Rose Maiden are doomed. Hinzelmeier, distracted by the World and the promise of the Philosopher's Stone meets his Rose twice but cannot keep her. Not only is the premise original, the prose, even in translation, is lovely, and the conclusion sorrowful: Hinzelmeier has failed and has lost his grace forever.

The second story is remarkable not for its plot, since nothing much happens, but for Hofmannsthal's creation of atmosphere. The theme of isolation, too, is apparent, as it often is in his work. The main character of the story, a merchant's son, sees a beautiful servant girl, but her beauty "fills him with longing but not desire" - he is not truly part of the world. At the end he is killed by accident by a horse, and as he is dying he hates everything: there is no revelation.***

This, like many of the stories, is not really a fairy tale. The term is used because the authors certainly wouldn't have thought of themselves as writing speculative fiction, even had the term existed.

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*While trying to find the text online, which it no longer seems to be, I have found this, which involves Roscrusians. No but really.
**If "The New Melusine" were a current fantasy story, it would be universally panned. So the elves were among the first creations of God, but they tried to take over the world, so God created dragons to fight them. But dragons were accursed, so He created giants to fight the dragons. The giants tried to take over the world too, so He created good knights to fight them and live in harmony with the elves.
***Both stories I enjoyed are beautiful failures.