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Sorry this has been so long in coming, the stresses and obligations of real life got in the way.
So, without further ado (ado-di-do-di-doodly-do!), I give you:
Raves and Reviews of Favorite Wondertales:
(not as famous as "Cinderella," but should be, dammit!)
First, three tales from The Brother's Grimm (1857 revision, 1884 translation by Margaret Hunt)
The Two Brothers
Many of my favorite tales speak to deep, dark truths of the soul. This is not one of them. It's one of my favorites simply because it is a rollicking tale -- or rather, about 4 different tales, one leading into the next. It should totally be made into a blockbuster summer action flick -- and not for kiddies neither. It's at least a PG-13 story, and that's if you tone it down. It has: Twin brothers who love each other more than anything, Talking Lions, and Bears and Wolves, oh, my!, A fierce battle with a seven-headed dragon, One cheating, lying, royal official, A wicked witch, and a king's daughter who, on the surface, seems to be there only so she can be rescued, but with the right script could be shown to have a real backbone and brain.
Go! Read! Imagine on the big screen, with mind-blowing special effects, and your favorite eye-candy actor in the double role of the twin brothers (or, if you are of a different persuasion, eye-candy actress as the king's daughter)!
Now, these next stories do touch on the dark side, and while their magic is downright prosaic compared to The Two Brothers, they have a poignancy that touches me as deeply as any of the full-blown novels of "great literature" I've read.
Hans my Hedgehog
This is the story of a child born from his father's wish -- a wish made for the sake of social standing, and not for love. And once the child is born, he is rejected, because he cannot fulfill the father's desires. This rejection keeps him in a perpetual state of half-humanness. The spell is finally broken, not by romantic love, or anything so sunshine-and-flowery, but simply by keeping a promise and fulfilling an obligation, however unwillingly -- a recognition that Hans, however monstrous, is still deserving of respect and honor -- the one thing his father never gives him.
My only complaint about this story is that the two kings' daughters are merely their father's property to be bartererd off, and the first princess bears the full weight of punishment and shame for her father's dishonor. However, as Jacob and Wilhielm redacted their stories to project an image of the perfect fraternal society as they envisioned it, I reserve the right to redact the stories, too, and when I tell this one, I give each young woman an active role in her fate.
Bearskin
Some veterans of the Vietnam War complain loudly that they were never honored for their sacrifice -- as they should have been -- like the soldiers of World War II, before them. This story suggests that the parades and speeches were the abberation, not the spitting and rejection. It's also an elegant protest against the harm we do the human soul when we train people only to fight and kill; war is Hell, but the Hell continues far into peace time while the soldier struggles to regain the humanity we've forced him to discard.
Finally (for now), there's East of the Sun, West of the Moon, from Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe of Norway; translated by George Webb Dasent (1859). Translation revised by D. L. Ashliman. © 2001.
Okay. It's hard to ick absolute favorites among stories, but this one comes very, very close. On the surface, this is pro-Christian tale, with good Christians being taken hostage by an evil troll queen. However, it's Pagan symbolism is too thick and deeply-rooted to be successfully disguised.
First of The enchanted prince first appears in the form of a great white bear, and to the Ob'-Ugric peoples (the linguistic ancestors of the Finns, and Hungarians, who were in Northern Europe before the Norse took over) the bear was seen as the son of the sky god Num-Tarim, and was protector of the forest. Second, it is specifically stated that he first arrives at the heroine's door on a Thursday night, during a storm, linking him with the Norse god Thor.
When the story gets to the universal turning point when the heroine breaks the central taboo, the prince is lost, and the young woman reveals her own devine nature as an avatar of the Sun Goddess. She journeys around the world to find him again, riding through the sky on the backs of the four winds (traveling from east, to south, to west, to north, as the sun does), carrying with her a golden apple and a golden spinning wheel -- both solar symbols. And at the end of her journey, the heroine wakes the prince from his death-like sleep with a kiss, much as the warmth of the spring sun wakes the wild bears from hibernation.
Another symbolic link between this story and the spring equinox is "The Castle East of the Sun, West of the Moon" itself. Such a cosmic address may seem, at first glance, to be in the far off regions of the otherworld, existing only in dreams. Further consideration, however, reveals that the opposite is true. During the spring and fall equinoxes, the sun rises due east and sets due west. If this is also the time of the full moon, than at the moment of sunset -- the cusp of the waking time and dreaming time -- than each of us is standing "East of the Sun and West of the Moon."
Most versions of the story have the two of them flying away from that place after the troll queen dies, but when I retell it, I choose to have them stay -- at the point of the heart.
So -- go read... and Happy Oestra!
So, without further ado (ado-di-do-di-doodly-do!), I give you:
(not as famous as "Cinderella," but should be, dammit!)
First, three tales from The Brother's Grimm (1857 revision, 1884 translation by Margaret Hunt)
The Two Brothers
Many of my favorite tales speak to deep, dark truths of the soul. This is not one of them. It's one of my favorites simply because it is a rollicking tale -- or rather, about 4 different tales, one leading into the next. It should totally be made into a blockbuster summer action flick -- and not for kiddies neither. It's at least a PG-13 story, and that's if you tone it down. It has: Twin brothers who love each other more than anything, Talking Lions, and Bears and Wolves, oh, my!, A fierce battle with a seven-headed dragon, One cheating, lying, royal official, A wicked witch, and a king's daughter who, on the surface, seems to be there only so she can be rescued, but with the right script could be shown to have a real backbone and brain.
Go! Read! Imagine on the big screen, with mind-blowing special effects, and your favorite eye-candy actor in the double role of the twin brothers (or, if you are of a different persuasion, eye-candy actress as the king's daughter)!
Now, these next stories do touch on the dark side, and while their magic is downright prosaic compared to The Two Brothers, they have a poignancy that touches me as deeply as any of the full-blown novels of "great literature" I've read.
Hans my Hedgehog
This is the story of a child born from his father's wish -- a wish made for the sake of social standing, and not for love. And once the child is born, he is rejected, because he cannot fulfill the father's desires. This rejection keeps him in a perpetual state of half-humanness. The spell is finally broken, not by romantic love, or anything so sunshine-and-flowery, but simply by keeping a promise and fulfilling an obligation, however unwillingly -- a recognition that Hans, however monstrous, is still deserving of respect and honor -- the one thing his father never gives him.
My only complaint about this story is that the two kings' daughters are merely their father's property to be bartererd off, and the first princess bears the full weight of punishment and shame for her father's dishonor. However, as Jacob and Wilhielm redacted their stories to project an image of the perfect fraternal society as they envisioned it, I reserve the right to redact the stories, too, and when I tell this one, I give each young woman an active role in her fate.
Bearskin
Some veterans of the Vietnam War complain loudly that they were never honored for their sacrifice -- as they should have been -- like the soldiers of World War II, before them. This story suggests that the parades and speeches were the abberation, not the spitting and rejection. It's also an elegant protest against the harm we do the human soul when we train people only to fight and kill; war is Hell, but the Hell continues far into peace time while the soldier struggles to regain the humanity we've forced him to discard.
Finally (for now), there's East of the Sun, West of the Moon, from Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe of Norway; translated by George Webb Dasent (1859). Translation revised by D. L. Ashliman. © 2001.
Okay. It's hard to ick absolute favorites among stories, but this one comes very, very close. On the surface, this is pro-Christian tale, with good Christians being taken hostage by an evil troll queen. However, it's Pagan symbolism is too thick and deeply-rooted to be successfully disguised.
First of The enchanted prince first appears in the form of a great white bear, and to the Ob'-Ugric peoples (the linguistic ancestors of the Finns, and Hungarians, who were in Northern Europe before the Norse took over) the bear was seen as the son of the sky god Num-Tarim, and was protector of the forest. Second, it is specifically stated that he first arrives at the heroine's door on a Thursday night, during a storm, linking him with the Norse god Thor.
When the story gets to the universal turning point when the heroine breaks the central taboo, the prince is lost, and the young woman reveals her own devine nature as an avatar of the Sun Goddess. She journeys around the world to find him again, riding through the sky on the backs of the four winds (traveling from east, to south, to west, to north, as the sun does), carrying with her a golden apple and a golden spinning wheel -- both solar symbols. And at the end of her journey, the heroine wakes the prince from his death-like sleep with a kiss, much as the warmth of the spring sun wakes the wild bears from hibernation.
Another symbolic link between this story and the spring equinox is "The Castle East of the Sun, West of the Moon" itself. Such a cosmic address may seem, at first glance, to be in the far off regions of the otherworld, existing only in dreams. Further consideration, however, reveals that the opposite is true. During the spring and fall equinoxes, the sun rises due east and sets due west. If this is also the time of the full moon, than at the moment of sunset -- the cusp of the waking time and dreaming time -- than each of us is standing "East of the Sun and West of the Moon."
Most versions of the story have the two of them flying away from that place after the troll queen dies, but when I retell it, I choose to have them stay -- at the point of the heart.
So -- go read... and Happy Oestra!
