Enchanted Fairy tales

acob Ludwig Karl Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Karl Grimm (1786–1859) were brothers, very close to the point that, when one of the two had a family, the other went to live with him. The numerous disappointments then led them to close themselves in their own fantasy world, a bit like what happened to Tolkien in the last part of his life. Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, they were linguists and philologists, founding fathers of Germanistics, authors of a very important dictionary that was completed posthumously only in the sixties. Jakob is also famous in glottology for the famous law that takes its name from him: the first consonant rotation (Erste Lautverschiebung).

In the world, however, they are known above all for having collected and reworked the tales of the German folk tradition into fairy tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen, 1812–1822) and Germanic sagas (Deutsche Sagen, 1816–1818). However, they also published fairy tales from France and other countries.

Their work is part of the nineteenth-century movement of rediscovery and revaluation of popular folklore. In a period in which the growing literacy led to the disappearance of the oral tradition, influenced by the romanticism of Clemens Brentano and by von Arnim, the Grimms carried out their research with the specific intent of recovering, not so much fairy tales for children, as stories that contained the spirit of an entire people, favoring the birth of a Germanic identity.

“Perhaps the time had come to bring these fairy tales together, since there are fewer and fewer people who have to keep them …”

Elias Lönrot performed the same action in 1835 in Finland with the Kalevala.

The fairy tales they revived were in the original version not intended for a childish audience. What has come down to us is a sweetened adaptation, purified of the most gory details, dating back to the English translations of 1857. The two half-sisters of Cinderella, for example, in the original version cut each other’s heel and toe in an attempt to enter the famous slipper. It seems, however, that some censorship has also been carried out by the Grimms regarding sexually explicit content.

The drafts over the years were many, the Grimms modified the stories to meet the tastes of the new German bourgeoisie and because they continually came across different versions. However, they tried hard to render the stories as they had heard them, in a simple style, mimetic of popular language, without embellishment and even a little bare. The two transpositions of Cinderella are very different, the baroque, aristocratic one by Perrault and the barren, bloody one by the Grimm. We must, in fact, specify that the work of the Grimms was preceded in the seventeenth century by that of Gianbattista Basile (with “Lo cunto de li cunti” 1643–46) and by that of the French Perrault.

The stories have a gloomy, dark setting, made up of ogres, witches who eat children, parents who abandon them in the woods, mothers (and not stepmothers!) who demand the hearts of their daughters, wolves that devour. It is a world of houses in the forest, of talking animals, of spinning wheels, of spindles that let you fall asleep, of straw that turns to gold, of magic mirrors, of poisoned apples. The protagonists are exponents of the people or of the aristocracy, the intent is edifying, with the happy ending that always rewards upright and honest behavior.

If Vladimir Propp has analyzed their recurring structure, if it is not impossible to relate them to Jung’s theories of archetypes and the collective unconscious, the Freudian interpretation given by Bruno Bettelheim is now very famous. What is certain is that fairy tales — all of them, not just those of the Grimm — fulfill a consoling task for children.

Through the narration, the little ones overcome fears, objectifying them, gaining confidence in a happy ending, resolving oedipal conflicts, sibling rivalries, latent feelings of guilt, first unconscious sexual disturbances, fear of abandonment, rites of passage to adulthood and psychophysics maturity. They also learn to distinguish what is good from what is bad, to take the side of the positive hero, to trust outside help, not to be demoralized in the face of difficulties and feelings of inadequacy, to accept the existence of evil, considering it surmountable. In the tales of the Grimm, who is not worthy, who does not behave as he should, meets a bad end, and the apparent lack of mercy in punishment is only justice in the eyes of the little ones.

The child draws much more consolation and benefit from listening to a fairy tale than from a logical reasoning. Through fantastic images and narration, he/she subliminally and instinctively re-elaborates the precepts, assimilating them effortlessly.

Even in current fairy tales, those of the hardcover booklets for sale on the shelves of the motorway restaurants, alas more and more sugary and attenuated, the most recurring word is FEAR. Exorcising childhood terrors, and overcoming children’s performance anxiety, seems to be the main purpose of the fairytale world.

To conclude, let us recall that an operation similar to that of the Grimm brothers was carried out by Italo Calvino in 1956 with the tales of the Italian popular tradition.