a grand day out

As befitting a year devoted to courage, I continued the process of unfurling from my self-induced state of reclusion and had a grand day out on Saturday. My youngest sister had to go the airport in the morning to fly back to England and since for unfathomable reasons it’s cheaper and quicker to go by car than by public transport, that’s what we did. I dropped her off and then navigated the car downtown, the town in question being Stuttgart (the capital of Baden-Württemberg, which is a federal state of Germany, the one right down in the south-western corner).

We’d started out from home with blue skies and a rose-and-gold sunrise, but we’d encountered the first snow on the way down already. When I’d parked the car and walked the couple minutes to the centre, I sent my middle sister this picture and text:

“It’s snowing here.”

I’d forgotten the acute sense of being connected and at the same time gloriously alone that you get when drifting through a big city, but I recaptured it as I tried my way through some new clothes (everything sorely needed, some of it coveted, practically nothing that fit), navigated some shoe stores (same story), ate my way through a variety of international take-away food, listened to street musicians, smiled at the pigeons huddling everywhere to be away from the snow, and looked out for the small human interactions, the gestures, the words, the movements that make a city come alive.

the new palace – a cool place to hang out in summer, when people sit everywhere on the grass and the park benches, but very much less so in this weather

At one point it got really cold and I bought myself a cheap pair of finger-free gloves, choosing, from the rainbow of available colours, the electric-blue ones, which went together awesomely with my choice of nail polish for the weekend, hot pink. The rest of the day, I felt like shoving my hands in front of every stranger’s face and say: “Look! Pretty, isn’t it?” I didn’t. I didn’t take the gloves off again though, not even when I was sitting in a café. I enjoyed too much the feeling of being colourful again. And since you guys are my friends and won’t call the police on me for harassment, I’m gonna shove my hand in front of your faces. Look! Pretty, isn’t it?

exactly the right colour combination for a grey winter day

I’d toyed with the idea of spending part of the afternoon in one of my favourite museums (an ethnological museum that has the most interesting special exhibitions and is a mine of creative inspiration!), but they closed early, so I didn’t manage. Instead, I spent the time in the two major book shops, feeling calm and happy in a way it’s only possible to feel in the presence of large numbers of books. These are the ones I eventually chose to take home with me:

… aren’t those covers pretty?!

They are all in the area of contemporary fantasy, which wasn’t planned as such. I pondered the poetry and the crime section just as long and the classics even longer. I was very tempted by a new edition of On the Road, with beautiful photography and set in a clear, stark font, but eventually decided to go for new stories. Now I wonder if there’s a deeper meaning behind my choices. Maybe I long to escape into a magical world as well. (Well, I know I do, I just didn’t know it was this easily translatable into book choices).

I’d also thought about going to the theatre or the opera in the evening, but there was nothing on that particularly interested me and after a whole day of walking and strolling and standing I was pretty tired anyway. Tired, but happy.

Happy because I bought four books whose covers I adore and that I can’t wait to read. Happy because I let myself drift, which is freedom and pleasure in itself. Happy because I smiled at people in cafés and behind counters and people making music and most of them smiled back at me. And happy because I haven’t lost the knack of noticing small, easily-overlooked details in the rushing crowds that make me laugh and think.

Life’s pretty good, all in all.

the sign on the wall (of the old palace)

How was your weekend?

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concerning fairy tales – a blog response

A while ago, author, fellow blogger, chocolate lover and generally cool gal, Zen, wrote a post about fairy tales, wherein she expressed surprise that fairy tales aren’t ideal after all. This is a response to that post. So before you continue, please go  and read her post, and the comments. I’ll wait for you.

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Back? Alright, let’s get started. The following might turn out a bit long and/or scholarly, but I’m keeping it to the point as much as possible, so just bear with me, please.

Fairy tales and me

Maybe it’s because I’m German, but I grew up with the originals, the Brothers Grimm and lots of others, some more local, some from neighbouring countries. Fairy tale movies are a big thing, and on one of the best TV channels we have, there’s a special feature, the Sunday Fairy Tale, where they show a fairy tale movie each week. It’s been around for years and years and years. When we went for family walks, my siblings and I used to ask our Grandmother or our Mum to tell us fairy tales. Later, my siblings asked me and I’d tell them the Grimm ones I liked the best or I’d invent some of my own. I also told them to all the kids I used to babysit. If you don’t know, you can make most of these stories quite interactive, and that’s what I did. Of course we also saw the Disney versions, but we were aware the whole time that they did not tell the “true” story.

When I studied to be a teacher, I chose fairy tales as a focus topic for my oral (and final) exam in literature. I read all the classics, I read all the scientific stuff about how to analyze them, different approaches from psychology towards fairy tales, historical documents, books on comparative literature, … Well, I studied them. And because I think fairy tales are an integral and extremely important part of any culture, I think it’s worthwhile to get it clear what they are, what they do and what they don’t do and why they are important.

Also, just to get it off my chest before I go on: I adore Zen, and her blog is one of my favourites and this is in no way intended to be patronizing or anything like that. It just happens to be a topic that I feel strongly about and that I like talking about and her post was just a kind of trigger. 

“Fairy” tales?

So, why are these stories called “fairy” tales? There’s very few fairies present in any of them! The answer is, quite simply, that ‘fairy tales’ is the wrong word. It has become the word that is used in the English language, but that is just a matter of convenience and usage. What they really are, are folk tales. Tales that have been around for a long time, that have been passed down from generation to generation, that have a long oral tradition.

In German, the word is ‘Märchen’. In literature studies, this word is even used in English, as a technical term for these kind of stories. It’s a diminutive form of the the word ‘Mär’, a very old-fashioned word that means nothing else than ‘story’. So ‘Märchen’ just means ‘little story’. Not that most people are aware of that, as I said, it’s a very old-fashioned term.

Because I don’t want to write “fairy tales” for the rest of this post, I’ll lay off the quotation marks. After all, it is the word that is most commonly used. But let’s keep in mind that really, they are folk tales, okay?

The Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm, or rather, Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, were not, as some people assume or as they have been portrayed, these adventure-seeking, dangerous-living, travelling guys. So who and what were they then? I’ll give it to you in one word: Geeks. Very prolific, very cool geeks. They were academics, both studying law and reading, reading, reading… They read Schiller and Goethe, were interested in the Romantics and friends with some of the most well-known German Romantics, and laid the foundations for what we now call “Germanistik” (the studies of German language, literature and culture, like for example “Amerikanistik”, the study of American language, literature and culture).

They were born in the 1780s, the eldest sons of a numerous family, the father was a civil servant of middle rank, their grandfather had been a cleric. Their research went into finding the roots and charting the development of German literature and culture, because they thought that the present social and political circumstances could be explained and charted and hopefully changed by this. For their research they studied documents and records and literature from England, Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, Finland, Serbia, Netherlands, Spain… large parts of Europe.

Together with a number of other academics and writers, all loosely connected to Romanticism (I’m talking about the literary epoch here, guys!), started collecting folk tales. They did not want only the written-down documents, because those only gave the view of the literate and the rich. Together, they went out to ask old people to tell their stories. However, they did not go very far out. They didn’t travel all the lands or anything like that. After all, they worked for their living as well. They went to the surrounding villages on weekends and a large portion of the stories actually comes from one source, an old lady that lived in a village near the town where they lived. They did work scientifically, in that they tried to find at least two different sources for each story, but they did not work scientifically in that they were picking and choosing which versions to include.

Yes, you heard right, versions. You don’t think that a story stays the same if it’s told and re-told and re-told by a number of people? It changed from village to village, from family to family, from generation to generation. And that’s just as it should be, since a story is a living, breathing thing. What the Grimm brothers and their friends and colleagues did, was to pick the ones they thought were most representative. They brought out the first part of their collection in 1812, entitled “Kinder- und Hausmärchen” (“Children and House tales”, literally).

Time went by and they worked on a large number of things, publishing essays and books and studies analysing or translation or commenting things like myths, epics, legends, … They were scholars, and they did what scholars do. In 1815 they published the second part of their collection and 1819 they brought out a second edition of the first part. This had to be heavily edited. A lot of stories were struck out, other included and most of the stories were toned down to exclude all the too obvious erotic allusions. They also published their notes and study references and later brought out a ‘small edition’ in only one book – that one brought them most of their publicity. Their collection was translated into English and became even more popular.

Although their work was largely scholarly and had to do with language and culture, they also were active in politics, publishing political arguments to the purpose of unifying all the splintered little states to form a republic. Both helped to formulate the first German version of human rights (following the example of the French revolution and other similar influences). Jacob was a representative of the first National Congress of Germany, something for which he was later exiled by the king.

I could go on about those two for a long time, because, as I said, they were cool guys and they did a lot with their lives and their talents, a lot of which is not enough acknowledged. But since this is supposed to be about fairy tales, and not about the lives of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, I’ll quickly inflict one more topic on you.

What’s the point of fairy tales?

Good question. What is the point of stories? Well, entertainment for one thing. Imagine you’re a farmer somewhere in 1700-something, or earlier, or later, any time before electricity and modern infrastructure. What do you do for relaxation and entertainment? Sure, you get together with neighbours and gossip. Or tell tales. Invent histories, lie about your achievements, exaggerate your woes. All those things that we do as humans. Stories are entertainment.

But more than that, stories are how we make sense of the world. They explain human behaviour. No, they don’t tell us of ideal behaviour of a hero, a demi-god (these stories exist as well, but they are myths – dealing with superhuman beings). Fairy tales talk about humans. Humans lie. They cheat. They seek their own advantage. But they also believe in rules of good and bad behaviour and fairy tales are pretty clear on that: good guys become happy and rich. Bad guys get punished. It’s all very black and white. No shades of grey in a fairy story.  There are no complex emotional dramas. That does not mean that you cannot imagine them to be there! I’m pretty sure that if there were a father who would abandoned his two children in the woods, would probably suffer intense emotional drama (unless he was a heartless, a-social freak, of course). But detailing that drama is not what fairy tales are about.

Incidentially, anybody who argues, that what some people nowadays perceive as “gruesome”, is a reflection of a harsher life in the past, is guilty of depriving people of the past of their humanity. No sane person would under any circumstances, as harsh as these circumstances may be, suffer a child of theirs to be lost or killed. It’s got nothing to do with that. Again, fairy tales are “only” stories. To instruct (and entertain) children. To help and make sense of the world to people. To entertain adults. Yes, I did say adults. They are not children’s stories, although the Grimms named them that, in a rather savy marketing strategy. If you read the originals, and I mean the original originals, not the edited ones, it’s perfectly obvious that these stories are full to bursting of sex and crime. Although it’s still perceptible in the edited version. Folk tales, not “fairy” tales.

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If you’re interested in getting answers to why fairy tales are important, what other fairy tales there are, where they come from, and what psychology has to say about them (a lot, believe me! and also this: you’ll be surprised!), check back here in a day or so. I’ll answer these questions in a second post.

In the meantime, go and read some of the Grimms’ tales, they are all online, since they are part of the public domain. Amazon features them as free downloads for Kindle, or you can either download them or read them online at Project Gutenberg.

On a related note, if you’re interested in things like fairy tales, myths, legends, mythical or fantasy beings and creatures and fantasy in popular culture, please go and check out this website and blog: Twilight Wanders. It’s a side project on which I’m collaborating. We’re only just starting, so there is not that much to see yet, but it’s growing every day and we’re very open for suggestions, ideas and guest posts!

Also, any comments, contradictions, questions? Need me to clarify something? Want to correct me on something? Please comment!

Sunday morning in autumn in the countryside of southern Germany

The sun rises weakly over the green wooded and fielded hill, only a soft blurred red area in the quiet fog. As she rises, she gains strength, burning away the dampness, slowly at first, then ever faster until the houses and gardens, the villages and little towns sit in soft clear light, under a hazy, not-quite-blue sky. It is quiet. Birds chatter from time to time. Flowers open their petals. Coffee is being made inside the homes and crisp fresh breadrolls eaten, still warm in the middle, with butter and honey. Churchbells ring, calling to service. The landscape soaks up the gentle heat of the quiet sun and lies in peaceful stillness. A small airplane drones across the sky. The birds are mostly silent now, but the sounds of cars driving by, in the distance and sometimes closer, can be heard every few minutes. A dog barks. Children play, far away, their voices only just carrying through the quietness. All public life has stopped, no shops are open, no deliveries are made, Sundays are private. Some villages, however, have autumn festivals going on – market stalls along which the people stroll, chatting to their neighbours, acquaintances and friends, buying pottery or woodwork, herbs or home-made jam, eating sausages in a breadroll or a steak sandwich for lunch, while a band plays music or the children’s choir performs their repertoire. Everywhere else Sunday lunch is being cooked and the smell of potatoes and roast wafts through the air and soon the families will be sitting down to eat. The sun shines on unconcernedly, covering everything in a diffuse golden light.