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Hermes
Registered User
(8/8/00 1:35:04 am)
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Grimm Brothers - The Elfin Grove
I have recently been editing the entire Grimm Brothers tales. I wondered if anyone else had any thoughts about how different The Elfin Grove is from the other stories. It features what I would call traditional fairy lore such as you might find in Irish tales, and it is fascinating how once the elves are forced away, the prosperity of the land declines. Mary also seems to have more personality than most of the characters in Grimm - which often seem to represent types rather than real people.
It just seems to be so different from the other stories that it would be interesting to know how it was collected and whether it represented an authentic German fairy tradition.
If anyone wants to read the story, it is at:
www.belinus.co.uk/fairytales/GrimmElfinGrove.htm
Thanks
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Becca
Registered User
(8/12/00 8:09:24 pm)
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Re: Grimm Brothers - The Elfin Grove
I can't seem to find my copy of Grimms Fairy Tales right now, but in nearly 17 years of rabid fairy tale reading I have never come across that story. You're right, while the style is similar to Grimms the characters actually have names and personalities as opposed to being 'youths' and 'maidens'. Likely I'm just ignorant, but I don't think this is one of their original stories.
~Becca
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Hermes
Registered User
(8/12/00 10:43:28 pm)
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Re: Grimm Brothers - The Elfin Grove
Becca, thanks for your comments - because they are exactly the same thoughts as mine. It just doesn't seem to fit - yet is in several early English translations that I have. Unfortunately I don't have access to the orginal German works.
It just feels so different from the rest of their works and much more like a Celtic type story. Thanks.
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Allie
Unregistered User
(8/13/00 3:31:35 am)
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The Elfin Grove
That story strikes me as more of what's usually called a "fairy anecdote" than a fairy tale. In other words, a true (or supposedly true) story about an encounter with fairies, rather than an obviously fictional tale about fictional fairies.
You might try writing Professor Ashliman about it. I've found him to be very nice in the past, and he's an expert on just this subject.
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Midori
Unregistered User
(8/13/00 6:34:47 am)
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Zipes
You might also try checking into Jack Zipes translation of Grimms. Zipes is a German scholar and worked with the original text. In fact I think the "selling point" of his edition was that it was an academic attempt to be faithful to the original collection. I'd be very curious as to what you find out!
Which brings up another point about collections. Somewhere below, there was a mention of the Arabian Nights...oh yes, I think in the Male Tales and someone mentioned Aladdin..I have a fabulous new translation (I admit to being a Burton fan as well..but this one is really splendid) called The Arabian Nights, translated by Husain Haddawy (published by Norton). In the introduction he goes through the history of the translation and the usual games that translators played with the various, original manuscripts. Alas, Aladdin is a very late invention (1700's) led in part by the enthusiasm of collectors to include more pieces and actually get up to 1,000 tales . Some of the tales are forgeries by the collectors themselves (written in French, translated back into Arabic, where they would then be "discovered" and then retranslated back into French.) The history of the existing manuscripts (some as old as the 11th. century from Syria) is fascinating. Burton was a decent scholar to be sure, but he was also taken in by some of these manufactured collections and helped to perpetuate later stories "written in the style" of the original. And last, Haddawy looks carefully at the quality of the translation, from the Arabic to the English, especially how British translators missed the cultural nuance in many of the stories, flattening the languages in places, or editing what seemed to them uninteresting or repetitive...and thereby diluting the Arabic cultural point of view that gives the story its weight. Because I have over the years done so much work in African oral narratives, I am always interested in the cultural objectives of the non African collector and translator (and certainly the same was true of the sanitized translations of the Grimms).
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DH
Unregistered User
(8/14/00 1:26:44 pm)
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The Elfin-Grove
Hermes, you're right about "The Elfin-Grove" not sounding like a Grimm tale. That's because it's not. The website you cite takes that tale--and others credited as being Grimms'--from Edgar Taylor's "German Popular Stories" (1823-26). Not all of the tales in that English translation are from Grimm. While "The Elfin-Grove" is vaguely similar to one of the three stories in Grimms' collection under the collective title "Die Wichtelmaenner" ("The Elves"), Taylor's story is actually an adaptation of a literary fairy tale--"Die Elfen"--by the German Romantic writer Ludwig Tieck. Taylor says that explicitly in the notes to "German Popular Stories." Mass-market reprints of Taylor's work sometimes do not contain these notes; nor does the website posting this story.
Incidentally, a note at that website says that Taylor's translations are used because they represent the "original" Grimm. Taylor's translations may be interesting in their own right, but they are not accurate translations of Grimms' stories. Taylor made very significant changes to the tales. The upshot is that they don't represent Grimms' "originals."
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Hermes
Registered User
(8/14/00 10:22:48 pm)
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Re: The Elfin-Grove
DH, many thanks for your reply. That is just what I wanted to find out, and confirms what I suspected.
Does anyone know of an edition of the original tales in English, that are a 'good' translation of the original?
What a useful resource this discussion group is.
Thanks to all who replied.
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DH
Unregistered User
(8/15/00 6:53:19 am)
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Grimm "Originals" in English Translation
The question of what constitutes Grimms' "original" tales is a thorny one. In their lifetime, the Grimms published 17 different editions of fairy tales under the title "Kinder- und Hausmaerchen," each one different from the others. Seven of these editions are the so-called Large Edition, consisting of tales and scholarly annotations. These 7 editions were published between 1812/15 and 1857. From edition to edition, there are many changes: the number of tales grows, the contents change (some tales are ommitted, some are added), and the text of many tales is altered--sometimes repeatedly. Ten of the 17 editions are the so-called Small Editions. These 10 editions, published between 1825 and 1858, contain fifty selected tales aimed primarily at children, contain no scholarly annotations, and include illustrations by the Grimms' younger brother Ludwig Emil Grimm. It was clearly intended as a popular edition and was inspired by Edgar Taylor's 1823 volume of "German Popular Stories," illustrated by John Cruikshank. The contents of these Small Editions is fairly stable, but there are occasional stylistic alterations.
These are all Grimms' tales. So, as you can see, in this context the question about the "original tales" becomes much more complicated. It's even more problematic--or interesting--when you take into account that we have access to the Grimms' manuscripts of 1810, which contain the original group of tales that were published in the first volume of their first Large Edition in 1812. These "original" tales in manuscript are much different than the tales the Grimms first published. the picture is further complicated by the fact that still other tales by the Grimms made their first appearance in parts of their correpondence and in various contemporary journals.
So, it depends what you mean by "original." Typically, "complete translations" (for the same reason also problematic) rely on the seventh and last Large Edition of 1857, with its 210 tales. That's what you find in Margaret Hunt's 1884 translation, which is still reprinted in revised form by Pantheon today. (Hunt's 1884 translation of the Grimms' tales, incidentally, includes their volume of annotations, which Pantheon does not reprint.) The 1857 Large Edition is also what Ralph Manheim uses in his Anchor Press/Doubleday translation called "Grimms' Tales for Old and Young," although he erroneously indicates that he's using the Grimms' second edition of 1819. (Edgar Taylor's translations/adaptations in his 1823 "German Popular Stories" used the Grimms' 1819 edition, which makes them particularly interesting.) Jack Zipes's "The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm" (rev. ed) also uses the 1857 Large Edition, although he includes additional tales from earlier editions that the Grimms' later omitted, stories that were embedded in Grimms' annotations, as well as notes explaining where the tales come from.
Tales in English translation from the Grimms' other editions and from their manuscripts are scattered throughout various works, including: Ruth Michaelis Jena's "Grimms' Other Tales" and "New Tales from Grimm"; Alfred and Mary Elizabeth David's "The Frog King and Other Tales from Grimm"; Elizabeth Shub's "About Wise Men and Simpletons: Twelve Tales from Grimm"; Maria Tatar's "The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Tales" and "Grimms' Grimmest"; and Jack Zipes's "The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood" (the 1812 version of that story) and "Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale" (the 1810 manuscript version of "Rumpelstiltskin"). David Luke's translation of "Selected Tales" has good notes that refer to Grimms' revisions.
I hope this helps you, Hermes.
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DH
Unregistered User
(8/16/00 1:12:44 pm)
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Correction to previous
In my previous posting Taylor's illustrator should be George (not John) Cruikshank, of course.
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Midori
Unregistered User
(8/17/00 4:33:21 am)
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information
DH,
Thanks so much for the great crash course in the history of Grimm's collections. Very useful information indeed. There is a a lot to be learned about the cultural hisotry of a society simply by examining how it chooses to preserve and continue elements from its popular culture. The history of these collections is as fascinating at times as the collections themselves. (especially when the different collections offer such radical contrasts in tone and subject matter).
The board has been unusally quiet of late....if others lives are like mine right now I can understand we are all waiting for the transition from summer into our fall schedules! I hope to be a more active poster in a couple of weeks...but I wanted to make sure that I thanked you for the great post sooner rather than later!
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Hermes
Registered User
(8/17/00 11:33:52 pm)
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Re: information
I echo Midori's thanks. It taught
me a great deal, and shows how careful we have to be at times with
what we think is 'original' source material.
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