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Comment
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searsmith
Registered User
(6/12/06 3:09 pm)
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Undines / Ondines / Rhinemaidens
Following La Motte Fouquet's Undine (1811), the whole watery tart business takes off in Romantic ballet, opera, poetry, painting, fiction, design -- you name it. Has anyone come across a good socio-historical or anthropological reading about why these creatures should have such an affect on European society in general and in the Romantic cultural movement in particular? (I already know about selkies, the ancient tales of mermaids, and the link to a maritime culture that such creatures might suggest -- even as the sirens did to ancient Greeks, despite their birdy underbodies.)
I should say this is part of my thinking through (for a book I'm writing) on what was so compelling about German Romanticism -- and what its own origins and cultural work might be (so as to get at my real topic, which is in British artistic transformations).
Thanks,
Kelly
Edited by: searsmith at: 6/12/06 3:10 pm
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InkGypsy
Registered User
(6/13/06 11:22 am)
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Re: Undines / Ondines / Rhinemaidens
With romantic ballet and opera originating largely in Europe I wouldn't be surprised if you found a link to the rusalkas of Russia. I have previously found articles on these in the past though I couldn't find them with a quick search. There is a book out now that you may find interesting called
Politicizing
Magic : An Anthology of Russian and Soviet Fairy Tales (Paperback)
I've only flipped through it but it looks fascinating. I know it's a back door to studying undines and related creatures directly but political influences and social thinking often crossed borders when it came to folklore and myth so I'd be surprised if there wasn't something useful for you down that avenue.
Another study avenue might be to delve into the history behind the ballets and operas that used these creatures/beings.
Let us know how you go - I'm sure we're all curious as to your findings.
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Chris Peltier
Registered User
(6/13/06 11:48 pm)
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Re: Undines / Ondines / Rhinemaidens
I don't know if this helps, but the Pre-Raphaelites of the nineteenth century were all really into Baron Fredrich de la Motte Fouquet - both William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones discovered la Motte Fouquet's writing while students at Oxford. Undine fit in well with their fascination with literary female figures that fit the Belle Dame Sans Merci profile.
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searsmith
Registered User
(6/14/06 10:56 am)
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La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Thanks for both leads. I've seen the Politicizing Magic book in my local bookstore. I'll thumb through it next time. I've only been waiting for an excuse to buy it.
And as for the appeal of the dangerous and seductive fairy woman, Chris, I do agree that this is the general type whether Fairy Queen or Rhine Maiden... Why this should have such an explosion of appeal in this period is curious. Being a British lit person, I'm thinking of the depictions in Pre Raphaelite art, as well as descriptions in poetry and fiction, such as the ones mentioned here. I wasn't aware of the Morris and Burnes-Jones connections to Fouquet's influence (thanks for that), but I know of many other such transmissions from Germany to England (such as George MacDonald's devotion to Novalis).
I'm wondering now if this beautiful lady without mercy can be read as an opposite in some ways of the Fallen Woman, which became a mainstay in mid-Victorian culture. Also, whether this lady might form the basis of such types as the seductive ice queens in, say, Eliot's or Dickens' fictions. They seem to seduce, but not to give in. Their consumation of any conquest is death (physical, spiritual) rather than sex.
Perhaps the fear is that such women are too natural, or that a woman's nature beneath is not as pliable and yielding as men would hope. As Keats said:
"Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild."
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Chris Peltier
Registered User
(6/15/06 10:49 pm)
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Re: La Belle Dame Sans Merci
"Sintram and his Companions" is primarily the work by de la Motte Fouque that Morris and Burne-Jones were wild about, but temptress women were a huge theme with them: see Burne-Jones's "Sidonia von Bork", based on Wilheim Meinhold's "Sidonia the Sorceress" (1847) (another book that they were wild about), Nimue in "The Beguiling of Merlin" by the same artist, as well as his "Laus Veneris"; "Morgan-le-Fay" by Frederick Sandys; "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by both Waterhouse and Frank Cadogan Cowper; and Morris's "Defense of Guinevere" (book of poetry), I'm sure the list goes on and on.
Rossetti had some of the most sexually direct images of the 19th century, such as "Astarte Syriaca", described by Fiona MacCarthy in her biography, "William Morris: A Life For Our Times", as showing "The goddess as a sexual power-figure, in an alluring and yet disdainful pose" (365). The goddess is pictured wearing two strategically placed jewlled girdles, at the breast and on the hips. Wrote Rossetti:
Her twofold girdle clasps the infinate boon
Of bliss whereof the heaven and earth commune.
Hot stuff.
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