Poem of the Aeolian Heart Harp 02/26/2025

Poem of the Aeolian Heart Harp 

poem 

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/1164090235

illustration 

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/1164089424

IN AMENDMENT

The Brothers Grimm & Dark Fairytales

VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

0:00 this video has been sponsored by Squarespace I seriously doubt that any of us have managed to reach adulthood 0:06 without hearing at least a few fairy tales maybe it was the story of Little 0:11 Red Riding Hood or Cinderella or Jack in the bean stock or maybe it was one of the many adaptations spoofs and edgy 0:18 2010 retellings that were inspired by those Original Stories and not stereotype you guys but if you're 0:25 watching this video I bet you know that a lot of those modern fairy tales originated from the collection of the 0:32 brothers Grim today I want to take a deeper look at The Life and Times of the Grim Brothers investigate some of their 0:39 more obscure and perhaps disturbing stories to try and pin down why they 0:45 made it their life's work to study and preserve something as silly and 0:51 inconsequential as fairy tales yakob ludvig Carl Grim was born on January 4th 0:58 1785 in Hano a city in what we now know as Germany just about a year later on 1:05 February 24th 1786 his brother vilhelm Carl Grim was 1:10 born and due to their closeness in age the brothers were Incredibly Close growing up they were basically twins 1:18 except that they shared the middle name Carl instead of the womb while their family had never been particularly poor 1:25 their stations improved considerably in 1791 when the father of the family was 1:31 elected amtman which is basically a magistrate of the city of styo this gave 1:37 them land to live on a quite beautiful house and a rather stable income the 1:43 brothers flourished in styo with private tutors to teach them reading and writing 1:49 a nursaid to tell them stories and the entirety of the German Countryside at their fingertips okay and I have been 1:56 saying the German Countryside but technically where they were living was not Germany yet this was before the 2:03 unification of Germany when the country was still split up into much smaller kingdoms each with their own leader 2:09 still under the larger umbrella of the Holy Roman Empire as they had been for 2:14 over a thousand years I will be continuing to refer to the regions that 2:19 would eventually become Germany as Germany just for the sake of Simplicity 2:25 but you should probably be aware that technically it was not Germany until 8 185 however it is interesting to note 2:33 that the abundance of random small Kings and Kingdoms in the time of the Holy 2:38 Roman Empire may have contributed to the environment of the fairy tales that the 2:44 brothers Grim would collect and retell where there's always a king and a 2:49 princess and a castle but their peaceful Countryside upbringing could not remain 2:54 peaceful there was a lot of Chaos in Europe at this time the French Revolution was was going on and things 3:01 were only about to get more chaotic in the personal lives of yakob and vilhelm Grim in 1796 their father died of 3:09 pneumonia leaving 11-year-old yakob as the man of the house because their 3:14 father the amtman was gone they lost possession of the house they had lived in and they got a very small stipend 3:21 from the government in his memory but it was not enough to support them their mother dorota was unemployed at the time 3:28 but they were able to just barely scrape by with a lot of monetary support from 3:33 family members their greatest support would come from their aunt who was wealthy enough to provide for yakob and 3:40 vilhelm to attend a special school in the city of Castle this was the 3:45 opportunity of a lifetime but it did present its own unique challenges 3:51 despite their private tutoring educationally speaking the Grim brothers were far behind their peers and compared 3:59 to the other Rich Noble boys that attended this school they were country bumpkins they stuck out like a sore 4:05 thumb and constantly pressing on them was this feeling that even though they were children themselves between vilhelm 4:13 and yakob was the responsibility of being the man of the house through hard 4:19 work and a lot of focus they managed to claw their way through school becoming 4:24 just as educated as their classmates and in 1802 yak was accepted into University 4:32 while this was a great step forward for him it also meant that for the very first time the Grim brothers would have 4:39 to be separated this was a heartbreaking blow for them they had basically been 4:45 connected at the hip since they had been born and now suddenly they were entirely 4:51 alone we still have a lot of their letters that they exchanged from this time were they're expressing to each 4:56 other the pure heartbreak that they feel being completely alone without each 5:02 other yakob was doing quite well in University but vilhelm who had suffered from scarlet fever when he was much 5:09 younger was constantly plagued by poor health he was bedridden for a full 6 5:15 months not allowed to read or write only able to draw and to dream to pass the 5:22 time and while this was obviously quite difficult vilhelm would later explain 5:27 how much this time of intense boredom would spark his creativity and his 5:33 curiosity fortunately the brothers were soon reunited as vilhelm went up to University and it was there that the two 5:40 of them fell under the tutelage of Professor Friedrich Von svy svy nurtured 5:46 the spark he saw in the brothers urging them to be mindful and thorough in their scholarship and pointing them in the 5:52 direction of specifically German art culture and knowledge this was at odds 5:59 with the more classical University curriculum which emphasized the study of 6:04 the art and history of Rome and Greece and svi was likely inspired by the 6:10 growing wave of Romanticism in Europe the movement known as Romanticism was 6:16 just starting to pick up steam in the early 1800s and it sought to do away with all pretension and get to the heart 6:25 of what it meant to be human the art and literature of romantic ISM attempted to 6:31 isue the subject of the Rich and Famous and focus on Simplicity on the ordinary 6:37 person and their very ordinary lives they thought that in this Simplicity in 6:43 going back to Our Roots we might find some answers some kind of universal 6:50 truth that might guide us through rapidly Changing Times this meant setting aside the tales of Homer and the 6:57 wisdom of Aristotle and instead diving into folk wisdom into local history svy 7:05 would eventually request ycob to be his research assistant in Paris and yakob 7:10 dropped everything to take this opportunity derailing his University career and although this was a very 7:18 risky move everyone in his life including his mother approved of the decision somehow they knew that this was 7:25 something that he needed to do but as important as this stint imp Paris would end up being to his later scholarly 7:32 efforts it also meant that the brothers had to be separated once more and again 7:37 you can see in their letters the pain and frustration that being divided by 7:44 space gave them but by 1805 the brothers were together again moving in with their 7:50 mother and sister in Castle where they had first attended school as joyful as this reunion was their living situation 7:58 was still as dire as ever despite their education yakob and vilhelm struggled to 8:04 find work and tragically in 1808 their mother dorota Grim died to make things 8:11 all the worse it was right around then that the French arrived in Castle the 8:17 new French Emperor Napoleon bonapart had been sweeping his way across Europe throughout the 1800s and his armies 8:24 reached Castle in 1806 Napoleon positioned his youngest 8:29 brother Jerome bonapart as the new king of West philia and Castle was the 8:34 capital of the new realm and it was actually in the castle of this new French King that yakob finally found 8:42 work perhaps it was because he was the best one for the job or perhaps it was 8:47 just because he was the only academic in town desperate enough to take a position under their new French overlords yakob 8:55 was given the job of being the Royal librarian caring for over 12,000 books 9:02 in their collection his only real job was to look after the books and to make 9:09 sure that nobody but the approved people the king the queen and of course himself the Royal librarian was allowed to ever 9:16 look at the books and fortunately for him the royal couple was not very much 9:23 into reading so he kind of just had the library to himself and he had a lot of 9:28 downtime meanwhile vilhelms already fragile Health was just getting worse and worse so he was sent away to an 9:35 experimental doctor for treatment and when I say experimental I really do mean 9:42 experimental he was fed pills that made him vomit every morning his neck would 9:47 be rubbed with Mercury which yes is incredibly toxic which is what we now 9:53 know and they even played with the new technology of electricity using A 9:59 Primitive car battery basically to run electricity through his body in the hopes of settling his heart vilhelm 10:07 understandably didn't really enjoy these treatments but he found refuge in this time in learning about the local 10:13 folklore and folk music and you know what something that they did to him must 10:19 have worked because eventually the treatments started to make him feel better and he was able to return to 10:26 Castle and to his family still trapped under under the thumb of the French but with plenty of free time because of 10:32 yacob's employment and vilhelms continued unemployment the brothers found solace in diving deeper into 10:39 German culture inspired by Romanticism they believed that fairy tales the fairy 10:45 tales of the German people contained some kind of quintessential germanness 10:51 and they thought that preserving the Integrity of that germanness would be key to preserving the spark in the 10:58 hearts of the German people vilhelm would later describe it when a storm or some other catastrophe sent from the 11:05 heavens levels an entire crop we are relieved to find that a small patch protected by tiny Hedges or bushes has 11:13 been spared and that some solitary stocks remain standing when the sun shines once again and favors them they 11:20 will continue to grow alone and unnoticed no sickle will cut them down 11:25 too early so they can be stashed in a large silo but late in the summer when 11:30 they are ripe and fully grown some poor and Pious hands will come searching for them ear on ear will be carefully Bound 11:38 in bundles inspected and attended to as whole sheaths then they will be brought 11:44 home and serve as the staple food for the entire winter perhaps they will be 11:50 the only seed for the future this is how it seemed to us when we began examining the richness of German literature in 11:58 earlier times and saw that nothing much had been preserved from that richness 12:03 determined to preserve what was left of the storytelling tradition of bygone days the brothers began to collect fairy 12:12 tales now the Contemporary impression seems to be that the brothers Grim 12:18 gathered these stories themselves that they canvased across Germany going door Todo hearing these stories 12:25 firsthand but that's not entirely accurate in certain special cases they 12:30 were able to do so such as in the case of their neighbors the Wilds who were literally their nextd door neighbors 12:37 they had four daughters who really enjoyed telling stories and some of the tales that we get in the very first 12:43 volume of grim Fairy Tales come from those sisters and in some cases the 12:48 brothers had to get a bit creative about how they collected their stories because 12:53 not everyone was willing to give them up to some random academic according to One account they tra an old man his stories 13:01 in exchange for a couple of pairs of their old trousers and they actually stayed in communication with that old 13:07 man and he would frequently send them letters asking if they had any other used trousers that he could take which I 13:14 think is nice and then in other cases they would have to send in children to little old ladies to get them telling 13:21 their stories because the little old ladies didn't want to tell their stories to grown men but for the most part the 13:27 brothers Grim asked other people for help they sent out to their colleagues and fellow Scholars requesting that they 13:35 record any Snippets of folktales that they might hear everything from the old 13:40 washer woman talking around the well to the thief in a prison cell and just 13:45 about everyone in between in 1811 they sent out an open letter requesting that anybody who has fairy tales send them in 13:53 it didn't matter yakob said if the stories taught a lesson or were just fun to listen to whether they were happy or 14:00 sad what was important was that the person writing down the story should capture every word the teller said even 14:08 if the story didn't make sense the way that it was told the brothers Grim certainly were not the first Scholars to 14:16 ever think of recording folklore but you could argue that for their time they 14:23 were the best a lot of other recorders of the time would only take very vague 14:29 notes on the original orally told story and then it was accepted practice for 14:35 them to embellish change and sometimes entirely make up the rest of the story 14:42 from that Bas line they could make the stories do whatever they needed them to do in order to confirm their scholarly 14:50 intent the brothers Grim however were comparatively far more mindful although 14:57 that's not to say that they didn't change anything anything for example in the original Snow White the orally told 15:03 version of the story the evil stepmother was actually Snow White's mother but 15:09 that didn't quite fit in with what the brothers Grim were trying to do and they 15:15 firmly believed in the goodness and purity of the role of a mother so they changed it from being a wicked mother to 15:22 a wicked stepmother and while that is a significant change it doesn't really 15:27 change the message of the story all too much plus the convention of the wicked stepmother was something that they saw 15:34 in other Tales so it wasn't a particularly difficult or a seriously transformative change to make so they 15:41 certainly did change things but they really worked hard to preserve what they saw as a story's essential truth vilhelm 15:50 Grim once compared it to cracking open an egg when you crack open an egg 15:56 there's always going to be a little bit of white that gets left behind in the Shell it's inevitable and you could try 16:03 and scrape it out but you're just going to lose some of it but what's important is that the Yoke stays intact and 16:10 especially compared to other Scholars of their day the brothers Grim were really mindful of keeping the truth that yolk 16:18 of the story intact and discernible even in their Rewritten stories by modern 16:24 standards they editorialized a bit and it's hardly a spot-on firsthand account but especially 16:32 in the context in which they were operating the scholarly work that the brothers Grim did was groundbreaking one 16:40 scholar who wasn't quite so concerned with maintaining integrity was an old 16:45 friend of the Grim Brothers Clemens brentano brentano had also been working 16:51 on a fairy tale compilation at the same time as the brothers Grim but his work 16:56 was far less precise and mindful in fact some of the storytellers that the Grims 17:02 approached had had previous encounters with brentano and whatever he did they 17:07 were so scarred by the experience that these storytellers refused to share their tales with any other Scholars 17:15 including the Grims still the brothers wanted to hold on to that friendship and 17:21 so when brentano requested a copy of their manuscript for him to examine of 17:26 course they gave it to him fortunately they did make a separate copy of the 17:31 manuscript before they handed it over which was good because brentano took that manuscript and never gave it back 17:38 in fact it went missing for decades and was only fairly recently found despite 17:44 trials and disagreements and a whole lot of work in 1812 the brothers Grim 17:50 published Kinder un house the title translates to the children's and 17:55 household tales and it contained 86 of of their collected stories and although 18:01 this was called children's tales it was not originally intended to be a book for 18:08 children rather than having illustrations or etchings you know the stuff kids kind of like to see in their 18:14 books this book contained footnotes and assiduous notes on all of the stories 18:21 and where they came from yakob explained that although the book very well could be enjoyed by children it was origin 18:28 Ally intended as a serious scholarly Pursuit intended for adult consumption 18:35 this was a misconception that would continue to reoccur throughout the fairy tale work of the brothers Grim while 18:42 children really enjoyed the book and they devoured the stories a lot of the 18:47 Educators and adults in their lives were a bit more skeptical Not only was the 18:53 book dull and illustration it was also throughout most 18:58 of it incredibly dark there are some seriously bloody and brutal moments in 19:06 those stories that you could argue are not acceptable for children in fact 19:11 there's one of the stories that I'm going to share later on that was deemed so brutal and horrifying that it was cut 19:18 by the brothers Grim from later publications of their books yakob would 19:24 remain steadfast in the idea that this book was not intended for children and that it should not not be adjusted to 19:29 Pander to them it was written to be a scholarly preservation of German culture 19:36 vilhelm however did begin to change his mind over time vilhelm had always been a 19:43 bit more of the Romantic between the two of them yakob was very much dedicated to 19:48 the facts and vilhelm was more interested in larger spiritual truths 19:54 and he was willing to Pivot their work to cat more towards a younger audience 20:01 this is something that would be a bit of a point of friction between the two of them when they were working together but 20:07 on the second collection of fairy tales vilhelm would have the chance to Pivot 20:13 their intent however he liked 1812 was a really rough year to be Napoleon 20:20 bonapart the French were facing defeat in Russia and higher-ups like King Jerome were beginning to see the writing 20:27 on the wall he began to to pull out of CLE and while they were trying to work on the second book he kept yakob very 20:34 busy collecting up German books and art to smuggle with him as he fled for 20:39 France and once Napoleon's defeat was finalized yakob was kept even more busy 20:45 with politics he was sent to Paris from 1814 to 1815 to recover German art and 20:52 literature that had been taken by the French it was during this lengthy 20:57 separation that a lot of the work was done to compile the second edition of Grim's fairy tales meaning that most of 21:04 it was done under vilhelms hand and as always when the brothers are physically separated we get a lot of very angsty 21:11 letters where they're getting upset about miscommunications due to just how long it takes to get a letter from 21:18 France to Germany the second volume when it was published wasn't quite the smash 21:23 hit that the first one was but it did a lot to establish the brothers grim as 21:29 the voice in German folklore the brothers would be reunited in 1816 and 21:35 fortunately they would never be seriously parted again they would continue much of their work together 21:42 editing and recompiling fairy tales exploring German folklore and history 21:48 and doing some groundbreaking work on the study of the German language in 1825 21:54 vilhelm would marry dor wild one of their former Nextdoor neighbors who had 22:00 contributed stories to the first volume of grim fairy tales yakob would never 22:05 marry but he did live out the rest of his life in the same house as vilhelm dorota and their four children over 22:13 their years they spent time as Librarians professors and members of The Academy of Sciences and in 1838 they 22:21 began work on the dees V the most comprehensive German dictionary ever 22:27 created vilhelm passed away in 1859 and yakob would carry on after him 22:33 just 4 years later but they left behind a remarkable Legacy be it their 22:39 linguistic studies their scholarly practice and of course their preservation of German culture at an 22:47 incredibly volatile point in history adaptations like the Disney Princess 22:53 movies loving satires on the original fairy tale stories and yes even the edgy 23:01 gritty 2010 dark fairy tale remakes none of these would have been able to exist 23:07 without the groundwork laid by the brothers grim and yet there are a lot of stories from these collections that 23:13 aren't quite as well known but they can tell us a lot about the values that these Tales wanted to promote the 23:21 questions and controversies around them and how these stories were crafted and 23:29 changed throughout time and space let's begin with my new favorite ever fairy 23:34 tale the mouse the bird and the sausage this Story begins as so many do with a 23:41 mouse a bird and a sausage getting together and buying a house and at first 23:47 they are experiencing domestic Bliss they each have their own special jobs the bird goes out into the forest to 23:54 gather wood the mouse stays home and takes in water from the well starts the 23:59 fire and sets the table and the sausage of course does all of the cooking and as 24:04 a final step to all of the cooking he takes his little body and slithers through the food to season it so that 24:10 it's perfectly salted every time it's just the perfect setup and they've got an excellent thing going however one day 24:17 the bird gets talking with another bird and that other bird is like hey to me it 24:22 looks like you're doing most of the work in the house because after they finished cooking the mouse and the sausage get to 24:30 relax they don't have to do anything but it's the bird who has to wake up early in the morning and spend all day 24:38 Gathering wood the bird insists that they try and change jobs for a day and 24:43 so they draw lots to decide who's doing what and their fate is sealed the 24:48 sausage goes out into the wild to gather firewood and the results are disastrous 24:55 not far from their home the sausage had encountered a dog now this dog had 25:00 considered the sausage free game and had grabbed him and swallowed him down the little bird arrived and accused the dog 25:07 of highway robbery but it was of no use for the dog maintained that he had found 25:12 forged letters on the sausage and therefore the sausage had had to pay for 25:17 this with his life with the sausage dead for his socalled crimes the bird flies 25:24 home to find even more chaos the mouse had been making dinner and since he had 25:30 seen the sausage cooking he knew that the final step was to slide your body 25:35 through the vegetables but the mouse isn't greasy enough and he gets stuck halfway through and he burns to death 25:43 between the potatoes when the bird returns he can't find the Mouse anywhere so he throws the firewood all across the 25:50 floor so that he can search for the mouse but the firewood then catches on fire and the whole house is consumed in 25:58 Flames the bird rushes to the well to try and get a bucket out but the bucket Falls in and pulls the bird in behind it 26:05 and the bird drowns truly you can learn just so many lessons from this story you 26:12 don't carry forged papers um cops might eat you if you're 26:18 an anthropomorphic sausage and you really shouldn't try and slip inside through a pan of hot vegetables if you 26:24 aren't greasy enough and perhaps most importantly you shouldn't change up a good thing although it may look like it 26:31 the grass is not always greener on the other side and even if it looks like your friend has the easier side of 26:38 things it might not go so well trying to walk a mile in their shoes I will be 26:44 honest that I first read this story because it had a mouse in the title and you guys know how I feel um about 26:50 rodents but I've been thinking about this story for days and I need as many people as humanly possible to hear it 26:58 and maybe a great way for me to get the word out about the mouse the bird and the sausage would be to build it its own 27:05 platform using this video sponsor Squarespace Squarespace is the allinone 27:11 website building platform that's going to allow you to stand out and succeed online using their Cutting Edge design 27:17 intelligence technology you can build 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10% off your first purchase of a website or domain thanks so much to Squarespace 28:23 for sponsoring this video and thanks to all of you for checking out my sponsors so the mouse the bird and the sausage is 28:32 I can admit ridiculous but this next one is not and it is very gruesome and 28:38 bloody so if you want to skip it go ahead to this Tim stamp in the story titled how some children play at 28:45 slaughtering we meet a couple of five and six-year-old kids who are playing 28:52 butcher together one of them is the butcher the other is the assistant who's holding a bowl to to catch the blood in 28:59 and then one of the children is cast as the pig in this game imitating The 29:05 Butchers that they've watched they pin down the pig cut its throat and collect 29:10 the blood one of the town's people sees what has happened and they panic and 29:16 they grab the kid who has done the murdering and take him before the local Court there they just have no idea what 29:23 to do until a wise man suggests that the judge present the boy with an apple and 29:30 a gold coin if the boy took the apple he was to be set free if he took the coin 29:36 he was to be killed the judge took the wise man's advice and the boy grabbed 29:42 the apple with a laugh thus he was set free without any punishment in the first 29:48 edition this was followed up by a part two which is somehow even more brutal so 29:53 I'm not going to share it here but that story was deemed so gruesome that it was 29:58 taken out of later editions of the brothers Grim stories it only appeared in the very first publication and this 30:06 was actually something that yakob himself protested heavily apparently this was one of the stories that had 30:12 come from the mouth of their own mother and yakob remembers that after hearing the story he certainly played a lot more 30:19 carefully there definitely was value to the story and while I get why you 30:25 probably wouldn't want kids reading that one I I think that in the original intended context of it being a 30:31 collection of folk stories for adults it makes a lot of sense to have that story 30:37 in there while it is a warning to children to play carefully it's also a 30:42 really interesting exploration into the culpability of children at what age does 30:48 a child become fully responsible for their actions at what age should their 30:54 conscience prevent things like that from happening no one likes to consider the 31:00 fact that children can do really terrible things but sometimes they do 31:05 and this story presents something very interesting the child is allowed to choose between an apple the instant 31:12 gratification and sweet treat of an apple versus a gold coin which is something that an adult would certainly 31:19 choose over an apple and the child chooses the Apple meaning that in all 31:24 likelihood he just didn't understand the serious ious nness and the adultness of 31:31 the act that he was performing it asks questions about who is accountable when a child does something wrong is it the 31:39 butcher who allowed the children to watch as he slaughtered pigs was it the 31:44 child himself who had no comprehension of his action or was it maybe even the 31:49 parents who probably should have been watching their kids a bit closer this isn't a fun story and it's probably not 31:56 one I'd um you know bring to story time at the local library but it does what 32:01 the best stories do it asks questions that provoke us to think further our 32:07 third story is way less brutal and that is the tale of the old woman in the 32:13 forest it tells of a servant girl left all alone in the forest after her 32:19 employers are killed by robbers she cries and cries thinking that she's going to die out there but then she's 32:26 saved by a dove holding a key the golden key unlocks a nearby tree where she 32:32 finds an entire Cas of delicious food she eats and when she grows tired the 32:38 dove brings her another key she unlocks another tree to find a beautiful bed for 32:43 her to sleep in and another tree where she finds a whole Wardrobe full of 32:49 beautiful clothing after many days of living in luxury in the forest the dove asks her for something in return I'm 32:56 going to lead you to a small cottage said the dove you are to go inside where you'll find an old woman seated right 33:03 next to the Hearth she'll say good day to you but you are not to answer her no matter what she does go past her to the 33:10 right where you'll come upon a door open it and you'll find a room where there will be lots of different kinds of rings 33:17 lying on a table you'll see magnificent ones with glistening stones but you're 33:22 to leave them alone pick out a simple one that will be lying among them and 33:27 bring it to me as fast as you can the girl hastens to obey enters the home and 33:33 ignores the old woman even as she screams at the girl to stop and finally 33:38 she makes her way into the room that the dove described while she was looking for the ring she noticed the old woman 33:45 slinking by with a bird cage in her hand the woman was about to make off with it but the maiden went up to her and took 33:51 the cage out of her hand when she lifted it up and looked inside she saw a bird 33:57 with a Le ring in its beak she snatches the ring and runs but returns to find 34:02 her Dove nowhere to be seen while she's waiting she leans against a tree but 34:08 suddenly that tree begins to move its branches wrap around her and when the 34:14 girl turns around she finds that the tree has become a handsome young man and 34:19 the two Embrace he explains that he is actually a prince and that him and his 34:26 servants and his entire house have been turned into trees by the wicked witch he 34:31 was able to become a dove for a few hours every day but so long as the old woman had the ring he was trapped by 34:39 stealing the ring the girl has freed him and they ride off into the sunset 34:44 together that story is really interesting to me because although it is certainly unique it contains so many 34:52 very familiar fairy tale elements helpful birds can be seen in in many 34:58 different fairy tales the image of a child lost in the dangerous Woods is pervasive that child breaking and 35:05 entering a witch's cabin is practically a staple and of course the girls saving 35:11 the prince and turning him human can be found in many tales but to me it rang 35:16 most similarly to the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast now what's 35:22 interesting is that Beauty and the Beast is not German it is a very specifically 35:29 French story with some Italian influences but it's definitely not 35:34 German which is really interesting that either it has influenced this story or 35:39 this story has probably influenced it either way there is some kind of crosscultural bleed there now I'm not 35:47 trying to say that the old woman in the forest is like fanfiction of Beauty and the Beast or something but it is some 35:54 kind of proof that although they didn't necessarily know it or acknowledge it in their time the stories collected by the 36:01 brothers Grim are not solely German in origin and I do think it's worth 36:07 examining if that's important and because a lot of people think it is why that is so important in their 36:14 exploration on the brothers Grim Alfred and Mary David explain all the labors of 36:19 the Grims whether in philology or in folklore stem from a basic premise that 36:24 they share with most of the major figures of the Romantic Movement there is a spiritual force in nature that 36:30 finds expression in literature nature means not only external nature mountains 36:37 forests Lakes but human nature which responds to these things the ancient 36:43 poets the Grims and their fellow Romantics felt had lived closer to Nature and their Works were therefore 36:50 imbued with fundamental truths and values these truths and values had been 36:56 given their noblest embod in the ancient epic poetry much of it lost but they still survived in the 37:03 humbler form of the folk tale there was a belief that only intensified over time 37:10 that coming from a more ancient like primitive more connected to Nature time 37:16 these stories contain some kind of German quintessence that by studying and 37:22 popularizing these stories they would find some kind of over seing national 37:28 identity to which they could cling now that's not entirely inaccurate these 37:33 stories told by a particular people and region are significant and of course they were in study but consigning 37:41 anything to belong specifically to any one nationality can be a bit of a 37:47 slippery slope for example very classically German things like vogner's ring cycle and the stories of the 37:55 brothers Grim were adopted and upheld by 38:00 particular movements of the 1930s and 40s that I can't name or else YouTube 38:05 will block this video suffice it to say trying to claim that anything is 38:11 quintessentially German and defining what values make someone quintessentially German or 38:17 quintessentially any nationality you risk alienating people that don't 38:22 specifically fit into that mold it also means that stories like the ring cycle 38:28 or like the stories of the brothers Grim may be written off by people who for 38:33 whatever reason don't want to engage with things that are German specifically 38:38 in the case of the Allies in World War II they specifically avoided things that were considered very German and that 38:46 included the tales of the brothers Grim despite the fact that the tales of the brothers Grim had nothing to do with the 38:54 certain political movements that had taken over Germany and what's really crazy is that these stories aren't even 39:01 technically German in a lot of cases first off Germany didn't exist when a 39:07 lot of them were being told and collected and stories don't really 39:13 respect arbitrary borders that's like expecting um rivers or Wildlife to 39:19 respect the arbitrary lines that we draw on maps in fact a lot of the 39:24 storytellers that contributed things especially for the first volume of fairy tales they were actually French people 39:31 who just a couple of years before had migrated over to Germany so they weren't 39:36 even technically German whatever that means because it's a human term that we 39:42 have applied to stories but the stories themselves do not obey those labels you 39:47 can find crossover and influence from stories from all across Europe in the 39:53 tales of the brothers grim and you could probably make Fair arguments that there are international stories sprinkled in 40:00 there some things are a bit Universal while the idea of a sausage um sliding 40:06 his body through the vegetables to season them may be admittedly um quintessentially German the concept of a 40:13 little girl lost in the forest is universal and can be found in the 40:18 stories of almost all if not all cultures on his essay exploring the idea 40:24 of ownership and the Grim fairy tales Donald hos explores this idea very thoroughly that essay is linked in the 40:31 description along with a lot of other very interesting discussions uh revolving around the brothers Grim but 40:38 he dispels the idea of a story being able to be owned by a single nationality because first off that's a dangerous and 40:45 limiting way to look at stories and second off stories rarely actually 40:50 respect International borders but even then the alternative to that sometimes 40:56 people swing a little bit too far in the direction of universality okay so if stories don't 41:02 belong to a single nationality if they don't belong to America or to England or to Germany who do they belong to you 41:10 could say they belong to all of us that the folk in folk tale is all of humanity 41:16 and that stories like fairy tales contain some kind of universal human value but the problem 41:24 with that is what are those Universal human values I think that 41:29 internationally we can all kind of agree that children with knives isn't a good call but beyond that you get into 41:37 generalizing and stereotyping that just doesn't really Encompass the full 41:43 breadth and variety and diversity of The Human Experience so we're left in a 41:48 place where the nationalistic definition doesn't satisfy nor does the concept of 41:54 universal ownership in both cases fairy tales are supposed to depict or 42:00 prescribe for us what is true as well as what forms of behavior are typical 42:05 normal and acceptable whether we view them as yours and mine or as ours fairy 42:11 tales read from these perspectives confine and limit us narrowing our views 42:16 of reality while allegedly giving us greater insight into the other into ourselves or into Humanity from these 42:24 perspectives fairy tales own us we don't own them I do find it kind of 42:31 unfortunate that this is a conversation that has to happen at all but the idea that a story can be owned by one 42:38 specific person has become so prevalent over the last few centuries the idea of 42:45 copyright has had a huge impact on The Art of Storytelling in that we feel the 42:50 compulsive need to assign ownership and to consider the ownership of everything 42:57 it can't just be a collection of fairy stories it is the brothers Grim collection of fairy stories it is 43:04 Disney's Cinderella it is this actor's show it is this author's book it is this 43:10 producer's movie ownership is important obviously it matters who originally told 43:16 a story and what their intent was but that can't be where our consideration of 43:21 a story ends because the moment that a story leaves one person's mouth and enters another person's mind it is 43:29 changed it is the egg being cracked open even if all of the pieces are still 43:34 there it will never quite be the same it is totally fair to attribute that 43:40 specific collection of fairy tales to the brothers grim and even to the larger country of Germany but that cannot be 43:48 where a consideration of these stories ends Donald hos explains so who owns 43:54 fairy tales to be blunt I do and you do we can each claim fairy tales 44:00 for ourselves not as members of a national or ethnic folk group as French 44:05 German or American not as nameless faces in a sea of humanity and not in the 44:11 Disney model as legal copyright holders we claim fairy tales in every individual 44:18 Act of telling and reading it is by this process of continual transformation that 44:25 stories stay alive without Shrek I bet a whole generation would never have heard of The Muffin Man 44:33 Without Disney's Snow White The Tale of Snow White may be just as obscure as the 44:38 mouse the bird and the sausage and without the brother's Grim collecting 44:44 preserving and retelling these stories we wouldn't have this entire plethora of 44:50 beautiful educational and imaginative fairy tales that we have today I 44:57 honestly think I might uh perish if I try and get through a video without talking about tolken a little bit so I 45:03 wanted to bring up one of his storytelling concept and that is the idea of The Cauldron of story speaking 45:11 of the histories of stories and especially of fairy Stories We may say that the pot of soup The Cauldron of 45:18 story has always been boiling and to it have continually been added new bits 45:25 dainty and UND dainty a story is not an individual incident it is an ongoing 45:32 process once it has been put out into the world a story drops down into The 45:38 Cauldron where it simmers away breaking into its component parts exchanging 45:44 flavors with the tails that lay around it until a new teller wants to spin 45:49 their tail and they dip into the pot take out these older elements reform 45:55 reshape them repurpose them and put them back into the pot once the new story is 46:01 told the same as it ever was but irrevocably Changed by time and by the 46:08 complexities of the human mind tolken mentions many stories that have found 46:13 their way into the cauldron the tale of King Arthur of fafnir and of sigur and 46:20 of course the classic fairy tale I wish to point to something else that these Traditions contain a a singularly 46:27 suggestive example of the relation of the fairy tale element to gods and Kings 46:34 and nameless men illustrating I believe the view that this element does not rise 46:40 or fall but is there in The Cauldron of story waiting for the great figures of 46:46 myth and history and for the yet nameless he or she waiting for the 46:51 moment when they are cast into the simmering Stew one by one or all together without consideration of rank 46:59 or precedence the important part of tolk's cauldron of story is not necessarily what's put in or who put it 47:06 in or what their reasoning was what's important is what we take out of it and 47:12 that means that it's really impressive when we find something like the tales of the brothers Grim something that has been in this cauldron for so long but 47:20 something that continues to prove itself to be flexible Timeless and significant 47:25 because it is Tales like that that will continue to flavor the stew of our 47:31 imaginations for generations to come you guys know that I absolutely love 47:37 researching highly specific and kind of random topics and putting together this 47:42 video was an absolute blast I pretty much didn't know anything about the actual Brothers Grim going into this and 47:50 they had incredibly interesting lives and there's a lot of stuff that I wasn't able to get into in this video so if if 47:56 you want to learn a little bit more and do a bit of research yourself I highly recommend checking out anything by Jack 48:02 zipes he's written a lot of stuff that was hugely helpful for putting this video together and his translation of 48:09 the grim tales is topnotch so go ahead and check that out I will link a couple 48:15 of things in the description and then of course my sources are also in the description in the comments let me know 48:21 what your favorite Brothers Grim fairy tale is especially if it's one of the more obscure ones on but I mean who 48:28 doesn't love the classics I think my favorite other than the mouse the sausage and the bird is probably Little 48:35 Red Riding Hood because I've always been a big fan of cloaks and also because we had that really creepy 3D animated movie 48:43 Hoodwinked on DVD as a kid and that kind of imprinted on my mind like I'm a baby 48:50 duck and I still think about that movie a lot today I am planning on hopping on 48:56 the patreon this weekend to do a little cozy read through of some more of the 49:02 brothers Grim fairy tales we'll pick a couple I might do it with the rats so 49:07 that I have somebody to read too other than the Silence of my own mind but if you're interested in that my patreon is 49:14 linked right below thank you so much for joining me this week I really love making videos about Tolen but I really 49:20 like making videos about other stuff too and it means the world that you guys are here supporting me even when when I'm 49:27 doing slightly more out there topics and I hope that you have a very happy hoby 49:33 day [Music] 49:42 [Music]

MY COMMENT

What are your thoughts on Giovanni Francesco Straparola or Giovanni Boccaccio ? I think those two predecessors inspired the grimms initial style of a full range of tales, to the merger of christianity with folk tales from the countryside of europe.

That gentleman mouse on the wall will never switch places with the bird + sausage.

Thanks for sharing the stories. Great point, on culture attributation. Funny that most whites in the usa are german americans. Good point on how human cultures influence each other with their folklores. you may enjoy : the roach family and the mouse; the mouse and the potato chips; the park mouse and the apartment mouse https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/sunset-children-stories

Yes, copyright has taken over creativity with stories. I wonder is this the problem with all arts. When whites have issue with the presence of black ballerinas? When blacks have issues with the presence of white rappers?

I concur to Tolkien in that the stew builds over time. Any writer who interprets work over one hundred years old knows this to be true.

hmm my favorite grimm is the bremen town players:) It makes me giggle thinking about it, and i like the version when they scare the robbers and lie in that house on the road, not reaching bremen. it is an excellent story about what inspires migration, a destination thought well like bremen, but what inspires immigration is finding a home along the way, like a house on the road