The Interpretation of Fairy Tales Read online

  This objective method can best be learned by practicing with fairy tale motifs in which there is no personal setup and you have no personal knowledge of the conscious situation to help you.

  Let us first consider: how does a fairy tale originate? If we are realistic we have to say that it originates at one particular moment; at a certain time a certain fairy tale must have come into being. How could that happen?

  Max Lüthi shows that in legends and in local sagas, the hero of the story is a very human being.13 A local saga is the sort of story which runs this way: “Do you see the beautiful castle up there? Well, you know, a story is told about it. There was once a shepherd who on a hot midsummer day tended his sheep around this castle and was suddenly seized by curiosity and thought he might go inside, though he had heard that there were ghosts there. So with trembling hands he opened the door and saw a white snake, which spoke to him in human speech and said that the shepherd should come with it, and if he would suffer three nights he could redeem it . . . ,” or something like that. That is what is called a local saga. Now Lüthi showed, with a great many examples, that in those local sagas the hero is a human being whose feelings and reactions are told. For instance, it is said that the shepherd’s heart beat violently when he opened the castle door, and he shivered when he was given the cold kiss of the snake, but he was courageous and stood it all. The story is told as though an ordinary human being were having a supernatural or parapsychological experience. But if you take a classical fairy tale, such as the Grimms’ “Golden Bird,” there the hero has no such feelings. If a lion comes toward him, he takes his sword and kills it. Nothing is said about his being frightened and shivering and then putting his sword down the lion’s throat and scratching his head and asking himself what he had done. Because he is a hero, he just naturally kills the lion. So Lüthi says that the hero in a fairy tale is an abstract figure and not at all human. He is either completely black or completely white, with stereotyped reactions: he redeems the lady and kills the lion and is not afraid of the old woman in the woods. He is completely schematic.

  After reading that I came across a story from a nineteenthcentury family chronicle published in a Swiss paper on folklore.14 The family still lives in Chur, the capital of Graubünden. The greatgrandfather of the people who are still living had had a mill in some lonely village in the Alps, and one evening he had gone out to shoot a fox. When he took aim, the animal lifted its paw and said, “Don’t shoot me!” and then disappeared. The miller went home rather shaken, because speaking foxes were not part of his everyday experience. There he found the mill water racing autonomously around the wheel. He shouted, asking who had put the mill into motion. Nobody had done it. Two days later he died. In spiritualistic or parapsychological records this is a typical story. All over the world such things sometimes happen before someone dies: instruments behave as if alive, clocks stop as if they were part of the dying owner, and various queer things occur.

  Now a man who read this story in the chronicles of this family went presently to the village and asked the people there about the mill. The mill itself was in ruins. A few people said, “Yes, there was a mill up there and there was something uncanny about it. There was a spook there.” So one sees how the story had degenerated. They all knew that it had something to do with death and a parapsychological event, but they did not remember anything special. There the Finnish school seems to be right in saying that in the retelling things get poorer, but then this same investigator found other old people who said, “Oh, yes, we remember the story. The miller went out to shoot the fox, and the fox said, ‘Miller, don’t shoot me. You remember how I ground the corn at Aunt Jette’s.’ And then at the funeral party a wineglass was broken, and Aunt Jette, the miller’s aunt, went quite white, and everybody knew that she was the fox and that it was she who had killed the miller.”

  There is a general belief in witches taking the form of foxes. Witches are said to go out at night as fox souls, do much mischief in this form, and then return to their bodies, which have lain as if dead on their beds meanwhile. That can be “proved” because sometimes a hunter comes across a fox, shoots him and wounds him in the paw, and then in the morning Mrs. So-and-So is seen sneaking about with her arm in a sling, and when she is asked what has happened she won’t say. Naturally she was the ghost-fox going around making mischief. There is a general archetypal belief which you come across in the Alps and in Austria as well as in Japan and China that witches and hysterical women have fox souls. So a general archetypal motif has been associated with our special fox story, and the story has been nicely enriched and made more coherent. It was as if the people had said that it was not satisfactory—why did the fox talk to the miller just before he died? So it was enriched with a witch story and projected onto the miller’s aunt, who gave herself away at the funeral party. Another old woman in the village told the same story but added still another motif—that when the miller came home and saw the mill wheel turning, there was a fox running around on it.

  That proved to me that Antti Aarne was wrong in thinking that stories always degenerate, for they can just as well improve and by self-amplification become enriched by the addition of archetypal motifs. If there is any fantasy and storytelling talent, they can become beautiful. My hypothesis is that probably the more original forms of folktales are local sagas and parapsychological stories, miraculous stories which are due to invasions from the collective unconscious in the form of waking hallucinations. Such things still happen; Swiss peasants experience them constantly, and they are the basis of folklore beliefs. When something strange happens, it gets gossiped about and handed on, just as rumors are handed on; then under favorable conditions the account gets enriched with already existing archetypal representations and slowly becomes a story.

  It is interesting that in this story only one person now remembered the miller’s personal name. In the other versions it was already “a miller.” So as long as it is Miller So-and-So, it is still a local saga, but when it comes to “A miller once went to shoot a fox . . . ,” then it begins to be a fairy tale, a general story in a form in which it could migrate to another village, for it is no longer bound to a particular mill and a particular man. So probably Lüthi’s statement is correct: fairy tales are an abstraction. They are an abstraction from a local saga, condensed and made into a crystallized form, and thus they can be handed on and are better remembered because they appeal to the people.

  Since I came across this idea that parapsychological experiences are at the bottom of the local sagas, this has been also discovered and presented by J. Wyrsch, “Sagen und ihre seelischen Hintergründe” (Innerschweiz. Jahrb. für Heimatkunde, Lucerne, 1943, Bd. 7), H. Burkhardt, “Psychologie der Erlebnissage,” (dissertation, Zurich, 1951). The readers will find more on this in G. Isler’s excellent thesis, “Die Sennenpuppe” (dissertation, Zurich, 1970).

  LITERATURE REVIEW

  Even before Claude Lévy-Strauss founded the school of structuralism, a meritorious Russian researcher, Vladimir Propp, in Morphology of the Folktale (Bloomington, Ind., 1958), tried to determine certain structures within fairy tales. He was then accepted by the school of structuralists as being one of their own. As it has been proved that Lévy-Strauss quoted from Jung without making reference to the fact,15 his work can be ignored here. On the other hand, Gilbert Durand in “Les structures anthropologiques de l’imaginaire” (1960) made an essentially new contribution to structuralism.

  It is not my intention to discuss here the many current sociological and feminist theories of fairy tales for, out of ideological prejudice or resentments, they distort the basic facts.

  Concerning historical fairy tale reasearch, Felix Karlinger’s Grundzüge einer Geschichte des Märchens im deutschen Sprachraum (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges., 1983) should be mentioned, as well as the collected volumes Wege der Märchenforschung (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges., 1973), of which Karlinger is the editor.

  In my opinion, important non-Jungian contributions
to comparative research in mythology have been made by Franz von Essen (in the Symbolon volumes, which at the time were published by Julius Schwabe) and Heino Gehrts in Des Märchen und das Opfer: Untersuchungen zum europäischen Brüdermärchen (Kassel, 1980). For both authors, see also Vom Menschenbild im Märchen (Kassel, 1980).

  Thus we arrive at essential literature in depth psychology. In the form of an unrevised reprint there exists Herbert Silberer’s work of 1914, Probleme der Mystik und ihrer Symbolik (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges., 1961), which also contains texts on dream and fairy tale interpretation from a psychoanalytical standpoint. Later works written from a Freudian point of view are Ottokar Wittgenstein’s Märchen, Träume, Schicksale (Fischer Taschenbuch, 1981) and Bruno Bettelheim’s Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976). There is additional material by Wilhelm Laiblin published in the collected volume Märchenforschung und Tiefenpsychologie (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges., 1975).

  And now to Jungian literature. Jung’s own theories are to be found mainly in his early work Symbols of Transformation and in his later work with Karl Kerényi, Science of Mythology (London: Ark Paperbacks 1985). Jung wrote specifically about fairy tales in “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales” (cw 9i, chap. 5). But clearly one can find interpretations of archetypal motifs throughout all his work. For a general introduction, I recommend Hedwig von Beits three-volume work Symbolik des Märchens (cf. also Max Lüthi’s discussion in vol. 2: Gegensatz und Erneuerung, in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, no. 2806/07 (1957), as well as the work of Wilhelm Laiblin, op. cit. and “Der goldene Vogel: Zur Symbolik der Individuation im Volksmärchen,” in Jugend gestern und heute (Stuttgart: Klett, 1961), and Wachstum und Wandlung: Zur Phänomenologie und Symbolik menschlicher Reifung (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchges., 1974); Hans Dieckmann, Gelebte Märchen: Praxis der analytischen Psychologie (Hildesheim 1983), as well as Märchen und Symbole: Tiefenpsychologische Deutung orientalischer Märchen (Fellbach: Bonz, 1984); but also Erich Neumann’s interpretation of the Apuleius fairy tale, Amor and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971); Emma Jung, “Die Anima als Naturwesen,” in Studien zur analytischen Psychologie C. G. Jungs, vol. 2 (Zürich: Rascher, 1955); Aniela Jaffé, “Bilder und Symbole aus E. T. A. Hoffmanns Märchen ‘Der Goldene Topf,’ ” in C. G. Jung, Gestaltungen aus dem Unbewussten (Zurich, 1950); Sibylle Birkhäu ser-Oeri, “Die Mutter im Märchen” (Fellbach: Bonz 1983); Marie-Louise von Franz, “Bei der schwarzen Frau: Deutungsversuch eines Märchens,” in Studien zur analytischen Psychologie C. G. Jungs, vol. 2 (Zurich: Rascher, 1955), pp. 1–41, The Feminine in Fairy Tales, rev. ed. (Boston & London: Shambhala Publications, 1993), Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, rev. ed. (Boston & London: Shambhala Publications, 1995), Individuation in Fairy Tales, rev. ed. (Boston and London: Shambhala Publications, 1990), and The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairy Tales (Toronto, 1980).

  I am skipping popular literature here.

  Thus we arrive at the sources which are important for the purpose of amplification. Of the earlier material, the ten-volume Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, which was brought into existence by von Bächtold-Stäubli, edited by Hoffmann-Krayer (Berlin, 1927–1942), must be recommended, as well as the basic work of Johannes Bolte and Georg Polivka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm, 5 vols. (Leipzig 1913–1932), and the Handwörterbuch des deutschen Märchens (Berlin, 1930–1940), edited by Lutz Mackensen. As a new parallel work, one can recommend the Enzyklopädie des Märchens: Handwörterbuch zur historischen und vergleichenden Erzählforschung (Berlin, 1977ff.), which has filled four and a half volumes to the present time.

  It is not my general practice to recommend symbol dictionaries, which for the most part are superficial and irritating. An exception to this, however, is in my opinion the recommendable fourvolume Dictionaire des symboles (Paris: Laffont, 1969/Seghers, 1973), which contains excellent contributions to otherwise littleknown African mythology.

  Of interest among the works important for research into symbolism would primarily be the comprehensive work of Manfred Lurker, Bibliographie zur Symbolkunde (Baden-Baden: Heintz, 1964; Bibliotheca Bibliographica Aurelliana XII). In addition, I recommend R. B. Onian’s The Origin of European Thought (Cambridge, 1952ff.), in which we can find very interesting material about body parts and body functions. Worth reading on individual themes are Arnold van Gennep, Les rites de passage (Paris, 1909), as well as Otto Huth, “Das Sonnen- Mond- und Sternenkleid” (manuscript) and “Der Glasberg des Volksmärchens,” in Symbolon 2, 1955). Concerning the mythology of antiquity, I recommend the work of Karl Kerényi, above all The Gods of the Greeks and The Heroes of the Greeks (Thames and Hudson, 1979), and Mircea Eliade’s work, above all Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (London: Harvill Press, 1907), Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964), The Forge and the Crucible (University of Chicago Press, 1978) and Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York: Harper, 1959), as well as Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), and Marks of the Gods, 4 vols. (Penguin Books, 1981).

  Current orientation concerning newly published literature can be found in the Journal of Folklore Fellows Communication (Helsinki/ London) and in Fabula (Berlin).

  2

  FAIRY TALES, MYTHS, AND OTHER ARCHETYPAL STORIES

  Personally, I think it likely that the most frequent way in which archetypal stories originate is through individual experiences of an invasion by some unconscious content, either in a dream or in a waking hallucination—some event or some mass hallucination whereby an archetypal content breaks into an individual life. That is always a numinous experience. In primitive societies practically no secret is ever really kept, so this numinous experience is always talked about and becomes amplified by any other existing folklore which will fit in. Thus it develops, just as rumors do.

  Such invasions of the collective unconscious into the field of experience of a single individual probably, from time to time, create new nuclei of stories and also keep alive the already existing material. For instance, such a story will locally reinforce the belief in fox-witches. The belief existed before, but this story will keep alive or modernize or bring a new version of the old idea that witches in the form of foxes go about killing or bewitching people. These psychological events, which always reach an individual first, are to my mind the source and factor which keep the motifs in folklore alive.

  It has been suggested that people know certain fairy tale motifs and stories and then pin them onto a local situation. Let us say that there is a girl in a village who commits suicide by jumping off the cliffs. Ten years later this suicide due to an unhappy love affair might be surrounded by a classical fairy-tale suicide motif. I think that this could easily happen, but I have not yet found any striking example where one could prove every step. Probably we have to reckon with two ways and can say that when a story is rooted somewhere, it becomes a local saga; and when it is cut off and wanders about, like a water plant cut off from its roots and carried away, then it becomes more of an abstract fairy tale, which, when it once more takes root, becomes more of a local saga. One could use the simile of a corpse, the fairy tale being the bones or the skeleton, the part which is not destroyed, for it is the most basic and eternal nucleus of the whole thing. It most simply shows the archetypal basic structure.

  The same problem about the difference between a local story and a fairy tale has arisen in other ways and with much controversy about the relationship of myth and fairy tale. E. Schwyzer, a classical scholar, has, for instance, shown that the Hercules myth is built up out of single scenes, all of which are fairy tale motifs. He showed that this myth must have been a fairy tale which had been enriched and lifted to the literary level of a myth. Just as wisely fighting for the opposite theory, some people contend that fairy tales are degenerated myths. They believe that origin
ally populations had only myths and that if the social and religious order of a population decayed, then the remains of that myth survived in the form of fairy tales.

  There is a certain amount of truth in this theory of the “decayed myth.” For example, in Die Märchen der Weltliteratur (The Fairy Tales of World Literature),16 one finds in the volume of Greek fairy tales slightly distorted episodes of the Odyssey: a prince sails to an island where there is a big fish or ogre, and he blinds that oneeyed ogre and hides under the belly of a big ram and creeps out of the monster’s cave. That was how Ulysses escaped from the Cyclops’s cave, so that story has been preserved till today. I do not, therefore, think it far-fetched to say that this tale is a remnant of the Ulysses story. It has survived and has nowadays become an ordinary Greek folktale. The story has convinced me that big myths can decay with the civilization to which they belonged and the basic motifs can survive as fairy tale motifs and migrate or stay in the same country. As with the local saga, I think we have to reckon with both possibilities. To me the fairy tale is like the sea, and the sagas and myths are like the waves upon it; a tale rises to be a myth and sinks down again into being a fairy tale. Here again we come to the same conclusion: fairy tales mirror the more simple but also more basic structure—the bare skeleton—of the psyche.