The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales (Pantheon Books) - Jacob Grimm [380]
The folk tale is the primer of the picture-language of the soul.
Joseph Campbell.
* Müller always stressed descriptions of the sunset and sunrise. Other scholars, following his lead, cogitated on the lunar phases and the interplay of sun and moon (E. Siecke, Die Liebesgeschichte des Himmels, 1892; Die Urreligion der Indogermanen, 1897), or on the terror of storms and winds (A. Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks, 1859, 1886; W. Schwarz, Die poetischen Naturerscheinungen der Griechen, Römer und Deutschen, 1864–1879), or on the wonder of the stars (E. Stucken, Astralmythen der Hebräer, Babylonier und Aegypter, 1896–1907). For Müller’s celebrated interpretation of “The Frog-King,” (Grimm 1.) as a sun-personification, see Chips from a German Workshop, London, 1880, Vol. II, pp. 249–252.
† F. Max Müller, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 1–146 (“Comparative Mythology,” 1856).
‡ Cf. Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, London, 1920, Chapters VIII-X.
* “Reflection and enquiry should satisfy us that to our [savage] predecessors we are indebted for much of what we thought most of our own, and that their errors were not wilful extravagances or the ravings of insanity, but simply hypotheses, justifiable as such at the time when they were propounded, but which a further experience has proved to be inadequate. It is only by the successive testing of hypotheses and rejection of the false that truth is at last elicited.” (Sir James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, one volume edition, New York and London, 1922, etc., p. 264.)
† Cf. Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press, 3rd edition, 1922.
‡ Emile Durkheim, Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, Paris, 1912; English translation, New York and London, 1915, Book I, chapter 1; Book II, chapters 5–6.
* Hugo Winckler, Himmels- und Weltenbild der Babylonier, als Grundlage der Weltanschauung und Mythologie aller Völker, Leipzig, 1901, p. 49.—The Babylonian astrological mythology, as described by Hugo Winckler, is a local specification, amplification, and application of themes that are of the essence of mythology everywhere.
† Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, “De la ‘Mentalité Primitive,’ ” Etudes traditionnelles, 44e Année, Nos. 236–237–238, Paris, 1939, p. 278.
* Cf. Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, New York, 1930; Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Transformation of Nature in Art, Cambridge, Mass., 1934; Heinrich Zimmer, Kunstform und Yoga, Berlin, 1936.
About the Illustrator
Josef Scharl (1896–1954) was born in Munich and lived in Germany until 1938, when he emigrated to the United States. He began to draw and paint at the age of fourteen, and later studied at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, as well as in Rome and Paris. In 1929 he received the Albrecht Duerer Award, in 1930, the City of Munich Award and the Prix-de-Rome, and in 1931 the Dr. Mond Prize and the Foerderer Prize. His paintings and drawings were exhibited throughout Germany and the United States, and in Rome and Amsterdam.
The 212 illustrations Josef Scharl did for this edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales won praise from both art and literary critics. According to art historian Alfred Neumeyer, this was “the ideal content for his style.… I do not hesitate to call this one of the most beautifully illustrated books.” And W. H. Auden wrote his 1944 review: “Josef Scharl … proves himself here to be one of the very few really good illustrators of our time. He understands, as too many do not, that book illustrating should not be a repetition of what has already been better communicated by the text, for that, as in most comic strips, only enfeebles and corrupts the imagination of the reader. The true function of the illustrator is to rethink the whole historical succession of the verbal story as a single, timeless, visual instant.”