Hi Folks, I posted the following on the general discussion thread for the Literary Club, but this is where it belongs.
I have been reading Philip Pullman’s
Grimm Tales: For Young and Old. I have downloaded the ebook with its Audible companion. This edition is edited and with a very fine introduction by Pullman. He has chosen fifty of the 210 tales collected by the Brothers Grimm over the several editions published in the 18th century.
The Brothers Grimm collected the tales as ”a cultural treasure”of German folklore and did not intend them to be read by children. When this became evident, the brothers sanitised the stories in the later editions. What Pullman has done is to present his selection in a translation that doesn’t shy away from the more gruesome aspects of the stories. In fairy tales the good are good and the bad are unforgivably bad. Thus, the latter are imaginatively punished with no holds barred. The wicked mother who tries to burn the Princess alive gets the following sentence in “ The Twelve Brothers”:
”But then it was the old woman’s turn to be accused, and the court had no problem in finding her guilty. She was put into a barrel filled with poisonous snakes and boiling oil, and she didn’t last long after that.”
Stories with unhappy endings may end with an ironic shrug. The story of the cat and the mouse in partnership ends with the mouse being eaten up. The last lines of the story are:
”Well, what else did you expect? That’s just the sort of thing that happens in this world.”
Pullman’s excellent introduction is filled with the insights of a fine author. He also adds end notes to each tale in which he gives the tale type, the source, and any other material he finds relevant.
The Audible edition is very well done. Pullman himself reads the introduction and Samuel West does a quite brilliant reading of the tales themselves. The end notes, however, are not included in the Audible version which is available in BorrowBox or Overdrive.
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