[HN Gopher] Unique volumes of Brothers Grimm fairy tales discove...
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Unique volumes of Brothers Grimm fairy tales discovered in Poland
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 253 points
Date : 2024-05-03 13:26 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (english.nv.ua)
(TXT) w3m dump (english.nv.ua)
| alexwhb wrote:
| It's unclear to me from the article if these volumes had never
| been discovered before or if the editions of these volumes are
| unique? Meaning are there wholly unique stories that have been
| discovered?
| duxup wrote:
| I wondered the same.
|
| They mention the prints are unique and presumably the footnotes
| they found are ... but I agree, the question of content is
| surprisingly not mentioned at all.
| avidiax wrote:
| I'm sure the folks at Disney are at the edges of their seats in
| anticipation of new source material.
|
| The fact that these volumes were "lost" suggests to me that
| there are "new" tales in these pages.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| > I'm sure the folks at Disney are at the edges of their
| seats in anticipation
|
| Until they find out the new tales are about a story teller
| that let politics ruin all the good stories.
| tomoyoirl wrote:
| Do me a favor. Go back and rewatch Dumbo (1941) and prepare
| a few thoughts regarding its treatment of hot-button issues
| like miscegenation (hint: what kind of elephant has big
| ears?). Then, comment again on Disney's recent discovery of
| "politics."
| octopoc wrote:
| Speaking of that, there ought to be a streaming service
| that uses bittorrent and has only old, public domain
| movies on it. Like popcorntime, but with only legal stuff
| on it. Internet archive just isn't the same.
| bena wrote:
| I hope this is genuine. It's the kind of low stakes anthropology
| that I like. Nothing major, nothing to fight over, just "how
| fucked up were these guys' stories"
| Izkata wrote:
| They didn't write the stories associated with their name, they
| collected and published existing stories.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Well Disney's got some new films in the pipe now I guess.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > A number of their works were considered to be permanently lost
| following World War 2. However, recent research at the Adam
| Mickiewicz University Library led to an unexpected discovery --
| specialists managed to find 27 original volumes with rare prints
| and unique editions.
|
| lots of people mention the advancements and technologies gained
| from war, but how can we possibly remember what it caused us to
| lose?
|
| it's gone
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| In this case they had an idea of how many volumes there were
| before the war and then how many after.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Think he is just making general case that it is easier to
| destroy than create, and during war, a lot is lost.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| With recent advancements in generative AI that balance is
| changing quickly.
| cafard wrote:
| If you are in Poland it ought to be painfully straightforward
| to remember the losses it caused.
| michael9423 wrote:
| The volumes of Brothers Grimm fairy tales found here were
| german. And they were found in Poland, because some of todays
| Poland was Germany, and most of the knowledge lost in the war
| in todays Poland was actually knowledge of german culture and
| heritage, when the Soviets invaded from the east and burned
| down all the houses and libraries. Millions of Germans fled
| and died, and with this large amounts of german knowledge has
| been lost forever. In this case, due to some luck, some works
| survived.
|
| Edit: "some", not "most".
| surfingdino wrote:
| "Most" is a bit of a stretch, but then it's hard to keep up
| with the territorial changes in that part of the world, see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Pola
| n...
|
| As for those poor Germans who had to flee... a lot of those
| lands were captured during partitions of Poland, but no
| other that Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prussia, and Russia. No
| love lost there.
| fch42 wrote:
| Thing is, European Countries before the Napoleonic Age
| were quite a bit "intertwined"; Several times between
| ~1400 ... 1700, Polish (or shall I say, Polish-
| Lithuanian?) Royalty also ruled Bohemia, Hungary,
| Wallonia (modern Romania), Sweden, almost got there in
| Moscow during "the Troubles", while at other times the
| German / Central European Wettin (Saxony) or Luxemburg
| (Bohemia) families also held the Polish Crown. Nevermind
| military alliances (Jan Sobieski's contributions to to
| lifting the Turkish Siege of Vienna in 1683 got him a
| memorial in the sky to this day ... the constellation of
| Scutum).
|
| The way to become King of Poland was not quite as
| elaborately ritualized as the German electorate, but not
| generally/universally hereditary either. But neither did
| Poland isolate itself from its neighbours, on the
| contrary. Up until internal strife and the great Nordic
| War, it involved itself a lot with both central and
| eastern Europe. And while one may look at the partitions
| as predatory, let's also remember that for 80 years
| before the Polish Duma flogged the crown to the highest
| bidder (August the nth of Saxony, for three generations),
| which, and realize it's a strong word, also sold the
| country. Let's remember "predatory" territorial
| expansions also a little in context; Turkey overrunning
| the Balkans and Hungary between 1300..1526 eradicated a
| dozen countries. Louis XIV's wars of reunion were very
| predatory and gained France territory the size of
| Switzerland. The Austria-Turkey wars after 1683 "undid"
| 200 years of Turkish rule in Hungary within two decades,
| as did Russia taking over the Cossack Hetmanates, Crimea;
| the wars of the Spanish and Austrian succession changed
| territorial "ownership" on a large scale as well. What
| Napoleon, in league with quite a few of the German
| states, did to "countries" in Germany was neither less
| disruptive nor, territory-wise, smaller in scale than the
| partitions of Poland.
|
| That doesn't make them "right". I would contest though
| that they were a "uniquely polish" sort of doom. Other
| countries lost their independence for centuries as well
| (Serbia, Hungary, Bohemia/Czechy, Lithuania if you like
| ...).
|
| The difference "then" was that such changes in
| overlordship only began to be associated with forceful
| removals of population - ethical cleansing - after the
| rise of nationalism post Napoleon. My country (Germany)
| did rather evil there, and can't blame others for having
| taken retribution. No need for "love lost". It's not
| deserved.
|
| The real evil was less the partitions and the "ganging
| up" on Poland, but the nationalism in the 19th century.
| The idea that within your country's boundaries, there
| shall be one language, one culture. It'd have been
| considered very odd up to ~1700 for sure. And it created
| all the evil between 1780 and 1945. Looking at Russia
| trying to eradicate Ukraine, maybe ... to this day.
|
| And yet, it's all _shared_ history.
| michael9423 wrote:
| "European Countries before the Napoleonic Age were quite
| a bit "intertwined""
|
| Excellent contribution. Marion Grafin Donhof talks about
| this, a descendant of both Prussian and newly turned
| "Polish" political elite and aristocracy. Some of her
| german ancestors adopted polish names and became thus
| polish. Before the rise of nationalism, there was not
| really such a gap between nations as today. Germans
| sometimes even ruled parts of Poland with no issues.
| There were also special laws and leaders in Poland
| exclusively for Germans, in other words, the Germans in
| Poland ruled themselves, living side by side respectfully
| with the Polish people. All of this makes one ask what
| nations really are and what national identity really is
| in the end, beyond political propaganda. National
| coherence was forced onto people everywhere, with
| dramatic consequences and suffering.
|
| People have lived hundreds or even thousands of years
| without the need for unified nations, often many
| different cultures coexisting with each other under a
| banner of a "nation", which was mostly just the culture
| of a given ruling aristocracy at that time.
| surfingdino wrote:
| It seems that creation of nation states was a way of
| scaling up tribalism.
| surfingdino wrote:
| That's a very good summary. I would also add colonialism
| to the conversation. The idea that "lesser" nations'
| culture and language could be erased, their populations
| turned into slaves, and natural resources exploited for
| the benefit of the colonial powers was also an important
| contributor to what happened in that region in the 20th
| century.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| It's not like all this has happened in vacuum though. Some
| context is missing from your observation.
| michael9423 wrote:
| nothing in history happens in a vacuum. But as a matter
| of fact, when the Soviets invaded Germany from the east,
| what got lost was mostly german knowledge in the
| destruction and burnings.
| keiferski wrote:
| When they invaded Germany proper, sure. But that was
| after the Germans had already destroyed countless Polish
| cultural treasures over the previous five years.
|
| And of course that's not even mentioning the
| Russification and Germanization programs that aimed to
| destroy Polish culture and knowledge during the
| Partitions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_culture_during_World
| _Wa...
|
| https://www.bn.org.pl/en/news/3855-75-years-ago-the-
| germans-...
| michael9423 wrote:
| Yes indeed. When governments lead wars against each
| other, it is the populations that suffer, and knowledge
| and culture get destroyed on all sides.
| keiferski wrote:
| Characterizing the invasion of Poland by Germany and the
| Soviet Union as "governments leading wars against each
| other" is sloppy revisionism at best. Poland was invaded
| by occupying powers.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Polish heavy cavalry was entirely innocent for a thousand
| years?
| keiferski wrote:
| That has what to do with WW2, exactly?
| michael9423 wrote:
| All war is state terror. As the great Sebastian Haffner
| wrote:
|
| "European history knows two forms of terror. The first is
| the uncontrollable explosion of bloodlust in a victorious
| mass uprising. The other is cold, calculated cruelty
| committed by a victorious state as a demonstration of
| power and intimidation. The two forms of terror normally
| correspond to revolution and repression. The first is
| revolutionary. It justifies itself by the rage and fever
| of the moment, a temporary madness. The second is
| repressive. It justifies itself by the preceding
| revolutionary atrocities."
| keiferski wrote:
| Nice quote, but I'm not sure how it relates to my
| comment.
| Amezarak wrote:
| You're quite right about that, but it is true that the
| post-WW borders of Germany viz. Poland were a little
| ridiculous, and the Allies after WWII undertook a
| deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing after the war
| against territories that had had major German populations
| for centuries in an effort to create ethnically
| homogeneous states.
| alkyon wrote:
| It's worth remebering though that this was Stalin's plan
| to enlarge the Soviet Union (incidently also approved by
| the Western powers in the Yalta Agreement) at the cost of
| German territory. The expulsion of some millions of Poles
| from the territories of some newly created Soviet
| republics that now belong to Western Ukraine, Belarus and
| Lithuania is just as well a striking example of campaign
| of ethnic cleansing against the territories that had
| major Polish population for centuries. Morover, the
| Western Poland was subject to Prussian ethnic cleansing
| policies for more than a century, not to mention the war
| itself.
| hnbad wrote:
| The national myth of Germany actually obscures one of the
| biggest successful efforts in "restructuring" the Allies
| engaged in: the complete elimination of Prussia.
|
| Not only were parts of Eastern Prussia reassigned to
| other countries but also Prussian provinces within
| Germany were dissolved and remodeled into the German
| _Bundeslander_. Today "Prussia" as a cohesive identity
| largely only exists as something for Bavarians to
| differentiate themselves from. Well into WW1 German
| national identity was defined more by Prussia than
| anything else but the Allies completely eliminated it.
| Denazification was largely a farce and appeals by
| influential people were mostly rubberstamped but
| Deprussification is the secret success story.
| zqna wrote:
| It didn't help that in Poland was an aggresive country in
| 1930s too, and was waging aggressive wars against its
| neighbours (read, "Lithuania"), and occupying and
| bruttaly polonizing what was never its ever. Not too say
| that Lithuania was not run by own nationalists, who also
| managed to get into military conflicts with Latvian
| "brothers". The moral is that the whole Europe was
| boiling in every own nationalism that culminated with
| WW2. Thinking that it can never repeat is as delusional
| as 100 years ago
| hnbad wrote:
| Nationalism truly was the mindkiller that enabled WW1 and
| WW2. It's important to remember that although WW2 is
| rightfully remembered for the Holocaust, it was in
| essence an attempt at a European colonialism by Germany
| coupled with a Germanic ethno-nationalism (or more
| accurately: volkisch nationalism, which is still deeply
| entrenched today).
|
| The racist pseudoscience of the Germanic ubermensch
| served the same purpose as the skull measuring scientific
| racism used to justify the enslavement and extermination
| of the native population in African colonies.
| "Lebensraum" was just a Germanized version of Manifest
| Destiny.
|
| The colonization of Africa, India and the Americas
| involved massive displacement of natives and mass
| killings that at least colloquially can best be described
| as genocides. Much the same way as forests were cleared
| to create farmland, native populations were cleared to
| create "living space" for settlers. Much like natural
| resources were exploited and brought back home, natives
| were used for manual labor until they were used up.
|
| Nationalism allowed leaders to use a national identity to
| rally their subjects against their neighbors. In an act
| of massive hubris and severe underestimation of
| technological advancements this nationalist fervor led to
| the mass death event that was WW1. WW2 in turn built on
| this but also brought colonialism home with the explicit
| goal of not only redrawing borders but also repurposing
| the land and eliminating any natives standing in the way.
|
| I.e. Poland may have engaged in nationalist assimilation
| in the form of Polonizing Lithuania but Germany
| explicitly wanted to remove anyone not part of the
| "volk", at the barrel of a gun if necessary.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Funnily enough a lot of Polish art was "lost" during WWII.
| Every now and then it resurfaces from someone's "private
| collection" in Germany. German government is kind enough to
| let Poles bid for the art they carelessly lost during that
| affair in the 1940s. If it is for sale, that is - much of
| it isn't.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looting_of_Poland_in_World_
| W...
| michael9423 wrote:
| Not only in Germany. Poland got looted by the Nazis and
| Soviets from both sides.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| And that somehow changes the merit of the argument?
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| My favorite German proverb is "children are not
| responsible for the crimes of their parents".
| praptak wrote:
| Doesn't work as a response to "this was robbed from my
| grandfather, you should give it back because benefitting
| from crime is generally bad".
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Even top US politicians, like Albright
| https://www.jta.org/archive/wealthy-austrian-family-
| claims-a...
| mzs wrote:
| Oh some German books were burned, while most of Poland's
| then inteligencia lie in a mass grave courtesy said
| Russians.
| jakubadamw wrote:
| > and most of the knowledge lost in the war in todays
| Poland was actually knowledge of german culture and
| heritage
|
| Wow. It sounds like you have a grossly misinformed view of
| this part of the world, with a clear sense of superiority
| of one culture over the other. So, here's a few facts for
| you:
|
| > Most likely on October 12-13, 1944, the Brandkommando of
| the Wehrmacht (Nazi German army) burned collections of the
| most valuable literary monuments from the National Library
| in one of the greatest losses to Polish culture in its
| history, and one of the greatest losses to written culture
| in history of the world. The National Library lost at least
| 39,000 manuscripts - and most likely more, perhaps as many
| as 50,000 - along with some 80,000 books from the fifteenth
| to eighteenth centuries, 100,000 books from the nineteenth
| and twentieth centuries, 60,000 drawings and engravings,
| 25,000 musical scores and 10,000 maps. The great family
| libraries were almost wiped out, such as the famous
| collection of manuscripts of the Krasinski Library, of
| which just 78 volumes survived out of more than 7,000.1
|
| 1 https://www.bn.org.pl/en/news/3855-75-years-ago-the-
| germans-...
| michael9423 wrote:
| > Mr. Garber, the Second World War was also an inferno
| for German book and library culture. Do we now know more
| or less exactly what damage and losses occurred at which
| collection locations in Germany?
|
| > Yes, most of the damage is known and extends across the
| entire old German Reich, from Karlsruhe to Kiel, from
| Munich to Konigsberg. The largest German library in the
| Reich was hit most spectacularly. In July 1943, the
| Hamburg City Library alone lost 700,000 volumes in
| "Aktion Gomorrha". As far as the individual titles
| themselves are concerned, the relevant data is often
| still missing - unfortunately. There is no large and
| accurate work on the books and libraries that once
| existed and were lost or not returned during the Second
| World War.
|
| > How do you assess the historical and intellectual
| damage caused to our cultural memory by the absence of
| German books?
|
| > I will answer this question with a quote from the first
| expert on the subject from 1947: "It is a catastrophe
| that has no comparison in the history of libraries and in
| the history of science" (Georg Leyh). We have no account
| of the demise of German libraries. Germany has lost
| significant parts of its cultural memory forever. But who
| knows about it? Conversely, the greatest crime committed
| by Germany has led to an irretrievable loss of urban
| silhouettes and cultural witnesses. The answer? Never-
| ending mourning and never-ending work of remembrance.
|
| https://www.fr.de/kultur/literatur/eine-
| katastrophe-11007951...
|
| Generally, the cultural loss via burning down libraries
| and knowledge is inherent to war, and obviously does not
| only affect one country. The article also mentions the
| Library of Warsaw as an example of lost knowledge, but
| the loss of german culture "has no comparison in the
| history of libraries", per renowned librarian Georg Leyh.
|
| P.S.: Germany still does not own the Berlinka -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinka_(art_collection)
| jakubadamw wrote:
| The German losses were mostly collateral damage related
| to the bombings of the cities. The burning of the Polish
| collections and archives by the German army, on the other
| hand, was a conscious, deliberate act pertaining to the
| objective of destroying the culture of the Polish nation
| - I refer you, amongst other things, to Himmler's and
| Hitler's clearly expressed intent of razing Warsaw, the
| nominal, but also cultural and intellectual capital of
| pre-war Poland, to the ground. That intent is not
| inherent to war in a universal sense - for one, it is a
| war crime, for which Alfred Rosenberg was convicted
| during the Nurnberg Trials - and it looks like you are
| generally convinced the conduct of the German army in
| WWII was that like of any other, and that war as carried
| out by Germany in 1939-1945 was war like any other. At
| this point, my curiosity in continuing this conversation
| is limited solely to the question on where you received
| your history education.
|
| > P.S.: Germany still does not own the Berlinka -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinka_(art_collection)
|
| It does not, the German state dropped it for safekeeping
| in Lower Silesia and according to international law, its
| ownership was transferred together with the legal status
| of the respective territories per the Potsdam conference.
| Any discussion on the possible return of parts of the
| collection would need to start with the return of the
| thousands of Polish works of art held in German
| collections, to which, unlike Poland's legal claim to the
| Berlinka collection, Germany has none.
| michael9423 wrote:
| My original argument was: "and most of the knowledge lost
| in the war in todays Poland was actually knowledge of
| german culture and heritage"
|
| to which I gave a reference that makes a good case for
| this to be indeed true.
|
| You chose to ignore it and instead resort to talking
| about something unrelated (intent), which is a straw man,
| and you also launch an ad hominem, another logical
| fallacy. You also resort to faulty generalizations.
| echelon wrote:
| > but how can we possibly remember what it caused us to lose?
|
| War is one thing, but the inexorable march through geologic
| time is far worse. Everything we are and know will be erased
| due to entropy and the arrow of time.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| my theory is The Great Filter is just species which figured
| this out and also figured out how to 'escape', and... well...
| us
| WillAdams wrote:
| One extremely sad example is the libraries of brass matrices
| for hot metal type --- all-too many of these were melted down,
| mostly to make shell casings by various accounts.
|
| After the war, it was necessary to re-create said type
| libraries, mostly as phototype though, thus ending a golden age
| of printing which had reigned since Gutenberg, eventually, the
| Linotype and Monotype machines followed this into dissolution
| when digital type became prevalent.
|
| While most designs were eventually remade as phototypes, and
| later as digital type, many of them were only imperfectly
| preserved, so for example, rather than all the different hot
| metal sizes and variations, only a single phototype master
| usually exists, capturing only the state of a single size
| (usually a larger display size).
| mistrial9 wrote:
| agree this is interesting and worthwhile.. notice however
| that the divergence of letter forms in Eastern Europe (into
| Central Asia) is really a reflection of the drastic cultural
| conflicts in that area over centuries.. from a distance, it
| seems that "modern" typeface, and the type it replaced,
| together really are not very old compared to the cultures
| that were using them... and those cultures merged by imperial
| forces from multiple directions.
| yorwba wrote:
| The article references reporting by Nauka w Polske, which I
| believe is
| https://naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/news%2C101748%2Codnalezi...
| which in turn references an article published by the library
| https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35...
| which has an English abstract:
|
| _The private book collection that belonged to Jakob and Wilhelm
| Grimm testifies to the sixty-year-long period of the fertile
| research (and artistic) output of the famous German researchers
| and founders of the German philology, and in itself is an
| important subject to study. This book collection, comprising rare
| prints and unique editions, is more than just a series of items
| of significant material of bibliophile value. It is particularly
| valuable primarily as a source of knowledge on the research
| methods used by the two researchers. In the footnotes and indexes
| to their publications of fairy tales or folk legends, both Jakob
| and Wilhelm were very meticulous in providing their written
| source material, i.e. the sources that they held in their book
| collection, the items of which had purposefully been acquired by
| the duo to preserve for subsequent editions of old relics
| European and German literature. Equally important for the
| research on the literary output and research activity of the
| Grimm Brothers is the analysis of hand-written underlining, notes
| and annotations that the texts were typographically enhanced by
| during the reading. The volumes from the portion of the working
| collection of the Brothers Grimm found in the Poznan University
| Library were long though to had been lost during the WWII, and
| now can be of significant value in their contribution to the
| development of modern research on the Brothers' literary and
| scientific output. The very fact that they have been found allows
| us to believe that the book collections at the Library can hold
| other volumes that belonged to the private book collection of
| Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm still to be discovered._
|
| So it's not about books written by the Brothers Grimm, but books
| which they used in their research.
| ikari_pl wrote:
| best part about > Polish science news outlet Nauka w Polske
| reported is that "Nauka w Polske" is not correct Polish. I hate
| to be the grammar Nazi everywhere I show up but to prevent copy
| pasting errors, that should be "Nauka w Polsce".
|
| original src:
| https://naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/news%2C101748%2Codnalezi...
| alfanick wrote:
| I'd say it could be interpreted as "correct funky informal
| Polish" - "Nauka w Polsce" indeed is super correct Polish,
| but "Nauka w Polske" is: - branding "nauKa w polsKe", - and a
| play of words "nauka (noun) w (go inside/towards) Polske
| (where)" - interpreted as "Hey Science, go to Poland", "Hey
| Science, go into minds of the people who live in Poland"
| Tade0 wrote:
| If that's so, then where's the "e" at the end?
| senorqa wrote:
| I'm glad all of those works belong to to public domain.
| thih9 wrote:
| Title is inaccurate, including article's title. No volumes of
| fairy tales were found - only books used for research.
|
| Could we update the submission title to: "Portion of Brothers
| Grimm working library found at University Library, Poznan" and
| point it to:
| https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35... ?
| Nydhal wrote:
| Which is even more interesting since that could pointing to
| older unknown works.
| ulrischa wrote:
| Poznan is Posen - a former German area with lot of German
| literature culture
| pkfz wrote:
| Do you mean a former German area during the WW2 occupation of
| Poland or after the Second Partitioning of Poland at the end of
| 18th century?
| cezary wrote:
| Poznan has been Polish for a millennia, it was a part of
| Germany from 1793 to 1919.
|
| It was majority Polish during that period, with Germans making
| up at most 40% of the population, or ~65000, when it became a
| part of Poland again.
| alkyon wrote:
| This is the most ignorant comment I've seen in years in hacker
| news. Educate yourself, read books, wikipedia or whatever.
| Otherwise you sound like an AfD supporter or Putin versteher.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| I always find discoveries like this so encouraging. There are so
| many treasures out there to re-discover
| Archelaos wrote:
| Here is the original article about the finding, including a
| complete list of the books:
| https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/b/article/view/38294/35...
| (PDF, in Polish)
| wnissen wrote:
| Anyone with the slightest bit of interest in the tales should
| read the recent English translation of the first edition.
| https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-original...
| or https://archive.org/details/originalfolkfair0000unse It's
| obvious reading the originals that it they were more a collection
| of tales with no particular moral, some unspeakable brutality,
| and a ton of hallucinatory weirdness. Why does an anthropomorphic
| needle go down the road? Heck if I know! The later versions, as
| explained in the preface of the above book, were sanitized and
| Christianized for popular consumption.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| I think there are morals in Grimms Fairy Tales even in the
| earliest versions. What is striking to me when I read them is
| that many of the stories come from people at the bottom level
| of society and reflected their struggle for survival. These
| include terrifying consequences for misbehavior and that
| violating group norms (including those imposed from above) is a
| big no-no. A lot of the stories feature tricksters who cleverly
| got around these restrictions.
|
| These patterns don't show up clearly in individual stories. But
| it's pretty strong if you read them from end to end.
| octopoc wrote:
| Yeah, this is definitely the case IME. It's easy to read
| these stories and go away thinking "WTF." But it's important
| to remember that these stories come from oral societies,
| which means 90% of the communication is lost since it's only
| written on paper. But that communication can be reconstructed
| by a charitable mind.
|
| For example, in the first story in Grimm's Fairy Tales (at
| least the version I read), there's a mouse and a cat that are
| friends. The cat and mouse find some delicious food and they
| hide it somewhere far away from their house. The cat then
| proceeds to go "visiting relatives" (in reality he is eating
| up the delicious food) and the mouse is gullible and believes
| the cat. After a while the mouse discovers the cat ate up all
| the food and angrily accuses the cat of being deceitful. The
| cat then proceeds to eat the mouse. The end.
|
| I think this is a profound story on not ignoring the fact
| that the cat is the natural predator and the mouse is the
| natural prey in the relationship. The mouse has convinced
| itself that this time will be different. This has relevance
| for e.g. not dismissing signs of abuse.
|
| But it's so easy to read that story and be like, "Well, I
| guess the point is that gullible people get screwed, so don't
| be gullible." Or even, "It's a dog-eat-dog world." It's a
| good story to tell a friend who's trying to rationalize being
| passive in an abusive relationship.
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| > in the first story in Grimm's Fairy Tales
|
| It's the second story. The first is the "frog prince".
|
| > The cat then proceeds to eat the mouse.
|
| Even the english Wikipedia article does not mention the
| most important part: When she beholds the
| empty pot, enlightenment dawns on the mouse: "First 'Top-
| off,' " she murmurs, "then 'Half-gone,' and then ..." The
| cat warns her to say no more, but the mouse persists. The
| cat pounces on the mouse and eats her up.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_and_Mouse_in_Partnership#
| P...
|
| The mouse says "All-gone" and is than eaten because of
| that. And the first version does not contain the phrase
| "And that is the way of the world," the story closes.
|
| at the end, it ends with the cat eating the mouse
| stoniejohnson wrote:
| Yeah dang I just read the original version and the moral
| is a double whammy of don't fool yourself into being
| deceived/oppressed by a predator, but if you do, don't
| ever call them out on it!
| wongarsu wrote:
| To me that story reads like thinly veiled political
| commentary. Peasants and feudal lords/nobility/local
| government working towards a common goal (e.g. paying taxes
| to fund defense against bandits, building grain stores for
| times of famine, etc). A person in power misappropriates
| the funds for personal gain, and any peasant who complains
| loses their head.
|
| Telling a story about a mouse and a cat allowed you to keep
| your head, and the situation was probably common enough for
| the fable to become widely known before it was picked up by
| the Bothers Grimm.
|
| It's not that different from Gulliver's Travels complaining
| about pointless religious wars under the guise of talking
| about far-away islands of tiny humans, or Star Trek
| criticizing the Vietnam War under the guise of talking
| about a primitive planet light-years away centuries in the
| future.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| My thoughts were this might also be on the World politics
| level. E.g. a case where a stronger country during
| wartime will co operate with weaker country, and then
| slowly infiltrate because it's easier than to do full on
| invasion.
|
| Then finally when weaker country starts to complain they
| will completely take over. The stronger country in theory
| could at any time swallow the weaker, it's just that it
| might be more beneficial for stronger country to do it in
| a slower, methodical, deceiving manner, until it can. Or
| when it actually needs to.
|
| In this case it seems to me it was strategic behavior by
| the cat to not immediately eat the mouse, but instead
| consume the fat first. Eating the mouse was a fallback in
| this scenario.
|
| But overall this specific scenario happens on so many
| levels of relationships including, but not limited to
| interpersonal, business, country level, World level, etc.
|
| The main key points in my view are that it is a cat, and
| cat always will want to eat the mouse in what you would
| think is pscyhopathic mannerism if it was between people,
| but it's most easily explainable on level of countries.
| Because ultimately countries as entities have to act in
| psychopathic ways with each other, because territories,
| resources are all clearly limited.
|
| Due to the complexity of World politics you have to co
| operate with your enemies as well. Both sides are lying
| to each other, keeping secrets, but at the same time co
| operating, because they have to or they otherwise will
| fall behind other countries.
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| The german version of the first two books can be found (for
| example) here:
| http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Grimm,+Jacob+und+Wilhelm/M%C...
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Who made all these revisions? The bothers themselves?
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| After the second revision only Wilhelm, Jacob did add some
| "scientific remarks" for these. The biggest problem had been
| the idea of the Grimms' of the books being both a
| "scientific" collection of stories (which never were meant
| exclusively for children) and a book for children.
| wnissen wrote:
| Yes, they set about on an academic exercise and found
| themselves with a surprise bestseller. They spent the rest of
| their days churning out subsequent editions. It was kind of
| the Harry Potter of its day.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| For my cheapskates like me, Amazon has that book for about half
| the price (in paperback). Cheaper if you get a used one.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Similar to Greek, Roman, Hindu, or another other ancient tales.
|
| A bit of morals, a bit of entertainment, a bit of propaganda, a
| bit of superstition.
|
| The difference between these tales and others is perhaps the
| "for children" angle.
| Eiim wrote:
| I'm actually actively researching the Grimms tales - I'm glad
| you linked to Zipe's translation! I think he has the most
| accurate and complete English translation out there, but it's
| still being frequently overlooked for lower-quality public-
| domain translations.
| kristopolous wrote:
| so were they just sitting on the open stacks? Was someone just
| wandering down the aisle?
|
| I can just imagine being a librarian and someone walks up to
| check the book out ...
| dangets wrote:
| I assume this is a good spot to give a shout-out for the Grimm,
| Grimmer, Grimmest podcast - kid-friendly story-telling podcast
| great for long car rides. The author likes to point out
| deviations between original stories and later re-tellings. I
| believe the first 2 seasons are free.
|
| * https://pinna.fm/library/kids-shows/pinna-podcasts/grimm-gri...
| martyvis wrote:
| Why are they the Brothers Grimm and not the Grimm Brothers?
| jszymborski wrote:
| Just an archaism
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