Let me introduce myself, and talk about the problem of "authenticity"

All my life (or at least as much of my life as I can remember), I've loved stories. Once, when I was eight or nine years old, I announced to my family that I could happily go a day without eating, but I couldn't go a day without reading. Every Christmas, the presents that always got me the most excited were the books (I could tell they were books just by picking them up). And my favorite books were collections of folk and fairy tales. These are still my favorite sorts of stories, and that's why I've started this blog -- because, frankly, there's really no easy way to bring The Three Snake Leaves or The Seven Ravens into everyday conversation, no matter wonderful they are.

When I was a freshman in college, I was lucky enough to have the chance to study my favorite stories, and get credit for it. It was a senior-level survey course that traced the evolution of "Wonder Tales" from the oral tradition to modern, literary fantasy. The oral tradition was represented by Grimms' Tales for Young and Old: The complete Stories, as translated into English by Ralph Manheim. (Anchor Press/Doubleday: Garden City, New York. 1977). That notion that "The Grimms' Tales" represent the truest, roughest, and darkest, "unpolished," versions of stories is an enduring one, and is one that the translator himself reinforced in his preface:

...the Grimms were astonishingly faithful, undeterred by the irrational or unseemly. To appreciate their fidelity, one need only look at most English translations, where the puzzling "Hans my Hedgehog" becomes "Hans the Hedgehog," where the donkey, instead of "emitting" gold pieces from both ends, merely spits them out [ . . . ] More important -- and this, I believe, is the greatest mark of their genius -- they make us hear the voices of the individual storytellers, and much more clearly I am sure than if they had been two tape recorders.
(Grimms' Tales: Translator's Preface, page 1)

And so an image emerges of two literarily-focused field anthropologists, bravely traveling across the countryside, recording the stories of the peasants and the poor -- the people no one else would listen to. In showing the Grimms brothers (for the record, Jacob Ludwig Carl and Wilhelm Carl) as the true, authentic recorders of tradition, Mr. Manheim is claiming that attribute for himself.

The first problem with this image is: it's simply not true. The idealistic bubble finally burst for me when I got access to the Internet and could run the online stories in the original German through the Babelfish translator. As grammatically garbled as the results were, they made it clear that Ralph Manheim had made his own changes to several stories, when the original details struck him as "irrational or unseemly," and simply failed to mention anything at all. And then, there's the whole question of what the brothers, themselves, intended, and what they actually did. A few years ago, I came across a book at my local library: The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World, by Jack Zipes. The author's thesis was that the brothers had a political agenda behind the publication of their stories (establishing new government in Germany), and that they deliberately crafted the stories to make such an idea palatable to their audiences.

When I first encountered that idea, I was struck by the cynicism of it. With further contemplation, I felt liberated by it; if the Grimms Brothers, themselves, were free to reinterpret the stories, to express their beliefs about wider social issues, then so was I. Still, I made a promise to myself not to repeat the sins of Mr. Manheim, but instead to acknowledge any deliberate changes I've introduced from my sources.

The second problem with this image is the whole notion that there are "ancient, authentic versions" of the stories, in the first place, for the brothers to record. It's a more subtle problem, and it's rooted in the very same Romantic movement that Jacob and Wilhelm were themselves a part of -- the belief that unlettered farmers and peasants are somehow less sophicated, aesthetically, than university professors and librarians. Every human being who is drawn to tell a story, no matter what his or her social status, or educational background, has the right and the ability to add artistic flourishes, to highlight certain details, and to express truths revealed simply by living life. Jacob and Wilhelm had that right, I have that right, and you have that right.

I hope that what I post here inspires you to tell your own favorite stories, and to share them with others. It's our stories that make us human.

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Here are two sites which give a factual overview of the Grimms Brothers' lives (which is almost as romantic as the folklore that's evolved around them):
Jakob and Wilhelm Karl Grimm, Encyclopedia of World Biography

Grimm Brothers' Home Page (as Compiled by D. L. Ashliman, (C) 1999-2009)