7 January: Boreham on the Grimm Brothers

Value of the Fairy Tale
It was by the fireside that the brothers Grimm, on the evening of January 7, 1811, resolved to give the world that exquisite collection of fairy tales with which we are all familiar. The mention of the name of Jacob Grimm seems to fill the air with fairies. Yet, as a matter of fact, nothing would more have astonished the quiet old scholar than to have been told that, in the centuries succeeding his own, he would be remembered only because of his audacious invasion of fairyland. He never took that part of his life work seriously; it was purely a sideline. Those who take the trouble to consult the popular encyclopaedias concerning the personality and achievements of Jacob Grimm will find that, whilst a great deal is said in reference to his researches in the most abstruse and academic subjects, there is scarcely a passing allusion to the fairy tales.

Is there in all history, a record of a pair of brothers more remarkable than the brothers Grimm? All through their long lives they were scarcely out of each other's sight. They were like a pair of Siamese twins. In their school days they slept in the same bed and sat at the same table; as university students they shared a common sleeping apartment, though occupying separate beds; year after year, they dwelt under one roof, regarding even their books as common property; and, when their student days were done, they became colleagues on the professional staff of the same university. Wilhelm subjected the quaint partnership to a terrific strain when, with unbrotherly indiscretion, he fell in love with a pretty girl and married her. But Jacob, as a matter of course, took up his abode in the home of the happy couple; and few of the neighbours knew which of the two was the husband of the lady. When the elder brother was appointed librarian at Gottinger, the younger was simultaneously appointed under-librarian, and so the two learned little men journeyed through life in each other's company.

Fantasies Born Of A Nation's Agony
The determination of the two brothers to collect and publish the fairy tales that have made them famous was based upon a profound philosophical principle. Civilisation tends to strangle the imagination. No person has quite as free a fancy after having left their childhood behind him, and, similarly, it is in the infancy of nations that poetry luxuriates. When a people becomes encumbered with a history, it automatically becomes enslaved by precedent and tradition. Bards will arise; but they will study carefully the work of earlier singers and mould their stanzas on established models. For the purest poetry—poetry in its crystalline essence—one must return to the beginning of things. There is more real inspiration in the fables, fairy tales and folklore of primitive peoples than in all the ponderous classics.

In his "Literature of Germany," Professor J. G. Robertson stresses the fact that one of the golden days in Germany's chequered history was the day on which "Grimm's Fairy Tales" were published. Those whimsical but delightful conceptions were gathered and immortalised under the influence of a quickened national consciousness. The Napoleonic era was in full swing. The fate of Germany was hanging in the balance. Goethe himself believed that her subjugation was inevitable. But the unexpected happened. The dire peril in which the nation stood, awoke the people to the preciousness of their heritage. This reanimated pride in everything that pertained to the history of their own land led to the revival of romanticism in German literature; and it was as part of this movement that the two professors, the brothers Grimm, went out into the forests of the fatherland to collect the folklore of the people. They chatted with woodmen, ploughboys, shepherds and cattle women; they sat by the hearths of lonely farm houses and lent a ready ear to the tales that pedlars and foresters could tell. As a result, they returned to their desks with their heads full of "Hansel and Gretel," "The Goosegirl," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and all those colourful, lively, and irresistible fantasies.

The Fairy Tale Vivifies Both Fact And Faith
The intrinsic value of the fairy tale lies in its power to quicken the imagination. "Babies," as Dr. Johnson used to say, "do not want to hear about babies. They like to be told of giants and castles and of anything that can stretch and stimulate their little minds." Mr. Chesterton said that he owed more to the fairy tales of his childhood than to anything that he afterwards read. Without a well developed imagination no person can excel. In the passage just cited, Mr. Chesterton says that nobody needs a vivid imagination more than the historian who is supposed to be dealing, not with fancy but with fact. It was Carlyle's imagination that enabled him to see the dramas and tragedies of the French Revolution. Although it all happened before his time, he actually saw the new States-General; saw Danton with his rude, flattened face; and saw Robespierre peering through his spectacles at the Girondists riding in their tumbrils to the guillotine. And Mr. Augustine Birell has declared that, although a judge is supposed to be bound hand and foot by evidence, the worst of judges is the unimaginative judge.

What is the explorer but a man who imagines lands that have never been seen and who sets out to find them? It is usual to say that Columbus crossed the Atlantic in order to discover America; but is it not nearer the truth to say that he sailed so bravely and persistently westward because, by a fine flight of fancy, he had already discovered America? There is a sense in which imagination—the end of imagination that is awakened and developed by fairy stories—is one of the essential ingredients in a vigorous religious faith. For faith, an inspired writer declares, is a conviction of the reality of things which we do not see. It enables us, as another seer puts it, "to look not at the things that are seen but at the things which are not seen, for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." The perceptive faculties with which we are endowed can go no farther than that.

F W Boreham

Image: Grimm brothers