![]() ![]() The hero will battle that monster -figure out a way to outwit it -to get behind it and push it into the oven, rather than being devoured. TATAR: That is, no matter how horrible that monster is, how frightening, the hero survives. And you get both in the story and yet also the promise of a happily ever after.ĭR. TATAR: That collision always makes a direct visceral hit. And that mingling of kind of operatic beauty -I think that’s a phrase I’ve used -and kind of monstrous terror, that combination, that juxtaposition is such an endearing quality of these stories.ĭR. I read you wrote somewhere that Europe was a place for you that signified deep horror. And also you had this personal connection to the kind of dramatic and menacing tone that’s in some of those fairy tales. TIPPETT: And it also sounds to me from your, who your family was and where they came from that the fairy tales were part of your childhood. ![]() But nonetheless, I can still see those images in my mind’s eye. ![]() It wasn’t Arthur Rackham who gave us those gorgeous gnarly trees and whimsical trolls and beautiful princesses. And the artist wasn’t particularly distinguished. And so I just remember looking at those illustrations and falling in love with them. But this book had these gorgeous illustrations, which just drew us into the stories. But there was something spiritual about it, in that my sister and I read the stories in a book called Die schönsten Kindermärchen der Brüder Grimm, The Most Beautiful Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Because of the excitement and the thrill and, you know, they never -they never turned you into the bored child. And maybe that explains why I was attracted to fairy tales. And I remember that as utter torture, sitting through a sermon. ![]() But I was sort of obliged to go to Sunday services, you know, with my family. TATAR: Oh gosh, I did, I was going to say, I had a secular childhood. TIPPETT: You know, whoever I’m talking with, whatever subject -I actually always start with this question about whether there was a religious or spiritual background to your childhood.ĭR. But she inched towards them with a doctoral thesis on a 19th-century German philosopher who delved into the “dark side” of nature.Ī daughter of Hungarian immigrants who fled Holocaust-era Central Europe, these themes were the stuff of reality, not fantasy, for Maria Tatar. When she was doing her graduate studies, such stories were not deemed serious enough for scholarly attention. Maria Tatar is a professor of Germanic languages and literature at Harvard University, where she also chairs the program in Folklore and Mythology. TIPPETT: I’m Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Not a resolution, I should say, because you have to keep working through things. You know, and in just mysterious ways you come to an understanding or a resolution. You can say things that you’re afraid to talk about. You can go in places that you’d be scared to go otherwise. MARIA TATAR: There’s the great “once upon a time,” which is a marker. They are carriers of the plots we endlessly rework as we weave the narratives of our lives.ĭR. These stories, she says, have survived by adapting across cultures and history. She’s an expert on classic fairy tales and legends and on how they help us work with things like fear and hope. To uncover what all of this might be saying about our time, we turn to Maria Tatar. TIPPETT: The last few years have seen multiple renditions of “Snow White” and “Hansel and Gretel,” as well as as well as “Frozen”, Disney’s updated take on “The Snow Queen.” There are overt fairy tale themes in hit TV series like True Blood, Grimm, and Once Upon a Time. And I know that light burns in all of you. But I have never seen a brighter light than when my eyes just opened. SNOW WHITE (PLAYED BY KRISTEN STEWART): All these years, all I’ve known is darkness. TIPPETT: But now, we have a darker, adult, self-realized Snow White and the Huntsman. SNOW WHITE (VOICE-OVER BY ADRIANA CASELOTTI): What do you do when things go wrong? Once upon a time in my childhood, for example, there was Disney’s frothy Snow White. KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: There’s something in the present that is finding new sustenance in the old, old storylines of fairy tales. ![]()
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