While I do take the view that a lot of literature biases us toward optimism, there are certainly exceptions to the rules, writers who don’t follow the rules. (Perhaps I should start a hashtag, #NotAllPoets, that will let all sorts of people be really angry at me.) An outstanding example was Georg Büchner (1813-1837). He wrote a play (or part of a play, as it exists only in fragments), Woyzeck, about a brutalized soldier who goes mad and murders his girlfriend. (The play would become the source-text for Alban Berg’s 1925 atonal opera Wozzeck.) In the course of the play a Grandmother tells a fairy tale of sorts which is almost an ingenious anti-story. (Kindly pardon my idiosyncratic translation!)
| Es war einmal ein arm Kind und hatt’ kein Vater und keine Mutter, war alles tot, und war niemand mehr auf der Welt. Alles tot, und es is hingangen und hat gesucht Tag und Nacht. Und weil auf der Erde niemand mehr war, wollt’s in Himmel gehn, und der Mond guckt es so freundlich an; und wie es endlich zum Mond kam, war’s ein Stück faul Holz. Und da is es zur Sonn gangen, und wie es zur Sonn kam, war’s ein verwelkt Sonneblum. Und wie’s zu den Sternen kam, waren’s kleine goldne Mücken, die waren angesteckt, wie der Neuntöter sie auf die Schlehen steckt. Und wie’s wieder auf die Erde wollt, war die Erde ein umgestürzter Hafen. Und es war ganz allein. Und da hat sich’s hingesetzt und geweint, und da sitzt es noch und is ganz allein. (From the Project Gutenberg version of the text.) | Once upon a time there was a poor child who had no father and no mother and everything was dead and there was no one left in the world. Everything was dead, and she went searching day and night. And as there was no one on Earth any more, she wanted to go up to heaven, and the moon looked at her in such a friendly manner, and when she finally came to the moon it was only a piece of rotten wood, and then she went to the sun and when she got there it was only a wilted sunflower and when she came to the stars they were just little golden mosquitoes stuck there like when the red-backed shrike sticks them on the blackthorn. And when she wanted to return to Earth the Earth was an overturned haven and she was all alone. And she sat down and cried and she sits there still and is all alone. |
Hat tip to that one to Maria Tatar, whose engaging book on folktales, The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales tipped me off to this charming bit of prose (and naturally, offered a better translation than I made).