Poetics of detachment: Charles Perrault and the brothers Grimm – The Onsets of the Artistic Fairly Tale

Abstract

When initially put to paper, fairy tale was gradually divested of the elements of oral and assumed certain qualities issuing from the pen of the editor. This was the case ever since the first records of fairy tales, made by Charles Perrault and the brothers Grimm. Perrault’s fairy tales comprehend three plane levels: folklore, classicistic and reflexive one. The first among the three is represented by the ancient folklore tenet, particularly referring to brutal motifs. In the second layer, Perrault is a typical representative of his time. Except on the theme and motif plane, his time is to be mirrored in the ironic component, addressed to the current establishment to a certain degree, along which those humourous, moralistic and rational accents ensue. On the third plane, the author is more likely to contrive his arrative by means of imaginary metamorphosis of reality than by utilizing the miraculous inherent to a fairy tale. When not employing motifs and methods taken from folklore, a writer is to be provided with a mall number of elements of the miraculous. The real is then to hold the power of metamorphosis, the potential of the fantastic. The message on the value of spiritual beauty manifest and interwoven with subtle irony, represents a peculiar attitude taken by the author towards the traditional model characteristic of the genre. Much owed to the latter, yet even equally so due to the perception of reality as eing the prime mover of the impulse within the world at question one may regard Perrault as the initiator or precursor of the artistic tale. The brothers Grimm collected and assembled German folk tales belonging to all kinds of prose genre. The brothers Grimm do not moralize in the manner characteristic of Charles Perrault, the idea of their tales being immanent to the work. Due to the absence of moralistic point of view in the concluding sections the tales are subject to a variety of interpretations. The employ of the strategy of compiling elements of different genres and symbolism derived from different notional concepts may represent the most intriguing moment in the brothers Grimm’s tales. They do not offer ready made solutions, but suggest content diversity as well as diverse aspects of life. Yet in he openness precisely, instead of hackneyed patterns, they reflect the world in its geneses, the world in a state of disturbance and turmoil, though still verging the path of oral literature seeking to fashion the ideal potency of being.