Serendipity and fairy tales
Jun. 20th, 2004 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dream_labyrinthHow come there is no translation for really interesting words of the English language?
Ever since I saw the "Dogma" movie, I have liked the word serendipity. But there is no German word for it. The writers of dictionaries are sissies, really! Instead of trying to find a translation, they just don't put the word in there. I had to take my monolingual English dictionary to find it.
I just opened my English-German dictionary at random. And what do I find? "highball" - whisky with soda. Who cares about that?? Certainly not me. I don't even drink alcohol.
Let's try again: "fatally". And a third time: "hit-and-run"
I don't seem to be very lucky today. Looks like a lack of - well - serendipity.
Anyway, that wasn't what I wanted to talk about.
Actually, I had planned on writing about fairy tales. For a long time, I haven't read any. But there was one I couldn't get out of my mind. It's one of the Grimm brothers' tales, König Drosselbart ("Drossel" is thrush, my dictionary says, and "Bart" means beard, "König" is king - but I don't know the English title of it.) The reason I have been thinking about it was that I don't believe it to be the whole story. So after I think years of thinking about it, I finally decided to write down my own version of it.
Please tell me that this does not sound absolutely crazy. ("manure" my dictionary says on the page that flapped open a second ago. I really should take that book out of the way before I get totally depressed.)
I have been addicted to fairy tales for all my life. At least to some of them. Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella never were my favorites. Even though there are some great adaptions of Cinderella out there. (One of the best is "Ella enchanted" - don't ask me who the author is, I have forgotten) I prefer the tales were the princess is a little more than beautiful. Being not drop-dead gorgeous myself, I prefer them to have a little brain, too. There is a Romanian fairy tale about a princess who fights a dragon to get back the sun he has stolen (because her stupid father had not paid the dragon for helping his wife to have a child when he saw that the child was only a daughter...) That one I really like. What I don't like in Cinderella is that she just lets everything happen to her without doing anything. Now, does that make sense? Why run to the tree on her mother's grave and cry? Why doesn't she just take a dress from her sisters and go to the ball anyway? Why always depend on somebody else to help you? What kind of message is that??
I admit it, I never dressed up as princess as a child. If I remember correctly, I prefered to be an Indian. But maybe that was because I wouldn't have been very convincing as princess. And you can't climb trees wearing these stupid long skirts. I guess I would be considered more of a tomboy. But I guess I grew out of it. Today, I don't wish to be a boy anymore. It's kind of fun to be a girl...
Anyway, I think fairy tales are a great way of getting kids to read. And these stories usually have a message. If I would have kids, I guess I would chose carefully which fairy tales to give them. But I don't believe the people who say that fairy tales harm children. What is so harmful in reading about fairies, dragons, knights and princesses? Or let's put it the other way around: is it better to believe in the Teletubbies and the characters from Sesame Street, Bob the Builder or the Bear in the Big Blue House? Or Spongebob??
I have kept all of my fairy tale books. (and some of my sister's - I hope she never wants them back) From time to time, when I feel lonely and sad, I read a tale I like to cheer me up. I write fairy tales myself. In normal life, I usually put up a rather negative point of view. (An optimist is somebody who doesn't have all the information...) But when nobody sees me, the little child comes out, the one that believes in the Knight in shining armour, Prince Charming and that some frog may be a prince. Of course, that does have an influence on my life. It has me waiting for my Knight for quite a while now. But I'm not so desperate to settle for anything less than a fairy tale kind of "true love". If I haven't found it until I'm 50, maybe I'll try one of the "widowers, 60 years old, younger looking..." you find in the ads in the paper. But until then, I'd rather keep my illusions. They are nice to live with. And if I don't believe in love, how am I supposed to recognize it when I find it?
Ever since I saw the "Dogma" movie, I have liked the word serendipity. But there is no German word for it. The writers of dictionaries are sissies, really! Instead of trying to find a translation, they just don't put the word in there. I had to take my monolingual English dictionary to find it.
I just opened my English-German dictionary at random. And what do I find? "highball" - whisky with soda. Who cares about that?? Certainly not me. I don't even drink alcohol.
Let's try again: "fatally". And a third time: "hit-and-run"
I don't seem to be very lucky today. Looks like a lack of - well - serendipity.
Anyway, that wasn't what I wanted to talk about.
Actually, I had planned on writing about fairy tales. For a long time, I haven't read any. But there was one I couldn't get out of my mind. It's one of the Grimm brothers' tales, König Drosselbart ("Drossel" is thrush, my dictionary says, and "Bart" means beard, "König" is king - but I don't know the English title of it.) The reason I have been thinking about it was that I don't believe it to be the whole story. So after I think years of thinking about it, I finally decided to write down my own version of it.
Please tell me that this does not sound absolutely crazy. ("manure" my dictionary says on the page that flapped open a second ago. I really should take that book out of the way before I get totally depressed.)
I have been addicted to fairy tales for all my life. At least to some of them. Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella never were my favorites. Even though there are some great adaptions of Cinderella out there. (One of the best is "Ella enchanted" - don't ask me who the author is, I have forgotten) I prefer the tales were the princess is a little more than beautiful. Being not drop-dead gorgeous myself, I prefer them to have a little brain, too. There is a Romanian fairy tale about a princess who fights a dragon to get back the sun he has stolen (because her stupid father had not paid the dragon for helping his wife to have a child when he saw that the child was only a daughter...) That one I really like. What I don't like in Cinderella is that she just lets everything happen to her without doing anything. Now, does that make sense? Why run to the tree on her mother's grave and cry? Why doesn't she just take a dress from her sisters and go to the ball anyway? Why always depend on somebody else to help you? What kind of message is that??
I admit it, I never dressed up as princess as a child. If I remember correctly, I prefered to be an Indian. But maybe that was because I wouldn't have been very convincing as princess. And you can't climb trees wearing these stupid long skirts. I guess I would be considered more of a tomboy. But I guess I grew out of it. Today, I don't wish to be a boy anymore. It's kind of fun to be a girl...
Anyway, I think fairy tales are a great way of getting kids to read. And these stories usually have a message. If I would have kids, I guess I would chose carefully which fairy tales to give them. But I don't believe the people who say that fairy tales harm children. What is so harmful in reading about fairies, dragons, knights and princesses? Or let's put it the other way around: is it better to believe in the Teletubbies and the characters from Sesame Street, Bob the Builder or the Bear in the Big Blue House? Or Spongebob??
I have kept all of my fairy tale books. (and some of my sister's - I hope she never wants them back) From time to time, when I feel lonely and sad, I read a tale I like to cheer me up. I write fairy tales myself. In normal life, I usually put up a rather negative point of view. (An optimist is somebody who doesn't have all the information...) But when nobody sees me, the little child comes out, the one that believes in the Knight in shining armour, Prince Charming and that some frog may be a prince. Of course, that does have an influence on my life. It has me waiting for my Knight for quite a while now. But I'm not so desperate to settle for anything less than a fairy tale kind of "true love". If I haven't found it until I'm 50, maybe I'll try one of the "widowers, 60 years old, younger looking..." you find in the ads in the paper. But until then, I'd rather keep my illusions. They are nice to live with. And if I don't believe in love, how am I supposed to recognize it when I find it?
