Marchen und Meta-Marchen: Zur Poetik der "Volksmarchen der Deutschen" von Johann Karl August Musaus (review)

Musäus's collection Volksmärchen der Deutschen (Folktales of the Germans, 1782-86, 5 vols.) has presented a problem for scholarship for most of its existence. It is one of the earliest collections of its kind in German, and so has for some a status as original and foundational: it is often cited as a, or even the, precursor of the Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Yet the comparison can only be to the ultimate detriment of the earlier work; Musäus, thus seen, is a careless folklorist (avant la lettre, of course) who failed to catch the "real" voice of the people the way the Grimms supposedly did. The fourteen tales are described as having a hybrid form between Kunstmärchen and Volksmärchen (despite the title Musäus gave it), failing to fulfill the expectations of either genre (or at least of the post-Grimm expectations of them).

As an Enlightenment writer conveying—authentically or not—the wisdom (or superstitions) of the people, Musäus's position was from the first suspect: how is it possible for a proponent of rational thought to make use of such popular material and stay true to his enlightened ideas? His style is very far from the simple narratives of peasants or of the less-educated bourgeoisie: he is witty and clever; his diction is creative and whimsical; he makes constant reference to topical events by means of humorous comparisons and metaphors. Some of the tales have very little magic or marvelous in them, and the occurrence of the marvelous is met with by a great deal of ambivalence, or at least by a lack of clarity, on the part of the narrator. Although marvels are never explained away by enlightened rational science, a rational attitude is just as likely to prove the correct one in a tale by Musäus as is the simple unquestioning acceptance of the magic of the world. Humor is often used to debunk magic in one scene of a tale where elsewhere magic has proved "real": Franz Melcherson, reports the narrator jocosely, does not need any magical accoutrements to retrieve the hidden treasure in "Stumme Liebe" ("Silent Love"), but only a shovel and spade: yet Franz knows of the treasure only because, earlier in the tale, a ghost he has released from a curse told him what to do to find it. Thus, it is difficult for the reader quite to know what to make of the purpose of the tales. Are they meant only to entertain, and to be understood simply as old tales in modern, and higher-class, dress? Or is there a moral to be drawn? If there is, it is not explicit, and it is also unclear. Should one spurn superstition in favor of modern science, or should one take on the happy-go-lucky attitude of the fairy-tale hero to whom all things come if only he accepts the gift freely?

In her book, Malgorzata Kubisiak touches upon all these issues, and more: the history and import of fairy-tale writing in the Enlightenment (or Rococo); peasant versus bourgeois tales; the function of and attitude toward the magical in this literature; the relationship of entertainment value to moral value in the tales; reason versus fantasy; tales as telling the truth or telling lies; the existence of a folk tradition underlying the collections published by Musäus and others. In regard particularly to Musäus, she has material on his humorous style, with its satiric and idyllic components; on his expressed attitude (very dismissive!) to the Ammenmärchen (old wives' tales) he heard and wrote down; on the reception and interpretation of the Volksmärchen der Deutschen since their publication. This volume represents, in fact, a thorough collection of comments on Musäus and...