‘Ach ja’: Stevie Smith’s Escheresque Metamorphoses

Abstract

S tevie S mithnamesherpoem ‘The Frog Prince’, and so ushers her text into the world of fairytale. 2 Smith had read and reread the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen in the original German, so can confidently remark, along with the frog in her poem, that ‘The story is familiar | Everybody knows it well’. 3 For centuries, the tale has been told in different versions across Germany and Britain, describing a maiden who either kisses a frog, or cuts off his head, or throws him at a wall. 4 Whatever the framing circumstances, the result never changes: the frog turns into a handsome prince. And so Smith’s frog can, in fact, omit the moment of transformation from his story. Since both frog and readers know that metamorphosis is bound to occur in a fairytale world, he need only refer to ‘When the changes come’ and when he will ‘be set free’ ( CP , pp. 471–2). The text’s key metamorphosis is so thoroughly known, so wholly given within the fairytale genre, that it can remain invisible within Smith’s poem.