Bernhard Heller's “Impact of the <em>1001 Nights</em> on the Grimms' Tales”

Abstract

Translator's IntroductionThe following translation supplements my essay Nights: Reflections on the Connections Between the Grimms' Household Tales and the 1001 in the present volume of Marvels & Tales. translation presents the section of Bernhard Heller's essay on folktales and fairy tales in Arabic literature and popular tradition that discusses the particular connections between the Grimms' tales and the 1001 Nights (pp. 405-409). Heller's essay was originally published in the fourth volume of the Anmerkungen zu den Kinderund Hausmarchen der Bruder Grimm, edited by Johannes Boite and Jin Polivka (Leipzig, 1929: 364-418), a volume that contains a number of essays that discuss the history of folktales and fairy tales on an international scale.In his day Bernhard Heller (1871-1943) was one of the most knowledgeable experts on both Jewish and Arabic narrative traditions. Although some of Heller's positions are now outdated, his essay retains its position as a historical document. Essentially, Heller's detailed argument bespeaks the comparative approach of the historic-geographic method in vogue in his day. Informative as it is, from today's perspective Heller's positivistic amassing of vaguely similar or overlapping motifs in the Grimms' Household Tales and the 1001 Nights constitutes at best a quarry for further research that would have to study the mentioned details with great scrutiny.Considering the density of the German shorthand sentences, the translation aims to be as faithful as possible. references to other volumes of Bolte's and Polivka's Anmerkungen have been amended to BP; the code KHM, for sake of clarity introduced in the translation, refers to the Grimms' Kinderund Hausmarchen. Several detailed references other than to these basic works have been deleted.Galland's translation [of the 1001 Nights] offered unexpectedly rich and new material to satisfy European taste and curiosity. Its impact on the educated audience, readers as well as writers, is easily explained. problem is not so easy when we study the manifold connections between the 1001 Nights and the European folktale. existence of some of these tales can be traced back to a past that preceded Galland's period by centuries. At this point, we must assume that in their journey from the Orient to the Occident, tales would also take along parts of the 1001 Nights. At any rate, this assumption is necessary to explain the impact of some motifs of the 1001 Nights on the medieval epic.The Brothers Grimm approached the 1001 Nights with sympathetic appreciation. By far the greatest number [of the collection's tales] includes tales that are felicitous in terms of content as well as charming and delicately beautiful in terms of presentation (KHM, 3: 350). For eight tales [of their own collection], they had recognized and listed connections to the 1001 Nights. These tales are The Fisherman and His Wife (no. 9), The Thief and His Master (no. 68), How Six Men Got on in the World (no. 71), The King of the Gold Mountain (no. 92), The Three Little Birds (no. 96), The Water of Life (no. 97), The Spirit in the Bottle (no. 99), and Simeli Mountain (no. 142). In addition, the Brothers Grimm (KHM, 3: 181) also listed the Harz mountain legend of the Dummburg [. . .] that is also found in the 1001 Nights [see BP, 3: 138],Since the times of the Brothers Grimm, our perception of the connections between the 1001 Nights and fairy-tale literature has widened and deepened. One should not, however, believe that for every analogy, the respective tale or motif has simply been adopted from the 1001 Nights. Rarely is the path of migration clear. Based on the first three volumes of Boite and Polivka, these connections between the 1001 Nights and fairy-tale literature may be summarized as follows.Of all tales in the 1001 Nights, the tales of Ali Baba and of Aladdin appear to have had the greatest impact. …