Posted by Racer on June 4, 2005, at 15:01:19
In reply to Jung and fairy tales...interesting exercise, posted by gardenergirl on June 1, 2005, at 22:38:25
It's hard because I grew up on fairy tales! Two do stick out, though:
The first was the one about a girl who has to climb a mountain of ice crystal to reach her friend who was kidnapped by a sort of Ice Witch. There's a shard of ice embedded in his heart, and that must be destroyed in order to rescue him. I don't know why that one always resonated so much with me, but it did. I was always kinda torn, because a part of me thought that he was better off as he was. Maybe I should go find that one and read it again. See if it still touches me the same way.
The other, though, was about a young person -- can't even remember now whether it's a girl or a boy -- whose mother dies. Father remarries -- of course; wicked stepmother -- of course. The real mother, though, is brought back as a cow with one horn. The child is fed by a magical feast that is hidden in that one horn, and the cow saves the child from the wicked stepmother -- until the WS has the cow killed. At that point, the cow has already told the child to bury her heart under a certain bush, and so on. I think it must have been a boy, because I seem to remember there's a magical sword that protects him in a war. That's another I guess I should read again. See if I get any new insights...
Then there are the fairy-tale-like poems, like Heine's Grenadiers. They lay down after the battle, to wait for the next time the Kaiser needs them...
Years back, a buddy of mine had to write about folk tales for a class -- can't remember what the class was, just that they read "Morphology of the Folk Tale" -- and his final paper showed that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had all the elements of a folk tale. Always remembered that, for some reason...
poster:Racer
thread:506634
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050528/msgs/507635.html