Reading reflections
Once upon a time, there were two men. One was a sarcastic, sharp-tongued genius with a gigantic chip on his shoulder who delighted in pissing people off; the other was a quintessentially nice guy with actual social skills, though he had on occasion passive-aggressiveness honed to an art form (both towards other people and towards Guy A on the rare occasions when they argued), also intelligent, just not as innovative. They decided early in live that living together made the most sense, and proceeded to do just that for the rest of their lives. When the nice guy married, his wife was completely on board with that arrangement and sometimes joked about having two husbands. Gentle readers are we talking about:
a) Holmes and Watson
b) House and Wilson?
Far from it. I got a biography of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm for Christmas, and reading it, could not help but be struck by the way they conform to certain beloved fannish archetypes. Incidentally, I hear there's a movie by Terry Gilliam in which the two of them are supernatural con men turning real ghostbusters played by Heath Ledger and Matt Damon, which I find incredibly amusing. Because, well, let me put this way. How devoted philologists and geeky academics were the Grimms? So much so that when Wilhelm died, Jacob wrote "half of my being, Wilhelm, just died, and I consider it a most fitting miracle that he managed to finish going through the proofs of Volume D". (The brothers had worked on a definitive German dictionary. Between them, they managed A-F; G-Z took from 1863 - when Jacob Grimm died - until 1960 to finish.) Their lives weren't precisely dull - among other things, they belonged to the Göttingen Seven, professors who protested against the king of Hannover acting unconstitutionally and got dismissed and exiled for their trouble, and Jacob Grimm was a member of the revolutionary German parliament of 1848 - but really didn't offer any material for an action-heavy fantasy movie, so I'm not surprised to hear Gilliam rewrote it from scratch. It still cracks me up that the founders of modern philology and linguistics were recast as the Winchesters from Supernatural.
Meanwhile, have an anecdote about a real life academic smackdown of royalty from the biography. The Grimms eventually ended up in Berlin. When Ernst August of Hannover, the king in question, some years later found himself at a reception together with Alexander von Humboldt (that's the discoverer), due to the later being a member of the Prussian nobility, he asked: "So, how are my professors doing in Berlin? Never mind. You can always buy more professors, just like ballet dancers and whores." Quoth Humboldt: "I cannot say anything about the later two professions, but I have the honour of belonging to the former."
Back to the Grimms and their fairy tales. Which I, like most German children, grew up with. Recently I watched the newest Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog. Which was lovely, and Tiana immediately became one of my favourite Disney heroines. Early on, though, there is a sequence when her mother reads what's supposed to be the original Princess-and-Frog tale to Tiana and her friend Charlotte, and my inner fairy tale reader/listener immediately protested because, you know, in the Grimm story the princess doesn't kiss the frog. Instead, she throws him disgustedly against a wall, and that is what breaks the spell. One of the reasons why the Grimm stories are wonderfully disquieting is that they are full of these kind of twists, and full of unapologetically disturbing violence like Cinderella's step sisters hacking their toes off to fit in the shoe, or locks that only open with someone's little finger as the key. There is a dream logic going on which doesn't always conform to modern narrative patterns. (Which is why I always thought writers like Neil Gaiman were the real inheritors of these stories.)
Volume F of the dictionary aside, Jacob's last contribution to publication was his speech about his late brother, which can be summed up with: "I wish everyone would get over their daddy issues. Relationships in a modern nation should not be modelled the father-son structure, because fathers and sons can never truly be equals, but on sibling relationships. Siblings are equals, they can tell each other uncomfortable truths and yet remain allies in a way father and son just can't. In conclusion, people, stop looking for a big strong daddy to rule you or to rebel against, treat each other as brothers and you'll be grown up citizens, philology rocks, and also, I MISS MY BROTHER."
And here they are in their late 30s and then later as old men:
(Jacob hated that second picture. He wrote "Wilhelm looks doped and I look like a servant hastily summoned to appear".)
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/541917.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
a) Holmes and Watson
b) House and Wilson?
Far from it. I got a biography of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm for Christmas, and reading it, could not help but be struck by the way they conform to certain beloved fannish archetypes. Incidentally, I hear there's a movie by Terry Gilliam in which the two of them are supernatural con men turning real ghostbusters played by Heath Ledger and Matt Damon, which I find incredibly amusing. Because, well, let me put this way. How devoted philologists and geeky academics were the Grimms? So much so that when Wilhelm died, Jacob wrote "half of my being, Wilhelm, just died, and I consider it a most fitting miracle that he managed to finish going through the proofs of Volume D". (The brothers had worked on a definitive German dictionary. Between them, they managed A-F; G-Z took from 1863 - when Jacob Grimm died - until 1960 to finish.) Their lives weren't precisely dull - among other things, they belonged to the Göttingen Seven, professors who protested against the king of Hannover acting unconstitutionally and got dismissed and exiled for their trouble, and Jacob Grimm was a member of the revolutionary German parliament of 1848 - but really didn't offer any material for an action-heavy fantasy movie, so I'm not surprised to hear Gilliam rewrote it from scratch. It still cracks me up that the founders of modern philology and linguistics were recast as the Winchesters from Supernatural.
Meanwhile, have an anecdote about a real life academic smackdown of royalty from the biography. The Grimms eventually ended up in Berlin. When Ernst August of Hannover, the king in question, some years later found himself at a reception together with Alexander von Humboldt (that's the discoverer), due to the later being a member of the Prussian nobility, he asked: "So, how are my professors doing in Berlin? Never mind. You can always buy more professors, just like ballet dancers and whores." Quoth Humboldt: "I cannot say anything about the later two professions, but I have the honour of belonging to the former."
Back to the Grimms and their fairy tales. Which I, like most German children, grew up with. Recently I watched the newest Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog. Which was lovely, and Tiana immediately became one of my favourite Disney heroines. Early on, though, there is a sequence when her mother reads what's supposed to be the original Princess-and-Frog tale to Tiana and her friend Charlotte, and my inner fairy tale reader/listener immediately protested because, you know, in the Grimm story the princess doesn't kiss the frog. Instead, she throws him disgustedly against a wall, and that is what breaks the spell. One of the reasons why the Grimm stories are wonderfully disquieting is that they are full of these kind of twists, and full of unapologetically disturbing violence like Cinderella's step sisters hacking their toes off to fit in the shoe, or locks that only open with someone's little finger as the key. There is a dream logic going on which doesn't always conform to modern narrative patterns. (Which is why I always thought writers like Neil Gaiman were the real inheritors of these stories.)
Volume F of the dictionary aside, Jacob's last contribution to publication was his speech about his late brother, which can be summed up with: "I wish everyone would get over their daddy issues. Relationships in a modern nation should not be modelled the father-son structure, because fathers and sons can never truly be equals, but on sibling relationships. Siblings are equals, they can tell each other uncomfortable truths and yet remain allies in a way father and son just can't. In conclusion, people, stop looking for a big strong daddy to rule you or to rebel against, treat each other as brothers and you'll be grown up citizens, philology rocks, and also, I MISS MY BROTHER."
And here they are in their late 30s and then later as old men:
(Jacob hated that second picture. He wrote "Wilhelm looks doped and I look like a servant hastily summoned to appear".)
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/541917.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.