Undine: Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué
Details
George MacDonald called Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's Undine (1811) "the most beautiful" of all fairytales. Based on a concept from the 16th-century Book of Nymphs by the alchemist Paracelsus, the plot revolves around the titular water spirit who must marry a knight in order to gain a soul. Today, the story is perhaps best known as the inspiration for Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid."
George H. Danton says it "remains one of the best creations of the Romantic school.... The value of the story lies in the author's power to make the reader believe in Undine, the water sprite, and in the presentation of a new nature-mythology. All Romanticists have consciously or unconsciously attempted to satisfy Friedrich Schlegel's demand for a new mythology: Fouqué's earth, air, and water spirits people the elements with graceful forms from the world of nature; [especially] the nymph Undine in the form of a flowing stream."
According to Merrell Davis (in Melville's Mardi: A Chartless Voyage), Mardi's water lily-like Yillah is "set forth in the garb of an attractive Undine" who "thus became the object of a search for ideal happiness as revealed through the flower meanings of 'Purity' and the 'Return of Happiness,' associated with her after she vanishes." In this interpretation, by extension, the lily becomes Melville's version of Novalis' blue flower.
Records show that a copy of Undine was charged to Lemuel Shaw (Melville's father-in-law) in 1847, possibly as a gift to Melville or his wife, lending credence to the notion that the influence was direct. More immediate evidence of Melville's familiarity with the story is attested by his allusion to "the tall pale man of the Harz forests" from "the old fairy tales of Central Europe," which (with slight geographical allowance) is almost assuredly a reference to the character of Kuhleborn.
Undine: ∼60pp
Supplemental:
- "Rusalka" (1901, opera by Dvořák)
- "The Kingdom of the Fairies" (1903, Georges Méliès)
- "Undine" (2020, movie trailer)
- Legends about mermaids, water sprites, etc
Extracts:
- "...why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does "the tall pale man" of the Hartz forests, whose changeless pallor unrestingly glides through the green of the groves— why is this phantom more terrible than all the whooping imps of the Blocksburg?" (Moby-Dick, 42)
- "...the water-sprites had rolled our stone out of its noose, and we had floated away." (Omoo, 56)
- "The own heart’s choice of every youth, seems ever as an inscrutable witch to him; and by ten thousand concentric spells and circling incantations, glides round and round him, as he turns: murmuring meanings of unearthly import; and summoning up to him all the subterranean sprites and gnomes; and unpeopling all the sea for naiads to swim round him; so that mysteries are evoked as in exhalations by this Love;—what wonder then that Love was aye a mystic?" (Pierre, 2.4)
- "...plunging in among a parcel of these river-nymphs.... [they] swarmed about me like a shoal of dolphins, and seizing hold of my devoted limbs, tumbled me about and ducked me under the surface, until from the strange noises which rang in my ears, and the supernatural visions dancing before my eyes, I thought I was in the land of the spirits." (Typee, 18)
This meetup is part of a series on Muses and Monsters.