And the moral of the story is?

A collection of subversive fairy tales from France

May 27, 2017 04:25 pm | Updated 04:25 pm IST

Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned: Enchanted Stories from the French Decadent Tradition; Gretchen Schultz and Lewis Seifert, Princeton University Press, $22.95.

Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned: Enchanted Stories from the French Decadent Tradition; Gretchen Schultz and Lewis Seifert, Princeton University Press, $22.95.

This collection is the result of a long fascination with the genre of fairy tales known in France as the conte de fées and written in times of crisis and transition. The end of the 19th century saw revolutions and regime changes in France, which gave rise to a cynical reaction against the decadence of the years 1870 to 1914.

For the first time, the English-speaking world is introduced to an intriguing collection of updated translations of some of the stories of this period—the French decadence from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The subversive tales are from the likes of Charles Baudelaire, Jules Lemaitre, Anatole France and Guillaume Apollinaire.

What good fairies?

The title comes from the lampooning of the fairy tale genre in Willy’s story ‘Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned’, which advises the lost couple, Daphnis and Chloe: “People have filled your head with ridiculous optimistic notions and persuaded you to believe in good fairies who guide the projects of poor mortals to fruition. All that my children, is a farce, and you must believe the exact opposite of such nonsense.” It ends with the words: “This tale has no moral.”

And rightly so. In the ‘Wolf’s Story’, in which the villain is Red Riding Hood who persuades the wolf to kill her grandmother and then has the wolf arrested “for being an anarchist”, the wolf complains that while he had to suffer 20 years of hard labour, Red Riding Hood enjoyed her grandmother’s savings.

In the story by Baudelaire, ‘Fairies’ Gifts’, we see a world brimming with gifts from fairies that bring nothing but misery, creating an ambience of black comedy that is at once brutal and sardonic, but deeply modern in its sensibility.

The latter part of the 19th century saw a period of religious and political turmoil with a “rapidly evolving class structure and the entrance of women in the workforce”. However, it was also the age of Auguste Comte’s philosophy of positivism and rationalist affirmation. Such a scientific temperament came in direct clash with the magical world of fairy tales. The naturalism of Emile Zola too was at loggerheads with any presence of irrationality. It was in 1850 that with the appearance of science fiction in the works of Jules Verne began the genre of the fairy tale, which would thrive by the end of the century.

Fairy tales were a reaction to the discoveries of Edison. The magic wand grappled with the instruments of electricity.

Perversion of original

The fallout of this is seen in the variations on ‘Cinderella’ by Apollinaire, Claude Cahun or Marcel Schwob, or on ‘Sleeping Beauty’ by Jacques D’Adelsward-Fersen. For instance, the ogre of ‘Little Thumbling’, the Wolf from ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and Bluebeard tell their stories from their perspective, which “demonises those who are victims in the original versions.” Mocking irony and the perversion of the original are the hallmarks of this tradition.

Alphonse Daudet’s ‘The Fairies of France’ castigates modern rationality and the death of belief in the marvellous. The last fairy appears in court outraged by present day decadence as symbolised by the ravages of deforestation.

The writer is Professor Emeritus and Fellow at Panjab University.

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