The Sorcerer's Apprentice
The Sorcerer's Apprentice | ||
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Aarne–Thompson grouping ATU 325 (The Sorcerer's Apprentice; The Magician and his Pupil) and ATU 325* (The Apprentice and the Ghosts) | | |
Region | Germany | |
Published in | "Der Zauberlehrling" (1797), by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (German: "Der Zauberlehrling") is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe written in 1797. The poem is a ballad in 14 stanzas.
Story
The poem begins as an old sorcerer departs his workshop, leaving his apprentice with chores to perform. Tired of fetching water by pail, the apprentice enchants a broom to do the work for him, using magic in which he is not fully trained. The floor is soon awash with water, and the apprentice realizes that he cannot stop the broom because he does not know the magic required to do so.
The apprentice splits the broom in two with an axe, but each piece becomes a whole broom that takes up a pail and continues fetching water, now at twice the speed. At this increased pace, the entire room quickly begins to flood. When all seems lost, the old sorcerer returns and quickly breaks the spell. The poem concludes with the old sorcerer's statement that only a master should invoke powerful spirits.
German culture
Goethe's "Der Zauberlehrling" is well known in the German-speaking world. The lines in which the apprentice implores the returning sorcerer to help him with the mess he created have turned into a cliché, especially the line "Die Geister, die ich rief" ("The spirits that I summoned"), a simplified version of one of Goethe's lines "Die ich rief, die Geister, / Werd' ich nun nicht los" - "The spirits that I summoned / I now cannot rid myself of again", which is often used to describe someone who summons help or allies that the individual cannot control, especially in politics.[citation needed]
Similar stories
Some versions of the tale differ from Goethe's, and in some versions the sorcerer is angry at the apprentice and in some even expels the apprentice for causing the mess. In other versions, the sorcerer is a bit amused at the apprentice and he simply chides his apprentice about the need to be able to properly control such magic once summoned.[citation needed] The sorcerer's anger with the apprentice, which appears in both the Greek Philopseudes and the film Fantasia, does not appear in Goethe's "Der Zauberlehrling".
Philopseudes
Eucrates recounts a tale extremely similar to Goethe's "Zauberlehrling", which had supposedly happened to him in his youth. It is, indeed, the oldest known variation of this tale type.[2] There are several differences:
- The sorcerer is, instead, an Egyptian mystic – a priest of Isis called Pancrates.
- Eucrates is not an apprentice, but a companion who eavesdrops on Pancrates casting his spell.
- Although a broom is listed as one of the items that can be animated by the spell, Eucrates actually uses a pestle. (Pancrates also sometimes used the bar of a door.)
Similar themes (such as the power of magic or technology turning against the insufficiently wise person invoking it) are found in many traditions and works of art. Comparative mythologist Patrice Lajoye argues for a parallel between the Brythonic legend of Taliesin and a Russian fairy tale, Le savoir magique, collected by Alexander Afanasyev[3] with both stories being classified as ATU 325.[4] As referenced by Joseph Jacobs in his English Fairy Tales,[5] Joseph Tunison (1849–1916) analysed several apocryphal medieval tales of Roman poet Virgil, including one where Virgil summons and banishes an evil entity.[6] Scholarship acknowledges the popularity of the tale type in Yiddish folklore.[7][irrelevant citation]
17th-century French author Eustace le Noble also wrote a literary variant of the tale type with L'apprenti magicien.[8]
In mythology
- Midas
- Golem
- Abhimanyu in Chakravyuha in the Mahabharata
- The Sañjīva Jātaka story about the boastful pupil who is killed by the tiger he brought to life with a spell, without yet being taught the counter-spell by his teacher.[9]
In folk and fairy tales
- "Maestro Lattantio and His Apprentice Dionigi"
- "The Master and his Pupil"
- "The Thief and His Master"
- "Sweet Porridge"
- "The Magic Book"
- "Farmer Weathersky"
- Faust
- Krabat
In literature
- Strega Nona
- Frankenstein
- "The Monkey's Paw"
- The Man Who Could Work Miracles (and numerous other works by H. G. Wells)
Cultural and popular culture uses of the story
This section needs additional citations for verification. (April 2020) |
The animated 1940
Literary adaptations of the tale include several fiction and nonfiction books, including the novel The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1910) by Hanns Heinz Ewers, and Christopher Bulis's novel The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1995) based on the TV series Doctor Who. Nonfiction books with this title include The Sorcerer's Apprentice: A Journey Through Africa (1948) by Elspeth Huxley, and the travel book Sorcerer's Apprentice (1998) by Tahir Shah.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels alluded to Goethe's poem in The Communist Manifesto (1848), comparing modern bourgeois society to "the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells."[12]
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The poem's story is alluded to in several episodes of the fairy-tale drama Once Upon a Time, especially in "The Apprentice" (2014). A variation of the Dukas piece also plays in certain scenes. The apprentice himself is a recurring character, while the sorcerer is shown to be Merlin.
The film The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010) features a scene based on Goethe's poem (and the Fantasia version).
"Top Secret Apprentice", a segment of the
The Fantasia version appears in the video game series Kingdom Hearts (2002), with the sorcerer Yen Sid serving as an adviser to the heroes, teaching Mickey, Sora, and Riku the Keyblade skills needed to guard the universe from his former friend Xehanort's plan. A world based on the Fantasia version also appears throughout the series, serving as Yen Sid's home.
The Magic: The Gathering playing card Sorcerer's Broom from Throne of Eldraine references the story and the replicating nature of the broom.[13]
See also
References
- F. G. Fowler. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- ISBN 0-8122-1705-5.
- ^ "Le savoir magique" (Contes 193, 194). Afanasyev, Alexander. Contes populaires russes. Tome III / [réunis par] Afanassiev. Paris: Imago. 2010.
- , specific pp. 204–205.
- ^ Jacobs, Joseph. English Fairy Tales. London: G. P. Putnam and Sons. 1890. p. 251.
- ^ Tunison, Joseph Salathiel. Master Virgil, the author of the Aeneid, as he seemed in the Middle Ages, a series of studies. Cincinnati: Clarke. 1890. pp. 28–35.
- ISBN 0-19-509200-7.]
The transformations of the lovers at the end of the tale are similar to those found in the many variants of 'The Magician and His Pupil', a tale especially popular in Yiddish folklore.
[page needed - JSTOR 10.3138/9781442699519.4
- ^ Jātaka story no. 150, "Sañjīva Jātaka", The Jataka, Volume I, translated by Robert Chalmers, 1895 – via sacred-texts.com
- ^ Knight, David B. (2006). Landscapes in music: space, place, and time in the world's great music. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 104.
- ^ Fantasia (2001) DVD commentary
- ^ Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (1848). The Communist Manifesto.
- YouTube
Further reading
- Abbate, Carolyn (1991). "What the sorcerer said". Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 30–60. ISBN 9781400843831.
- JSTOR j.ctv6p4w6.9.
- Cosquin, Emmanuel. Les Mongols et leur prétendu rôle dans la transmission des contes indiens vers l'Occident européen: étude de folk-lore comparé sur l'introduction du "Siddhikûr" et le conte du "Magicien et son apprenti". Imprimerie nouvelle G. Clouzot, 1913.
- Ogden, Daniel (2004). "The Apprentice's Sorcerer: Pancrates and his powers in context (Lucian, "Philopseudes" 33–36)". JSTOR 24595381.
- Troshkova, A (2019). "The tale type 'The Magician and His Pupil' in East Slavic and West Slavic traditions (based on Russian and Lusatian ATU 325 fairy tales)". Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology. XXIII: 1022–1037. .
- .
- ISBN 978-1-4008-8563-3.
External links
- Media related to Der Zauberlehrling at Wikimedia Commons
- Volume 3 of Fowler's translations of Lucian, from Project Gutenberg
- Modern English translation from 2013 by Katrin Gygax
- The Sorcerer's Apprentice from Fantasia (first part) and second part