29.The Original Grimm`s Fairy Tales原版格林童话

29. The Original Grimm`s Fairy Tales原版格林童话

【文章赏析】几乎我们每一个人都听过白雪公主的故事，并为那美丽的情节感动不已，但是读过这篇文章，你就会惊讶地发现格林童话实际上是这样地暴力与血腥。

Murder, Child abuse, Racism sound like the ingredients for a good children`s story? Probably not, but that`s exactly what you`ll find when you look at some of the early versions of the Grimm brothers` fairy tales. When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm began collecting and writing down folktales, they considered it a scholarly project for preserving German oral stories, rather than an effort to entertain children. The Grimms were the first to try to faithfully record oral storytelling.

What is clear is that as their fairy tales became more popular as children`s literature, the Grimms edited them to make them more suitable for children. They made the morals clearer and eliminated some of the violence and most of the sex. But even the edited versions will probably make your hair stand on end, and you wouldn`t dream of giving them to children.

For example, in the Grimms` version of“The Frog Prince,” the princess doesn`t kiss the frog—she throws it against the wall as hard as she can. Cinderella has no fairy godmother, and her mean stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to try to fit into the glass slipper. In the end, they have their eyes pecked out by birds as punishment. In“Snow White,” the evil stepmother is forced to wear red-hot iron shoes and dance until she`s dead. But that`s still better than a Swiss version where the seven dwarves were killed.

The fairy tales are still being rewritten even now. The tradition of changing the stories to fit the times continues. Maybe next, Snow White and the dwarves will start an internet company, sell out to Microsoft, and retire.

原版格林童话

【参考译文】

谋杀、虐待儿童、种族歧视，听起来像是优良儿童读物的成分吗？可能不是，但是如果去看早期版本的格林兄弟通话，这些正是你会看到的内容。当雅格和威廉·格林兄弟开始收集、撰写民间故事时，他们把它视为一项学术计划，目的是要保存德国的口传故事，而不是要娱乐儿童。格林兄弟是最早尝试忠实记录口传故事的人。

可以断定的是，当他们的童话以儿童文学的形式日渐受到欢迎后，格林兄弟就着手修改，使它更适合儿童阅读。他们使故事的寓意变得更清楚，删掉一些暴力及大多数关于性的情节。但即使是修改过后的版本可能也会让你毛骨悚然，而且你绝不会想拿给儿童看。

例如，在格林兄弟的《青蛙王子》中，公主并没有亲吻青蛙—而是尽可能最大的力气把它摔到墙上。灰姑娘并没有神仙教母，而她那两个恶劣的继姐为了想穿上玻璃鞋，把脚削掉了一部分。最后她们的眼睛还被鸟啄掉，当做惩罚。在《白雪公主》中，邪恶的后母被迫穿上烧红的铁鞋跳舞至死。但这仍比瑞士版的《白雪公主》好，因为在那个版本，七个小矮人被杀身亡。

就在今日，这些童话仍在不断重写着。改变故事使它符合时代的这个传统仍在持续。或许在下一个版本，白雪公主和小矮人会开一家网络公司，卖给微软，然后退休。