Thereupon painter Runge said: "I'm glad to say that The journal for Hermits has accepted one of the tales I've taken down in dialect, 'The Juniper Tree,' but the other, which was also told me years ago by an old woman on the island of Riigen and which I took down in two versions, because the old woman, who was strangely obstinate, kept shifting from one to — the other and back, this tale of 'The Fisherman and His Wife' is still unpublished, though Zim-mer the book dealer recommended it a good two years ago to Messrs. Arnim and Brentano for inclusion in their Boy's Magic Horn. Our meeting here gives me an opportunity to bring the story up again, and I'm going to submit both versions. That's why I've come all this way at the Messrs. Grimm's request. Because I ought to be at work on my painting. It's called Morning, and it simply refuses to get finished."
Thereupon painter Runge laid the two versions of his dialect tale on the long, paper-littered table. The one is the tale as it has come down to us; of the other, there is more to say.
Because, you see, the old woman, who lived on Oehe, a small island between the thin, elongated island of Hiddensee and the large island of Riigen, but who, when the wind was right, came rowing over to the main island on market days to sell her sheep's-milk cheese in Schaprode, told painter Philipp Otto Runge two different truths to take down in his
sketchbook. The one made Ilsebill the quarrelsome wife credible, how she wants to have more and more and more, to be king emperor pope, but finally, when she wants the all-powerful Flounder to make her "like God," is sent back to the old thatched hut, called "pisspot" in the story. The other truth dictated to painter Runge by the old woman showed a modest Ilsebill and a fisherman with immoderate wishes: He wants to be unconquerable in war. He wants to build, traverse, inhabit bridges across the widest river, houses and towers reaching to the clouds, fast carriages drawn neither by oxen nor horses, ships that swim under water. He wants to attain goals, to rule the world, to subjugate nature, to rise above the earth. "But now," he says in the second tale, "now I want to fly, too. . " And when at the end the fisherman, though his wife, Ilsebill, keeps advising him to be content ("Now suppose we stop wishing and let well enough alone"), wants to rise up to the stars ("I must and will fly up to heaven"), all the splendor, the towers, the bridges, the flying machines collapse, the dikes burst, drought parches, sandstorms devastate, the mountains spew fire, the old earth quakes, and in quaking shakes off the man's rule. And cold blasts usher in the next all-covering ice age. "And there, under the ice, they've been sitting to this day." So ended the tale of the Flounder who granted every wish of the man who kept wanting mOre and more, every wish except the last — to fly beyond the stars to heaven.
When painter Runge asked the old woman which of the two tales was right, she said, "The one and the other." Then she went back to the market to sell her sheep's-milk cheese, for she wanted to be on her island before nightfall, "with some sweet stuff and a bottle."
As for painter Runge, he returned to Wolgast, where he lived in his father's house. There he copied both tales, the one and the other truth, out of his sketchbook in his best calligraphy, without changing a single word.
When the Grimm brothers, the writers Arnim and Bren-tano, and Brentano's sister Bettina had read the one and the other manuscript, asking what certain words meant because they didn't know much Low German, they all praised the tales for their moral substance and originality, but each
in a different way. Arnim wanted to put both of them right into his Boy's Magic Horn; Brentano wanted to cleanse them of dialect, transpose them into verse, and fashion them into a great epic; Jakob Grimm delighted in their free and easy grammar; and Wilhelm Grimm resolved to publish these tales and others in the future. Only Bettina took a dark view of the one version in which, so she said, Ilsebill was painted too black. If the tale were published in that form, it would be easy for men to say: That's how you women are, greedy and quarrelsome, all alike. "When actually," she cried, "women have such a hard time of it!"
"I, on the other hand," said her brother Clemens, "cannot approve of the other tale, which so cruelly demolishes man's strivings and dreams of greatness. None of the things we hold sacred, our rich and complex history, the glorious empire of the Hohenstaufens, the towering Gothic cathedrals, would exist if men had dully contented themselves with what they had. To publish the tale in this form, so suggesting that all men's striving leads to chaos, would soon make a laughingstock of male authority. And besides, women are undoubtedly more immoderate in their wishes. Everyone knows that."
After that, brother and sister argued across the long table, and soon the other friends also began to quarrel. Even the scientific-minded Jakob Grimm thought the greedy Ilsebill more plausible than the overweening fisherman. He knew other tales (from Hessen, from Silesia), about women (always women) who wanted more and more. The sensitive Wilhelm took the contrary view. It was common knowledge, he contended, that male lust for power was a source of tyranny and oppression. Consider Napoleon — or Caesar. Hadn't the Corsican wanted more and more? As general under the Directory, to be consul; as one of three consuls, to be first consul; as first consul, to be emperor; and hadn't he gone on as emperor to subjugate all Europe? And wasn't he planning, at this very moment, to invade India; didn't he hope to break the world dominion of Britain and perhaps even, like Charles XII of Sweden, to penetrate deep into Russia?
The friends, who were all stricken by the misfortune of their fatherland, agreed. Only Bettina would hear no slur
on the greatness of her undersized hero. Hadn't she heard Goethe in person, himself a great man, praise Napoleon in no uncertain terms? Whereupon Arnim poured abuse on Goethe and waxed loudly patriotic. (Later on, during the War of Liberation, he was to show bravery as captain in a Landsturm battalion.)
To all this Runge said nothing, though he had his own grounds for bitterness against the great man of Weimar, who, when viewing Runge's Achilles's Combat with the River Gods at a competitive exhibition, had thought it "not classical enough." Once, to be sure, though no one heard him, Runge informed his friends that the old woman had said both tales were true.
When Brentano*now declared the quarrelsome, greedy Ilsebill from the one tale to represent the very essence of womanhood, in support of which judgment he cited some revolting anecdotes drawn from his recent but already foundered marriage to a certain Auguste Busmann, Bettina (who after the Revolution of 1830 was to become a militant champion of women's rights) was furious with her outspoken brother: "Haven't we women been humiliated enough?" Then, with a glance at the silent Kashubian woman at the stove (and her frightened children), she put an end to the angry quarreclass="underline" "Friends, let's stop and think this over quietly. Our dear Lovise tells me the woods are full of mushrooms. Let's entrust ourselves to nature and gather into our baskets what it has to offer us. It's still early afternoon. The autumn sun will give us a golden light. Where, if not in the forest cathedral, will our quarrel give way to appeasement? And besides, our dear Lovise has announced her cousin's visit for this evening. She is the local governor's cook and moreover an expert on mushrooms."
So they went into the forest, which they saw in different ways. Each carried a basket. For fear of getting lost, they arranged to remain within calling distance of one another. Oliva Forest, consisting mostly of beeches, merged with Goldkrug Forest and the hilly woods of Kashubia farther inland. Brentano was soon overpowered (as though rehearsing his subsequent conversion to Catholicism) by a feeling