Gaia: The Bardic Circle

Re: 27 people

http://kjerwitt.gaia.com — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:18:30 GMT

Here! New to the group; it looks awesome. I'm gonna go explore more now. :)

Re: Astrological After-Sex Comments

http://kjerwitt.gaia.com — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:10:01 GMT

Hahaha... wow.. that just says everything it needs to...

Invitation to story tellers

http://dragonsbeard.gaia.com — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 11:24:13 GMT

Imagine, if you will -- just for a moment -- a rising movement which translates global climate change, the war on terror, oppressive injustice, and all the issues of our times into a vibrantly exciting collective project and celebration to call into being the very world we have always wanted. Imagine what your part is -- and could be -- in co-creating that irresistible movement. Imagine talking to other people about this remarkable possibility and reality. Imagine that we succeed and that we dance, sing, love, share, create and uncover new possibilities together every step of the way.

A new story is seeking to be born, in these dark times, filled with promise.... an insistent story, pressing through the cracks... in our hearts and our world. Within it are all our stories, those told and yet to be told. Deep true stories... our gifts to a mysterious urgent future, that is calling us together....You are invited...come to...
The first annual Story Field Conference
is bringing together innovators and initiatives in the stories we need to shift our world.
August 26-31
Shambhala Mountain Resort, Colorado
$400 for the conference
Room & board starts at only $296 for the whole conference!

http://xk1.net/l_10567_1390

Racoon - Close your eyes

http://merlijnsmagic.gaia.com — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 16:47:06 GMT

This song by dutch band Racoon left me completely speechless, so I'll just let it speak for itself. If you ever get the chance (and if the opportunity doesn't come to you, it's worth the effort creating the opportunity), check 'm out :-).

Racoon - Close your eyes

Lost the things that you thought you would never miss.
Let them out, miss them while they are gone
But there are memories down here and they will always live
And they cant take them away so they won't

Open this window, let the sickness out
Sleep softly and breath again
If there's a way that it'll find you and help you out
You're like a circle there's no start and no end

Close your eyes, you might see something beautiful
Cause It's not all pitch-black at the back of your mind
So Close your eyes, you might see something prettier
You pick your dream right out of the night

And change I wish or I will, cause it's gonna work.
You can do this, it is your life
And if you are unhappy about something, stop jerking about.
Follow the clouds and dive right in

Open this window, just let the wind blow in
And let it grab you and calm you down.
And if there is no way to find a way,
Don't go down the easy way,
And don't let any of them bastards hold you down.

Close your eyes, you might see something beautiful
Cause it's not all pitch-black at the back of your mind
So Close your eyes, you might see something prettier
So pick your dream right out of the night

Welcome to the show,
Cause you're following the man, with a million dollar plan
And all your dreams are gone if you let it go.
Yeah all the dreams you win, if you dare to make it so

If you dare to make it so

You lost the things that You thought You would never miss.
You let them out, miss them while they're gone
But there's memories down here and they will always live down here
No they cant take them away, so they won't

Close your eyes, you might see something beautiful
It's not all pitch-black at the back of your mind
So Close your eyes, you might see something prettier
You pick your dream right out of the night

Just thought I'd share ;-)

Re: Hans Christian Andersen

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:43:30 GMT

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L. Dundes and A. Dundes

eels, Flotsam and Jetsam, who have visible sharp teeth and to whom she is very attached,

also have phallic signi cance (cf. Otero, 1996, p. 270). But it turns out that Ursula’s

‘penis envy’ is not satis ed by her eight feet. Instead, she ‘covets the powers of the male

phallus’ as is suggested when she ‘lovingly caresses Triton’s trident while he is holding

it’ stroking one of the tines with her ngers (Trites, 1990–1991, p. 150). It turns out that

Ursula’s agenda includes more than competing with Ariel for Eric. She is also engaged

in a battle of the sexes with Triton.

When Ariel fails to get Eric to kiss her within the prescribed three-day period, she

must, according to the legally binding contract she signed with Ursula, revert to being

a mermaid. Her father Triton, realizing the sincerity of Ariel’s love for Eric, decides to

sacri ce himself for her sake and to take her place in the contract. Ursula is delighted

as apparently she was more interested in unmanning Triton than in defeating Ariel.

Triton reluctantly uses his trident to seal an agreement to trade places with Ariel. He then

hands over the trident, the symbol of his power, whereupon he immediately shrinks into

a shriveled shadow of himself to join other captive souls in Ursula’s garden. The loss

of the trident would constitute symbolic castration while the dramatic shrinking would

appear to be symbolic detumescence. At this juncture all seems lost. The father king is

trident-less and the villainous mother- gure Ursula is in complete control.

The castration theme is also repeated in subplot detail. Sebastian, the Caribbean crab,

whom Triton originally assigned to watch over Ariel but who eventually becomes

sympathetic to her desire to become human, is at one point chased by Prince Eric’s

French chef Louis who holds a huge cleaver, and later attacks the crab with a full arsenal

of glistening sharp knives. Fortunately, he does not succeed in chopping off either of

Sebastian’s claws. He is shown, however, hacking the heads off sh and the castration

imagery is thus dramatically intensi ed by the sight of dozens of decapitated sh

surrounded by countless disembodied sh heads.

Ursula quickly utilizes her new-found power by rising up to gigantic proportions

whereupon she emerges from the water, with a phallic projection from a now oversized

crown driving apart Ariel and Prince Eric who are huddling together (Leadbeater and

Wilson, 1993, p. 475). As a result of Ursula’s expansion, Ariel gets sucked down into

a vortex that with its cavernous form resembles her hidden cave under the sea. That is,

Ariel is rendered helpless by being trapped in a womb-like enclosure (Johansen, 1996,

p. 216) whereas Ursula, once in possession of the trident, becomes instantly masculine,

even to the extent of acquiring a deepened, clearly manly voice. Thus, the only powerful

woman in the story ful lls her desire for supreme power by becoming masculine, both

in actual presentation and symbolically (by gaining possession of both the crown with

its unmistakable crenellated circle of vertical projections ending with sharp points and

the potent trident). Ultimately, however, her usurpation of the male role is all for naught

and the ‘unnatural’ situation is ‘recti ed’ by her fatal re-feminization through a dramatic

impalement.

One might well ask what is the thematic relationship, if any, between the gure of the

mermaid and castration? Recall that in the original Andersen story, the sea witch cuts out

the mermaid’s tongue which feminists have correctly interpreted as symbolic castration.

Dinnerstein suggested that the woman is perceived essentially as a castrated male, that

is, as a human lacking the male penis; but there is another possible explanation for the

linkage between the mermaid gure and castration. One could argue that the mermaid

represents the fear of feminine power in general and the fear of unbridled sexual appetite

in particular (Johnson, 1987, pp. 73–74). Certainly in Mediterranean cultures, the female

is perceived as possessing a vagina which is threatening (sometimes portrayed by the

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addition of teeth—vagina dentata) which coupled with her presumed voracious sexual

appetite constitutes a castratory danger to males. Narratives which include so-called

‘Poison damsels’ (Motif F582; see Penzer, 1952), ‘Serpent damsel’ (Motif F582.1), in

which a woman has a serpent inside her vagina which comes out and kills her

bridegrooms, or the ‘vagina dentata’ (Motif F547.1.1; see Creed, 1993; Otero, 1996)

play on this male fear. The lm Jaws (1975) is another tale of a vagina dentata lurking

in the sea.

Inasmuch as the mermaid has no vagina, with or without teeth, she is no threat. The

phallic Ursula is, in contrast, a castrating female. Ursula as vagina dentata is signaled

by a detail noticed by several feminist critics. ‘Ursula’s palace is entered through the

mouth opening of a skeletal animal, and the swimming entrant must traverse the long

neck of the animal before penetrating the womb-like inner chamber where Ursula

resides’ (Trites, 1990–1991, p. 149). ‘To visit Ursula, Ariel must enter through the

toothy jaws of a gigantic mouth, and swim through womb-like caves’ (Sells, 1995,

p. 184). In contrast, Ariel has a body innocent of any dental threat. The only hint is her

mistaking a fork for a comb. The comb, along with the narcissistic mirror, traditionally

have been the standard accoutrements of mermaids (Benwell and Waugh, 1961, pp. 137–

139; Higgins, 1995, p. 40). As a comb, the fork’s tines become metaphorical teeth placed

in her hair, but Eric and his dinner companions soon civilize Ariel by teaching her the

true nature of a fork. The sexual innuendo of the fork as comb would have been

transparent to the Romans. The Latin word for comb ‘pecten’ also meant the female

pudenda (Phillpotts, 1980, p. 10) or pubic hair (Adams, 1982, p. 76).

There is another possible interpretation supporting the notion that Ariel must be

castrated in order to become Prince Eric’s bride. The mermaid’s shtail is not only a

denial of the vagina, but it could symbolize a penis (Lederer, 1986, p. 251; Róheim,

1948, pp. 22, 33). If this is so, then Ariel’s phallic attributes are somewhat analogous to

those of Ursula with her serpentine octopus lower body tentacles. For Ariel to transform

into a viable human female, she must lose her phallic shtail. The castration of Ariel is

further con rmed in the original Andersen story by the cutting out of her tongue. (Even

though this detail was omitted from the Disney version, Ursula tosses a tongue of

unknown origin into her brew designed to rob Ariel of her ability to speak, a witty

literalization of the metaphor referring to the likely adverse effects caused by a ‘loose

tongue’.) Even the loss of Ariel’s voice could be similarly construed according to

Bunker’s essay ‘The Voice as (Female) Phallus.’ Bunker does mention sirens and

mermaids (1934, p. 411) but without reference to Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid.’

One could speculate that the male fear of castration by a female is transformed

through inverse projection to the castration of females by males. The story in which the

mermaid’s tongue is cut out was, after all, written by a male Hans Christian Andersen

and the Disney script was also written by men. The male bias of the Disney studio has

been well established by feminists. The history of the male domination of women

includes a series of imposed restrictions designed to curb female sexuality ranging from

chastity belts to keeping unmarried girls under virtual house arrest behind secure walls.

Another striking illustration of the male’s fear of female sexuality is perhaps provided

by the widespread practice of female genital mutilation, particularly prevalent in Africa.

It is justi ed in part by the claim that the genital mutilation allegedly reduces women’s

sexual desire which purportedly would otherwise be out of control. The excision of the

clitoris is sometimes followed by in bulation, which means that the initiate cannot have

sexual intercourse until the stitched vagina is cut or torn open. One critic in speaking of

the mermaid in the Andersen story even goes so far as to suggest that ‘her loss of a

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L. Dundes and A. Dundes

tongue may be the symbolic displacement of clitorectomy’ (Dahlerup, 1990, p. 427). So

since the mermaid imago herself is a male ideal of sexual allure without the dangerous

castratory vagina dentata, it is not surprising that such an overt castration theme

permeates the ‘The Little Mermaid’ lm. The thematic linkage between mermaid and

castration is explicit in a striking bit of American material culture. In the late 1920s, a

curious shing lure appeared as a novelty item. As reported by the late Gershon Legman

(1975, p. 433), it consisted of ‘a naked-breasted mermaid with a three-pronged hook

emanating from her pubis.’ In gleefully thinking of her prospective triumph over King

Triton, Ursula speaks of looking forward to seeing ‘him wriggle like a worm on a hook.’

The phallic nature of sh caught by sh hooks continues to be obvious as indicated by

the bragging of shermen who carefully measure and weigh their trophies, sometimes

even mounting them over replaces in their game rooms. The repeated vandalism of the

famous statue of ‘The Little Mermaid,’ the veritable symbol of the city of Copenhagen,

also con rms the association of castration with the mermaid. For the vandalism,

presumably carried out by males, often involves decapitation, an act that not only

connotes castration but which may also suggest de oration, that is, destroying a virginal

maiden head.

Whereas a young girl can be controlled by female genital mutilation or by depicting

her as mermaid, the mature female remains a threat. When Eric succeeds in penetrating

Ursula with the jagged prow of his raised ship, this not only destroys the evil sea witch,

but results in her dropping the trident which fortuitously falls to the bottom of the sea

right near the shriveled Triton. Symbolically, Ursula has been so utterly feminized, not

to say decimated, by Eric’s phallic attack, that she can no longer retain possession of the

powerful trident. Triton regains his trident, swells to attain his previous imposing and

muscular build, and is then empowered to set everything straight.

The role of the trident in Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ has not been suf ciently

noted by critics. The word literally means ‘three teeth’ and both the number three and

teeth have phallic signi cance (Freud, 1915–1916, pp. 163–165). The trident turns out to

be crucial in terms of the male reworking of an Electral fantasy. Early in the lm when

Triton learns about Ariel’s secret grotto where she stores her human artifacts, he visits

her there and destroys the chamber and its contents with his powerful trident. Symbol-

ically speaking, a secret chamber or garden or other hiding place of a young girl is an

obvious representation of her vagina. The entrance to the chamber is a tubular tunnel

marked by striations that would appear to resemble the transverse ridges of a vaginal

wall. Inside the chamber Ariel irts with and sings to a lifelike statue of Prince Eric

(Leadbeater and Wilson, 1993, p. 474), commissioned for Prince Eric from Grimsby,

which was salvaged from the wreckage of the destroyed ship. (It is curious that the statue

of ‘The Little Mermaid’ in Copenhagen harbor was sculpted by Edvard Eriksen that

might partially account for the choice of the name Eric for the prince.) The statue of

Prince Eric, intended as a nuptial gift, portrays him as about to draw his sword,

presumably suggesting the impending penetration following marriage. King Triton later

obliterates the statue with his trident, just as the mermaid gurehead on Eric’s ship was

destroyed by a stormy sea. The discovery and wholesale destruction of her secret hideout

foreshadows her eventual loss of virginity. As Triton wields this instrument symbolic of

male power, it becomes illuminated, perhaps even implying heat. The illuminated trident

is somewhat reminiscent of the remarkable extensible light sabers utilized in Star Wars

for Oedipal father–son duels.

The ‘hot’ trident reappears near the end of the movie when Triton relents and agrees

to allow Ariel to leave his watery domain to join the world of humans on land. Still a

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mermaid, Ariel needs human legs and the requisite interstitial female genitals in order

to become Eric’s bride. Triton accomplishes this transformation with one ick of his

mighty trident. Poof! The mermaid’s tail disappears and is replaced by human legs. It

is the father who gives his daughter, his favorite daughter, the necessary sexual parts

which will allow her to marry Eric, and consummate the marriage properly. One may

recall that when Ariel returned ‘in love’ after her initial encounters with humans

(including Prince Eric), she presented a ower to her father. This blatant pre guration

of de oration is thus a de nite daughter–father matter. Just in case the audience should

miss this oral sign, it is immediately followed by Ariel’s plucking petals in a version

of the well-known divinatory custom ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ (Mieder, 1985).

Completion of this literal and symbolic de oration ritual ends with Ariel picking the last

petal exclaiming triumphantly ‘He loves me.’

The essential Electral nature of the entire plot is con rmed by the very last words of

the lm. After nally being kissed by Eric at the conclusion of the marriage ceremony,

Ariel embraces her father and whispers intimately, ‘I love you, Daddy.’ While smiling

tenderly at him, she slowly backs up and then blows him a kiss. The nal scene shows

Prince Eric and Ariel’s ship sailing off towards the arc of a rainbow, a rainbow

magically produced by father Triton with one sweep of his illuminated ‘hot’ trident. The

ship’s entrance into the semi-circular image is yet one more sign of consummation of the

marriage on the wedding night. Another such symbol is the French chef’s cutting the

white wedding cake into two halves with his cleaver. A white wedding cake is a standard

symbol of a virginal bride and the plunging of a knife (often nowadays a joint venture

involving the hands of both bride and groom) into the cake symbolizes the nuptial

de oration (Charsley, 1992, p. 126). In American wedding ritual, the knife poised for the

initial insertion into the usually round white cake is typically one of the principal

post-wedding photographic highlights. In the Disney lm, the bifurcation of the cake into

two halves could also represent in microcosm the successful transformation of Ariel’s

monolithic sh tail into two legs.

We can well imagine that readers hostile to psychoanalytic thought will say that they

saw Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ and that they never once thought of most, if any, of

the symbolic elements discussed above. Perhaps the Disney staff members who worked

on the lm might respond similarly. Disney lms are on the surface conspicuously

wholesome family entertainment with nary a hint of sexuality. Mickey and Minnie

Mouse never have sex; nor do Donald and Daisy Duck (Berland, 1982, pp. 96, 103). But

our analysis is concerned with the latent and not the manifest content of the ‘The Little

Mermaid.’ We would argue generally that Disney’s choice of plots for cartoon treatment

is almost certainly made without awareness of unconscious symbolic elements. Why

would Disney have chosen to make a movie, for example, about the masturbatory

rubbing of a magic lamp that produces a wish-granting genie? (Aladdin is Aarne–

Thompson tale type 561.) For that matter, the Electral plot has proven itself in earlier

successful Disney lms. ‘Snow White’ (Aarne–Thompson tale type 709) tells of a

wicked stepmother’s attempt to kill the heroine and there is a competition between them

as to who of the two is the most beautiful. Similarly, ‘Cinderella’ (Aarne–Thompson tale

type 510A) involves a girl’s struggle with a stepmother and in some versions (AT 510B)

a motif in which a father wants to marry his own daughter, a clear inverse projection of

a daughter’s wish to marry her own father. In Disney lms subsequent to ‘The Little

Mermaid’, the Electral component continues: ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (Aarne–Thompson

tale type 425C) and ‘Mulan’ both concern a father–daughter constellation in which the

daughter, against the father’s wishes, insists on imperiling herself to protect her father.

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L. Dundes and A. Dundes

Indeed, as ‘Pocahontas’ concludes, she elects to sacri ce her romantic relationship in

order to stay in her village and assist her father in maintaining peace.

Disney has found a sure- re formula for success, namely a cartoon-rendering of the

Electra Complex. We suggest that the ‘The Little Mermaid’ is just a modern version of

this tried and true plot, with male chauvinist patriarchal values superimposed upon it. A

sexy young girl who wears a shell bra which reveals more than it conceals (Bendix,

1993, p. 287; O’Brien, 1996, p. 173) is given female genitals by her father so that she

can marry a prince who has destroyed her rival mother surrogate by a heroic act of

penetration. So the girl enjoys the Electral fantasy of seeing a mother gure eliminated

and wedding the man her mother surrogate was about to marry, but at the same time the

power of the trident (and a ship’s prow) remains the exclusive property of males (Triton

and Eric).

The fact that ‘The Little Mermaid’ is readily available on videotape has greatly

increased the dissemination of this psychologically loaded narrative way beyond its

original movie-theater audience. Accordingly, this male-constructed Electral fantasy,

with its powerful embedded patriarchal overlay, is likely to continue to in uence the

emotional development of all the young girls who see it and identify with Ariel. At the

same time, it may also impact upon little boys. Although the story is certainly nominally

about a female mermaid (Johansen, 1996, p. 220), the recurring themes of castration and

the fear of the phallic female no doubt re ect the unconscious anxieties of the males

(Andersen and Disney writers) who created the story. In that light, Disney’s ‘The Little

Mermaid’ would appear to encapsulate critical emotional issues for both girls and boys.

This may serve to help explain the enormous popularity of such a unique male

construction of an Electral fantasy.

Correspondence: Lauren Dundes, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Western Maryland

College, 2

College

Hill,

Westminster,

21157–4390,

USA

(e-mail:

ldundes@wmdc.edu); Alan Dundes, Kroeber Hall, University of California, Berkeley,

Berkeley, CA 94707, USA.

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Re: Hans Christian Andersen

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:34:53 GMT

Okay, here's the other one. I'm having trouble getting the whole thing to paste in. Hopefully third try is the charm. Otherwise, I'll post in two parts....

Psychoanalytic Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2000

The Trident and the Fork: Disney’s

‘The Little Mermaid’ as a male construction

of an Electral fantasy

LAUREN DUNDES, Western Maryland College

ALAN DUNDES, University of California

Most of the tales written by Hans Christian Andersen were not taken from oral tradition.

Although he occasionally borrowed motifs from such tradition, the greater portion of his

so-called fairy tales were strictly literary creations. The distinguished Danish folklorist

Bengt Holbek claimed that of some 156 ‘fairy tales and stories’ published by Andersen,

‘only seven of them are manifestly taken from Danish oral tradition’ (Holbek, 1990,

p. 165), a number con rmed by Grönbech (1996, p. 221). On the other hand, Elias

Bredsdorff in his splendid biography of Andersen suggests that ‘nine tales were based

on folktales Andersen had heard’ (1975, p. 311). Whether the number is seven or nine,

there can be no question that the percentage of authentic traditional tales in Andersen’s

total corpus is small.

In the parlance of folkloristics, the academic study of folklore, such literary creations

are usually referred to as ‘Kunstmärchen’ as opposed to ‘Volksmärchen.’ There is a huge

body of such literary or art tales, many of which have become a staple in the canon of

children’s literature. One of Andersen’s literary tales that has received such hallowed

status is his classic ‘The Little Mermaid’ (1837). In one of his letters, Andersen

acknowledged proudly that whereas his rst tales were ‘mostly old ones’ he had ‘heard

as a child,’ the later ones that were his ‘own creations such as “The Little

Mermaid” … were the most popular’ (Bredsdorff, 1975, p. 165).

In ‘The Little Mermaid,’ Andersen utilizes two major folklore motifs. The rst is the

very gure of the mermaid, a young girl whose lower parts consist of a substantial sh’s

tail. The gure is listed in the six-volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature as ‘Motif B81.

Mermaid. Woman with tail of sh. Lives in sea.’ The mermaid is not universal—no

motif, for that matter, is universal in the sense of existing among all peoples past and

present. It is not found in native North and South America, for example. There are many

accounts of female supernatural creatures inhabiting watery domains (Moog, 1987;

Róheim, 1948), but most of them do not refer to demonic beings with sh-like lower

extremities. Although not universal, the mermaid or some early form thereof is well

attested in classical antiquity (Deonna, 1928; Faral, 1953; Shepard, 1940) and is

signi cantly represented in ancient, medieval (Almendral Oppermann, 1992; Broendsted,

1965; Goodman, 1983; Leclercq-Marx, 1997) and modern (Liberati, 1995) art.

There is some confusion of the mermaid gure with the siren (Marót, 1958;

Rachewiltz, 1987) and apparently the evolution of the mermaid from the siren involved

a shift from ornithomorphic to pisciform features. Just when the siren lost her bird-like

1460-8952 Print/1470-1049 On-line/00/020117-14

2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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L. Dundes and A. Dundes

appearance and obtained her sh-tail to become the ‘modern’ mermaid is in dispute

(Benwell and Waugh, 1961, p. 48; Burnell, 1949, p. 201). One authority claims that the

earliest mention of a sh-tailed siren occurred around the turn of the 8th century

(Phillpotts, 1980, p. 32), while another indicates the 6th century (Touchefeu-Meynier,

1962, p. 450). There have been numerous alleged sightings of mermaids (Waugh, 1960)

as well as repeated attempts to display fake mermaid specimens in circus freak shows

(Bondeson, 1999, pp. 36–63). Though few now believe in the existence of actual

mermaids—one scienti c parody deplores the absence of mermaid skeletons, which

might have been used as an index of mermaid population statistics (Banse, 1990,

p. 151)—the popularity of the mermaid gure continues unabated in modern literature

(Roebling, 1991), movies (Bouillet, 1958), as well as in jokes and cartoons (Johnson,

1987).

The second motif as identi ed in the standard international Motif-Index of Folk-Litera-

ture mentioned above is K1911. The false bride (substituted bride). An impostor takes

the wife’s place without the husband’s knowledge. This second motif, though critical for

an understanding of the plot of ‘The Little Mermaid’ has not received much attention by

students of either Andersen’s 1837 story or Disney’s 1989 feature-length cartoon

adaptation. In Andersen’s narrative, the mermaid saves the prince from drowning in a

shipwreck caused by a storm. But later having forfeited her voice (by having her tongue

cut out) to the sea witch in exchange for having her sh tail replaced by human legs, she

is unable to reveal her identity to the prince. The prince mistakenly believes the princess

of a neighboring kingdom was the one who had saved him. In the Disney version, it is

Ursula, the sea witch, who transforms herself into a beautiful young woman and who,

armed with the mermaid Ariel’s exquisite voice, persuades Prince Eric that it was she

who saved him thereby causing him to seek to marry her. (The seductive power of

Ariel’s singing voice is an echo of the original siren gure.) As we shall see, the failure

to take account of the false or substituted bride motif has greatly impeded the analysis

of the underlying symbolic content of Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid.’

The various interpretative essays devoted to the Disney lm include structural

(Thomsen, 1990), moralistic (Hastings, 1993), feminist (O’Brien, 1996; Trites, 1990–

1991), and psychoanalytic (Soracco, 1990; Tseëlon, 1995) approaches among others

(Nybo, 1990). Folkloristic treatments (Bendix, 1993; Ingwersen and Ingwersen, 1990)

emphasize Disney’s utilization of folktale formulas, e.g. the traditional happy ending.

Not all discussions of Disney’s transformation of Andersen’s plot are equally sophis-

ticated. Tseëlon, for instance, argues that the Disney version has changed the character

of the story by turning ‘the myth into a folktale’ (1995, p. 1026). Calling Andersen’s

story a ‘myth’ reveals a serious error in genre identi cation. A myth, de ned in concrete

technical terms, is a traditional sacred narrative explaining how the earth and humankind

came to be in their present form. Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ is not a traditional

narrative; it is mostly a literary product of his creative imagination. It is not sacred as

it does not explain how the earth and humankind came to be in their present form.

Tseelon’s claim that it is a myth is based upon her mistaken notion that ‘a myth is a story

which involves supernatural beings’ (1995, p. 1018), but the vast majority of stories

involving supernatural beings (such as fairies, ghosts, vampires—and mermaids) are

legends. A legend is a narrative told as true and set in the post-creation world.

Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ would thus be more correctly classi ed as a ‘literary

legend.’

It is true that the Disney transform of Andersen’s literary legend has elements of a

folktale, but it would be more accurate to specify the particular kind of folktale. Folktales

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Male Construction of an Electral Fantasy

119

are ctional narratives and they include animal tales, cumulative and other formula tales,

and jokes. The particular form of folktale relevant to the Disney lm is the so-called

magic or wonder tale (misleadingly labeled in English as ‘fairy tale’). In the standard

canonical index of Indo-European folktales, tales of magic or fairy tales are limited to

Aarne–Thompson tale types 300–749 (Aarne and Thompson, 1961, pp. 88–254). There

are very few fairies found in fairy tales and most accounts of fairies are told as true and

would accordingly therefore be more appropriately classi ed as legends, not folktales.

One of the characteristics of fairy tales is that they typically end with a marriage as the

Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp so brilliantly demonstrated in his pathbreaking

Morphology of the Folktale, rst published in 1928. The nal function of the sequence

of 31 functions or units of plot action identi ed by Propp in his corpus of 100 Russian

fairy tales is labeled ‘Wedding’ (1968, p. 63).

In Andersen’s original story, the little mermaid does not marry the handsome prince

and this sad story of unrequited or unful lled heterosexual love has been linked to

Andersen’s own personal life (Bredsdorff, 1975, pp. 280–282, 348; Golden, 1998,

p. 100; Grif th, 1984; Lederer, 1986, pp. 169–172) and what appear in retrospect to be

his latent homosexual tendencies. As a small boy, Andersen played with dolls even to

the extent of sewing dresses for them; as a youth he studied brie y at the Royal Ballet

in Copenhagen in an abortive attempt to become a ballet dancer; one of his principal

life-long hobbies was making amusing paper cut-outs; never married, he appears to have

had a long-standing ‘crush’ on his patron Jonas Collin’s son Edvard to whom he wrote

many ‘love’ letters; and as an old man, he invariably invited one of Jonas Collin’s young

grandsons to accompany him on his many travels abroad (Bredsdorff, 1975, pp. 19, 22,

85, 303). The question of whether or not Andersen was a repressed homosexual remains

moot, but it has been the subject of much debate (Hansen, 1901; Helweg, 1927, 1929;

Lederer, 1986; Ringblom, 1997; von Rosen, 1978–1981). Certainly, Andersen seems to

have identi ed with his mermaid creation. As one critic phrased it, Andersen ‘is the little

mermaid, the outsider who came from the depths and was never really accepted in the

new world into which he moved’ and Andersen himself confessed that the story was one

of only two of all his works that moved him deeply while writing it (Bredsdorff, 1975,

pp. 275, 125).

In any case, Andersen is given credit or rather blame for transforming the traditional

seductive, aggressive mermaid gure into a passive self-effacing heroine who sacri ces

her own goals and ful llment for the sake of the happiness of an unattainable male

prince (Golden, 1998, p. 99; Stuby, 1992, p. 109). A female psychiatrist begins her book

entitled Sweet Suffering: Woman as Victim with a report of one of her patient’s rst

analytic sessions in which the patient recounted the story of Andersen’s ‘The Little

Mermaid.’ The psychiatrist comments: ‘This story is a nearly perfect parable of

masochism, for it expresses the self-punishment, the submission to another, and the sense

of suffering that lie at the heart of masochistic behavior’ (Shainess, 1984, pp. 1–2). It is

perfectly true that the pre-Andersen mermaid was a very different creature, a danger-

ously seductive combination of voluptuousness and voracity. One description may stand

for many. In 1601, a Portuguese priest living in Brazil wrote the following vivid account

of ‘Mermen, or men of the Sea’:

The female are like women, they have long haire and are beautiful … In Port

Secure are some seene, which have killed some Indians alreadie, the manner

of their killing is to embrace themselves with the person, so strongly, kissing

and grasping it hard to it selfe, that they crush it in pieces remaining whole,

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L. Dundes and A. Dundes

and when they perceive it dead, they give some sighings in shew of sorrow,

and letting them goe they runne away, and if they carrie any they eate only the

eies, the nose, the points of the ngers and toes, and privie members, and so

ordinarily they are found on the sands with these things missing. (Tristaon

1601, p. 1315)

In Disney’s adaptation of Andersen’s story of a passive mermaid, the addition of the

nal wedding scene has further incurred the wrath of feminists who see it as an insidious

continuation of a patriarchal conspiracy to keep women enslaved. The Little Mermaid is

initially controlled by her father Triton, the king of the sea, who eventually hands her

over to her husband Prince Eric. Never really free, Ariel is allowed only to transfer her

allegiance and abode from one male to another. (The patronymic tradition in Western

culture supports this metaphorically as a woman is expected to exchange her original

father’s last name for that of her husband. Also American wedding ritual typically

requires the father—not the mother—to escort his daughter–bride down the church aisle

to formally give her away to the groom.) Moreover, the fact that Ariel is unable to speak

means that she is quite literally ‘dumb.’ Feminists feel, with some justi cation, that this

further con rms the male chauvinist ideal of a woman who is beautiful but dumb, in this

case not just unintelligent, but mute (Golden, 1998, p. 140; Tseëlon, 1995, p. 1022).

Feminists further complain, again with good reason, that Disney has continued the

tradition begun by Andersen by making the alleged ‘heroine’ of his lm a very passive

creature who relies on the assistance of a number of animal allies, all of whom are male.

She does not kill the evil sea witch Ursula (the only powerful female portrayed); Prince

Eric does so (cf. O’Brien, 1996, p. 173; Trites, 1990–1991, pp. 150–151). She can

remain human and marry Eric, not by kissing him, but by inducing him to kiss her. Even

in Andersen’s story, the mermaid in search of a soul can obtain one only if the prince

allows his soul to ‘ ow’ into her body—the receiving body aperture is not indicated in

this sublimated image of coitus (Dahlerup, 1990, p. 420). In contrast, in true oral fairy

tales, the heroine is the active agent. So in Hansel and Gretel (the very naming of this

tale re ects a male bias … It is Gretel’s story, not Hansel’s), Gretel kills the witch, a

double of her mother who was the original instigator of the plot to dispose of the

children by abandoning them in the woods. (It was only after the fourth edition of the

Kinder- und Hausmärchen that the Grimm brothers changed the gure of the mother to

‘stepmother’ no doubt in an effort to avoid further besmirching the image of motherhood

in traditional German culture.) When men retell women’s tales, the tales are often altered

to conform to male ideology. So in the oral versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the

heroine escapes from the wolf (or tigress in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean versions)

by her own cleverness and ingenuity. This is not the case in the male retellings of the

tale. In the Perrault version, she is eaten up by the wolf and also in the Grimm version,

where unable to rescue herself, she must await a passing male huntsman to save her (cf.

Zipes, 1993, pp. 29, 79). In this context, it is not totally unexpected that the Disney

version of ‘The Little Mermaid’ continues the passive female tradition, even if this is

clearly disappointing to feminist critics. On the other hand, Ariel does defy her

controlling father by visiting humans and in her unrelenting single-minded quest to win

the love of Prince Eric.

What is most striking about the Disney adaptation of Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’

is the remarkable series of symbolic representations of a young girl’s coming of age and

her successful, if conventional, resolution of the Electra Complex. Several studies of the

Andersen story have concentrated on the process of individuation (Engel, 1988; Mäeen-

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Male Construction of an Electral Fantasy

121

pää-Reenkola, 1989; for another Jungian study of the story, see Nyborg, 1962, pp. 68–88

and the polemic dialogue it generated: Baggesen, 1967a, b; Nyborg, 1967). It was

actually Jung who rst proposed the term ‘Electra Complex’ for the female counterpart

of the Oedipus Complex in a series of lectures on psychoanalysis that he presented at

the Fordham University medical school in September of 1912. Speaking about the

Oedipus Complex, he said, ‘The con ict takes on a more masculine and therefore more

typical form in a son, whereas a daughter develops a speci c liking for the father, with

a correspondingly jealous attitude towards the mother. We could call this the Electra

complex’ (Jung, 1975, p. 72). The fact that it was Jung who coined the term may explain

in part why Freud opposed its adoption, preferring instead to employ the label ‘Oedipus

complex’ for both son–mother and daughter–father constellations: ‘I do not see any

advance or gain in the introduction of the term “Electra complex”, and do not advocate

its use’ (1920, p. 155, n. 1). On the other hand, from a feminist perspective, it seems

inappropriate to use a male-centered folktale—Oedipus is tale type 931 in the standard

index of European folktales; see Aarne and Stith Thompson, 1961)—to describe a female

psychological con guration. However, Freud’s succinct description of the complex in his

lecture on ‘Femininity’ in his 1932 New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis

would certainly seem to be applicable to Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’: ‘ … in the

Oedipus situation the girl’s father has become her love-object, and we expect that in the

normal course of development she will nd her way from this paternal object to her nal

choice of an object’ (1932, pp. 118–119). Ariel must shift from loving her father to

loving her husband-to-be Eric.

Ariel’s mermaid image itself contains a basic paradox. As a young girl, she is quite

literally divided. Her lower ‘human’ half is denied. This division is paralleled by the

dichotomy between the lower world, under the sea, and the upper world where human

libido is permitted to function. Ariel’s father, King Triton, assumes she will marry a

merman who, like other merfolk, lacks genitals, whereby permanent virginity may be

guaranteed. (It remains a mystery as to exactly how mer-people manage to reproduce.)

As Dorothy Dinnerstein correctly observed in writing in 1967 about Andersen’s story,

the mermaid’s renunciation of her tail for human legs ‘means sudden human-sexual

availability’ (1967, p. 106). (It is interesting in this connection that inasmuch as sh are

apodal, it is their caudal n or their ‘tail’ which replaces the normal female lower limbs

in mermaid anatomy. Ariel must lose her ‘tail’ to become human.) On the other hand,

the mermaid has to pay a price for gaining human sexual parts. Through a curious form

of upward displacement, she is obliged to let the sea witch cut out her tongue. In other

words, she is forced to give up her upper part in order to have her lower part. In the

Disney version, this is softened so that she loses only her voice. The voice, however, is

also a sexual component as it is what attracts Eric in the rst place. Dinnerstein interprets

the tongueless mouth as the male perception of the woman as a mutilated (castrated?)

male. She terms it a horrible wound, a nightmare vagina, ‘an empty hole created by

excision’ (1967, p. 108). Other critics also see the cutting out of the mermaid’s tongue

as a form of castration (Consoli, 1974, p. 87, 1980, p. 80; Duve, 1967, p. 141; Johansen,

1996, pp. 219–220; Soracco, 1990, p. 408; Tseëlon, 1995, p. 1023). This castratory

incident should, however, be viewed in the total context of the tale where it can be seen

as part of a larger struggle between males and females as to who shall nally possess

power as symbolized by a phallus.

The idea that a mermaid is to be destroyed or transformed is signaled early in the

Disney lm. Eric’s ship has on the cutwater of its prow a mermaid gurehead. When he

explains to his counselor Grimsby that he expects to fall in love one day as if struck by

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L. Dundes and A. Dundes

lightning, through the magic of his words and the ‘omnipotence of thought’, lightning

suddenly strikes the ship and the mermaid gurehead is roughly dislodged from its

privileged position on the bow. The resulting jagged edge of the ship will play an

important role in the denouement of the plot later on.

Also early in the lm, Ariel is seen exploring the interior of a sunken ship where she

is searching for human artifacts to add to her collection of such objects which she stores

in a secret place. Remembering that ships are commonly regarded as female (and

referred to by means of female pronouns), it is of symbolic signi cance that she is

investigating the interior of a ship. While rummaging about, Ariel is suddenly threatened

by a hostile shark. She is saved only when the shark in an attempt to attack her (and her

animal companion) gets his head caught in the upper ring portion of an anchor. (The ring

with its descending shank and horizontal stock clearly suggest the standard symbol for

a female, commonly referred to as Venus’ hand mirror.) The phallic shark is thus

rendered harmless and impotent by being tightly wedged in a female enclosure.

In the ship, Ariel does discover several objects, one of which is a fork. She does not

know what it is for and when she subsequently asks a friendly but befuddled seagull

about it, he informs her that it is a kind of comb. Later on land while at dinner with

Prince Eric, Ariel makes a fool of herself by attempting to comb her hair at the table

using a fork. The fork may be contrasted with the trident possessed by her father Triton,

the king of the sea. The trident is also a kind of fork but it is much larger and endowed

with magical power. Both Ariel’s fork and Triton’s trident are trifurcated (whereas the

dinner fork of Prince Eric’s advisor Grimsby has four tines). The fork is signi cant in

terms of both its form and its size. Its form includes tines located at its bottom. Tines

may perhaps suggest the bifurcation of the mermaid’s tail into human legs. Ariel must

learn to use a fork properly just as she must learn to walk on two legs. Her placing of

the fork in her hair could allude to her grappling with her newly found sexual parts

(which include pubic hair) created by the bifurcation. The seagull advising Ariel had

mistakenly informed her that the fork was a ‘dingle-hopper,’ a curious seemingly

nonsensical word which may or may not allude to the slang term ‘dingle’ meaning penis

(Spears, 1990, p. 51) wherein the sexual implications of learning to handle a ‘penis’

hopper, that is, someone who hops on a penis, would be obvious.

The size of the fork (when compared to the trident) emphasizes the differential

proportions of adult and child. Both Triton and the villainous sea witch Ursula are huge

gures whereas Ariel is small. The adjectival pre x ‘Little’ placed before ‘Mermaid’

serves to infantilize Ariel. This is similar to the same device in the name of ‘Little’ Red

Riding Hood. (In French, it is Le Petit Chaperon Rouge and in German the suf x -chen

signifying diminutive in Rotkäppchen accomplishes the same result.) Of course, if we

remember that fairy tales are always told from the child’s perspective, then giants are

nothing more than the child’s perception of adults. Relativistically speaking, the child

does not see him or herself as small but rather adults are perceived as larger versions of

the observing child.

Ariel’s initial family situation is revealing. Her mother is absent (Leadbeater and

Wilson, 1993, p. 472) and we are told nothing about her. King Triton lives with his six

daughters of which Ariel is the youngest and obviously his favorite. In female-centered

fairy tales, the mother is often absent or killed thereby leaving the father and daughter

alone. This is parallel to male-centered fairy tales, where it is the father who is absent.

An example would be ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ where Jack lives alone with his mother.

Following adventures in which Jack successfully hides in the giant’s wife’s oven, he kills

the giant by cutting down a huge stalk with an ax handed to him by his mother with

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123

whom he ends up living happily ever after (Róheim, 1953, pp. 358–359). As male-

centered fairy tales present Oedipal plots where sons castrate or kill fathers, so

female-centered fairy tales present Electral plots where daughters triumph over mothers

or mother surrogates such as witches or wicked stepmothers.

In Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid,’ the mother substitute to be defeated is clearly

Ursula, the sea witch (Leadbeater and Wilson, 1993, pp. 477, 478). When Ariel feels

thwarted by her father in her quest to pursue Prince Eric, she goes behind her father’s

back, turning to the mother substitute for assistance, just as children often turn to the

other parent when the rst one refuses to help. In the Electra Complex, the daughter

competes with her mother for the attention (love) of her father. According to Freud’s

Oedipal theory, a girl wants to marry her father or a substitute for him just as a boy

wants to marry his mother or a substitute for her. The same-sex struggle may be

transferred to the parental substitute or parent surrogate. In the case of Disney’s ‘The

Little Mermaid’, Ursula competes with Ariel for the prized Prince Eric. It is Ursula, the

mother gure, who is the false or substitute bride. She is the older mother who envies

her young daughter’s beauty. She wants to be young and attractive like her daughter.

Through magic, she succeeds in transforming herself into a beautiful young woman and

with the aid of Ariel’s voice that she has obtained, she is able to dupe Eric into agreeing

to marry her instead of Ariel.

Ursula is a gross and grotesque caricature of a femme fatale, another aspect of the

original siren gure and her seductive powers are considerable. At one point near the end

of the movie, having gained possession of Triton’s trident, she stirs up the waters

suf ciently so as to raise Eric’s sunken ship from the bottom of the sea to the surface,

a notable symbolic resurrection. This eventually leads to Ursula’s downfall as Eric deftly

uses the jagged prow of his ship to ram Ursula and this frontal attack succeeds in

penetrating Ursula suf ciently to destroy her. As she meets her death, images of

cemeterial crosses formed from masts of the ship are prominent in the background. The

phallic nature of Eric’s improvised weapon has been recognized by several critics

(Leadbeater and Wilson, 1993, p. 475; Trites, 1990–1991, p. 150). A more overt and less

symbolic testament to Ursula’s feminine charms lies in a very controversial, if brief,

moment in the lm. On board ship when Eric is about to marry Ursula (before the

ceremony is interrupted at the last minute by Ariel’s various animal helpers), the minister

performing the marriage service is depicted as having an erection barely concealed by

his pants. Since he is male, his arousal is presumably caused by the sexual allure of

Ursula. This incident is so brief that it is dif cult to see without stopping the lm.

Perhaps it was meant to be an inside joke by the Disney studio personnel who worked

on the lm although Disney’s response was that some viewers misinterpreted a perfectly

innocuous movement of the minister’s knee. Another possible inside joke consists of a

seemingly overtly penile-shaped turret centrally located on the castle depicted on the

illustrated case cover of the original videocassette. Disney’s apparent response was to

replace this illustration on the cover of later releases of the video, totally removing all

traces of a castle.

Ursula whose name derives from Ursa or bear—is there a play on a sexually mature

woman’s ability to ‘bear’ children?—has the identity of an octopus. The word octopus

consists of ‘octo’ meaning ‘eight’ and ‘pus’ meaning foot. (The latter is, of course, the

same morpheme contained in the name of Oedipus which means literally ‘swollen foot’

or symbolically an erection.) Trites suggests that ‘Ursula seems to be an inverse Medusa

gure. The snake-like appendages also make Ursula a perversion of femininity; her

tentacles could be interpreted as eight phalluses’ (1990–1991, p. 150). Her two male pet

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L. Dundes and A. Dundes

eels, Flotsam and Jetsam, who have visible sharp teeth and to whom she is very attached,

also have phallic signi cance (cf. Otero, 1996, p. 270). But it turns out that Ursula’s

‘penis envy’ is not satis ed by her eight feet. Instead, she ‘covets the powers of the male

phallus’ as is suggested when she ‘lovingly caresses Triton’s trident while he is holding

it’ stroking one of the tines with her ngers (Trites, 1990–1991, p. 150). It turns out that

Ursula’s agenda includes more than competing with Ariel for Eric. She is also engaged

in a battle of the sexes with Triton.

When Ariel fails to get Eric to kiss her within the prescribed three-day period, she

must, according to the legally binding contract she signed with Ursula, revert to being

a mermaid. Her father Triton, realizing the sincerity of Ariel’s love for Eric, decides to

sacri ce himself for her sake and to take her place in the contract. Ursula is delighted

as apparently she was more interested in unmanning Triton than in defeating Ariel.

Triton reluctantly uses his trident to seal an agreement to trade places with Ariel. He then

Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2001

The Little Mermaid: Hans Christian Andersen’s

Feminine Identification

Robert W. Meyers

1,2,3

While verbally transmitted fairy tales express universal human concerns, the

literary fairy tale, the written creation of an individual author, permits a psy-

chodynamic understanding of the writer. The little mermaid’s willingness to

undergo the pain and mutilation involved in the loss of both her tail and was

voice in order to become a mortal and marry a prince has been regarded as il-

lustrating problems in female sexual development. However, a review of Hans

Christian Andersen’s biographical data indicates that the story also represents

his unconscious homosexual conflicts and supports Freud’s concept of the role

of castration anxiety in the negative Oedipus complex.

KEY WORDS: Hans Christian Andersen; literary fairy tales; negative Oedipus complex.

This paper on applied psychoanalysis is an outgrowth of a course on

fairy tales that I took several years ago.

Various methods have been used to study fairy tales, beginning in the

early years of the last century with the work of what is called the Finnish

school. These investigators laboriously collected folk tales from all over the

world and then classified the basic tale types and their variants; this is called

the historical-geographic approach. One of the early studies of this group

listed nearly two thousand tale types. With this method one can study the

origin of these tales, their dissemination, and the transformations that occur

as the result of cultural conditions in a specific time and place. With this data

asabasis,therehavebeenotherapproaches;feministshaveidentifiedgender

issues and Marxists have studied these stories in terms of power and class.

St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute.

St. Louis University School of Medicine.

Correspondence should be directed to Robert W. Meyers, M.D., 6364 Alexander Dr., St. Louis,

MO 63105.

149

1521-1401/01/0400-0149$19.50/0

2001 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

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Meyers

Another method which has been very useful and widely applied is the

psychoanalytic approach, probably best exemplified by Bettelheim’s The

Uses of Enchantment (1975). It is his belief that fairy tales help children

cope with psychological problems of growing up and integrating their per-

sonalities. Of course, this can backfire; I remember how frightened I was as

a child by Bluebeard and how sad I felt after reading The Little Match Girl.

By investigating stories such as Perrault’s or Grimms’ fairy tales, many of

which had been transmitted orally from one generation to the next, one can

identify universal human concerns also found by Freud in the analysis of

neurotic patients. Two examples of such concerns are sexual awakening in

the transition from puberty to adolescence in Sleeping Beauty and Oedipal

rivalry in Snow White. This approach is even more useful for literary fairy

tales, in which we not only have the text to interpret, but may also have some

biographical data about the author. A literary fairy tale, a popular genre in

the nineteenth century, is a written story, the creation of an individual au-

thor, which uses the structure of a fairy tale, particularly the use of magic

and the supernatural.

The focus of this paper is Hans Christian Andersen’s well known and

beloved fairy tale, The Little Mermaid (1837). In the last 20 years it has been

the subject of a number of psychoanalytic papers. Most of the authors see

this tale as illustrating problems in female sexual development. Although I

agree with these conclusions, it is my contention that, in addition, this story

demonstrates Andersen’s unconscious homosexual conflicts. To support this

hypothesis, I shall summarize the story, then discuss the pertinent analytic

literature on sexual development and finally, examine the biographical ma-

terial to gain an understanding of Andersen’s own sexual development and

to learn what was occurring in his life at the time he wrote this story.

THE LITTLE MERMAID

The little mermaid lived at the bottom of the sea with her father, the sea

king, her grandmother and her five older sisters. She was the most beautiful

of all and had the loveliest voice in the sea or on earth. When each sister

became fifteen, she was allowed to rise to the surface of the sea to observe

the world of humans. After each of the older sisters was free to do this, they

were content to return to their life at the bottom of the sea. When it was

time for the youngest to go, her grandmother attached eight oysters to her

fishtail in token of her high rank. The mermaid said that it hurt, but her

grandmother replied, “Yes, pride must suffer pain.” When she rose to the

surface she saw a ship carrying a prince who was celebrating his sixteenth

birthday and she fell in love with him. After the party a violent storm arose,

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151

causing the ship to capsize. The prince, who was unconscious, would have

drowned had not the mermaid saved him. She took him to the shore near

a convent and left him on the beach when others approached. A young girl

appeared while he was awaking and he believed it was she who had saved

him.

After the mermaid returned to her home, she thought of nothing but the

prince and the world above. From her grandmother she learned that humans

lived a shorter life than the sea people, but that they had an immortal soul,

in contrast to the sea people who lived for three hundred years and then

became foam in the sea. The mermaid wished to become a human and gain

an immortal soul. Her grandmother told her that could only happen if a

human loved her; but that was impossible, since humans thought a fishtail

was ugly.

The mermaid was determined to marry the prince and get a soul, so she

went to the sea witch for help. The witch told her that she could give her a

potion which would shrivel up her tail and give her legs, but it would seem

as if she were cut by a sharp sword. Every step would feel like walking on

sharp pins and her feet would bleed, Further, if the prince married someone

else, she would die and become foam on the water. Finally as payment for

this, she must give the witch her tongue. The mermaid agreed and the witch

cut off her tongue so that she could no longer speak or sing.

The mermaid went to the prince’s castle and drank the potion. It seemed

as if a two-edged sword went through her body. She fainted; when she awoke

the prince was watching her and she realized she now had legs. She had no

clothes, so she covered herself with her hair. The prince took her with him

to live in the castle and be his companion; she had permission to sleep on

a cushion before his door. What the witch had predicted about the pain on

walking was true, but the mermaid bore it gladly and when she climbed with

him in the mountains, her feet bled. When she danced, she was the loveliest

dancer of all, even though it seemed as if she were treading on knives.

The prince loved her as if she were a child, but did not consider marrying

her,andofcourseshecouldnotspeaktohimandtellhimofherfeelings.They

went on a trip to a neighboring kingdom to meet a princess, a prospective

bride. It so happened that the princess was the girl who found him on the

beach and whom he had mistakenly thought was his rescuer. He immediately

fell in love with her and married her. On the honeymoon voyage home, the

mermaid’s sisters came to the surface next to the ship. Their long hair had

been cut off. They told the mermaid that they had given their hair to the

witch, who promised to help them so she would not die. They gave her a

knife provided by the witch and told her she must plunge it into the prince’s

heart. When his blood fell upon her feet she would become a mermaid again.

However, she could not bring herself to do it; she flung the knife into the

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Meyers

sea and then jumped into the water herself, expecting to dissolve into foam.

Instead, she became a daughter of the air and was told by other spirits that

she could gain an immortal soul after three hundred years. She was also told

that when she sees a good child and smiles, the time is shortened by a year,

but when she sees a naughty child, for every tear she sheds, a day is added.

PSYCHOANALYTIC LITERATURE

Since most of the articles about The Little Mermaid deal with issues of

female sexuality, I shall discuss them first. According to classical Freudian

theory, the little girl sees herself as no different than a boy. Her mother is her

primary love object; when she first becomes aware of Oedipal desires, she

wants to get mother with a child or bear mother one, at which point father

is seen as a rival. This a continuation of her preoedipal relationship with her

mother. What changes this is the discovery by the girl that she does not have

a penis, for which she blames her mother. This causes her to turn to her father

for, initially, a penis and then later a child. In other words, penis envy drives

her into the positive Oedipus complex where she is a rival to her mother

and becomes feminine. This view of female development (Freud 1925) has

been challenged almost since the time it was first presented, by analysts as

well those outside the field, especially feminists. Other factors that have been

found to be important in determining female development are: the nature of

the relationship with each of the parents, as well as the relationship between

the parents; maternal depression; separation issues with the mother; gender

preferences of the parents; concerns about sibling rivalry; innate biological

factors; and the opportunities that a culture permits women to have.

One factor on which most investigators agree is that the suppression

of women’s aggressiveness which occurs constitutionally and is imposed

on them socially favors the development of powerful masochistic impulses

(Freud 1933). The association of pain, suffering and sexuality is not exclu-

sively a feminine trait; e.g., Muslim boys must undergo ritual circumcision

in the second half of the first decade of life and some men become involved

in bizarre masochistic perversions with a dominatrix. However, masochistic

behavior occurs much more frequently in females. Biologically, there is the

discomfort of menstruation and the pain of childbirth (Eve’s punishment

for having eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge) and culturally, the

range is from the discomfort of an adolescent girl’s wearing high heels (re-

call the mermaid’s pain when her grandmother attached oysters to her tail),

to Chinese footbinding, to the mutilation of female circumcision.

What to me is the most striking about The Little Mermaid is the pain

and suffering she is willing to endure, from the incident with the oysters, to

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her willingness to sacrifice her voice and to tolerate the pain and bleeding

associated with having legs, and, finally, to sacrifice her life when the prince

marries another woman. Dinnerstein (1967) sees the mermaid as the mani-

festation of Girl, which occurs in the special situation of Andersen’s world,

but to some degree still pertains in our world. She sees a metamorphosis

in three crucial images in the story: the mermaid’s renunciation of her tail

for human legs, the sacrifice of her tongue as a condition for acquiring legs

and her quest for immortality through marriage to the prince. Each of these

images has contradictory aspects. The first represents a girl’s movement to-

ward adult competence and freedom, but at the same time it means sexual

availability and an assault on the girl’s sense of liberty and personal invio-

lability. The second represents her inscrutability and fascination, but it also

signifies the relinquishment of her right to be heard, the loss of her creativity

and the wound of castration. The third image means that a girl can only

achieve immortality through a man, through procreativity. If a man does not

choose her, she can still serve him and be responsible for children. However,

by not killing the prince she can still achieve full human status or, at least,

a handicapped version of it through independent, personally characteristic

action (becoming a daughter of the air).

Cohen (1994) emphasized the moral theme in Andersen’s work. She

addressed three tales: The Little Girl Who Trod on a Loaf, The Red Shoes,

and The Little Mermaid. In each of these stories, girls were transformed

into angels. In the first two, girls are punished for their vanity, then are con-

trite and eventually become angels. She sees these three stories as tragic;

she does not see these girls as developing into adulthood, but rather re-

treating into death and an asexual angelic idealized maternal image. The

little mermaid becomes a “daughter of the air,” whose happiness is linked

to the goodness of children. Tseelon (1995) reads The Little Mermaid as a

creation myth and a metaphor for woman’s condition in patriarchy; her ap-

proach is Lacanian. She conceptualizes castration as a series of separations

which include birth, growing up, desire and death. This fairy tale represents

the female condition in patriarchy structured around a particular castration

of tongue and voice. The mermaid epitomizes the female predicament in

western culture; she is rendered socially mute.

Turning to sexual development in the male, the picture is ostensibly

much clearer. According to Freud (1924), somewhere between the ages of

three to five the boy wishes to possess his mother and to displace his father.

These wishes are accompanied by vague erotic desires toward his mother,

associated with infantile masturbation. This is the positive Oedipus complex,

which continues until it is ended by the threat of castration. The threat occurs

when the boy observes that females do not possess a penis and he thinks this

could happen to him; awareness of menstruation strengthens this conclusion.

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Meyers

In the face of this threat the boy relinquishes this aspect of his relationship

with his mother, identifies with his father and enters the latency phase. It

is only in puberty that erotic desires return and these are directed toward

other females.

However, in addition to the positive Oedipus complex there is a neg-

ative one (Freud 1923), which occurs in all boys to some extent. In the

negative complex the boy develops a feminine attitude toward his father

and jealousy and hostility toward his mother. Freud thought that what de-

termined the outcome, a predominantly masculine or feminine identifica-

tion, is the degree of innate bisexuality present in everyone; he attributed

much more to genetic disposition than most people believe. The etiology

of homosexuality is still uncertain, but the prevailing opinion today is that

it is a biological variant unrelated to psychic conflict in most situations.

Freud postulated that in the positive Oedipus complex, the boy represses

his aggressiveness toward his father and his attraction to his mother be-

cause of the danger of castration by his father. In the negative complex

the boy represses his love for his father, because to have a relation like

that presupposes the sacrifice of his genitals (Freud 1918, 1926). Freud de-

scribed other mechanisms in the development of homosexuality, besides

castration anxiety: repressed masculine competitiveness (1922); narcissistic

object choice, where the boy identifies with his mother and takes himself

as the sexual object; and retention of the erotic significance of the anal

zone (1905).

It is my opinion that Andersen had a strong unconscious feminine iden-

tification which had to be repressed because his masculine identity would

not tolerate it. I suggest that Andersen identified with the mermaid and that

the tale represents his unconscious wishes and conflicts. In order for the boy

in the negative Oedipus complex to be loved like a woman, he must first

undergo castration. To become a mortal the mermaid has to lose her tail

and acquire legs, which means that every step she takes is accompanied with

pain and bleeding. Further, she loses her voice by having her tongue cut out.

These are very graphic representations of castration.

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA

In this section I shall review in some detail Andersen’s background and

early development, briefly sketch his career, describe his personality and

focus on what is known about his adult sexuality.

Four biographies of Hans Christian Andersen were reviewed: Toksvig

(1934), Book (1962), Spink (1972) and Bredsdorff (1975); their assessments

of Andersen were quite similar.

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Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark in 1805, the only child of an

unsuccessful cobbler and an almost illiterate, superstitious washerwoman,

who was 15 years older than her husband. When she was older she became

an alcoholic. She had an illegitimate daughter six years earlier; apparently

the girl lived with her maternal grandmother and Andersen had almost

nothing to do with her. His mother was one of three illegitimate daughters,

each with different fathers, and his grandmother was also illegitimate. An

estrangedhalf-sisterofhismotherwasamadaminabrothelinCopenhagen.

His paternal grandfather was chronically insane; he wandered about the

area, but apparently was harmless. Andersen recalled speaking to him only

once. His paternal grandmother, to whom he was devoted, claimed that her

grandmother was a noblewoman and that she and her husband had been

well-to-do farmers before they lost their money. Neither of these stories

were true. His father was an intelligent man with an unusual amount of self-

education; he was devoted to his son and insisted that the boy must never be

forced to do something he did not like. When Andersen was seven his father

enlisted in the Danish army to seek his fortune. Two years later he returned

in ill health and died two years after that.

He was a precocious child, who was indulged by his mother and grand-

mother; they encouraged his belief that he was different from other children.

He disliked the rough-and-tumble play of other boys; they often tormented

him. One of his favorite pastimes was playing with a doll theater his father

had made for him; he spent hours making dresses for the dolls. In child-

hood he began to write plays and poems and he would eagerly recite them

to anybody who would listen. Two years after his father’s death his

mother remarried; his stepfather had little to do with him. Finally, in 1819,

when he was fourteen, he decided to go to Copenhagen to become an

actor.

In Copenhagen he attempted to become an actor, a singer and a ballet

dancer, but was unsuccessful in each endeavor. His ungainly appearance

and lack of education were serious obstacles. What he did have was an

extraordinary talent for making benefactors interested in him and willing

to support him financially. Finally, he began to write stories and plays. In

1822 he submitted a play to the Royal Theater. Although it was rejected,

it was recognized by the board of directors that the author had talent and

should be sent to a grammar school for three years to prepare himself for the

Greenacre (1983) postulated that Andersen knew that his mother “had been a prostitute at

least a practicing one if not an established one” and that a child conceived in a brothel could

never know who was really his father. There is no evidence that his mother was a prostitute.

As Toksvig noted, “Virtue, in the kindly island of Fyn, has not got its meaning limited to the

sexual code.” I suspect that illegitimacy or marriage shortly before childbirth was not that

uncommon in Andersen’s socioeconomic group.

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Meyers

matriculation examination at Copenhagen University. One board member,

Mr. Jonas Collin, a highly respected, influential civil servant, was given the

responsibility for arranging the matter.

This was one of the decisive events in Andersen’s life. Collin was a

surrogate father for Andersen, who became an almost adopted member

of the family. The problem was that at times he never felt fully accepted

by the family; he saw himself as a homeless outsider. It was true that the

Collin family was very self-contained with little need for non-family per-

sons. This was particularly true of his relationship with Jonas Collin’s son,

Edvard Collin. Edvard was in almost every respect Andersen’s opposite: a

cool, reserved person; socially secure; an excellent administrator; and a firm

believer in the status quo (Bredsdorff 1975). The Collin family never really

appreciated Andersen as a writer. Edvard eventually took over his father’s

role with Andersen, becoming his financial adviser and rendering him all

kinds of personal services. However. he regarded it as his duty to educate

Andersen, particularly to reprove him for his vanity and self-centered be-

havior. Andersen desperately wanted an intimate relationship with Edvard.

In 1831 Andersen asked Edvard by letter if they might use Du, the familiar

formofyou,witheachotherandEdvardrefused,statingthathisDuacquain-

tances dated from childhood, but otherwise the use of it with friends made

him uncomfortable and their relationship was pleasant and useful as it was.

This was a crushing blow to Andersen, who kept referring to it throughout

his life. Zipes (1983) sees this as a question of power and class differences,

but it seems to me it was Edvard’s reaction to Andersen’s personality which

was so unlike his own. Nevertheless, their relationship continued for the rest

of Andersen’s life.

For three years Andersen studied with a tutor, Simon Meisling. These

were difficult years for him because of Meisling’s criticisms and bullying.

He was a man of violent behavior with a talent for sarcasm and mockery.

Andersen was especially susceptible to his sadistic behavior and had night-

mares about it throughout his life. After three years Andersen complained

to Jonas Collin about his maltreatment, which was confirmed by another

teacher; Collin then decided that Andersen should return to Copenhagen.

He eventually passed his matriculation examination and entered the

university. After completing his studies he began to find success with his

writing and in 1835 published his first collection of fairy tales.

What was he like? Without question, he was a self-centered man. All

his life he had a desperate craving for affection and praise. When he re-

ceived it, he was ecstatic, but criticism plunged him into despair. A saving

grace was that he recognized these traits in himself. According to Bredsdorff,

he was the little mermaid, the outsider who came from the depths and felt he

was never really accepted in the new world into which he moved. He traveled

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constantly and cultivated royalty, the aristocracy and the rich bourgeoisie.

Although he was a social snob, he stood up for the underdog. He never had

a home of his own; he lived in hotels or was a visitor in the homes of his

aristocratic and/or wealthy friends.

As described above, he was not a very masculine boy. During childhood

he was conspicuously naive about sexual matters. Both men and women

took delight in embarrassing him with loose remarks and gestures. Although

he was attracted to women, his diaries indicate that he never had sexual

intercourse. From his diaries there are allusions that his only sexual outlet

was guilt-ridden masturbation. When he was about twenty, Mrs. Meisling, his

tutor’s wife, attempted to seduce him, but he fled trembling to his room. He

apparently was strongly tempted sexually when traveling in Italy; this seems

to have been a frequent experience for northern Europeans. He wrote in his

diary that he behaved like a “good boy” for the Collin family on his travels

and was upset when they teased him for not acting like other young men.

When he was older, friends on several occasions took him to brothels in

Paris, but he merely talked to the naked prostitutes and left.

Andersen fell in love several times, but these relationships came to

naught. When he was twenty-five, he met Riborg Voigt, the sister of a fellow-

student, and fell in love. She was more or less engaged to another man. She

and Andersen met only a few times over the course of several months; finally,

she decided to marry the other man. Most of his biographers believe that had

he pursued her more vigorously, he could have won her hand. Some feel that

he was in love with being in love. Within a few months he had recovered from

the rejection and was relieved he had not married her. One year later he fell

in love with Louise Collin, Edvard’s youngest sister. She did not respond to

him and his feelings quickly diminished. His attraction to her was possibly

based on his desire to be part of the Collin family. According to Spink (1972),

inTheLittleMermaid LouisewastheprinceandAndersenwasthemermaid.

It is possible, but it seems to me that Louise was not that important to him

and furthermore the story was not written until six years later.

In the late

1830s he became interested in the daughter of a famous scientist who was a

friend and supporter of his. He had nearly decided to propose to her when

he learned that she was engaged. His last serious relationship was with the

famous Swedish singer, Jenny Lind. After a courtship of three weeks, she

rejected him.

When preparing this paper, I read a review of a tone poem, Die Seejungfrau, by a little-

known Viennese composer, Alexander von Zemlinsky, (Scherer 1988). He had been having

a romantic relationship with the well-known Viennese beauty, Alma Schindler. She went to

Gustav Mahler to plead Zemlinsky’s case for his latest opera. Within a month she married

Mahler. Zemlinsky composed Die Seejungfrau in response to his loss. A critic wrote that

Zemlinsky identified himself with the mermaid and Alma was the prince.

Greetings and Salutations!

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 13:10:46 GMT

Hey all,

I'm Brad a musician, poet, hack philospher, lover of religions and cultures and sometimes artist (I like to create pretties with my computer).

I'm in a fairly successful band called Mother Grove (www.mothergrove.com) and I'm currently working on a solo CD, which may or may not ever be complete!

I'm hoping to fulfill my personal rule of creating and sharing something creative every day (it's my own personal way of acknowledging the spirit of the bard).

See ya 'round.

Slan,
Brad

Astrological After-Sex Comments

http://joybringer.gaia.com — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 03:57:26 GMT

Aries: “Okay, let's do it again!”

Taurus: “I'm hungry – pass the pizza.”

Gemini: “Have you seen the remote?”

Cancer: “When are we getting married?”

Leo: “Wasn't I fantastic?”

Virgo: “I need to wash the sheets.”

Libra: “I liked it if you liked it.”

Scorpio: “Perhaps I should untie you.”

Sagittarius: “Don't call me – I'll call you.”

Capricorn: “Do you have a business card?”

Aquarius: “Now let's try it with our clothes off!”

Pisces: “What did you say your sign was again?”

... :)

Joy of Autumn Splendor - Collection of Poems & Haiku

http://joybringer.gaia.com — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:11:12 GMT

I invite you to a virtual journey through the autumn beauty and splendor with a fusion of landscapes, poetry, art, haiku and more…

Share your joys and experiences with pictures, poems, stories, or anything that lets you enjoy it…

Crushed Autumn by Scott Grimando

***********

Golden reds, leaves tread

And rain down upon my head

Joyous Autumn Falls

~ Ocean ~

********

********

Autumn
~ Abhinabha ~

O season of ripe beauty, you I greet!
Whose heart is love's calm wisdom at its throbbing core;
Your deep hues and myriad colors make the soul's wings beat
And lift a lover like me to your ambrosial shore.

Through you Nature weeps its precious golden tears,
In you a mortal eye could glimpse its native Immortality,
O endless fount of inspiration to the poet-seers
To be bound by your embrace is to be truly free!

A glad earth bathes in your benign and lustrous smile
And man's heart thrills with an unknown rapture and delight
By your whispers and footfalls and flute-call beguiled,
An ancient kinship links him to your celestial height.

A brimming of golden sweetness in your dreaming eyes
Fills the world with the beauty of a realm divine,
The sun's last rays serenely trickle from your purple skies:
I send my love and song and call your blessings mine.

********

********

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams.”
      Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”
      Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again – and she was a blade of grass.
      And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves! They make such a noise! They scatter all my winter dreams.”

~ Kahlil Gibran ~

********

********

My Autumn Dance

~Nicola ~

If I were a leaf,
I would spend all day
Dreaming of that exquisite moment,
When I do my sweet Autumn Dance.

I have been rehearsing in my mind
Ever since Spring.
Practising my twirls and pirhouettes,
As I frolic across the sky.
Dancing through the air,
Against the backdrop of a clear, blue fall sky.

I await the right moment.
My colours are intensified to perfection.
Brilliant oranges, scarlets and rich golds.
I flutter in the gentle breeze.
The moment is almost here.

With great excitement, I let go of home base.
I surrender to the elements with great relish.
The wind tosses me up into the air.
It floats me here and floats me there.
I spiral and I twist,
Spiralling down to almost touch the ground.

Another puff of wind and I am up again
To dance with delight and ecstasy.
Swirling through the air.
Wheeee….. I am free!

All of my life, I have envisioned this moment.
The anticipation, the excitement, the release,
The sheer pleasure of desire realised.

My moment is now.
Each moment before has paved the way
For my platform of now.

I revel in the experience with great appreciation.
I relish the celebration of this, my Autumn Dance.

********

********

October
~ William Cullen Bryant ~

AY, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath! When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief
And the year smiles as it draws near its death. Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks
And dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

********

********

clouds part, sun bathing
tall grasses aflame, swaying
breeze caressing face

*
Christopher Lovejoy
A Witness to the Kosmos

*********

*********

On Fields O'er Which the Reaper's Hand has Passed
~ Henry David Thoreau ~

On fields o'er which the reaper's hand has pass'd
Lit by the harvest moon and autumn sun,
My thoughts like stubble floating in the wind
And of such fineness as October airs,
There after harvest could I glean my life
A richer harvest reaping without toil,
And weaving gorgeous fancies at my will
In subtler webs than finest summer haze.

*********

*********

Colorado Autumn

~ Happiness ~

My horse snorts his way up the steep trail,

uncertain in this first snow of the year.

The silence is vast. Summer sleeps now,

banished from meadows, valleys, woods.

The pines are like a memory of pines.

The stream over there has disappeared

in this strange new dreaming.

Ice throws rainbows into the luminous air.

A sudden breeze shakes down a shower

of aspen leaves, and coins of pale gold

fall around us like an unexpected gift of Grace.

**********

**********

Autumn
~ Kalidasa ~

The autumn comes, a maiden fair
In slenderness and grace,
With nodding rice-stems in her hair
And lilies in her face.
In flowers of grasses she is clad;
And as she moves along,
Birds greet her with their cooing glad
Like bracelets' tinkling song.

A diadem adorns the night
Of multitudinous stars;
Her silken robe is white moonlight,
Set free from cloudy bars;
And on her face (the radiant moon)
Bewitching smiles are shown:
She seems a slender maid, who soon
Will be a woman grown.

Over the rice-fields, laden plants
Are shivering to the breeze;
While in his brisk caresses dance
The blossomed-burdened trees;
He ruffles every lily-pond
Where blossoms kiss and part,
And stirs with lover's fancies fond
The young man's eager heart.

********

********

Fall Song
~ Mary Oliver ~

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries - - -roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - - - how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

********

********

Adrift on the Lake
~ Wang Wei ~

Autumn sky illuminates itself all empty
distances away toward far human realms,

cranes off horizons of sand tracing its
clarity into mountains beyond clouds.

Crystalline waters quiet settling night.
Moonlight leaving idleness everywhere

ablaze, I trust myself to this lone paddle,
this calm on and on, no return in sight.

******

*******

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest, And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe; And all the daughters of the year shall dance! Sing now the lusty song of fruit and flowers.
~ William Blake ~

*******

********

     Fall leaves morph me.
     I sigh, better get busy;
     Bursting hot colors…

~ Professor ~

********

********

“Does autumn enter legally, or is it an underground season?”

Happiness

********

********
Leaves blanket my yard
bags and bags must be raked up.
glad i have my kids!

~ Lobster John ~

********

Goddess in Autumn by Light Dancing Dryad

********

*********

And now I'm falling
Watched until you're out of view
Leaves fall, tears fall, love.

~Samme S.S.~

********

Hope you enJOYed and want to share yours…
D a r i n a :)

The perfect instruments for Bards

http://LadyLuna.gaia.com — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 21:03:34 GMT

Hi.... My name is Yvonne and I am the designer for Luna Guitars. They are unique instruments that I feel are perfect for Bardic Circles as they are infused with intent, symbols and archetypes that speak to the heart and soul. www.lunaguitars.com There is a Muse series which uses Celtic imagery as well as a Fantasie series that features artwork by Waterhouse (Lady of Shallot, Mermaid) and Edward Hughes (Midsummer Night's Dream). Also a "Henna" guitar and aome lovely inlaid models (Luna Moth, Dragonfly, Passionflower, Phoenix) I would be very interested in feedback and would appreciate your spreading the word in your circle. I definitely believe in the power of grassroots!!! Thank you for your time. The Lady Luna

Re: Hans Christian Andersen

http://LightDancing.gaia.com — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:55:20 GMT

I also love Hans Andersen. All sorts of kinds of stories have been dealt dirt by Disney, but I feel worst about Andersen’s. I wonder what we are doing to our children when we take the therapeutic ‘real’ out of stories and give them all generic, happy-ever-after endings. We already had people with Cinderella complexes, now they can have Little-Mermaid complexes to go with them, since Disney has rendered the story practically the same. What makes Hans Christen Andersen such an incredible writer and story teller is his ability to handle pathos without it turning into bathos. When you read a child Andersen’s words, or tell a story keeping his reality, you are giving them a precious gift.

Last summer when I was in Denmark, the tour bus stopped at the famous statue of the Little Mermaid in the Copenhagen harbor. The tour guide made a big deal about saying that it was an area where you could get your pocket picked so perhaps we should all stay on the bus. We couldn’t see the statue from the bus at all. I was appalled. I was also one of the only people who got off the bus. I am so glad I did. The statue is very different than I had expected. I always thought it was large and further out in the bay. It is just barely off shore and it is life size - in other words, the size of a young girl. It is a magnificent statue. One of the things that doesn’t show in the reproductions is that her legs are just turning - they are half legs and half fins. And the look on her face is authentic Andersen. I looked at her and thought: ‘This is what it is like to be human.’ Hans Christen Andersen knew this, as did the creator of the statue. What a sad thing that there are children who will never understand this meaning, having never been given the real thing.

Re: People who are too dumb to figure out how to post . . .

http://LightDancing.gaia.com — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:37:52 GMT

Ah ha! Magic is afoot I see!
~ Dryad