It seemed to me that he did not follow me with sufficient
delicacy, so I moderated my tone. “Can
you not see,” I said, “that fairy tales
in their essence are quite solid and straightforward;
but that this everlasting fiction about modern life
is in its nature essentially incredible? Folk-lore
means that the soul is sane, but that the universe
is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that
the world is dull and full of routine, but that the
soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the
fairy tale is— what will a healthy man
do with a fantastic world? The problem of the
modern novel is—what will a madman do with
a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes
mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern
novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and
suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity
of the cosmos. In the excellent tale of ‘The
Dragon’s Grandmother,’ in all the other
tales of Grimm, it is assumed that the young man setting
out on his travels will have all substantial truths
in him; that he will be brave, full of faith, reasonable,
that he will respect his parents, keep his word, rescue
one kind of people, defy another kind, ‘parcere
subjectis et debellare,’ etc. Then,
having assumed this centre of sanity, the writer entertains
himself by fancying what would happen if the whole
world went mad all round it, if the sun turned green
and the moon blue, if horses had six legs and giants
had two heads. But your modern literature takes
insanity as its centre. Therefore, it loses
the interest even of insanity. A lunatic is not
startling to himself, because he is quite serious;
that is what makes him a lunatic. A man who thinks
he is a piece of glass is to himself as dull as a
piece of glass. A man who thinks he is a chicken
is to himself as common as a chicken. It is only
sanity that can see even a wild poetry in insanity.
Therefore, these wise old tales made the hero ordinary
and the tale extraordinary. But you have made
the hero extraordinary and the tale ordinary—so
ordinary—oh, so very ordinary.”
I saw him still gazing at me fixedly. Some nerve
snapped in me under the hypnotic stare. I leapt
to my feet and cried, “In the name of God and
Democracy and the Dragon’s grandmother—in
the name of all good things—I charge you
to avaunt and haunt this house no more.”
Whether or no it was the result of the exorcism, there
is no doubt that he definitely went away.
XVII
The Red Angel
I find that there really are human beings who think
fairy tales bad for children. I do not speak
of the man in the green tie, for him I can never count
truly human. But a lady has written me an earnest
letter saying that fairy tales ought not to be taught
to children even if they are true. She says that
it is cruel to tell children fairy tales, because
it frightens them. You might just as well say
