00:01:20So Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in 1785 and 86, respectively,
00:01:28in the city of Hinau in the Holy Roman Empire.
00:01:32But of course, those of you who are history buffs
00:01:35will of course know that the Holy Roman Empire
00:01:38isn't going to be around for quite much longer.
00:01:42Nonetheless, the two children obviously being born so close together
00:01:46grew up with a remarkable bond, just a genuine fondness for one another from the youngest of
00:01:54ages. And obviously, as evidenced by this important scholarly work and scholarly was
00:02:01certainly the way that they looked at it, something that, you know, they shared very
00:02:05similar passions throughout their life. And as well as that, they grew up to begin with in
00:02:12reasonable comfort. They grew up with a good father who very shortly after the two brothers
00:02:19were born, they were moved over to Steinau, where the father had become a magistrate.
00:02:25And so again, good money, comfortable living with their mother, Dorothea. All of this good fortune
00:02:32very quickly disappeared as their father passed away untimely. And as a result of that, a lot of
00:02:40the, well, the family simply couldn't afford the good lifestyle that they'd had up until that
00:02:46point. And it really needed, well, a stipend from the government, which was small, but obviously
00:02:53went some way. And particularly on the charity of their aunt, who helped to make sure that the
00:03:00brothers would at least get a good education together. And so they went off in their secondary
00:03:07school years, as I would term it as a Brit, to a good school in a castle. But the two brothers
00:03:15were remarkably studious and had a great passion for storytelling and knowledge. And so they
00:03:23quickly caught up to all of their peers at school and eventually both went on to study law at the
00:03:30University of Marburg, though obviously one year after the other. And in fact, that initial
00:03:37period of isolation, the first really in the brother's life, where they were away from one
00:03:42another, with Jakob being the year older, going away to university, and Wilhelm being left behind,
00:03:49suffering quite terribly, actually, with the prolonged effects of scarlet fever,
00:03:55which could be very, very vicious indeed. He had great problems. In fact, for about half a year,
00:04:02poor Wilhelm, bless him, was laid up in bed, only really able to draw and not much else,
00:04:10basically to minimize his movement and his stresses as much as possible.
00:04:15But all of this sitting around in bed, sleeping and drawing, obviously gave him plenty of time
00:04:23to imagine many other things, as we see in the example of Coleridge that I gave back when we
00:04:30of the rhyming Ancient Mariner, it's often when people have the least resources behind them,
00:04:36around them, that they need to utilize and mind more to imagine their way out of Borden.
00:04:43And that's exactly what Wilhelm did. And it was during the two brothers' time at the university
00:04:49at Marburg that their professor really pushed for them to embrace the budding romanticist movement.
00:04:57And so against the traditional grain of old time, where students would be expected to read and to appreciate the classics of Greco-Roman antiquity,
00:05:10they were pushed rather to embrace their own culture, that of German culture, with its own art and its own knowledge and its own particular wisdom and idiosyncrasies.
00:05:22And this is something they evidently took to heart. And I give as evidence, of course,
00:05:30the fact that we're covering the natural conclusion of such a drive here and now.
00:05:36And it's certainly clear that the professor had a particular liking for Jakob as he invited him to
00:05:42be a research assistant on the trip to Paris that he was going to take for his work. And whilst all
00:05:49of this was going on, of course, you had the Napoleonic War raging about in the background,
00:05:55and especially after Napoleon's complete victory at the Battle of Austerlitz and the
00:06:02dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire after that 1,000 glorious years reaching all the way back
00:06:10to the time of Charlemagne, well, of course, we now find ourselves with an entirely new paradigm.
00:06:16And so once back, Jakob found himself as the royal librarian for the newly inserted King
00:06:27of Westphalia, Jerome Bonaparte himself, the youngest brother of Napoleon.
00:06:33And this afforded Jakob a great amount of, well, one, it was a good paid position, but
00:06:40also as well, it basically gave him free reign of the Royal Library, which was possibly the
00:06:46greatest advantage that a young budding scholar like Jakob could have wanted. But like all good
00:06:53brothers, the two eventually found themselves reunited. Jerome Bonaparte's reign was quite
00:07:01short-lived and his fall only accelerated by Napoleon's eventual disastrous campaign into
00:07:10Russia in 1812. And as a result of that, and many other factors that are more for an epoch,
00:07:17eventually Jerome fell from power in Westphalia. And for Wilhelm's part, he eventually was able to
00:07:25overcome through some quite experimental electrotherapy. I mean, whatever cured him,
00:07:32but eventually he found himself in better health. And the two brothers were reunited and decided
00:07:37that the time was here to dedicate themselves to those romanticist passions that they'd now so
00:07:45long harbored to find throughout Germany and throughout the German-speaking peoples all of
00:07:51the disparate folklore that they could, from neighbours to noblemen to prisoners to fishermen
00:07:57to people of all different walks of life. And though it would be quite romantic to imagine the
00:08:05two brothers walking about, going on this grand adventure to compile all of these stories,
00:08:12the fact of the matter is that they had a great amount of help and employed all of their
00:08:18contacts and scholarly friends to assist them in this endeavor. In some cases, they found
00:08:25themselves trading items of clothing or money in exchange for stories, or in fact sending
00:08:33children into the household so that they might get the stories for them and then report back to
00:08:39them. And as a scholarly pursuit, the Brothers Grimm took it incredibly seriously to report as
00:08:46accurately as possible the verbatim words that came from those who told these stories and not
00:08:55to try and take creative liberties or change the stories as a result of the strangeness that might
00:09:02abound from, you know, some particular tellings. In fact, one of the most charming aspects about
00:09:09this grand collecting of stories is the fact that eventually it led Wilhelm to fall in love
00:09:16with his neighbor, a daughter of the Wilde family, who were very, very happy to contribute to their
00:09:24works and provide as many stories as they knew about. And they went on to live very happily.
00:09:31they had four children together, and she even went on to outlive Wilhelm, I think, by about
00:09:37eight years. So again, just a really nice, beautiful thing that came from all of this.
00:09:42So when the two brothers finally created this great compendium of fairy stories and folk tales,
00:09:50it was known as the Children's and Household Tales, and it came out in 1812. And it was in
00:09:57there that we find the darkest edition of the Grimm's fairy tales and everything since then
00:10:04over time with a lot of pushing from Wilhelm himself and many of the other critics. Eventually
00:10:13we find that they were slowly, a lot of the darker elements were taken out of them. They were
00:10:20sanitized. And they were made more and more to the design of children, so that they were as
00:10:28approachable for children as possible. But we find even here, in one of the later editions
00:10:35that I have, it is still far darker than even Disney's telling of it. Disney's telling, once
00:10:43again, was even more cutesified. And this was one of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis's grand criticisms of it,
00:10:52that the dwarves, everything was just made to be cute, that a lot of the darker aspects of it
00:11:00are taken out. So with that said, I suppose now's as good a time as any to actually read Snow White,
00:11:07and then I'll see you back here and we'll talk all about it.
00:11:13Once upon a time, in the middle of winter, when snowflakes were falling like feathers from the
00:11:22sky, a queen was sitting and sewing at a window with a black ebony frame. And as she was sewing
00:11:30and looking out the window, she pricked her finger with a needle, and three drops of blood fell on
00:11:36the snow. The red looked so beautiful in the white snow that she thought to herself,
00:11:42if only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood of the window
00:11:48frame. Soon after, she gave birth to a little daughter, who was as white as snow, as red as
00:11:55blood, and her hair as black as ebony. Accordingly, the child was called Snow White, and right after
00:12:03she was born the queen died when the year had passed the king married another woman who was
00:12:10beautiful but proud and haughty and she could not tolerate anyone else who might rival her beauty
00:12:17she had a magic mirror and often she stood in front of it looked at herself and said
00:12:24mirror mirror on the wall who in this realm is the fairest of all then the mirror would answer
00:12:32you my queen are the fairest of all that reply would make her content for she knew the mirror
00:12:40always told the truth in the meantime snow white grew up and became more and more beautiful
00:12:46by the time she was seven years old she was as beautiful as a day is clear and more beautiful
00:12:53than the queen herself one day when the queen asked her mirror mirror mirror on the wall who
00:13:01in this realm is the fairest of all the mirror answered you my queen may have a beauty quite rare
00:13:08but snow white is a thousand times more fair the queen shuddered and became yellow and green with
00:13:16envy from that hour on her hate for the girl was so great that her heart throbbed and turned in
00:13:24her breast each time she saw snow white like weeds the envy and arrogance grew so dense in her heart
00:13:33that she no longer had any peace day or night finally she summoned a huntsman and said take0.99
00:13:42the child out into the forest i never want to lay eyes on her again you are going to kill her and
00:13:49to bring me back her lungs and liver as proof of your deed the huntsman obeyed and led snow white
00:13:56out into the forest but when he drew his hunting knife and was about to stab snow white's innocent
00:14:03heart she began to weep and said oh dear huntsman spare my life and i'll run into the wild forest
00:14:11and never come home again since she was so beautiful the huntsman took pity on her and said
00:14:17you're free to go my child then he thought the wild beasts will soon eat you up nevertheless
00:14:25he felt as if a great weight had been lifted off his mind because he did not have to kill her
00:14:31just then a young boar came dashing by and the huntsman stabbed it to death he took out the
00:14:38lungs and the liver and brought them to the queen as proof that the child was dead the cook was
00:14:44ordered to boil them in salt and the wicked woman ate them and thought that she had eaten snow
00:14:51whites lungs and liver meanwhile the poor child was all alone in the huge forest when she looked
00:14:59at all the leaves on the trees she was petrified and did not know what to do then she began to run
00:15:06and she ran over sharp stones and through thorn bushes wild beasts started by her at times but
00:15:13they did not harm her. She ran as long as her legs could carry her, and it was almost evening when
00:15:20she saw a little cottage and went inside to rest. Everything was tiny in the cottage and indescribably
00:15:27dainty and neat. There was a little table with a white tablecloth, and on it was seven little
00:15:34plates. Each plate had a tiny spoon next to it, and there was also seven tiny knives and forks
00:15:41and seven tiny cups. In a row against the wall stood seven little beds, covered with sheets as
00:15:47white as snow. Since she was so hungry and thirsty, Snow White ate some vegetables and bread from each
00:15:55of the little plates, and had a drop of wine to drink out of each of the tiny cups, for she did
00:16:01not want to take everything from just one plate. After that, she was tired, and began trying out
00:16:08the beds, but none of them suited her at first. One was too long, another too short, but at last
00:16:14she found the seventh one was just right. So she stayed in that bed, said her prayers, and fell
00:16:21asleep. When it was completely dark outside, the owners of the cottage returned. They were seven
00:16:28dwarves who searched in the mountains for minerals with their picks and shovels. They lit their seven0.52
00:16:34little candles and when it became light in the house they saw that someone had been there for
00:16:40none of their things were in the exact same spot in which they had been left who's been sitting in
00:16:45my chair said the first dwarf who's been eating off of my plate said the second who's been eating
00:16:52my bread said the third who's been eating my vegetables said the fourth who's been using my0.72
00:16:59fork said the fifth who's been cutting with my knife said the sixth who's been drinking from my
00:17:07cup said the seventh then the first dwarf looked around and noticed that his bed had been wrinkled
00:17:13and said who's been sleeping in my bed the others ran over to their beds and cried out someone's
00:17:19been sleeping in my bed too but when the seventh dwarf looked at his bed he saw snow white lying
00:17:27there asleep so he called the others over to him and when they came they were so astounded that
00:17:33they fetched their seven little candles to allow more light to shine on snow white oh my lord oh
00:17:40my lord they exclaimed what a beautiful child they were so delirious with joy that they did not wake
00:17:48her up instead they let her sleep in the bed while the seventh dwarf spent an hour in each one of his
00:17:55companions' beds until the night had passed. In the morning, Snow White awoke, and when she saw
00:18:02the seven dwarves, she was frightened. But they were friendly, and asked, What's your name?
00:18:08My name's Snow White, she replied. What's brought you to our house? The dwarves continued.
00:18:16She told them how her stepmother had ordered her to be killed, how the huntsman had spared her life,0.59
00:18:21and how she had run all day until she had eventually discovered their cottage.0.55