WORDSPEAK
Wake up, Sleeping Beauty
ANAND
A FRIEND once said, not without some dramatic infusion, that all Hollywood movies were a remake of the Cinderella, Snow White or Sleeping Beauty theme. Since the last two "Wordspeak" columns were about the former two, it seemed befitting to see how the persona of the beauty who slept for a 100 years waiting to be kissed by her prince fared in the popular and the literary imagination.
Charles Perrault's rendering of the fairly tale "La Belle au Bois Dormant" was retold by the Brothers Grimm as "Brier Rose", and it is the later version that inspired the Walt Disney's sugary, high on feel-good factor production of the 1959 spectacular "Sleeping Beauty". The Grimm's tamer version was needed, for it did not involve any of the cannibalism, adultery or rape that is found in some of the earlier renditions. In "Sun, Moon and Talia", an Italian version of "Sleeping Beauty", a hunter king finds Talia asleep in the castle, cohabits with her, and then leaves her and forgets the whole affair. Nine months later, Talia gives birth to two children, all the time still asleep. They nurse from her breast. "Once when one of the babies wanted to suck, it could not find the breast, but got into its mouth instead the finger that had been pricked. This the baby sucked so hard that it drew out the splinter, and Talia was roused as if from deep sleep." (Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, 1977.)
Further in the same story, one day the king remembers his adventure and goes to see Talia. He is delighted to find her awake with two beautiful children, and from then on they are always on his mind. The king's wife finds out his secret, and on the sly sends for the two children in the king's name. She orders them cooked and served to her husband. The cook hides the children in his own home and prepares instead some goat kids, which the queen serves to the king. Surely no Walt Disney stuff, except the expected denouement and the king and Talia living happily ever after.
Before Disney poisoned the teenage mind with its blond `n' blue-eyed, size eight perfection of beauty, and much before the feminist attacks on the desired-ness of a passive beauty and the defeatist symbolism in "Brier Rose", its use for political propaganda was noticed by writers and politicians. The story of a dashing man, they found, battling his way against terrible odds to reawaken a sleeping princess and set all wrongs aright could easily be used to support nationalist claims. The leader became the prince, and the girl an allegory for the sleeping nation. One of the best examples of such use was (not surprisingly, given the nature of its ideology and its emphasis on German folk tradition) in Nazi Germany.
In addition to marshalling popular support for its National Socialist ideals, fairy tales like "Sleeping Beauty" became a form of political propaganda that bolstered the Nazis' popularity among the masses. "By comparing Hitler to heroes in familiar, universally known tales, the Nazis shored up support for their political activities and reinforced the image of Hitler as the unerring Fuehrer. An example of this sort of glorification is Adolf Holst's "Der Drachentöter" ("The Dragon slayer"), in which Hitler is the prince who battles hell to free the princess (Germany) and wake it up — and all of the people cried out: `Heil!'"
Several decades later, when Wall Street coined the term "a Cinderella market" for lucrative but neglected investment opportunities, it also began using "Sleeping Beauty" for a potential takeover target that had not yet been noticed or approached by an acquirer. Such a company usually had particularly attractive features, such as a large amount of cash, undervalued real estate or other assets.
In everyday conversation, Sleeping Beauty may be used for a person who is sleeping soundly. In the 1944 mystery movie "The Uninvited", Ray Milland told his sister about his progress with another woman in this dialogue: "There's kind of a Sleeping Beauty magic about the kid. I thought I'd done something toward breaking the spell. Seems not. Prince Charmless, that's me."
There are no Shakespearean allusions to Sleeping Beauty because the English translations of Perrault's and the Grimm's tales became available more than a couple of hundred years after the bard's time. But other poets used the allusion to an awakening or the spring, as did Mathilde Blind (1841-1896) in the last half of the poem "The Sleeping Beauty":
For now the Sun had found the earth once more,
And woke the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss;
Who thrilled with light of love in every pore,
Opened her flower-blue eyes, and looked in his.
Then all things felt life fluttering at their core —
The world shook mystical in lambent bliss.
E-mail the author at anand@journalist.com
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