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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ:
Hello and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host PJ Weary and I'm here today with Dr. Jack Zipes, professor emeritus of German comparative literature and folklore at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. And Dr. Zipes, we're here today to talk about your book Buried Treasures, The Power of Political Fairy Tales and it's a real honor to have you. Thank you for coming on the show.
Jack Zipes:
Well, thank you for inviting me.
PJ:
So tell me a little bit, I mean it seems like this is your career, right? Like you have done a lot in children's literature, German literature, German Jewish culture, these sorts of things. But why this book in particular? Why political fairy tales?
Jack Zipes:
Well, I wanted to sort of point out that fairy tales are not just these bedtime stories, sweet bedtime stories for kids. And I wanted to demonstrate that they really have a great deal to teach us about our own present-day conflicts and ideas and beliefs and so on. And so I chose 10, approximately 10 if not 12. unusual writers who wrote during World War I and World War II and who really have a great deal to offer us and also who sacrificed their lives in trying to defeat fascism both in the early part of the 20th century and also in the middle part of the 20th century.
PJ:
Thank you. For our audience, when you say fairy tale, do you have a good, concise definition so they can get a feel for it? I feel like everyone kind of instinctively knows, right?
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
But all of a sudden, it can get a little bit ethereal, right?
Jack Zipes:
Right, right. Yeah, basically you can't define what a fairy tale is because, you know, in almost all the tales, like in the Brothers Grimm or Anderson and so on, there are no fairies
PJ:
Hahaha!
Jack Zipes:
in the tales. I swear.
PJ:
Right, right.
Jack Zipes:
The term came to being in approximately 1696 in France, and where the French began taking the oral tales, the peasant tales, or tales told by simple people, and they were mainly women, very rebellious women, in Louis XIV's court, and they called the tales contes de fées. which, you know, literally speaking in French is fairy, contefait, tales about fairies. Now, in their tales that they told, fairies did appear. They were brilliant. They were just as good as the famous Charles Perrault, who is the considered one of the great writers of fairy tales in the world. But they were just as good, if not better, than Perot. As usual, women do not
PJ:
Yeah.
Jack Zipes:
get their say, right?
PJ:
Right,
Jack Zipes:
And
PJ:
right.
Jack Zipes:
so people started liking, for instance, in Germany, the word for fairy tale is Maschen. Maschen means little tail. anything about fairies and so on. So essentially, fairy tales borrow from all types of genres in a very imaginative, unique ways that really demonstrate in the telling of tales how powerful
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
do sort of in the spirit of fairies to help us understand why we are in certain conflicts or jams or... why we want to love somebody and so on and so forth. In other words, these were very unusual tales that people recognized. They didn't have to, nobody had to say, I'm gonna sit down to you, dear, and tell you a fairy tale, you know, before you go to bed or in a circle in peasant homes and so on, things like that. So. I mean, I have written long essays that outline going back to the rise of myths, for instance.
PJ:
Mm-hmm.
Jack Zipes:
The word myth more or less means... more or less means fairy tale.
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
I mean, for the Romans and the Greeks and so on, the tales that they told were also extremely unusual, filled with imagination, with tremendous, let us say, suspense. So... Way before 1697, when Contrefe was sort of developed, the Greeks and the Romans had their tales, and they were very similar to fairy tales. And nobody bothered definitions about what is a fairy tale.
PJ:
Right, right. Even as you're saying this and you know the next step is like you're talking about political fairy tales but just that first mention of uh Comte Fe like the rebellious women in Louis the 14th's court like
Jack Zipes:
Yeah.
PJ:
immediately it's political right like I mean there seems to be hints of that can you talk a little bit more about these rebellious women like where that comes from why they felt the need to draw these out?
Jack Zipes:
Yeah, well, if you recall that women were not allowed to have any professions in the 17th century. And they were highly educated, I mean, the upper classes, of course. And they were amazingly educated. intelligent and they knew how to play music and so on. And because they had tons of money, the richer ones, the aristocrats, they would have what they called salons at their homes where people could perform, men and women together,
PJ:
Mmm.
Jack Zipes:
stories, songs, music and so on and so forth. And in these salons, They would take motifs or information from tales that the peasants were told, and they would modify them into really brilliant stories of different kinds. And so it was during this time in the 17th century when Louis XIV was the sort of autocratic king in France and in Europe, that women began saying, we want to go beyond our homes. We want to tell tales that will sort of defend us and so on. So these tales are amazingly, in quotes, feminist, before
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
the term feminist was coined. So they would tell tales. And they were all Catholic, of course. They were raised Catholic in France, but none of them believed in priests and the Catholic religion. And so their tales generally depict these amazing, powerful fairies that would punish man, male or female. Excuse me. I'm sorry, we'll let it ring.
PJ:
No worries.
Jack Zipes:
Okay. I'm looking for my phone and my phone is on the floor somewhere. I can't
PJ:
Yeah,
Jack Zipes:
even find
PJ:
yeah, yeah.
Jack Zipes:
it right
PJ:
No, no problem.
Jack Zipes:
now. So, one of the most famous writers was Madame Doe. And she wrote about two volumes. fairy tales and there was sort of like she influenced many of the other women at that time who also you know wrote fairy tales and so that was sort of the beginning of the labeling okay labeling of these tales.
PJ:
Mm-hmm.
Jack Zipes:
Up to that time, they were simply called little tail, like in German, mashen, is little tail, not little fairy tail, but little tail. And so the French were the ones who added these, I would call, scurrilous and powerful fairies to their tails.
PJ:
Yeah, so one thing it does seem to stick out is like, for it to be a fairy tale, it at least has to be short, right? There has to be brevity.
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
Yeah, yeah, like you can't have a fairy tale novel, though
Jack Zipes:
Yeah.
PJ:
people have drawn them out now, like in fantasy, that's not, that's no longer a fairy tale, it's a novel drawn
Jack Zipes:
Right.
PJ:
from that. Um.
Jack Zipes:
Exactly.
PJ:
I might be barking up the wrong tree entirely, but from what I understand, part of the Grimm's motivation in collecting the German fairy tales was part of the effort of German unification and nationalism. Is that correct?
Jack Zipes:
Yes, yes, that makes a lot of sense. But we have to be a little careful about that, because some people have tried to label the Grimms fascists or the early fascists of some kind. The Grimms were actually from a middle-class family. They were born in the 1880s. And their father died when they were 11 and 12. And they really had to, let us say, fend for themselves at the university, at high school and university and so on. And they felt, this was also the time of the Napoleonic wars, so France again plays a major role here. And they favored They were democratic in quotes. They wanted because they lost, they were not from the aristocracy and they had lost their father and they had to show through their work how good they were and they became professors later on in their lives. But they felt that the people's, the common people's voices the, let us say, basis of a culture in society. That we could actually learn a great deal about who we are and what we are and what we stand for, what we want to celebrate, how we want to plant fields or share work and so on and so forth. So that the Brothers Grimm really wanted to find, they wrote on many, many different themes, even wrote the first dictionary in German and so on and so forth. So they wanted to find stories that would celebrate all of the different states. There were at that time 300 principalities in Germany.
PJ:
Yeah, right.
Jack Zipes:
Always fighting one another, right? And so eventually the Brothers Grimm demonstrated that these tales could enable people to grasp, you know, what is the significance of the celebrations, of living together, working together, and so on and so forth. And initially they thought that they could find the pure sort of German tales. That's where it gets a little dicey with regard to fascism and so on.
PJ:
Right, right.
Jack Zipes:
But they quickly learn... that almost all the tales that they found from friends, colleagues sending them tales that they kept and redid and things like that, these tales were coming from Italy and from Greece, from all over the world practically, let us say the European world, and that there were similar beliefs, similar ways that people reacted to the same type of living conditions that they had in Germany. So in other words, they quickly realized after the first two books, they did seven different editions, adding tales, distracting tales and things like that. And they were smart and intelligent and they realized that, hey, you know, we're really doing international
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
are not really German, even though they call them German tales, but they owe their existence to other countries and to other storytellers and things like that. They never tried to define what a fairy tale was. They never insisted that they were Germanic and so on and so forth. They were just brilliant ethnologists and they really understood how important language, stories and so on. were to various, let us say, societies or cultures, and that was a great sort of contribution to the rise of storytelling in Europe.
PJ:
Absolutely, as I listen to that, it's a really inspiring story. There's a reason the tales have endured. Now, one thing you mentioned about them, though, is this idea of this great imaginative aspect, that there's a lot of imagination involved.
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
In some cases, and maybe this is my own lack of understanding, it seems almost like there's an opaque symbolism. As an example, maybe this is an example of me being a poor parent, but I have just taken upon myself to read the original Grimm's Fairy Tales to my kids. And my oldest child, she's like, oh, I know Red Riding Hood. And we started reading Red Riding Hood. And of course, at the end... in the edition that we have, right? Because I think there's
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
some slight differences, but the wolf gets its stomach cut open, Red Riding Hood comes out, Grandma comes out,
Jack Zipes:
Hahaha
PJ:
and then they put stones in the wolf's stomach, sew it back up, and then the wolf wakes up, and then it dies from the stones in its stomach. And
Jack Zipes:
Right.
PJ:
one, my oldest girl, she's looking at me, and she's like, I did this to bother you, I'm not going to lie. I am not maybe the best parent. But the other side to it is I really enjoy that aspect of the tales, like the things like the stones and the stomach and that sort of thing. But I have no idea what's going on, right?
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
Is there some explanation for that? Or is that
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
just part of the imaginative aspect that like there's something that has been carried through kind of opaquely through the tradition?
Jack Zipes:
Yes, yeah, no, it's definitely very imaginative because the, in the original, not the, I won't say the original, but in the, going back to Charles Perot in 1697, he was the first, let us say, educated writer who wrote his version of Little Red Riding Hood that he got from, again, from peasants, probably. And in his tale, however, the wolf eats up Little Red Riding Hood, and she dies. Because, and there's a, at the end of the tale, little girls who invite wolves into their parlors deserve what they get.
PJ:
Yeah.
Jack Zipes:
Okay,
PJ:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack Zipes:
so then you have to think, now there are at least a thousand, and I'm not kidding you, a thousand
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
up to today and throughout the world, maybe a thousand or more versions of Little Red Riding Hood. My argument is that certain fairy tales become memetic, memes. It becomes memes. because they provide information that are crucial for the survival of human beings. And if we look at Little Red Riding Hood carefully, it's a tale about rape. It's a tale about a little girl. Of course, in those times... no matter what the society was, girls were not supposed to go out without any god, not a god, anybody accompanying them.
PJ:
Right.
Jack Zipes:
And if
PJ:
A chaperone.
Jack Zipes:
they did,
PJ:
Guardian. Yes.
Jack Zipes:
exactly. And if they went into the woods by themselves, then, you know, they were liable to be raped. If you accept that, and I hope you will, as my interpretation, and I've written about it a great deal, then it's really interesting to see that up through today, the tendency in most of the endings has now switched to the girl getting the better of the wolf. And why, of course, has to do with the change in the society's, sort of, let us say, not laws, but customs. And that we have now feminism. Women have come into their own. They won't stand for this. And in fact, some of the greatest writers today, of fairy tales, not just based on the Grims or anything, have been women. They've really come into their own and asserted themselves. And so if you go into any store that has maybe of Little Red Riding Hood or so on, you'll see there's a remarkable ending in each one of the tales. And so that's what makes these tales really exciting and you also see the politics changing. You know, in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, men determined the lives of women, you know? And that's how we live today.
PJ:
Right.
Jack Zipes:
And if you dare to write a story that harks back to little girls who invite wolves into their parlors to serve what they get, you will be criticized. Or
PJ:
Right.
Jack Zipes:
you will be questioned.
PJ:
And rightfully so, right? Like that's
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
what we don't want. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Jack Zipes:
Right.
PJ:
I, um, uh, and this is something I read 15 years ago and I haven't been able to find the book since. Um. But in a very similar vein, I remember reading some cultural criticism that said the same thing about werewolf stories and vampire stories. That vampires were about nobles and how you couldn't trust them coming to seduce you at night. You know, like they always come at night and they come in their carriage and they come through the window and they're mesmerizing, they're good looking and charming. And then werewolves are people that you know, but at certain times, you know, venture out at night, by the light of the full moon they all sudden become these hairy beasts. And it's really interesting. Like as soon as I saw that I was like, I mean, even like, you know. the very simple like, vampires hate garlic, right? All of a sudden you're like, well if you ate a lot of garlic erupted, like erupted around your neck, that would be, that would put off some noblemen, right? And so,
Jack Zipes:
Right, right.
PJ:
are you familiar with that? Like
Jack Zipes:
Yeah.
PJ:
is that something, like I mean, I have not been able to find that since, so.
Jack Zipes:
Yes, they're very unusual. Like I said, fairy tales are unusual imaginative tales.
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
And they deal with situations that bother people, or people want to celebrate them, certain things. And they find their own narrative way. to express themselves and some people are better storytellers than others or writers and so we have a really amazing, throughout the world, amazing types. And a lot of scholars have noted these things in written books or developed catalogs or indexes. And so it's exciting. It's an exciting field. And you learn a lot not only about society, but about yourself when you read these tales.
PJ:
Yeah, even just to push it a little further, just like you said, Little Red Riding Hood, it's often been the other way. Vampires and werewolves are now, now they have happy endings, right?
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
It's not that you're taking away, it's that it's kind of interesting, you almost see the ascendancy of the Beauty and the Beast model, where the Beauty tames the Beast. And
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
I mean, not that I am a Twilight fan by any means, but this idea that the Beauty can tame even this Beast is kind of just a fascinating idea.
Jack Zipes:
Right.
PJ:
But I don't want to take away from the main thrust of your book. I mean, this has
Jack Zipes:
Yes,
PJ:
been fascinating to me.
Jack Zipes:
no problem, no problem.
PJ:
But you focused on World War I and World War II political fairy tales.
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
Do you mind expounding on that a little bit?
Jack Zipes:
Yes, you know, the dark days, not that we have very bright days right now, but in the early first half of the 20th century, there were two world wars. their own way to present what is happening and to also disguise their critiques of let's say Hitler, Mussolini, and they used then symbolical artworks and literature and so on and so forth. And people... And by the time the 20th century arrived, more people had learned to read. Up until the 20th century, about half of the world couldn't read, if not more than half. And so, but people, artists, intellectuals, creative people, you name it. or just the ordinary people had to find different ways sometimes to communicate with what they were feeling, what they were seeing and so on. And they wanted to sort of protest against a lot of the... things that were going on in both world wars. And so it was really during the, and quite often these people were either executed or had to flee their countries. None of them
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
in my book, I discuss about 12 to 13 really great fairy tale writers and artists. They never, none of them wound up. in the country into which they were born. They fled to America,
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
they fled to Norway, or were killed, and so on. And so I wanted to demonstrate that these tales were really substantial or significant for what they had to say about what was going on in the world at that time. and that they risked their lives to do what they did. So
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
that's what I think drove me to write about all of these particular authors.
PJ:
I love that because... It's easy to be dismissive of stories and their power. But when you see people who are persecuted and chased from their homes, because
Jack Zipes:
Mm.
PJ:
of the, like on the one hand, it illustrates, it's a story of courage, of their courage. And also
Jack Zipes:
Okay.
PJ:
it's something that illustrates the power of what they're doing, right?
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
Like, you don't chase someone away who's not, like who's just sitting there, right? Like this is like obviously causing a problem for these fascists.
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
Now, there are many of these that I want to ask about, but the one that I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't, like I think everyone will be familiar with, tell me a little bit about Bambi and Bambi's Courage, this idea of Felix Salton and his
Jack Zipes:
Yes,
PJ:
dilemma.
Jack Zipes:
yes, yes. Yeah, now, okay, we have to remember, begin with that Bambi was written between 1920 and 1922, came out in 1923. So, this is a novel not written for children, by the way. Okay,
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
he, Felix Salton was always angry at the critics who thought that this was a children's book and it never ever was written that way. It was really sort of an autobiographical, symbolical, autobiographical novel about his own life. He was Bambi and Bambi was Felix Salton. And
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
so this particular novel really reflects the pogroms. There were 300,000 Jews after World War I killed because Europeans, the Germans, and the Austrians felt that the Jews had betrayed Germany or Austria. And so, and a lot of the Eastern European countries literally had these pogroms for about in the early parts of the 1920s. And so we have to, Felix Sultan was a journalist and he was not a dummy. He may have had other faults or whatever and so on, but. It's quite clear, and many other critics have agreed with me and have demonstrated that, indeed, this is a novel about pogroms, where
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
men go into the forest and just out of pleasure shoot animals and cause them to die. And so he really demonstrated the very difficult situation that people were in at the end of World War I and also demonstrated what a forecast, to a certain extent, what was to come in terms of the Holocaust. Now we didn't
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
do this in any pedantic way. He did it in a really brilliant way in which he also questioned himself because he himself used to like to hunt animals. He would only kill, as he tried to say, animals if they were going to be eaten and so on and so forth, not like many other hunters who just do it for the coat or something like that for the skin. became famous quickly because he touched a nerve. in all of Europe, not just in Vienna, Austria, he was Austrian, or Germany, or the rest of Europe, but also in America. When the book was translated in 1928, the book did extremely well. There was the Book of the Month Club, of course, which helped. That was the beginning of these book clubs that made a lot of money and so on and so forth. people sort of saw something in that story. The difficulty with Bambi of course is that the anti-semitic Disney who was not really, couldn't read English or German. decided to make his own film out of that in which he celebrated himself as Bambi. It's a putrid film and
PJ:
Ha!
Jack Zipes:
it came out in 1942. If you go and watch it, I'll bet you won't stand more than five or ten minutes of the film. He really destroyed Bambi. Salton's name, again remember, Salton did not create this for children. This is a serious film about what happens to minority groups who are marginalized and the other classes, social classes, kill them. So he's a very contradictory writer because Salton himself wanted, he was Jewish, and wanted to become... like Christian aristocrats and so on. And he learned, however, that the Nazis were going to kill him in
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
the 1930s and fled to Switzerland. And that's
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
where he spent the last years of his life. So it was very interesting. The research that I did on this book really taught me many, many new things.
PJ:
Yeah, absolutely. And even as I'm glad you mentioned it, because I was going to ask, I was like, wait, so if this is about pogroms against the Jews, you know, Disney kind of famously anti-Semitic, you know, as a studio, especially Disney himself. And then one, thank you for trying to get over, you called Bambi a putrid movie. I thought that makes me laugh. Um, but the, um,
Jack Zipes:
Watch
PJ:
but.
Jack Zipes:
it, please. Please, please
PJ:
Yes,
Jack Zipes:
watch
PJ:
yes!
Jack Zipes:
it.
PJ:
Yeah, I mean, I've seen it before, but I hadn't seen it through the these lenses. And
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
so that'll be that'll be interesting. Also really fascinating to see there is a long history, many examples of people taking serious literature and because of its subject matter, assuming it's children's literature. One that comes to mind is Watership Down by Richard Adams.
Jack Zipes:
Mm-hmm. Good.
PJ:
with the book but uh and of course like the I mean I read that as a young child and I was I was like this is not you know this is a disturbing book and so uh it's just really fascinating to watch um to watch these sorts of things uh unfold
Jack Zipes:
and
PJ:
um is there uh As you walk through, who are some of the other examples of these brave fairy tale creators, fairy tale collectors that you would want to highlight?
Jack Zipes:
Well, there's another in the 1930s, there was a brilliant illustrator. He wasn't a writer. His name is, I've written about him in this book, Ralph Brandt. B-R-A-N-D-T, Ralph Brandt. And he was born into a very exceedingly wealthy German family in Hamburg, in Germany, in approximately, I think at the beginning of the 20th century. And because his father was a wealthy merchant, they had a huge company, and part of that was in England. England and Germany at the beginning of the 20th century always. And so this young man, Ralph Brandt, grew up in Germany, but he had, because he was born, his parents conceived him in England. And so he was British also. He had double nationality. and his brother who's very famous and as a photographer. He began to study art in Europe and in Switzerland and traveled about and he also wanted to become an actor and eventually when Hitler came to power he hated Hitler. and fled because the family had an estate in England. He returned to England swearing that he would never ever return to Germany. And he began doing brilliant artwork. And he also illustrated the Grims and other fairy tales and brought out the absurdity of certain situations. really amazing artist and he quite often wrote, did work in pencil and ink and so on. And during the 1930s, about 1938, he joined the resistance. He also joined the Communist Party in 1936. England at that time. And that was okay because at least the English didn't think all communists were traitors or anything like that. Actually they were socialists. And he was asked because he had a passport, a German passport, to rescue Jewish
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
citizens from Hamburg. and bring them to England. And so for two or three years he risked his life, even he was
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
an artist, because he felt so dedicated and committed to saving people, who was dedicated to humanity. And his artwork is noted in England, and unfortunately not so much in America. And he was one of the artists I've discovered. But there were many others who did work in Britain, in Great Britain, that we don't know about, who also, some of them were feminists, some of them were or socialists and whatever, but their artwork was to a certain extent an expression of their political ideologies. And that's why the book talks about fairy tales as political tales.
PJ:
Yeah, absolutely. And forgive me for glancing off to the side. I had
Jack Zipes:
That's
PJ:
never heard
Jack Zipes:
OK.
PJ:
of Ralph Brandt and I was bringing up his, I was not expecting the artwork to have. It's brilliant and it's more, and I might be getting the term wrong, surreal than I was expecting.
Jack Zipes:
Yes,
PJ:
Is that
Jack Zipes:
yes,
PJ:
the right term? Yeah, it's very interesting.
Jack Zipes:
right.
PJ:
Also, in some ways, not what I would think of for Grimm's fairy tales. I have the Arthur Rackham illustrations for the
Jack Zipes:
Yes,
PJ:
one that I have for the kids,
Jack Zipes:
totally different,
PJ:
which,
Jack Zipes:
totally
PJ:
yes,
Jack Zipes:
different.
PJ:
completely different. Those are like, they have this old feel to them. This
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
is, I love the challenge that
Jack Zipes:
Yeah.
PJ:
these provide. Very,
Jack Zipes:
Yes. All
PJ:
very fascinating.
Jack Zipes:
right.
PJ:
Sorry, I got caught up in looking at... at these different paintings. So, you know, you mentioned Ralph Bronte, you mentioned, I mean, you have this collection of like, of 13. As we look at, tell us a little bit about Lisa Tetzner. I
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
love this characterization of the naive and idealistic
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
revolutionary, right? And so, can you draw a little bit about her for us?
Jack Zipes:
Yeah, yeah, no, she was actually, again, she was born, you know, the late 19th, early 20th century, and she had a leg that was... She was never paralyzed, but she had tremendous problems throughout her life with one of her legs. But she too, she came from a very conservative German family and met a communist, a German communist, and they got married at the beginning of the 1920s. And she then began... Because she was a storyteller and traveled, she actually learned a lot of the tales by going from town to town and writing them down and became one of the foremost writers of fairy tales for children and also wrote a play that another Hungarian playwright Balacs who's also in the book, they teamed together and wrote a play about a young boy who is starving in a poor family, a proletarian family, and he goes out one day to get some milk for the family and meets a talking rabbit, a big talking rabbit, who wants to educate him and takes him on his back and they fly through the world. and to different places where the wars are going on. And he learns how important it is for all people to be fed and so on and so forth. And it's brilliant, a brilliant play. And she continued writing tales that the Nazis objected to. So where did they go? 33, Switzerland. And she and her husband continued writing there. And eventually, they never wanted to go back to Germany, although I think they visited one time. But after the war, they still considered one of the foremost writers of children's literature.
PJ:
Amazing. And so you're talking about, she comes from a conservative German family, meets a communist, marries the communist. So
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
did her plays carry this communist tendency throughout them?
Jack Zipes:
No, no, not really. I mean, you know, there were people who were loyal party members, but communism became stalinized in the nine, unfortunately,
PJ:
Ah.
Jack Zipes:
in the 1930s and 40s, and, and people left the party and, you know, remains, you know, basically in their way of living socialist. but they stopped aligning themselves with a particular party. And that's what happened with them, that they realized that the world was much more complex than they thought.
PJ:
I and so maybe and I think that's a great lead in here Well, I'm trying to understand is where's the naive and idealistic revolutionary part come in Is it
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
just that they're pushing against the Nazis or was there something a particular
Jack Zipes:
No,
PJ:
theme?
Jack Zipes:
they hoped that despite what happened with Russia, despite many difficulties, they continued to have this vision of a world in which people are humane.
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
They kept... doing, they kept writing from that perspective even though things didn't work out that way.
PJ:
Yeah, and that's very helpful. Thank you. I'm not gonna lie when you first started talking about them you talked about this conservative German woman marrying this communist German man. I had images of a feather on the roof the second I can't remember the second couple but I what I do remember because it always makes me laugh so much is the you know the second couple the man is a communist and him to teach his daughters and he's telling the story of Jacob and Laban and they come up and Reptavia comes up and he and of course he goes and Laban tricks Jacob and the moral of the story is never trust your employer and
Jack Zipes:
Hahaha
PJ:
I so that's more what I had in mind when you first so thank you thank you for that clarification and just try to figure that out um And I want to be respectful of your time, of course. As a last one, I see the violent, in air quotes, pacifist, Emery Kellan. Can you talk to us a little bit about him? Or is that
Jack Zipes:
About whom?
PJ:
Emery Kellan?
Jack Zipes:
Oh, yes. Oh, Emery Gellin. Whoa. Wonderful man. Amazing man. Also Hungarian Jew
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
who went to eventually he fought in World War I for Germany and wound up in Munich after the war and studied art in Munich and became a great caricaturist.
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
And he, the war... made him into, transformed him into a pacifist. He fought in the trenches, he was wounded, he managed to stop fighting by once he was wounded and then he pretended that he was nuts and he flapped his wings and things like that and they had to move him to a mental a hospital that dealt with people who were mentally ill. And so he spent the last part of the war in a hospital that saved his life.
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
And then he wound up in Munich in 1919, 1920, and he began studying. to be an artist and he became really a brilliant political caricaturist and worked with a good friend of his, I'm forgetting his friend's name. At any rate, they were both Hungarian Jews and they went and they, in those days when the, not the United Nations, what was the, before the United Nations?
PJ:
uh the league
Jack Zipes:
Yeah,
PJ:
is it the
Jack Zipes:
League
PJ:
league
Jack Zipes:
of
PJ:
of
Jack Zipes:
Nations.
PJ:
nations
Jack Zipes:
Yes,
PJ:
yes
Jack Zipes:
League of Nations. So they needed photographers. They couldn't have photographers, but they could have caricatures in the meetings and so on. And they, for almost 15 years in Switzerland, became these brilliant caricatures. And some of the characters were of Hitler and Mussolini and so on. So when 1933 came, they had to think about where they were going to go.
PJ:
That didn't go over well, caricaturing. No, okay, yeah, okay.
Jack Zipes:
I think that Mr. Hitler didn't prove
PJ:
Didn't appreciate
Jack Zipes:
up there.
PJ:
that. Yeah
Jack Zipes:
But their artwork was actually in Esquire, and in other words, it wasn't just in Europe.
PJ:
Yeah.
Jack Zipes:
And so fortunately they had friends. And in 38, they went to New York. And in New York, Kellan continued to illustrate all sorts of... mainly for children because he was concerned about their education. And one of the books I've translated and also republished is about Yusuf the Ostrich, about an ostrich in North Africa in the 1930s or 40s who saves Americans who are in the continent in Northern Africa and so on. it and we
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
did it to a great extent and his daughter lives in Washington, the state of Washington and I contacted her for permission to do this and so there were other books he's written that he was a dedicated pacifist
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
and it was not, he was It's really clear, the message in almost all of the artwork. His wife was a writer and helped him. His Hungarian background didn't help his English. So
PJ:
Understandable.
Jack Zipes:
she helped with the writing of the text, but he did three or four other books that I've collected, and he also wrote a biography his trail from Hungary to Germany to the United States. Very amazing, admirable man.
PJ:
One, I can see why you wrote about this and I kind of love that, you know, we gave a kind of a smattering of some of the people you write about. But to get the full feature, of course, people should buy your book.
Jack Zipes:
Yeah.
PJ:
But. I want to be respectful of your time and I want to leave our audience with something. If you could leave, well first off, it's been a joy having you on. I've really enjoyed
Jack Zipes:
Thank you.
PJ:
talking to you today.
Jack Zipes:
Thanks.
PJ:
What is one takeaway you'd leave for our audience as they go about their week that they can think about?
Jack Zipes:
Huh. Well, we're living in really brutal times. And
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
in all sorts of... We have wars in Europe that are unfounded, that dictators are on the rise. And even, I think, in the United States, there's a danger of fascism raising its ugly head. I hope that people can realize that through our understanding of literature, of art, of education, schooling, and so on, that we can live together and try to enable one another to survive and become clear-headed and to enjoy. this great universe instead of destroying the air around us and the climate and so on and so forth. So, we're living at a very pivotal time. I'll be 86 in it tomorrow.
PJ:
Happy birthday.
Jack Zipes:
Thank you. And I'm somewhat sad, you
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
know, not happy, because I think we have to turn things around. I think we have to develop a sense of compassion, compassion
PJ:
Hmm.
Jack Zipes:
for one another, and to try to help those who have, let us say, less than we might have, to find ways to help them enjoy what we have on this earth. So that's about it.
PJ:
Yeah, and that is the power that stories have.
Jack Zipes:
Yes.
PJ:
Dr. Zipes, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming on today.
Jack Zipes:
Great, thank you for inviting me. Have a good week.