"The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily" (German title: "Das Märchen") is a fairy tale by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published in 1795 in Friedrich Schiller's German magazine Die Horen (The Horae). It concludes Goethe's novella rondo Conversations of German Emigrants (1795). Das Märchen is regarded as the founding example of the genre of Erzählung, or artistic fairy tale.
The story revolves around the crossing and bridging of a river, which represents the divide between the outer life of the senses and the ideal aspirations of the human being.
Read more about The Green Snake And The Beautiful Lily: Synopsis, Analysis, Adaptations, Translations
Famous quotes containing the words green, snake, beautiful and/or lily:
“On the green they watched their sons
Playing till too dark to see,
As their fathers watched them once,
As my father once watched me;”
—Edmund Blunden (1896–1974)
“The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. Likewise those spirits who are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be spirits.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
—Julius J. Epstein, screenwriter, Philip Epstein, screenwriter, Howard Koch, screenwriter, and Michael Curtiz. Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart)
“I am haunted by numberless islands, many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;
Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)