“A Fairy Tale” - by Georg Büchner

(This might be the most de-

pressing “fairy tale” ever
written. This little tale is
told by an old woman to
“entertain” a group of
children in Büchner's
unfinished drama
“Woyzeck” which he began
in 1836. He was dead the
following year in his 24th
year).
Irma Walter finished the story with her own words.
Irma Walter June 2010
http://www.scribd.com/englishontarget
Once upon a time
there was a poor
child and he had
no father and no
mother,
everything was
dead and there
was no one else in the world.
 Everything dead, and he
went and he wandered
day and night. And as
there was no one else left
on earth, he wanted to go
up to the sky, and the moon
looked at him in such a friendly
way,
and when he came at
last to the moon, it
was a piece of rotten
wood

and so he went to the sun

and when he came to the
sun, it was a faded
sunflower
and when he came to the
stars, they were little gold
flies stuck on,

just the way the

butcherbird sticks
them on the thorns of
the blackthorn bush
 and when he
wanted to go back
to earth, it was an
upturned pot and
he was all alone and so he sat
down and cried and he's still
sitting there and he's all alone.

(Georg Büchner,
translated by Gordon Wood, Edinburgh)

********************************
And as it goes with tears and
crying, there is an end to it when
no one else is watching.

So the child turned his eyes away

from the wrotten wood and the
faded sunflower and the goldflies
and wondered what else there
might be to look at and as it goes
with wondering, he turned inside
to look at his own soul.
At first he saw nothingness to the
end of the universe but then he
noticed a faint light and as he
approached the light he realised
that it was warm and round and
looked like rotten wood.

He noticed a plant
that looked like a
faded sunflower and
an upturned claypot
that was out of use.
He crushed the rotten wood, filled
it into the pot and planted the
faded sunflower and because he
was so good at it, he cried a little
longer until he had
watered the wood and
turned it into soil.
The child looked at his
work and found it useless
but it was all that he
could do. Although he wished he
was dead, the sunflower seeds
dropped into the mud and started
sprouting there.
A smile came upon the child's face
and the smile shed a light, first on
the seeds, then the pot and the
whole universe of his soul and it
didn't stop there, the light went
on to spring from his eyes into the
world and the claypot he was
sitting on.

The faded sunflower lifted its

drooping head and dropped its
seeds into the ground. Then it
rose to take its place in the sky
and smiled on the earth.
The rotten wood came together to
form the moon and the goldflies
moved their wings to make the
stars glitter.
When he stared at the wonder of
it all, he heard laughter and song
and children's
clamour and he
turned to see the
world approach
him with a warm
breeze.