Undine (novella)

Infobox Book |
name = Undine


image_caption = Cover of "Undine"
author = Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué
country = Germany
language = German
genre = Novella
publisher =
release_date = 1811
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages =
isbn =

"Undine" is a novel by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué concerning Undine, a water spirit who marries a Knight named Huldebrand in order to gain a soul. It is an early German romance, which has been translated into English and other languages. During the nineteenth century the book was very popular and was, according to The Times in 1843, "a book which, of all others, if you ask for it at a foreign library, you are sure to find engaged" [cite journal|last=Au|first=Susan
url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/view/1567379?seq=2
journal=Dance Chronicle|volume=2|issue=3|year=1978|pages=160|publisher=Taylor & Francis, Ltd|title=The Shadow of Herself: Some Sources of Jules Perrot's "Ondine" |accessdate=2008-05-07|doi=10.1080/01472527808568730] . The story, which has resemblences to "The Little Mermaid" by Andersen, is descended from Melusine, the French folk-tale of a water-sprite who marries a knight on condition that he shall never see her on Saturdays, when she resumes her mermaid shape. It was also inspired by a text of Paracelsus. [cite web|url = http://www.naxosdirect.com/STRONG-Ondine---From-a-Notebook-of-Sketches-Suites-1-3/title/8559078/|title = Ondine • Suites Nos. 1 - 3|first = George Templeton|last = Strong|accessdate=2008-05-16] An unabridged English edition of the story published in 1909 was illustrated by Arthur Rackham. George Macdonald thought "Undine" "the most beautiful" of all fairy stories, and the references to it in such works as Charlotte Yonge's "The Daisy Chain" and Louisa Alcott's "Little Women" show that it was one of the best loved of all books for many 19th-century children.

The first adaptation of "Undine" was E.T.A. Hoffmann's opera in 1814. It was a collaboration between E.T.A. Hoffman, who composed the score, and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué who adapted his own work into a libretto. The opera proved highly successful and in his review of Hoffmann's opera, Carl Maria von Weber admired it as the kind of composition which the German desires - 'an art work complete in itself, in which partial contributions of the related and collaborating arts blend together, disappear, and, in disappearing, somehow form a new world' [cite book|last = Strunk |first=Oliver|title=Source Readings in Music History: The Romantic Era|year=1965|place=New York|pages=63|url=http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/aurifex/issue1/castein.html|accessdate=2008-05-10] . [cite journal|last=Castein|first=Hanne|title=The Composer as Librettist: Judith Weir's 'Romantic' Operas Heaven Ablaze in His Breast and Blond Eckbert|url=http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/aurifex/issue1/castein.html|accessdate=2008-05-10|journal=Aurifex|year=2000|issue=1]

Adaptations

Opera

* "Undine", E.T.A. Hoffmann, 1814
* "Undine", Christian Friedrich Johann Girschner, 1830
* "Undine", Albert Lortzing, 1845
* "Undina", Alexei Lvov, 1846
* "Undina", Pyotr Tchaikovsky, 1869
* "Rusalka", Antonín Dvořák, 1901

Music

* "Sonata Undine", a Romantic sonata for flute and piano (in E-minor) by Carl Reinecke, 1882
* "Ondine", a movement in "Gaspard de la Nuit" by Maurice Ravel, 1908
* "Ondine", a piano prelude by Claude Debussy, 1911-1913

Ballet

* "Ondine", composed by Cesare Pugni and choreographed by Jules Perrot, 1843
* "Coralia, or the Inconstant Knight", choreographed by Paul Taglioni, 1847
* "Undine", composed by Hans Henze and choreographed by Frederick Ashton, 1958

Film

* "The Loves of Ondine", a film by Andy Warhol

Literature

* "Ondine, ou la Nymphe des Eaux", a play by René-Charles Guilbert de Pixerécourt, 1830
* "Ondine", a poem by Aloysius Bertrand, 1842
* "Undine", an autobiographical book by Olive Schreiner, 1928
* "Ondine", a play by Jean Giraudoux, 1939

Art

* "Undine and Huldbrand", a painting by Henry Fuseli, 1819-1822
* "Undine", a painting by Moritz Retzsch, 1830
* "Undine", a painting by John William Waterhouse, 1872
* "Ondine", a painting by Paul Gauguin, 1889
* "Undine", a painting by Georges Fantin-Latour
* "Undine", a painting by Daniel Maclise
* "Undine", a painting by J.M.W. Turner
* "Ondine de Spa", a sculpture by Pouhon Pierre-Le-Grand
* "Undine with harp", a sculpture by Ludwig Michael von Schwanthaler, 1855

External links

*Gutenberg|no=18752|name=Undine