 Undine | |
| Creature information | |
|---|---|
| Grouping | Legendary creature |
| Origin | |
| Region | Europe |
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Undines (/ˈʌndiːnz,ənˈdiːnz/; alsoondines) are a category ofelemental beings associated with water, stemming from thealchemical writings ofParacelsus. Later writers developed the undine into a waternymph in its own right, and it continues to live in modern literature and art through such adaptations as DanishHans Christian Andersen's 1837 "The Little Mermaid" and the 1811 novellaUndine byFriedrich de la Motte Fouqué.
The termUndine first appears in thealchemical writings ofParacelsus,[1] a Renaissancealchemist and physician. It derives from theLatin wordunda, meaning "wave", with a diminutive "-ina" which in modern Italian could translate the term "little wave", and first appears in Paracelsus'A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits, published posthumously in 1566.[2]Ondine is an alternative spelling,[3] and has become a female given name.[4]
Paracelsus believed that each of the fourclassical elements—earth,water,air andfire—is inhabited by different categories ofelemental spirits, liminal creatures that share our world:gnomes, undines,sylphs andsalamanders respectively.[5] According to Paracelsus (as paraphrased by occultistManly P. Hall), the spiritual inhabitants of the elements are "invisible, spiritual counterparts of visible Nature ... many resembling human beings in shape, and inhabiting worlds of their own, unknown to man because his undeveloped senses were incapable of functioning beyond the limitations of the grosser elements".[6][8]
Undines are almost invariably depicted as being female, which is consistent with the ancient Greek idea that water is a female element.[9] They are usually found in forest pools and waterfalls,[10] and their beautiful singing voices[11] are sometimes heard over the sound of water. The group contains many species, includingnereides,limnads,naiades,mermaids andpotamides.[9]
What undines lack, compared to humans, is animmortal soul.[12] Marriage with a human shortens their lives on Earth, but earns them an immortal human soul,[13] a view which was professed by Paracelsus.[14]
The offspring of a union between an undine and a man are humans with a soul, but also with some kind of aquatic characteristic, called a watermark. Moses Binswanger, the protagonist inHansjörg Schneider'sDas Wasserzeichen (1997), has a cleft in his throat, for instance, which must be periodically submerged in water to prevent it from becoming painful.[15]
Theancient Greek philosopherEmpedocles (c. 490 –c. 430 BC) was the first to propose that the four classical elements were sufficient to explain everything present in the world.[16]
Paracelsus's view of elemental spirits may have grown out of the folklore that a very human-like race of spirits exists in a different "plane" from humans, according to CelticistHenry Jenner.[17]
Thus in the "astral plane" (or "Chaos", in Paracelsian jargon)[18] for each of the four elements, earth, air/wind, fire, and water, there resided four types of spiritual beings, a view held by Paracelsus according to hisLiber de Nymphis. These spirits are like unto human beings, but not endowed withimmortal souls.[12][19] But Undines ("water women", "water people"[20]) in particular are able to consort with humans more than the spirits of other elements, and are most capable of entering into marriage with a human male, thus earning a kernel of the immortality. The children born to her will be imparted with human souls as well. For this reason, the Undines (also called Nymphs) yearn to marry a human husband.[20][14][19] If a man has an Undine/Nymph for a wife, he must be careful not to offend her in the presence of water, or she will return to her element.[21][22][19]
This motif of the husband's calumny causing Undine's departure also occurs in Fouquet's novella (and Hoffmann's opera[23]). Undine's husband Huldbrand had been forewarned not to do so,[24] but he rekindles his unfaithful relationship with Bertalda, he commits the insult, and she splashes away beneath the Danube.[19]
Paracelsus also emphasizes that even if the sylph/undine has returned to water, the marriage still remains valid, and she cannot be presumed to be dead,[25] another theme exploited by Fouquet's novella: thus, as her husband's transgression necessitates her departure into the watery world, she makes the insistence on her husband that his vow of fidelity still remains in place, and breaking it would have deadly consequence.[26][27] And she continues to remind to her husband to remain faithful, in the form of a message in a dream between the swan song.[28]
According to Paracelsus, the Undine will still receive her place on theDay of Judgment,[25] i.e., she will still preserve the immortal soul she earned through marriage.
David Gallagher argues that, although they had Paracelsus as a source, 19th and 20th-century German authors found inspiration for their many versions of undine in classical literature, particularlyOvid'sMetamorphoses, especially given the transformation of many of their undines into springs: Hyrie (book VII) andEgeria (book XV) are two such characters.[29]
Later writers embellished Paracelsus' undine classification by developing it into a water nymph in its own right. The romanceUndine byFriedrich de la Motte Fouqué, published in 1811, is based on a passage in Paracelsus'Book on Nymphs in which he relates how an undine can acquire an immortal soul by marrying a human,[30] although it likely also borrows from the 17th-century Rosicrucian novelComte de Gabalis.[31]
Ondine was the title of one of the poems inAloysius Bertrand's collectionGaspard de la Nuit of 1842. This poem inspired the first movement ofMaurice Ravel's 1908 piano suiteGaspard de la nuit.[citation needed]
The character of Mélisande fromMaurice Maeterlinck's symbolist playPelléas et Mélisande has been seen as an Undine figure.Debussy,Sibelius,Fauré, andSchoenberg all wrote music adaptions of the play.[32][33][34] The 1939 playOndine by French dramatistJean Giraudoux is also based upon Fouqué's novella,[35] as isOndine, a ballet by composerHans Werner Henze and choreographerFrederick Ashton[36] withMargot Fonteyn as Undine.[37] Austrian authorIngeborg Bachmann, a friend of Henze's who collaborated with him frequently, attended the premiere of the ballet in London, and published her short story "Undine geht" in the collectionDas dreißigste Jahr (1961),[38] in which Undine "is neither a human nor a water spirit, but an idea".[37]
Fouqué'sUndine also exerted an influence onHans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" (1837),[39][40] andH.D. plays on this identification in her autobiographical novelHERmione (1927).[41][42] Burton Pollin notes the popularity of the tale in the English-speaking world: translations in English appeared in 1818 and 1830, and a "superior version" was published by American churchman Thomas Tracy in 1839 and reprinted in 1824, 1840, 1844, and 1845; he estimates that by 1966 almost a hundred English versions had been printed, including adaptations for children.Edgar Allan Poe was profoundly influenced by Fouqué's tale, according to Pollin, which may have come about through Poe's broad reading ofWalter Scott andSamuel Taylor Coleridge:[43] Scott had derived the character of the White Lady of Avenel (The Monastery, 1820) fromUndine,[44] and a passage by Coleridge onUndine was reprinted in Tracy's 1839 edition.[43]
French composer Claude Debussy included a piece called "Ondine" in his collection of piano preludes written in 1913 (Preludes, Book 2, No. 8).[citation needed]
A poem by Seamus Heaney titled "Undine" appears in his 1969 collectionDoor into the Dark. The poem is narrated from the first-person perspective of the water nymph itself.[citation needed]
Japanese pianistYukie Nishimura composed a piece of piano music titledUndine in late 1980s.[citation needed]
The composerCarl Reinecke wrote the "Sonata Undine" for flute and piano, opus 167, first published in 1882.[citation needed]
In 2015 a fish-based character by the name of Undyne appeared in the video gameUndertale.
In 2017Ryan Jude Novelline created a gown that he displayed atNew York Comic Con based on the story of Undine.[45]
Congenital central hypoventilation syndrome, a rare medical condition in which those affected lackautonomic control of their breathing and are hence at risk of suffocation while sleeping, is also known as Ondine's curse.[46] Ondine, the eponymous heroine of Giraudoux's play, tells her future husband Hans, whom she has just met, that "I shall be the shoes of your feet ... I shall be the breath of your lungs".[47] Ondine makes a pact with her uncle, the King of the Ondines, that if Hans ever deceives her he will die. After their honeymoon Hans is reunited with his first love, the Princess Bertha, and Ondine leaves him, only to be captured by a fisherman six months later. On meeting Ondine again on the day of his wedding to Bertha, Hans tells her that "all the things my body once did by itself, it does now only by special order ... A single moment of inattention and I forget to breathe".[48] Hans and Ondine kiss, and he dies.
Critics have pointed out that medical texts on the syndrome frequently misinterpret Ondine as a vengeful or malevolent character; in the play, Ondine is not responsible for the curse and tries to save Hans.[49]
The subdivisions and elaborations [of nature spirits] ... by Paracelsus, the Rosicrucians, and the modern theosophists are no doubt amplifications of that popular belief in the existence of a race, neither divine nor human, but very like to human beings, who existed on a "plane" different from that of humans, though occupying the same space which ... resembles the theory of these mystics in its main outlines, and was probably what suggested it to them.
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