Sleeping Beauty
by Günter Kunert -- translated by Prof. Diethelm Prowe
Generations of children have been fascinated by that fairy tale because it excited their imagination: how year after year a mighty hedge grew up, immeasurably high, a vertical jungle, alive with blooming and wilting, with robins and fragrances, but without openings, impenetrable, and labyrinthian. The brave, who kept arriving to overcome this obstacle, all failed: gored by the thorns; all entangled by the branches, caught, shackled; attacked by poisonous vermin; and suddenly paralyzed by doubts whether this alluring king's daughter existed at all. Until one day the victor finally arrives: he achieves what his predecessors failed to do; he enters the castle, runs up the stairs, enters the chamber where the sleeping beauty rests, her toothless mouth half open, drooling, sunken eyelids, the skull sparsely covered with hair and worm-like blue veins bulging at the temples, stained, dirty, a snoring hag.
Oh, blessed are all who, dreaming of Sleeping Beauty, died in the hedge and in the belief that behind that hedge a different order of time ruled, where time finally stood still and safe.