Massachusetts College of Art and Design - Palette and Pen Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 22 text:

writer says, and the fairy tale is wise to briefly tell what happens and let the reader do the rest. For unless the writer he some wise llioreau who, knowing the woods better than we, leads unerringly to hutter-ciips and herry patches, it is tiresome fo lly to dog h is heels on the road, stepping carefully into his footprints, while magic entices in bypaths and fancy beckons us afield. And set against a common story thus laboring dully over what the writer says and how he felt and what he saw, the fairy tale is a sparkling splendor of concise enchanted words, phrases of enormous implication, and sen- tences like Bacon s that em- brace a lifetime. So we read fairy tales, come back to them again and again as to the best. 1 lie last of the fairies, waving her wand gently over a II, gave them the power of light in a dark world; and indeed they are the loveliest possessions of this earth, rare and precious and glittering. Nowhere is such wealth as in a book of fairy tales, such a gaudy unbelievable wealth of delights and dangers and deep enchantments. We never tire of the glass hill, the enchanted fawn, the cloak of darkness, of the ashes and the straw and the gold; these are more to us than all the world, for we created them ourselves, gorgeous fancies and golden dreams to shimmer between us and the pages of the book. Sometimes one gifted above men comes with the daring to make his imagery articulate, to display his dream. Such a one was Walt Disney. Working swiftly, laughing softly to himself, he fashioned a bri ght new thing. With bold fastidious hand he emphasized a knife, a daisy wreath, an apple, a box to hold a heart. Skilfully he tangled the old with the new, let some of

Page 21 text:

FTER half a year of anxious publicity, there came at last the moment iJI Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs began, when the curtain was raised, when the book was opened to Once upon a time . All over the audience apprehensive artists and youngsters beside them moved closer on the edges of their chairs: for they both had much at stake. If it were possible for paint and ink to create national legendary heroes as the camera did. Snow W hite was to prove it. And applause for Snow White, more than the applause of all the children who had ever clapped for Tinker Bell since Peter Pan was born, was to determine whether or not the fairies should live. It was a hushed expectant moment. Fairy tales, like all legends, and like sunlight and laughter and the four seasons, are common f)roperly; they belong to all of us, to do with as we like. I hey are no more than outline, a framework for us to build on; and we Sf)end our dreaming hours rounding them and filling in the long descri[)tive f)as- sages, bringing to them all the fancy and the music and invention we [)ossess. hat the reader imagines has ever been more im[)oitanl than what the

Page 23 text:

Donald Duck s unholy laughter echo in the dwarfs glee, sent the big had wolf dressed up like the Fuller Brush man stalking through the river mist in the witch’s place. And then with fear and trembling when he thought of all the dreamers of the world, against whose own firm notions of beauty and hate he must pit his witch and his princess, he offered, as a great king scattering largess. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs . And we accepted it as largess. In spite of many things, we acknowledged in our hearts that though we might indeed have asked for something different, we could not well have asked for anything better. And when it was all over and we went out into the world again, we looked curiously up and down at the color of the sky and the shape of the street. Partly we looked because it was as though we were back from a long journey and as yet scarcely knew where we were, partly because to our affected eyes all the buildings loomed in mystery, and magic hovered over all the people. Far off in the middle distance we could just make out Dopey, skipping off un- certainly, with many a backward glance, to take his rightful place among the immortals. Susan Richert, ’39