CONTEXT IN WHICH THE GREEN SNAKE AND THE BEAUTIFUL LILY WAS WRITTEN

This epic Fairy Tale was written by Goethe at the time of the French Revolution in response to letters and essays he received from Friedrich Schiller about the task of re-building communities.

As a poet, Goethe's contribution to this "debate" was to write imaginatively to enable the reader, if they wish, to become freer in their thinking and resolution about how to re-build communities. He did this by writing the Fairy Tale.

This Story was placed at the end of a Work by Goethe entitled "The Recreations of the German Emigrants." This text is a series of short stories which contain references to moral values. It amounts to being a prelude to the Tale.

Unlike the stories that came before the Fairy Tale, Goethe created very imaginative characters such as a Green Snake, a Beautiful Lily, an Old Man with a Lamp, Will-o'-wisps - 19 in all. The nature of the "images" characters like these portray reduce dramatically the tendency to make judgements about them - thus freeing our minds to think, feel and act more intuitively and inspirationally.

Two paragraphs in "The Recreations of the German Emigrants" immediately before the start of the Fairy Tale provide an insight into Goethe's reasoning, rational for the imaginative and creative nature of the way he wrote it.

He stated, "The exercise of imagination should be voluntary. It can affect nothing by compulsion; it must wait for the moment of inspiration. Without design and without any settled course, it soars aloft upon its own pinions and as it is borne forward leaves a trace of its wonderful and devious course. The imagination should not deal in facts, nor be employed to establish facts. Its proper province is art." 

Additionally to the imaginative characters in this Tale, Goethe presented aspects of their world which encourages the reader, listener to make separate exploration for potential relevance, insight and meaning. An example is why the Light from the lamp held by the Man with the Lamp only shines when there is reciprocal Light shining towards it.

The key question is to what degree exploration of aspects and characters in this Fairy Tale help creative free thinking and speech within us for use in our lives today.