My Dickens analogy will be postponed for a couple days.
I have to post on the book, The Nutcracker. Sure it's a pretty ballet Tchaikovsky whipped up to
the bizarre story, but have you actually read E.T.A Hoffman's book? The ballet and the book
are completely different and I was shocked how down right CreEpy the book is!
Several variations of the characters are part of the ornaments we hang on the tree. But I had
deleted the story line in liue of the fact it was bizarre.
It involves some Queens (one a mouse- on the lines of Madame DeFarge-, which is scary, a bacon
loving King (and bacon loving mice) The King, whose offspring is born pretty and, oddly, a full
set of teeth, is angered when his wife allows the mice to have bacon. His bacon. A mouse curse
ensues, on account of not enough bacon for the King, and lands Pirlipat looking quite different.
At least she keeps her nice straight teeth.
She, however, is alright with her looks -seeing how she has some astromer promise the curse will
be broken when a guy, who can crack even the hardest nuts with his own exceptional teeth, comes
along and breaks it.
The Mouse Queen makes sure he doesn't undo the facial she's given Princess Pirlipat. Tough tooth
guy trips over the hideous mouse and ends up looking like the girl he was trying to transform. ----
Which petrifies her to death.
Add a girl with fits of fevers who likes to get up in the night and then listen to her Godfather
Drosselmeir fill her in on why she has creepy events happening in the middle of the night, and you
have quite the tale.
J's reaction: "What does this have to do with Christmas?" and finally: "This seems sort of violent
for Christmas...."
Turns out Hoffman wrote fantasy and horror. Which explains the down right weird things that
happen. It truly is something you would dream about one night with a fever. Or several nights with
one. Thanfully the ballet is very different.
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