The Sorcerer's Apprentice

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Illustration from around 1882 by S. Barth

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the English name of both an 1897 symphonic poem by Paul Dukas (L'apprenti sorcier in French), and of a 1797 ballad by Goethe (Der Zauberlehrling in German), which inspired the musical work. Goethe, in turn, based his poem on Philopseudes, a story by Lucian of Samosata.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is also the title of two novels, one by François Augiéras and the other by Hanns Heinz Ewers. It is also the title of a Doctor Who novel by Christopher Bulis.

1 General plot
2 L'apprenti sorcier
3 Der Zauberlehrling
4 Philopseudes
5 Trivia
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] General plot

The tale begins as an old sorcerer departs his workshop, leaving his apprentice with chores to perform. The apprentice tires of fetching water for a bath or tank, and enchants a broomstick to do the work for him, using magic he is not yet fully trained in. However, soon the floor is awash with water, and he realises that he cannot stop the broom because he does not know the magic word to make it stop. Despairing, he splits the broom in two with an axe, but each of the pieces takes up a pail and continues fetching water, now faster than ever. When all seems lost in a massive flood, the old sorcerer returns, quickly breaks the spell and saves the day.

In some versions, the sorcerer expels the apprentice for causing the mess. Other versions have the sorcerer, who is sometimes a bit amused at the object lesson for the need for proper control of magic, reprimands him more mildly.

[edit] L'apprenti sorcier

Although Dukas's musical piece was already quite well known and popular, it was made particularly famous by its inclusion in the 1940 Walt Disney animated film Fantasia, in which Mickey Mouse plays the role of the apprentice. Its popularity caused it to be used again in Fantasia 2000.

Some authorities have suggested that L'apprenti sorcier was intended as a scherzo of Dukas's untitled symphony, with which it has some thematic similarity; indeed it is subtitled "Scherzo after a ballad by Goethe". However others point out that L'apprenti sorcier is clearly program music while the symphony is abstract.

[edit] Der Zauberlehrling

Goethe's poem is a ballad in fourteen stanzas. The story proceeds as described above up to where the floor begins to flood. Not knowing how to control the enchanted broomstick, the apprentice splits it in two with an axe, only for each of the pieces to take up a pail and continue fetching water, now at twice the speed. When all seems lost, the old sorcerer returns, quickly breaks the spell and saves the day. The poem finishes with the old sorcerer's statement that powerful spirits should only be called by the master himself. Interestingly, the question of the sorcerer's anger with his apprentice, which appears in both Philopseudes and Fantasia, does not appear in Der Zauberlehrling.

The "Zauberlehrling" is extremely well-known in the German-speaking world. The lines in which the apprentice implores the returning sorcerer to help him with the mess he has created has attained the status of a proverb, especially the line "Die Geister, die ich rief" ("The spirits that I called"). "Die Geister, die ich rief" is often used to describe a situation where somebody summons help or uses allies that he cannot control, especially in politics.

[edit] Philopseudes

Philopseudes (Greek for "Lovers of lies") is a short frame story by Lucian, written c. AD 150. The narrator, Tychiades, is visiting the house of a sick and elderly friend, Eucrates, where he has an argument about the reality of the supernatural. Several internal narrators then tell him various tales, intended to convince him that supernatural phenomena are real. Each story in turn is either rebutted or ridiculed by Tychiades. Eventually Eucrates recounts a tale extremely similar to Goethe's Zauberlehrling, which had supposedly happened to him in his youth. While the similarities are so great as to make it obvious that Lucian was Goethe's inspiration, there are several small differences:

The sorcerer is instead an Egyptian mystic, a priest of Isis called Pancrates;
Eucrates is not an apprentice, but a companion who eavesdrops on Pancrates casting his spell; and
Although a broom is listed as one of the items that can be animated by the spell, Eucrates actually uses a pestle. (Pancrates also sometimes used the bar of a door.)

However perhaps the most important difference is the moral of the story. In Der Zauberlehrling and in Fantasia, it is generally presumed that the story embodies some maxim or moral, and that it is something along the lines of "don't start what you can't finish" or "don't meddle with things you don't understand". In Philopseudes, however, the intention is to ridicule tall tales.

[edit] Trivia

A similar sounding theme can heard throughout the arcade game Zoo Keeper.

[edit] See also

Sorcerer's Apprentice mode

Similar themes - magic turning against the person invoking it - are found in many traditions and works of art; see e.g. Golem, Faust, "The Monkey's Paw", Wish (fiction), Sweet porridge, Forbidden Planet (Clarke's law of sufficiently advanced technology as magic-- the Faustian theme of the post atomic age), and The Master and His Pupil.