The Woman and the Snake/The Woman as a Snake. The Ophidian Feminine in Ludwig Tieck’s Romantic Tale Melusine

In 1456, the aristocrat Thüring von Ringoltingen of Bern introduced the figure of Melusine into the German literature. But the first literary telling of the myth of Melusine, the creature half woman, half snake, came from France, when Jean d’Arras, commissioned by his master, Jean de Berry Count of Poitou, wrote in 1392 the story of the House of Lusignan and the legend of Melusine. Ludwig Tieck reworks in 1800 the story of Melusine starting from the text of Thüring: At a first reading the Melusine by Tieck does not seem to diverge from the previous elaborations. Yet, while on the one hand, the thematic core stays the same, on the other Tieck makes changes both formally and thematically: He shortens and summarises those genealogical references that find ample space in medieval elaborations, focusing on the characterisation of Melusine and on the symbolic relationship humanity/animality. The main mytheme that sets in motion the narrative process is an exogamous union par excellence, that between a supernatural being and a human being. It is an ancient and pagan mytheme, that structures also the story of Eros and Psyche, overturned in its terms within the Christian cultural system. Melusine is a Naturwesen, an imperfect being, which is not only human, but also animal, therefore stigmatized as the fearsome “other” by the whole society. Following the mytheme pattern she seeks release from her condition through the union with a man, which is bound to fail because the man responsible for the redemption of this creature from the state of wildness proves himself unable to fulfil the only request made by Melusine, not to be seen during her metamorphosis, not to be seen as a snake, as an animal. The failure to comply with the condition, which as always proves to be a sort of “narrative trap”, determines the return of the Naturwesen into the kingdom of the indifferent nature, populated by species only, not by individuals. Eventually Melusine, as a woman-snake, a Mischwesen, half animal, half human, will be confined in an imaginary place where nature and culture interweave. The whole story is overshadowed by the disturbing presence of the animal, symbol of the violence of the unconscious desire and of the irrational component of the thought. Ambiguous, snake-like figure, Melusine is an expression of the maternal archetype, which, like every other archetype is characterised by its irreducible ambivalence: she is the origin of life, but also the mother who devours her own children. In Tieck’s tale, the figurative element of the snake refers to two different symbolic orders, that of the maternal one and that of the more specifically female-sexual one, which are closely intertwined.