The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily

About “The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”

"The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily" is a literary fairy tale by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, published in 1795 in Friedrich Schiller's magazine Die Horen. The story uses a river as a symbol for the divide between the outer life of the senses and the human pursuit of ideals. It serves as the concluding piece of Goethe's short-story collection The German Refugees. The tale is considered the first example of the Kunstmärchen, or artistic fairy tale, a genre that blends artistic elements with traditional fairy tale structures. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)