The Sorceror's Apprentice was originally a poem by Goethe from 1797. The poem begins as an old sorcerer departs his workshop, leaving his apprentice with chores to perform. Tired of fetching water by pail, the apprentice enchants a broom to do the work for him — using magic in which he is not yet fully trained. The floor is soon awash with water, and the apprentice realizes that he cannot stop the broom because he does not know how. Not knowing how to control the enchanted broom, the apprentice splits it in two with an axe, but each of the pieces becomes a new broom and takes up a pail and continues 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. This amazing pair has been in my personal collection for 30 years.
The acclaimed animated dialogue-free 1940 Disney film Fantasia popularized the story from Goethe's poem, and the Paul Dukas symphonic poem based on it, in one of eight animated shorts based on classical music. In the piece, which retains the title "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," Mickey Mouse plays the apprentice, and the story follows Goethe's original closely, except that the sorcerer is stern and angry with his apprentice when he saves him. Fantasia popularized Goethe's story to a worldwide audience. Yen-Sid is the powerful sorcerer in Fantasia, appearing as an old man with a long beard and robes that extended to the floor. The nickname ("Disney" spelled backwards) was given by Disney animators, as the sorcerer in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of Fantasia had no onscreen name, nor does the character in the original Goethe poem "Der Zauberlehrling", the inspiration for the music piece by Paul Dukas. Film historians believed Fred Moore added the same sized nose as Walt Disney's nose, and even added the same eyebrow length as Walt Disney's eyebrows.
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