The Sorcerer's Apprentice

"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (German: Der Zauberlehrling) is a poem by Goethe written in 1797. The poem is a ballad in fourteen stanzas.

Story

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.

The apprentice splits the broom in two with an axe, but each of the pieces becomes a whole new broom and takes up a pail and continues fetching water, now at twice the speed. When all seems lost, the old sorcerer returns and quickly breaks the spell. The poem finishes with the old sorcerer's statement that powerful spirits should only be called by the master himself.

German culture

Der Zauberlehrling is 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 have turned into a cliché, especially the line Die Geister, die ich rief ("The spirits that I called"), a garbled version of one of Goethe's lines, which is often used to describe a situation where somebody summons help or uses allies that he cannot control, especially in politics.

Sorcerer's Apprentice

Sorcerer's Apprentice may refer to:

In music:

In books:

In film and television:

Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Kim Coppola (born January 7, 1964), known professionally as Nicolas Cage, is an American actor and producer. He has performed in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action films. In the early years of his career, Cage starred in films such as Valley Girl (1983), Racing with the Moon (1984), Birdy (1984), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Raising Arizona (1987), Moonstruck (1987), Vampire's Kiss (1989), Wild at Heart (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), and Red Rock West (1993).

Cage received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance as an alcoholic Hollywood writer in Leaving Las Vegas (1995) before coming to the attention of wider audiences with mainstream films, such as The Rock (1996), Face/Off (1997), Con Air (1997), City of Angels (1998), and National Treasure (2004). He earned his second Academy Award nomination for his performance as Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Adaptation (2002). In 2002, he directed the film Sonny, for which he was nominated for Grand Special Prize at Deauville Film Festival. Cage owns the production company Saturn Films and has produced films such as Shadow of the Vampire (2000) and The Life of David Gale (2003).