The Sorcerer's Apprentice 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. The animated 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 ("Yen Sid", or "Disney" backwards) is stern and angry with his
The Traveller (poem) modern, has a plan so noble, and at the same time so simple. The novelist William Black, on the other hand, while highly praising the poem's mellifluous qualities, admitted that "the literary charm of "The Traveller" is more apparent than the value of any doctrine, however profound or ingenious, which the poem was supposed to inculcate". More recent academic criticism continues to assert the poem's claims to respectful attention. Arthur Humphreys considered it "a true and thoughtful poem"; Boris Ford noted "the judicious tone, the unruffled movement, the urbane and fluent control of the couplet", which "established him as a