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 Sorcerer's Apprentice two with an axe – but each of the pieces becomes a whole new broom that 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. 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 ' ("The spirits that I