My life is a beautiful story, happy and full of events. It’s as if, when I was a boy and ventured into the world, poor and without friends, a good fairy met me and said: “Choose your own life path now, and what you will strive for, and I will guide and protect you until it is fulfilled.” Even in that case, my destiny would not be happier, wiser, or better directed. The story of my life will convey to the world what it has revealed to me: there is a loving God who governs everything and leads to the best. (From Andersen’s autobiography The Fairy Tale of My Life)
If you offer your friends a collection or one of the stories written by this great author to read, you can expect them to thank you, thinking that fairy tales should be left behind with childhood. However, Andersen is known as the greatest Danish writer and one of the greatest writers of all time. Collections of his fairy tales are also published in editions for adults because, according to his words, he did not write them only for children. He has been translated into many languages and is almost more esteemed abroad than at home. away from home.
His name today also carries a prestigious international literary award that is given to the best writer in the field of children’s literature.
Some of his stories are well-known to everyone: The Little Mermaid, The Tin Soldier, The Ugly Duckling, The Tinderbox, The Emperor’s New Clothes… It is less known that he wrote around one hundred and sixty stories, some of which were first published here only twenty years ago.
He spent his childhood in his hometown of Odense in Denmark. His father was a shoemaker, his mother a laundress, and they lived very modestly. His father was somewhat unconventional. He had skillful hands, not only for making shoes, but he also made dolls, toys, and even a small theater for his son once. And above all, he told him stories. Day after day, evening after evening: fairytales, legends, adventures. That was the environment in this town, and on the whole island of Fyn. The old Scandinavian myths and legends still lived there. Odense, as its name suggests, was the seat of the god Odin. Andersen remembered that as a boy, he used to wear I went up the hill to gather hay for Odin’s horse, Stiepnir. That atmosphere and many characters from Andersen’s myths will be woven into his fairy tales: Fairy Hill, The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling…
At the age of eleven, he lost his father, and at just fourteen, determined to become an actor, he went to the Royal Theater in Copenhagen on his own. He recited, learned dance and singing, with a great desire to perform on stage. He didn’t become an actor, but his persistence and simplicity impressed the local patron, and Andersen got the opportunity to continue his education. He regularly attended and completed lower and then upper classical gymnasium, and passed the graduation exam. At the age of twenty-three, he tried his hand at poetry and immediately won an award at an international competition.
That’s when he began his numerous travels, but also continued writing: essays, novels, plays, travelogues, albeit with varying success.
At the age of thirty, without high expectations, he published his first collection of fairy tales. “Trifles!” he said about them, adding that he wrote them “along the way.” Almost every year, he released a new collection. It is a collection of children’s stories. Only after his death, fairy tales come to the forefront and remain the most revered part of his literary work to this day. His most famous fairy tale is certainly The Little Mermaid. Printed in countless translations, it often unfortunately appears in shortened and distorted texts. Andersen himself complained that his works were arbitrarily altered and shortened in publication. Along with The Little Mermaid, we can include The Snow Queen and The Eleven Swans in the group of great and complex fairy tales. There are also shorter fairy tales such as The Ugly Duckling, The Tin Soldier, The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep, The Last Dream of the Old Oak, and many others, equally beautiful and interesting, both well-known and lesser-known. Each of them deserves complete and separate attention. There are also specific and short ironic stories about human flaws, such as The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea, etc. He knew how to make a story out of almost any object: a teapot, a feather and an inkwell, a pea pod… “Life is full of wonders, but we are so used to them that we hardly notice them.” “They seemed to us everyday,” he said.
The inevitability of death runs through many of his fairy tales, but as a natural transition and part of life itself, as an inevitability with which nothing ends, because as he says in his verses:
The soul that became the image of God
It is eternal – it cannot fade
The seed of eternity is woven into our lives –
The body decays, but the soul does not die.
Some of his fairy tales are actually autobiographical stories; they are full of the joy of life, but at the same time they bear the mark of the sadness of a man who did not fulfill his great desire: to have a family and his own children. Simple and kind-hearted, thin and with a big nose under a tall hat, they say he somewhat resembled the elves from fairy tales that forever captured the hearts of children all over the world.
During his lifetime, he often traveled, mainly in Europe, thus meeting many world writers, scientists, and intellectuals, and was invited to royal courts.
At the end of his autobiography, he wrote: My whole life, shining In gray and gloomy days, they were heading towards the best. It’s like a journey to a familiar destination: I stand at the helm, I have chosen my direction, but God controls the storm and the sea. He can change the course, but whatever happens, it will be the best for me. This faith is firmly embedded in my heart and makes me happy. (…) Above me, a lucky star shines; there are thousands that deserve much more than me; often I cannot understand why I, compared to countless others, have been given so much joy: let it just shine! But if it sets – maybe just as I finish these lines – it once shone and I received a rich portion; let it set! Only the best will come out of it again. My praise and love to God and people! (July, 1846.)
CANDLES (1870)
Once upon a time, there was a large wax candle that was very aware of its importance.
“I was born from wax and cast in a mold,” it said, “I give better light and burn longer than other candles, my place is in a chandelier or on a silver candlestick!” “That must be a wonderful life!” said the tallow candle. “I am made of tallow, but I console myself with the thought that it is still better than being just a wick. I am content! Surely it is more beautiful and happier to be born as a wax candle than as a tallow candle, but no one determines their place in the world. They place you in a large room on a hanging crystal chandelier, and I remain in the kitchen, but that is also a good place because the whole house gets food from there.”
“But there is something more important than food,” said the wax candle. “Gathered society! To see them illuminated and to illuminate yourself! Tonight is a ball and soon they will come for me and my entire family.”
Just as she said that, they came for the wax candles, but the tallow candle went with them. The mistress herself took her in her fine hands and carried her to the kitchen: there stood a little boy with a basket full of potatoes, along with two or three apples. The kind lady gave all of that to the poor boy.
“I have a candle for you too, my little friend,” she said. “T “My mother sits and works late into the night, it will do her good!”
When she heard the words “late into the night”, the girl from the wealthy house standing next to them exclaimed excitedly: “I will also stay up late into the night! We have a ball, and I will wear a big red bow!”
Her face was shining with joy! No candle can shine like two children’s eyes!
“It’s a true blessing to see,” the little wax candle thought, “I will never forget this and I probably won’t see it again.”
Then it was put into a basket with a lid, with which the boy went outside.
“Where am I going now?” the little wax candle wondered. “I am going to poor people and probably won’t get a copper candlestick, while the wax candle sits in silver and watches all the great and important people! But my fate is to be a little wax candle and nothing more!”
And so, the candle ended up with the poor people, a widow with three children, in a small, low room, just across from the wealthy house.
“God bless the kind lady for her gifts “Look,” said the mother, “what a beautiful candle! It can burn late into the night.”
Then they lit the candle.
“Yuck,” she shuddered, “she lit me with such a smelly match! The wax candle from the rich house across the street would never tolerate such a thing.”
And there they also lit candles: they illuminated the street entirely; carriages arrived with elegant ball guests, music echoed.
“So, they have started over there,” noticed the spy and remembered the illuminated face of the rich girl whose face shone brighter than the lights of all the candles. “I will never forget that image!”
Then the youngest child in the poor house, a little girl, came and hugged her brother and sister: she had something very important to say to them, something she had to whisper: “Tonight we will have – imagine… Tonight we will have hot potatoes!”
And her face lit up with joy: the spy illuminated her face and saw the satisfaction and happiness just as great as in the rich house. Once upon a time, when that little girl said, “Tonight, we have a ball, and I will wear my big red bow!”
“It’s almost as exciting as having hot potatoes for dinner,” thought the loyalist. “There is just as much joy among the children here.” With that, she sniffled, or rather, burst into tears; that’s all a loyalist can do.
The table was set, and the potatoes were eaten. How delicious they were! It was a perfect feast, and each child also received an apple on the side. The youngest one said a prayer:
“Oh, dear God, thank you for feeding me again. Amen!”
“Isn’t that beautifully said, mother?” the little one asked.
“You must not ask or talk about it,” the mother said. “You must only think about the kind God who fed you.”
The children went to bed, received a goodnight kiss, and soon fell asleep. The mother sat down and sewed late into the night to provide for them and herself. And from the big house across the street, lights were shining, and music echoed. The stars sparkled above all the houses, both rich and “And the poor, equally clear and with the same blessing.”
“This was truly a beautiful evening!” concluded the wax candle. “I wonder if anything better happened to the silver candlestick? I would like to find out before I burn out completely.”
And she thought about the two happy ones, about one girl illuminated by a wax candle and another illuminated by a wax candle.
And that’s the whole story!”