150 years of Hans Christian Andersen

I really love the less famous stories by Andersen that involve objects or insects… A needle, a coin in a foreign land, a teapot that feels empty, a tree (that wants to be cut down!) have deep inner thoughts; a butterfly in love! In all those stories the last sentence introduces some sort of a final twist.

A few years ago the H. C. Andersen center made a New website with all his works online: https://hcandersen.dk/en/works/?pageNumber=1&genre=tale

Both in Danish and English

What an great article and what a great life. I had no idea.

When he was 11, his father died and Andersen took a job in a factory where he had his trousers pulled down to prove he was a man.

Aged 14, he left [...] to make his fortune in Copenhagen. “First you go through an awful lot, and then you become famous,” he explained to his anxious mother, as though the plot of his life had been written already.

“I shall have no success with my appearance,” he reflected, “so I make use of whatever is available.”

If he sounds like a character invented by Charles Dickens, it is because Uriah Heep was modelled on Andersen, whom Dickens met in 1847. David Copperfield’s first sighting of Heep was “a cadaverous face” peering out of the round tower: “He had a way of writhing when he wanted to express enthusiasm, which was very ugly, the snaky twistings of his throat and body.” “If you’re an eel, sir,” counsels Betsey Trotwood, “conduct yourself like one. If you’re a man, control your limbs, sir!” In our own kinder age, we might diagnose Anderson with dyspraxia.

He saw himself, however, not as an earthly being at all but “one who seemed”, as he told Dickens, “to have fallen from the skies”.

Just like the article mentioned, he has become almost synonymous with fairy tales associated with stories for kids, but for anyone who has ever read from a collection of his stories, a majority of them are most certainly not appropriate for kids. Some of them are incredibly sad, and as another comment says, the fate of the characters often can change for the worse in the last paragraphs, when you least expect it.

I can only recommend reading his works, they are deeply profound.

A whole paragraph on how freakishly ugly he was. I google images and he looked perfectly normal and fine in the portraits which I assume at least some were accurate.

If you haven't visited before, Danes absolutely worship HCA. You can't go two blocks without stumbling on a statue of him, while walking on a street named for him.

He was apparently known as an appalling house guest, and someone made a game about it: https://www.patreon.com/posts/trapped-in-your-71881711

I love the story of him tying his horse to a pole in the snow at night only to wake up and look up to see all the snow has melted and his horse is hanging from the roof cross of a church.

Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. The stories of my early childhood!

[dead]

When I grow up, I realize that fairy tales are almost lies.It is difficult for princes and princesses to live happily ever after～