Fairy Tales Are for Everyone! The Lost Legacy of Hans Christian Andersen

By Stephen Wilson, one of our reporters abroad

Some say that in our worse moments the spirits of our deceased relatives surface in our dreams.   I recall hearing a story from a Russian woman who had reached rock bottom and felt abandoned.  She felt she had no one to turn to.  She told me "I dreamed my late grandmother, who really loved me, came into my dream and I told her ‘Take me with you, I don't want to stay in this world any longer.’  She didn't say a word.  She just shook her head sympathetically to signal 'No,' as it was not time."  

This story reminded me of the story 'The Little Match Girl', who is almost destitute on the street because she can't return to an angry father without selling matches.  In the story you read 'She struck another match against the wall. It lit up everything around her, and in the radiance stood her old grandmother.  So bright, so glittering, so gentle and blessed.  "Grandmother," cried the child.  "Oh, take me with you" {‘Fairy Tales,’ by Hans Christian Andersen, 2004, London: Penguin Classics, page 248}.  In this case, the girl dies and goes to her grandmother.  I had also come across some reports by nurses where dying children in hospices were seen talking to an unseen person who they said was a dead relative.

It is self-evident that the writer Hans Christian Andersen's powerful images of dying and death resonate with so many readers.  In some of his stories the spirits of the dead assist the living.  In 'The Travelling Companion' a kind hero agrees to pay off the debts of a dead man so that he can receive a decent burial.  The spirit of this dead man returns to help him overcome all kinds of troubles.  

In the story 'The Nightingale,' as the Emperor of China is dying he opens his eyes to find death sitting on his chest and then all kinds of spirits or his deeds come and ask him, "Do you remember this?"  One after another whispered, "Do you remember this?"  And then they told him so many things that sweat poured from his brow' {‘Fairy Tales,’ page 140}.  This sounds just like the experience of some near-death experiences where all the most important things in a person's life flash up in seconds.

There is no doubt that the appeal of Andersen's tales lie in an original colloquial style, his humor and witty way of putting things, and a beautiful simplicity where he avoids long boring descriptions which can stifle the unfolding narrative.

We sometimes make the error of assuming we know all about Andersen's stories. After all, his stories are popularized in countless cartoons, films and books. We know about 'The Ugly Duckling,' 'The Steadfast Tin Soldier,' 'Thumberlina,' 'The Little Mermaid,' 'The Tinderbox,' and 'The Snow Queen.'  But we perhaps know only about a dozen.  How many of us know 'The Shadow?'  'The Most Incredible Thing'?  Or 'Aunty Toothache?'  Andersen wrote around 160 tales, but readers don't go beyond a few of his gems!  Why is this the case?  It is because many people retain misleading notions of fairy tales.  They dismiss them as naïve, far-fetched—and depicting a highly unrealistic picture of society.  They presume fairy tales suggest a happy ending.  

But if you read Andersen, you will note that a lot of his stories have unhappy or ambiguous endings.  Does 'The Little Match Girl' have a happy ending?  In the story 'The Shadow,' a person loses his shadow which has taken on a life of its own.  His shadow returns to his home and invites him on a tour.  When the shadow suggests that the hero become 'his shadow' such that the roles are reversed, the hero refuses.  The shadow then orders the hero to be arrested and executed.  

Very interesting to note is that many of Andersen's tales were very popular in the Soviet Union because film makers and artists felt it was safer to work with such tales and there was a lot of implicit sharp satire in his tales.

One reason fairy tales are so under rated is that adults do not often read them.  The problem seems to be that many people presume fairy tales are exclusively for children.  Or that they should be relegated to the kindergarten.  

Abandoning fairy tales is even almost viewed as 'a rite of passage' towards adulthood.  Andersen disagreed strongly!  He argued his tales were written for everyone.  

You can enjoy the humor and satire in the tales.  In 'The Emperor with No Clothes' we see how so many people are afraid to tell the emperor the truth because they are afraid of being punished.  It goes without saying that many of the tales deal with very unpleasant aspects of poverty, bullying, snobbery, and persecution of all kinds.  In the story, 'The Tinderbox', the hero loses all his money and becomes poor again.  His so-called friends turn out to be false friends.  They make all kinds of excuses not to see him anymore.  Anderson writes, 'He had to brush his own boots and mend them with a darning needle, and none of his friends came to see him because there were too many stairs to climb {‘Fairy Tales,’ page 8}.

A proverb in Russian reveals, 'A tale is a song, an invention and a truth.'  And to some extent fairy tales can partially reflect the life of the authors.  If you read some of the stories by the Brothers Grimm you will notice how many of the characters are very hungry and dying to eat something.  It is perhaps no accident that at the time those stories were being collected and written the brothers were very poor and were trying to survive on one meal a day.  

Also, it might come as no surprise to readers that Andersen's early life was, in a word, a nightmare!  In his childhood, other children mocked his appearance and eccentricity.  When he came to Copenhagen, he had to enlist in a school at the age of 17 among 11-year-old school children.  The sadistic headmaster would humiliate him in front of the other pupils.  On his first day at school, he was asked to find Copenhagen on a map of Denmark which he could not find.  He described his five traumatic years at school as the most miserable of his life.

Andersen does offer would-be storytellers some advice about how to craft stories.  In his story 'What one can Invent' a person who dreams of making a living from being a poet comes to a wise woman for help.  He complains he can't find inspiration.  The wise woman says there are stories everywhere if he would just pay attention.  She advises him to just go into a forest and he should be able to find stories everywhere.  She gives him a hearing aid, but he still forgets the stories.   She also encourages him not to forget to say his prayers.  

So to be a storyteller one has to actively listen to other voices, acutely observe, remember all the stories one hears, plus tell a story from the heart.  They also must make an effort and at least work hard!  As the English Writer Graham Greene noted, there is a relationship between spirituality and art.  

The mistake of the would-be poet is that he wants to make money from his poems.  He loves money more than poetry.  Any authentic artist will tell you that you develop your art not for the external rewards such as fame, fortune or money but from the soul.  If anyone wishes to be a good storyteller, then he should not be ashamed of fairy tales.  On the contrary, he should read all of Andersen's tales as well as the tales of the Brothers Grimm.  It would also do no harm to read as many folk tales as possible.

At some schools, children are told by their teachers they should not repeat the same word in a sentence, and never begin a sentence with 'but' or 'and'.  But Charles Dickens did this all the time—as did Dostoyevsky.  Just read both 'Bleak House' and 'Crime and Punishment.'  A person has to break the rules.  What is good about Andersen is the audacity of the writer who was not scared to express his own voice despite a lot of negative criticism during his time.

Sometimes stories are the only thing homeless people have.  When the police come to evict the homeless from camps they can deprive them of their most cherished possessions such as a tent, sleeping bags—and even trash the toys of children!  The homeless can be denied a decent burial plot in a graveyard like Andersen's Travelling Companion.  They are forced to get out of town like the Ugly Duckling.  But the homeless can at least preserve and pass on very unique stories to people around them or the next generation.  

For often the homeless, like the Shadow, can say, ' I looked where no one else can look, and I saw what no one else can see, what no one else ought to see' {‘Fairy Tales,’ page 229}.  The stories we retain are an integral part of our lives which no one can deny us.  They are priceless gems!  

Hans Christian Anderson knew this long ago!