Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century

Since, then, the moral attributes are requisite to the intellectual, so, too, they are mutually contingent one upon the other. An overflowing lyric sentiment, an exalted sensibility, cannot exist with the experience and method of a man of the world, for experience chills and hardens. A lightly vaulting fancy that hops and soars like a bird, does not admit of being united with the logically measured crescendo and decrescendo of dramatic action. An observation by no means inclined to be cold-blooded cannot possibly penetrate psychologically to the heart of things; a childlike, easily quivering hand cannot dissect a villain. If, therefore, we place genius of this kind face to face with sundry defined and well-known types of art, we can determine beforehand precisely what its relations with each of them will be.

The romance is a species of poetic creation which demands of the mind that would accomplish anything remarkable in it, not only imagination and sentiment, but the keen understanding, and the cool, calm power of observation of the man of the world; that is the reason why it is not altogether suited to Andersen, although it is not wholly remote from his talent. In the entire scenery, the background of nature, the picturesque effect of the costumes, he is successful; but where psychological insight is concerned, traces of his weakness may be detected. He will take part for and against his characters; his men are not manly enough, his women not sufficiently feminine. I know no poet whose mind is more devoid of sexual distinctions, whose talent is less of a nature to betray a defined sex, than Andersen's. Therefore his strength lies in portraying children, in whom the conscious sense of sex is not yet prominent. The whole secret lies in the fact that he is exclusively what he is, – not a man of learning, not a thinker, not a standard-bearer, not a champion, as many of our great writers have been, but simply a poet. A poet is a man who is at the same time a woman. Andersen sees most forcibly in man and in woman that which is elementary, that which is common to humanity, rather than that which is peculiar and interesting. I have not forgotten how well he has described the deep feeling of a mother in "The Story of a Mother," or how tenderly he has told the story of the spiritual life of a woman in "The Little Sea-Maid." I simply recognize the fact that what he has represented is not the complicated spiritual conditions of life and of romance, but the element of life; he rings changes on single, pure tones, which amid the confused harmonies and disharmonies of life, appear neither so pure nor so distinct as in his books. Upon entering into the service of the nursery story all sentiments undergo a process of simplification, purification, and transformation. The character of man is farthest removed from the comprehension of the poet of childhood, and I can only recall a single passage in his stories in which a delicate psychological characteristic of a feminine soul may be encountered, even this appears so innocently that we feel inclined to ask if it did not write itself. It occurs in the story of the new porcelain figures, "The Shepherdess and the Chimney-Sweep."

"'Have you really courage to go forth with me into the wide world?' asked the chimney-sweep, tenderly. 'Have you considered how large it is, and that we can never come back here again?' 'I have,' said she. And the chimney-sweep gazed fixedly upon her, and then he said: 'My way lies up the chimney. Have you really courage to go with me through the stove, and to creep through all the flues?' … And he led her towards the door of the stove. 'It looks quite black,' said she, but still she went with him and on through all the intricacies of the interior, and through the flues, where a pitchy darkness reigned." After long, long troublesome ascent they reached the top of the chimney and seated themselves on its edge. "The heaven and all its stars were above them, and all the roofs of the town below them; they could see far around, far away into the world. The poor shepherdess had never pictured it to herself thus; she leaned her little head on her sweep, and wept so bitterly that all the gilding of her girdle came off. 'O this is too much!' said she; 'I cannot bear it. This world is too large. O were I but again on the little table under the looking-glass! I shall never be happy till I am there again. I have followed you into the wide world; now, if you really love me, you may follow me home again.'"

A more profound, more mercilessly true, more self-evident analysis of a certain kind of feminine enthusiasm and its energy when it undertakes to act boldly without regard to consequences, and without looking backwards, can be found, I think, in the works of no other Danish writer. What delicacy of presentation: the momentary resolute enthusiasm, the heroic conquering of the first horror, the endurance, bravery, firmness, until the moment which requires courage, when the firmness is shattered, and the yearning for the little table under the looking-glass is awakened. Many a voluminous romance would have been exalted by such a page, and we find in it a compensation for the fact that Andersen is no master in the province of the romance. The drama is a species of poetic production that requires the faculty for differentiating an idea and distributing it among many characters; it requires an understanding of conscious action, a logic power to guide this, an eye to the situation, a passion for becoming absorbed and overwhelmed in the inexhaustible study of individual, many-sided characters. Therefore it is that the drama is still farther removed from the genius of Andersen than the romance, and that his lack of capacity for the dramatic style increases with mathematical exactness in the same ratio as each variety of dramatic art is removed from the nursery story, and consequently from his gifts. He naturally succeeds best with the nursery-story comedy; although, to be sure, it possesses little more of comedy than the name. It is a mixed species, and if it were put to the test of the Spanish story, it would be recognized as a bastard. In the comedy of special situations he is happy with respect to the poetic execution of single scenes ("The King's Dream"), but singularly unfortunate in the execution of the idea as a whole ("The Pearl of Good Fortune"). The comedy proper is not poorly suited to his gifts. Certain of his nursery stories are, indeed, veritable Holberg comedies; "The Happy Family" is a Holberg character-comedy, and "It is Quite True" possesses a decided Holberg plot. In stories of this kind character delineation comes easier to him than in the grave drama, for in them he walks directly in the footsteps of Holberg, so strikingly does his talent accord in a single direction with that of this early Northern dramatist. Andersen is, as I have already remarked, no direct psychologist; he is rather a biologist than an especially well-informed student of human nature. His predilection is for describing man through animals or plants, and seeing him develop from the rudiments of his nature. All art contains an answer to the question, What is man? Inquire of Andersen how he defines man, and he will reply, Man is a swan hatched in the "duck-yard" of Nature.

To a person who takes an interest in psychological investigations, who, without being able to grasp a complex character, possesses a refined development of observation for single qualities, for characteristic peculiarities, animals, especially those with which we are familiar, afford great relief. We are usually accustomed to credit each animal with an individual attribute, or at all events, with a limited group of attributes. The snail is slow, the nightingale is the unpretending singer with the glorious voice, the butterfly is the fair inconstant one. There is nothing then to prevent the poet who possesses the gifts needed to represent these striking little traits, from following in the footsteps of Holberg, the man who wrote "Den Vægelsindede" (The Fickle One), as Andersen did in "The New Lying-In Room." He betrays here, moreover, one of his many points of similarity with Dickens, whose comic characterizations are frequently limited to a few traits repeated ad infinitum.

In the epopee, which belongs in our day to the impossible forms of poetry and which demands all the qualities that Andersen lacks, he can merely find play for certain petty fancies, as for instance, when he characterizes the spirit of China, in his "Ahasuerus," in a droll lyric episode, or when he permits the twittering swallows (exactly as in a nursery story) to describe the festal hall of Attila.

In his descriptions of travel very naturally a large number of his best qualities come to light. Like his favorite, the migratory bird, he is in his element when he travels. He observes with the eye of a painter, and he describes like an enthusiast. Yet even here two faults are apparent: one is that his lyric tendency at times runs away with him, so that he chants a hymn of praise instead of giving a description, or exaggerates instead of painting (see, for instance, the gushing and untrue description of Ragatz and Pfäffers); the other, that the underlying, personal, egotistical element of his nature, giving evidence that his innermost personality lacks reserve, occasionally obtrudes itself in a most disturbing manner.

The latter tendency characterizes with especially marked force the style of his autobiography. The criticism that can with justice be made on his "Story of My Life" is not so much that the author is throughout occupied with his own private affairs (for that is quite natural in such a work); it is that his personality is scarcely ever occupied with anything greater than itself, is never absorbed in an idea, is never entirely free from the ego. The revolution of 1848 in this book affects us as though we heard some one sneeze; we are astonished to be reminded by the sound that there is a world outside of the author.

In lyric poetry Andersen has met with foreign success – even Chamisso has translated some of his songs; yet I am always loath to see him lay aside his bright colored, realistic prose dress, that is so true to nature, in order to veil himself in the more uniform mantle of verse. His prose has fancy, unrestrained sentiment, rhythm, and melody. Why, then, cross the brook to find water? His poems, too, are frequently distinguished by a peaceful and childlike spirit, a warm and gentle sentiment. We see that the result of his attempts in the different regions of poetry proceeds quite directly, like the unknown x in mathematics, from the nature of his talents on one side, and the nature of the kind of poetic creation he has chosen on the other.

Thus the nursery story remains his sole individual creation, and for it he requires no patent, since no one is likely to rob him of it. In Andersen's day it was a common thing to attempt to classify all kinds of poetic creations with their varieties in an æsthetic system, according to the method of Hegel; and Hegel's Danish disciple, Heiberg, projected a complicated system in which the rank of the comedy, the tragedy, the romance, the nursery story, etc., was definitely fixed, while to Heiberg's own art-form an especially high rank was accorded. It is, however, in a certain measure pedantic to speak of general classes of art. Every creative artist thoroughly individualizes his own species of art. The form which he has used, no other has it in his power to use. So it is with the nursery story, whose theory Andersen made no attempt to describe, whose place in the system there has been no effort to establish, and which I, for one, should take good care not to define. There is, indeed, something very curious about æsthetic systematic classification; it impresses one very much in the same way as division of rank in the State: the more one broods over it, the more heretical one becomes. Perhaps this arises from the fact that to think is in the main synonymous with becoming a heretic. Yet like every natural type, Andersen's nursery story has its individual character, and his theories are comprised in the laws it obeys, whose boundaries it may not overstep without bringing to light a monster. Everything in the world has its law, even that species of poetry which transcends the laws of nature.

Andersen somewhere remarks, that he has made attempts in pretty much every radiation of the nursery story. This remark is striking and good. His nursery stories form a complete whole, a web with manifold radiations, that seems to address the beholder in the words of the spider's web in "Aladdin," "See how the threads can become entwined in the delicate net!" If it will not seem too much like bringing the dust of the schoolroom into the parlor, I should like to call the reader's attention to a celebrated scientific work in Adolf Zeising's "Æsthetic Investigations," in which can be found a complete series of æsthetic contrasts, in all their different phases (the beautiful, the comic, the tragic, the humorous, the touching, etc.), arranged in one great star, just as Andersen has planned in respect to his nursery stories.

The form of fancy and the method of narration in the nursery story admit the treatment of the most heterogeneous materials in the most varied tones. Within its province may be found sublime narratives, as "The Bell"; profound and wise stories, as "The Shadow"; fantastically bizarre, as "The Elfin Mound"; merry, almost wanton ones, as "The Swineherd," or "The Leap Frog "; humorous ones, as "The Princess on the Pea," "Good Humor," "The False Collar," "The Lovers"; also stories with a tinge of melancholy, as "The Constant Tin Soldier"; deeply pathetic poetic creations, as "The Story of a Mother"; oppressively dismal, as "The Red Shoes"; touching fancies, as "The Little Sea-Maid"; and those of mingled dignity and playfulness, as "The Snow Queen." Here we encounter an anecdote like "A Great Sorrow," which resembles a smile through tears, and an inspiration like "The Muse of the Coming Age," in which we feel the pinion strokes of history, the heart-throbs and pulse-beats of the active, stirring life of the present, as violent as in a fever, and yet as healthy as in a happy moment of enthusiastic inspiration.30 In short, we find everything that lies between the epigram and the hymn.

Is there, then, a boundary line which limits the nursery story, a law which binds it? If so, where does it lie? The law of the nursery story lies in the nature of the nursery story, and its nature is dependent on that of poetry. If, at the first moment, it would seem that nothing is prohibited a species of poetic creation which can permit a princess to feel a pea through twenty mattresses and twenty eider-down beds, it is but a semblance. The nursery story, which unites unbridled freedom of invention with the restraint its central idea impresses upon it, must steer between two rocks: between the luxuriance of style that lacks ideas, and dry allegory; it must strike the medium course between too great fulness and too great meagreness. This, Andersen most frequently succeeds in doing, and yet not always. Those of his stories that are based on materials derived from folk-lore, as "The Flying Trunk," or those that may be classed with the fairy-tale proper, as "Thumbling," do not attract grown people as they do children, because the story in such instances conceals no thought. In his "Garden of Paradise" everything preceding the entrance to the garden is masterly, but the Fairy of Paradise herself seems to me to be invested with little, if any, beauty or charm. The opposite extreme is when we see the barren intention, the dry precept, through the web of poetic creation; this fault, as might be expected in our reflecting and conscious age, is one of more frequent occurrence. We feel it keenly because the nursery story is the realm of the unconscious. Not only are unconscious beings and objects the leaders of speech in it, but what triumphs and is glorified in the nursery story is this very element of unconsciousness. And the nursery story is right; for the unconscious element is our capital and the source of our strength. The reason why the travelling companion could receive aid from the dead man, was because he had entirely forgotten that he had formerly helped this same dead man, and even simple Hans gains the princess and half the kingdom, because with all his folly he is so exceedingly naïve. Even stupidity has its genial side and its good luck; with the poor intermediate beings, the Nureddin natures alone, the nursery story knows not what to do.

Let us consider some instances of sins against the unconscious. In the beautiful story of "The Snow Queen" a most disturbing influence is exercised by the scene where the Snow Queen requests little Kay to make figures with the ice puzzle for the understanding, and he is unable to represent the word "Eternity." There is also clumsy and un-poetic bluntness in "The Neighboring Families" whenever the sparrow's family mention the rose by the abstract, and for a sparrow rather unnatural, term, "the beautiful." It would have been understood, without this hint, that the roses were the representatives of the beautiful in the narrative, and in encountering this abstract word in the nursery story we recoil as though we had come into contact with a slimy frog.

This tendency to allegory in narratives for children appears most frequently, as might be expected, in the form of instruction and moralizing; in some of the nursery stories, as in "The Buckwheat," the pedagogic element plays an exaggerated rôle. In others, as "The Flax," we feel too strongly at the conclusion – as in Jean Paul – the tendency to exhibit, in season and out of season, the doctrine of immortality. Toward the end of the latter story a few little, somewhat "insipid beings" are created who announce that the song is never done. In some cases finally the tendency is more personal. A whole series of stories ("The Duckling," "The Nightingale," "The Neighboring Families," "The Daisy," "The Snail and The Rose-Tree," "Pen and Inkstand," "The Old Street Lamp") allude to the poet's life and the poet's lot, and in single cases we see traces – a rare exception with Andersen – of invention being dragged in forcibly in order to bring out the tendency. What sense and what conformity to nature is there, for instance, in the fact that the street lamp can only let others see the beautiful and symbolic sights that had been interwoven with its experience when it is provided with a wax candle, and that its faculties are useless when provided with an ordinary light? It is quite incomprehensible until we conceive it to be an allegory on a poet's supposed need of prosperity in order to accomplish anything. "And so genius must run after cupboard lore!" wrote Kierkegaard on the occasion of the appearance of "Only a Fiddler." Still more infelicitous is the scene where the street lamp, in its melted-down condition, in its other life, finds its way to a poet and thus fulfils its destiny. So strongly as this the tendency has rarely shown itself.

The first duty of the nursery story is to be poetic, its second to preserve the marvellous element. Therefore, it is first of all necessary that the order of the legendary world be sacred to it. What in the language of legendary lore is regarded as a fixed rule, must be respected by the nursery story, however unimportant it may be in relation to the laws and rules of the real world. Thus it is quite inappropriate for the nursery story, as in Andersen's "The Dryad," to part its heroine from her tree, to let her make a symbolic journey to Paris, to go to the "bal Mabille," etc., for it is not more impossible for all the kings of the earth to place the smallest leaf on a nettle than it is for legendary lore to tear a dryad away from its tree. But in the second place, it lies in the nature of the nursery story form that its outline can frame nothing that, in order to obtain its poetic rights, requires a profound psychological description, an earnest development, such as would be adapted either to the nature of the drama or the romance. A woman like Marie Grubbe, a sketch of whose interesting life Andersen gives us in the story of "Chicken-Grethe," is too much of a character for it to be possible for the author of the nursery story to describe or interpret; when he attempts to do so, we feel a disproportion between the object and the form.31 There is less occasion, however, to marvel at these few blemishes than at the fact that they so very rarely occur. I have only called attention to them because it is interesting to become acquainted with the boundary lines by observing how they have been overstepped, and because it seemed to me more important to ascertain how the Pegasus of the nursery story, notwithstanding all its freedom to race and fly through the circle, has its firm tether in the centre.

Its beauty, its strength, its power of flight, and its grace, we do not see by observing its limits, but by following its many and bold movements within its circle. Upon this fact we will in conclusion cast a glance. The nursery story field lies before us like a large, rich flowery plain. Let us freely stroll about this, let us cross it in all directions, now plucking a flower here, now there, rejoicing in its coloring, its beauty, its tout-ensemble. These brief little poetic creations stand in the same relation to the poetry of greater compass as little flowers to the trees of the forest. Whoever on a beautiful day in spring takes a walk in a forest by the seaside in order to view the beeches in their youthful splendor, with their brown velvety buds encased in light green silk, and after gazing aloft for awhile bends his eyes downward to the earth, will find that the carpet of the forest is as beautiful as its ceiling of tree-tops. Here grow in lowly state many colored anemones, white and dark red mayflowers, yellow stars of Bethlehem, and saxifrage, starwort, buttercups and dandelions. Near together are the buds, the full-blown flowers, and those which already bear seed, the virgin and the fecundated plants, the flowers without fragrance and those with pleasant perfume, the poisonous, and the useful, the healing weed. Frequently the plant which takes the humblest place in the system, as the flowerless fern, is the most beautiful to the eye. Flowers which seem to be complex prove on closer scrutiny to consist of very few leaves, and plants whose bloom seems to be one flower, bear on their top a wealth of blossoms only united by the stalk. So, too, it is with the nursery stories. Those which in respect to their worth seem the most insignificant, as "The Leap-Frog," often contain a whole life philosophy in a nutshell, and those which appear to be a single whole, as "The Galoshes of Fortune," are often composed of a loosely united cluster of blossoms. Some are in the bud, as "The Drop of Water"; others are about bursting the seed, as "The Jewish Girl," or "The Stone of the Wise Men." Some consist of but a single point, as "The Princess on the Pea"; others have grand, noble form, as "The Story of a Mother," a tale that is a special favorite in India, and that resembles that tropical flower, the calla, which in its sublime simplicity consists of but a single leaf.

I open the book at random, and my eye falls on "The Elfin Mound." What life and what humor! "In the kitchen there was a great quantity of frogs among the dishes; adders' skins, with little children's fingers inside; salad of mushroom-seed; wet mice's snouts and hemlock… rusty nails and church-window glass were among the delicacies and kickshaws." Does any one think that the children are forgotten here? By no means. "The old Elfin King had his golden crown polished with powdered slate-pencil. It was the pencil of the head scholar; and to obtain this one is very difficult for the Elfin King." Does any one think there is nothing here for grown people? A still greater mistake! "O how I long to see the old Northern Elf! His sons, people say, are coarse, blustering fellows…" They "went with open throats, for they disdained the cold." What a banquet! The skeleton horse is among the invited guests. Does any one think that Andersen would forget the character of the guests at a festal gathering? "The Elfin maidens were now to dance, simple as well as stamping dances… Confound it! their legs grew so long, one did not know which was the beginning nor which was the end, one could not distinguish legs from arms; all was twirling about in the air like sawdust; and they went whizzing round to such a degree that the Skeleton Horse grew quite sick, and was obliged to leave the table." Andersen is acquainted with the nervous system of the skeleton horse, and is mindful of his weak stomach.