Fairy Tales Read online

  Little is known in the English-speaking world about the tireless creative experiments of the tormented writer called Hans Christian Andersen. He tried to make a fairy tale out of his life to save himself from his sufferings. Whether he succeeded in saving himself is open to question, but he did leave us fantastic tales that still stun us and compel us to reflect on the human will to survive.

  Jack Zipes is professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota and is a specialist in folklore and fairy tales. Some of his major publications include Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales ( 1979) , Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion ( 1983 ) , Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England ( 1986) , The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World (1988), and Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter (2001). He has also translated The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1987) and edited The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales (2000) and The Great Fairy Tale Tradition (2001 ). Most recently he has served as the general editor of the Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature (2005).

  Translator’s Preface

  “There are so many delightful stories in this book,” said Hans. “So many that you haven’t heard.” “Well, I don’t care about them,” said Garden-Ole. “I want to hear the one I know.”

  The sentiment expressed by Garden-Ole in Andersen’s story “The Cripple” is one that might be familiar to many English readers of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories. It is tempting in reading a new translation to want to hear again the stories that we know. And most of the old favorites are here: “The Tinderbox,” “The Princess on the Pea,”. The Little Mermaid,” ”The Emperor’s New Clothes,” ”The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” ”The Ugly Ducking,” and others. But here too are ”many that you haven’t heard“—or, at least, have not heard as often. It is my hope that reading some of the less often translated tales will help the modern English reader understand why Andersen is considered by Danes to be at the center of the Danish literary canon, not primarily a children’s author, as he continues to be thought of in the English-speaking world.

  When I told a friend that I was working on a translation of Andersen’s stories she looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, “But hasn’t that been done?” I replied that of course it had, but while Andersen’s nineteenth-century Danish words remain forever unchanged upon the page, our splendid English language continues on its merry way, evolving and adapting and challenging us to renew the old stories in the idioms of our time. Many of the early English translations were quite deplorable, and while there have been good recent translations of “the ones you know,” the most complete edition of recent years, Erik Christian Haugaard’s comprehensive Hans Christian Andersen: The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974) can really best be described as an excellent adaptation rather than a translation. So the fact remains that many of Andersen’s less-often translated stories remain unknown to English readers in anything approximating their original forms.

  The translations in this book were made directly from the first five volumes of the critical edition of H. C. Andersens Eventyr (Copenhagen: 1963-1967), edited by Erik Dal and Erling Nielsen. For the textual annotations to this collection, I made extensive use of the notes and commentaries by Erik Dal, Erling Nielsen, and Flemming Hovmann from volume 7 of this work, which appears on the Arkiv for Dansk Litteratur (Archive of Danish literature) website: http://www.adl.dk.

  Andersen often made references to or citations from other texts in his work, and whenever a standard English translation was available, I have used that. These borrowings are recorded in the annotations, which immediately follow each story. Andersen’s own footnotes are indicated in the annotations by “[Andersen’s note].” Since this text is intended for a broad range of readers, no efforts have been made to censor Andersen’s expressions or adapt them to a younger audience.

  It is a popular practice to lament the difficulty in translating Andersen’s style, and it is true that his fondness for puns and word play, alliteration, and stylistic originality can be challenging for the translator. In fact, as Viggo Hjørnager Pedersen writes in his excellent 2004 study Ugly Ducklings? Studies in the English Translations of Hans Christian Andersen’s Tales and Stories (see “For Further Reading”), “Andersen’s style is not easy to imitate in English and few have done so with success.” Despite this daunting observation by a native Danish scholar, I have made no conscious effort to convey a comprehensive stylistic whole, because I believe that Andersen actually used diverse techniques, depending on the demands of the story and at different times in his life. I have rather seen my task as one of capturing the mood and tenor of each individual story. My goal throughout has been to attempt to give the modern English reader a reading experience as similar as possible to that of a Danish reader of the original, one story at a time. This has sometimes necessitated taking a few liberties with Andersen’s text when conveying jokes and puns, adding alliteration when possible, and sometimes changing pronouns for the sake of consistency. The most notorious example of the latter (and one for which I expect to be severely criticized) is changing the single gender-specific pronoun referring to the nightingale from “her” to “it.” I did this because it is the male nightingale that sings, and because Andersen uses “it” except in this one instance. In a few rare instances, I have actually changed or even added a few words in order to keep a rhyme, a joke, or the sense of the original. For example, in “The Flea and the Professor,” when the professor ascends skyward in his balloon, the original has “‘Slip Snorer og Toug!’ sagde han. ‘Nu gaaer Ballonen!’ De troede han sagde: ‘Kanonen!’” [The final sentence translates as: “They thought he said: ‘the cannon!’”] I have changed this exchange to: “‘Let go of the ropes and cords,’ he said. ‘Up goes the balloon!’ They thought he said, ‘Let’s make a boom!’” The exchange makes sense only if the expressions rhyme. Such liberties with the original are rare and always deliberate.

  If I have not been consciously concerned with a stylistic whole, I have been extremely conscious of Andersen’s use of poetic language in many of the later stories, and with his delightful sense of play and fun in his use of Danish. To this end I found Fritse Jacobsen’s H. C. Andersens ordspil (H. C. Andersen’s Puns; Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen Center for Translation, DAO 9, 2000) very useful. Unfortunately, it has not always been possible to convey Andersen’s jokes and puns, with specific Danish cultural references, successfully through English. In some cases I have compensated for this loss by adding a joke of my own or slightly twisting Andersen’s original (my favorites include giving the darning needle “the bends,” and the deliberate misspelling of “do” in the story “In the Duckyard”). In some cases I have found that the best English solutions for jokes and puns have already been discovered. Those familiar with earlier translations will hear echoes of Leyssac, Hersholt, Spink, Haugaard, and Keigwin in my work. Scholars of all disciplines build on the work of others, and there is no reason why translators should not appropriate best solutions. The goal, after all, is the most perfect possible rendering of Danish to English, and despite Viggo Pedersen’s attempts to find influence between translators by comparing short sentences or paragraphs, there really are a finite number of possible ways to translate a set Danish sentence to a corresponding English one.

  Many people helped in one way or another with my work. I would like to acknowledge and thank Gracia Grindal, Dennis Omoe, Ole Stig Andersen, Kathie Crawford, Erik Horak-Hult, Michael Hult, Jeffrey Broesche at Fine Creative Media, and my entire email address book for responding to my English language usage survey. I am deeply grateful to Anne Hvam for her countless hours of work on the poetic sections of “The Galoshes of Fortune.” I am confident that “Mormors briller” has never been rendered as well in English. Finally, I am enormously indebted to Jack Zipes for his careful correcti
ons, enlightening commentary, and valuable suggestions throughout the project, and not least for his observations on the art of translating. All remaining errors in the “many delightful stories in this book” are my own.

  Minneapolis, Minnesota

  September 28, 2005

  Marte Hvam Hult holds a Ph.D. in Scandinavian languages and literatures from the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Framing a National Narrative: The Legend Collections of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, published by Wayne State University Press in 2003. She is working on a translation of Asbjørnsen’s Huldreeventyr.

  THE ARTIST AND SOCIETY

  THE NIGHTINGALE

  OF COURSE YOU KNOW that in China the emperor is Chinese, and all the people around him are Chinese. It was many years ago, but just because of that, it’s worth while hearing the story before it’s forgotten! The emperor’s palace was the most splendid in the world, completely made of fine porcelain—so expensive, but so brittle, so fragile to touch that you had to be really careful. There were the most remarkable flowers in the garden, and to the most beautiful were tied silver bells so that you couldn’t walk by without noticing the flower. Everything was so artful in the emperor’s garden, and it was so big that even the gardener didn’t know where it ended. If you kept walking, you would enter the loveliest forest with high trees and deep lakes. The forest went right down to the deep, blue sea. Big ships sailed right under the branches, and in the branches lived a nightingale that sang so sweetly that even the poor fisherman, who had so much else to do while pulling up his nets, lay still and listened when he was out at night and heard the nightingale. “Dear God, how beautifully it sings,” he said, but then he had to pay attention to his task and forget the bird. But when it sang again the next night, and the fisherman was out again, he said the same: “Dear God, how beautifully it sings!”

  Travelers came to the emperor’s city from all the countries of the world, and they were astounded by it all: the palace and the garden, but when they heard the nightingale, they all said, “this is the best of all!”

  And the travelers talked about the bird when they got home, and scholars wrote many books about the city, the palace, and the garden. But they didn’t forget the nightingale. It was placed at the very top of the wonders, and those who could write poetry wrote the most beautiful poems, all about the nightingale in the forest by the deep sea.

  The books circulated around the world, and in the course of time one reached the emperor. He sat on his golden throne and read and read. He nodded his head constantly because he was pleased to hear the magnificent descriptions of the city, palace, and garden. “But the nightingale is the best of all!” it said in the book.

  “What?!” said the emperor. “The nightingale! I don’t know anything about that bird at all! Is there such a bird in my kingdom, even here in my own garden? And I’ve never heard about it? I have to read about this?!”

  And he called his chamberlain, who was so distinguished that when someone who was inferior to him dared to speak to him, or asked about something, he didn’t say anything but “P!” and it didn’t mean anything.

  “There’s supposed to be a highly remarkable bird called a nightingale here,” said the emperor. “They say it’s the best thing in my entire kingdom! Why hasn’t anyone told me about it?”

  “I’ve never before heard it mentioned,” said the chamberlain. “It’s never been presented at court.”

  “I want it to come here this evening and sing for me,” said the emperor. “The whole world knows what I have, and I don’t know it myself!”

  “I’ve never heard anything about it before,” said the chamberlain, “I’ll go find it.”

  But where to find it? The chamberlain ran up and down all the steps, through the rooms and hallways. None of those he met had heard anything about the nightingale, and the chamberlain ran back to the emperor and said that it must have been a fable made up by those who wrote books. “Your royal majesty should not believe what is written! They are mostly made up, and something called black magic.”

  “But the book I read it in,” said the emperor, “was sent to me by the powerful emperor of Japan, and so it can’t be untrue. I want to hear the nightingale! It shall be here this evening! It’s my greatest pleasure, and if it doesn’t come, the entire court will be thumped on the stomach after they’ve had dinner.”

  “Tsing-pe!” said the chamberlain, who ran up and down all the steps again, through the rooms and hallways, and half the people at court ran along too because they didn’t want to be thumped on the stomach. They went asking about the remarkable nightingale which the whole world knew, but no one at court had heard of.

  Finally, they met a poor little girl in the kitchen, and she said, “Oh God, the nightingale! I know it well. Oh my, how it can sing! Every evening I’m allowed to bring some of the scraps from the table home to my poor sick mother who lives down by the shore. When I walk back, I get tired, and rest in the woods. Then I hear the nightingale singing, and it brings tears to my eyes. It’s like being kissed by my mother.”

  “Little kitchen maid,” said the chamberlain, “I’ll get you a permanent job in the kitchen and permission to watch the emperor eat if you can lead us to the nightingale. The emperor has ordered him to perform this evening!”

  And then they all went into the woods where the nightingale used to sing. Half the court went along. As they were starting out, they heard a cow mooing.

  “Oh,” said the young court nobles, “Here we have it! What remarkable power in such a little animal! We have most assuredly heard it before.”

  “No, those are cows mooing,” said the little kitchen maid. “We’re still far from the place.”

  Then the frogs croaked in the pond.

  “Lovely!” said the Chinese palace chaplain. “Now I hear it—like little church bells.”

  “No, those are the frogs,” said the little kitchen maid. “But I think we’ll hear it pretty soon.”

  And then the nightingale started singing.

  “That’s it,” said the little girl. “Listen! listen! And there it is!” and she pointed at a little grey bird up in the branches.

  “Is this possible?” asked the chamberlain. “I wouldn’t have imagined it to look like that. How plain it looks! It must have lost its colors from seeing so many distinguished people looking at it!”

  “Little nightingale,” called the little kitchen maid quite loudly, “our Most Gracious Emperor so dearly wants you to sing for him!”

  “With the greatest pleasure!” said the nightingale and sang so beautifully that it was a pleasure to hear.

  “It sounds like glass bells,” said the chamberlain. “And look at its little throat, how it’s throbbing! It’s remarkable that we haven’t heard it before. It’ll be a big success at court!”

  “Shall I sing one more time for the emperor?” asked the nightingale, who thought the emperor was with them.

  “My splendid little nightingale,” said the chamberlain. “I have the great honor of summoning you to a court party this evening, where you will enchant his great Royal Highness the Emperor with your charming song!”

  “It really sounds better out in the open air,” said the nightingale, but it gladly followed along when it heard that it was the emperor’s wish.

  At the palace everything had been polished. The walls and floors of porcelain were shining with the light of many thousand golden lamps. The most beautiful flowers with their bells were lined up in the hallways. There was a running back and forth and a draft so that all the bells rang, and you couldn’t hear what anyone said.

  In the middle of the big chamber where the emperor sat, a golden perch had been set up, and the nightingale was to sit on that. The entire court was there, and the little kitchen maid had been allowed to stand back by the door since she now had the official title of Real Kitchen Maid. They were all dressed up in their finest, and all looked at the little grey bird as the emperor nodded for it to begin.

  And t
he nightingale sang so beautifully that it brought tears to the emperor’s eyes. They rolled down over his cheeks, and then the nightingale sang even more beautifully so it touched everyone’s heart. The emperor was very happy, and he said that the nightingale should have his golden slipper to wear around its neck. But the nightingale thanked him and said it had already had payment enough.

  “I’ve seen tears in the emperor’s eyes, and that is the greatest treasure for me. An emperor’s tears have a remarkable power. God knows I have payment enough!” and then it sang again with its blessed, sweet voice.

  “That’s the most delightful coquetry and flirtation we’ve ever seen,” said all the ladies, and they kept water in their mouths so they could cluck when someone talked to them. They thought they were nightingales too. Well, the footmen and chambermaids also let it be known that they were satisfied, and that says a lot since they are the most difficult to please. Yes, the nightingale was a great success!

  It was going to remain at court and have its own cage, but freedom to walk out twice a day and once at night. Twelve servants were to go along with silk ribbons tied to the nightingale’s leg, and they were to hold on tightly. There was no pleasure to be had from walks like this!

  The whole town talked about the remarkable bird, and if two people met each other, then the first said only “Night” and the other said “gale,” and then they sighed and understood each other. Eleven grocers named their children after the nightingale, but none of them could sing a note.