The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen (The Annotated Books)

by Hans Christian Andersen

  1. she had to go barefoot. The condition of being without shoes signals abject poverty, abandonment, and exposure in Andersen’s works. Gerda in “The Snow Queen” and the little match girl share Karen’s fate: being deprived of protection from the cold. Note that Karen will receive two pairs of red shoes, with the first leading to her social elevation through the maternal old woman, and the second to her social degradation. Shoes have always sent strong social signals, indicating position in a hierarchy—even today we use the term “well-heeled” to mark a person of high standing. Our popular entertainments are filled with references to shoe brands. Shoes enable not just physical mobility but also social mobility.

  2. did her best to turn them into a little pair of shoes. This first pair of shoes remedies the disjunction between Karen’s appearance (“delicate and pretty”) and the poverty to which she is subjected. Karen’s beauty contrasts sharply with the big ugly wooden clogs that chafe her ankles. The red shoes, linked by their color to the clogs that turn Karen’s ankles red, seem to create a new social identity for Karen. But they do not entirely efface the old identity.

  3. The little girl’s name was Karen. Andersen’s mother had a daughter named Karen-Marie, born out of wedlock in 1799 and raised by her maternal grandmother. Andersen scrupulously avoided any mention of her in his autobiographical writings. Karen worked as a washerwoman in Copenhagen, where she lived with her husband. In 1842 Karen contacted Andersen, and he gave her a small sum of money when she paid him a visit.

  W. HEATH ROBINSON

  Karen has dressed up for her appearance at church.

  4. the plain coffin made of straw. Coffins made of straw were widely used in Europe to bury the poor. Today the use of straw coffins has been revived as an ecologically correct form of burial.

  5. the mirror told her. As in “The Snow Queen,” a mirror figures prominently as a device promoting self-division and vanity. The voice in the mirror affirms beauty, as in the Grimms’ “Snow White”; but, in Andersen’s story, the reflection in the mirror has a malignant effect, turning a “delicate and pretty” child into a selfabsorbed, vain creature.

  6. There’s nothing in the world like a pair of red shoes! The narrator shares Karen’s delight in red shoes with an exclamation that seems to articulate a universal truth. The pleasure derived from the shoes stems from their beauty, which seems untart nished by sin so long as the shoes are put on display in public spaces rather than at sacred sites like the church. Note that the mark of royalty has been transferred from the princess’s head (the crown) to her feet (the red shoes), and that the red shoes become an emblem of nobility when they are worn by the princess. As one commentator on the story points out: “This image of the princess fixes the red shoes to a fantasy of social transcendence that would lead Karen from low to high, from rags to riches, from a little pauper in bloodstained clogs to a princess in red moroccan slippers” (Mackie, 239).

  7. They were beautiful! The beauty of the shoes is once again emphasized; and the fact that they are exhibited twice—first as the shoes worn by the princess in greeting her subjects, then as objets d’art in the shoemaker’s display cases—affirms their status as aesthetic objects, rare and beautiful. Both the old woman and Karen call attention to the shininess of the shoes (“See how they shine!” and “Yes, they are shiny”), thereby emphasizing the luminous quality characteristic of Andersen’s cult objects. The shoes turn into such powerful emblems of Karen’s sinful nature that it is easy to forget that they begin as exquisite ornaments arousing wonder and admiration.

  8. She looked at her black shoes, and she looked at the red ones. Faced with a choice between remaining a self-effacing girl raised by an old woman or becoming a princess, Karen hesitates only for a moment. Her fixation on the red shoes is driven in part by their beauty but to a great extent by their association with a princess who is acclaimed by her subjects and accompanied by her mother.

  9. At the church door they met an old soldier. The old soldier occupies a liminal, or in-between, space at the threshold to the church. In policing entry into a sacred space, he appears to be an enforcer of socioreligious codes. His red beard points in the direction of a diabolical force linked with Karen’s red shoes. That he is depicted as an invalid anticipates Karen’s fate.

  10. “Just look at those beautiful dancing shoes.” The shoes are linked here for the first time with dancing. They have been seen as objects that open up the possibility of social mobility, and indeed they allow Karen to engage in activities that are both artistic and adventurous. Linking the beauty of the shoes with an expressive activity draws attention to the possibility that the moral and religious sentiments expressed in the remainder of the narrative may not necessarily be the dominant discourse of the tale. Note also how evil is associated with the act of covetous looking.

  11. “May they stay on tight when you dance.” The soldier uses a charm or curse, a maleficium that will lead to Karen’s inability to stop dancing. He taps the soles and animates the shoes, endowing them with a life of their own. Oddly, the very figure who steps in to enforce submission to Christian values and bring Karen back to the fold is a diabolical character who uses black magic.

  12. which seemed to be floating in the chalice. That the vision of the red shoes displaces the sacrament suggests that Karen places her faith in (and communes with) what is on her feet, not the sacrament representing the blood of Christ. She is more deeply invested in social mobility through the red shoes than in the salvation offered in church, and she will pay a price through the shedding of her own blood.

  13. Then she looked at the red shoes. Once again, Karen is faced with a choice between duty and pleasure. Just as she turned away from the black shoes, she now leaves the old woman and elects to put on the red shoes once again. Looking and desiring lead to her downfall.

  14. Karen thought it must be the moon. The moon, as in Andersen’s “Snow Queen,” is associated with diabolical forces that stand in opposition to the warmth and light generated by the sun, which is, in turn, associated with divine powers and redemption.

  15. the dead did not join in her dance. Karen may be wearing beautiful shoes and her dancing may free her from the constraints of village life, but that dancing is also linked more emphatically to death than to life. She is presented as a solitary figure performing what was known in medieval times as the dance of death, or danse macabre and “skeleton dance.” The concept originated in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and gained greater prominence during the outbreak of the plague in European countries. The danse macabre overturns social hierarchies by presenting a row of figures, sometimes led by the personified figure of Death, in descending order of social rank, beginning with the pope and ending with a peasant—all are equal before death. The dance of death could also be performed by the dead, who rose from their graves and danced in the cemetery before going out to fetch the living.

  16. where bitter tansy weed grows. Tansy ragwort (Senecio jacobaea) is a noxious Eurasian weed that causes liver damage in cattle and horses.

  17. he held a broad, gleaming sword. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, two angelic beings were placed at the gate, with “a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24). Dazzling in his whiteness, the angel contrasts sharply with the soldier, whose most prominent feature is a red beard.

  18. “they will hear you and fear you!” Karen becomes a figure of warning, reminding children that pride (her desire for social mobility) and vanity (the wish to put herself on display) must be avoided. Her story becomes a cautionary tale about making the effort to aspire to the nobility of the princess waving to the crowds.

  19. she had to keep on dancing. Karen’s compulsive dancing became the inspiration for the 1948 film The Red Shoes, directed by Michael Powell and starring Moira Shearer. Victoria Page, the ballerina in the film, is deeply committed to her professional life as a dancer and makes her name in the ballet The Red Shoes. She
is torn between her desire to dance and her love for her husband. The film and novel that inspired it end when Victoria Page leaps to her death just before the performance of The Red Shoes. With her last dying breath, she bequeaths the shoes to her husband, shoes that are “alas, more red than ever before,” as noted in the novel (Powell and Pressburger, 279). By removing the shoes, she signals to her husband the decision to abandon her career.

  Ivor Guest, in a history of the romantic ballet, captures the way in which ballerinas are continually driven to dance: “Rest! Does a dancer ever rest? We were just poor wandering Jews at whom M. Barrez incessantly shouted, ‘Dance! Dance!’ . . . And do not imagine that such brutal fatigues only last for a short time. They must continue forever and be continually renewed” (Guest, 25). Andersen understood the rigors of the ballet, for he sang and danced on stage before returning to his studies in the town of Slagelse.

  20. “go to church and let everyone see me.” Karen makes the fatal mistake of going to church in order to put herself on display, this time as a wounded creature who has liberated herself from the torments inflicted by beautiful shoes.

  21. the red shoes dancing in front of her. The shoes, with bloody feet inside them, are charged with a powerful spirit of resistance and dance off on their own. They return to haunt and mock Karen as a talisman of her earlier desires.

  22. looking as beautiful as a queen. Karen recognizes in the make-believe activities of the children her own desire to imitate the princess. Discrediting the attractions of beauty, she accepts the codes of her community and dedicates herself to a life of hard work and piety.

  23. no one there asked her about the red shoes. The red shoes presumably continue their manic dance on earth, achieving a kind of immortality through a magic blend of beauty and horror.

  The Shadow 1

  Skyggen

  Nye Eventyr. Andet Bind, Første Samling. 1847

  Andersen wrote much of “The Shadow” in 1846 when he was in Naples. In a diary entry of June 8, he complained: “The heat is pouring down. I hardly dare go outside.” The following day, he announced: “In the evening, began writing the story of my shadow.” Note the use of the possessive pronoun, with Andersen cast as the “learned man” from “cold lands” so that “The Shadow” becomes a reflection—or shadow—of its author. The tale marks a real turning point in Andersen’s literary production, for it establishes him as an author whose work is animated by the theme of artistic and existential crisis. Like his British, European, and American contemporaries, he became fascinated with doubles, shadows, portraits, and statues, finding in them metaphors for exploring the divided self.

  The autonomous shadow has appeared in many nineteenth-century literary works, most notably Adelbert Chamisso’s The Marvelous Story of Peter Schlemihl (1814), which was translated into many languages shortly after its publication. Andersen met Chamisso when he traveled to Berlin in 1831 and noted in his autobiography that he had found in the Prussian poet of French descent a “life-long” friend. Andersen deepens Chamisso’s story by turning the shadow into the sinister force of the tale, suggesting that truly menacing forces emerge from within.

  In the hot countries the sun can really scorch you!2 People can turn as brown as mahogany, and in the hottest countries they can be baked black. One day, a learned man traveled from the cold countries to one of the moderately hot countries. He was sure that he would be able to go about his business just as he had back home, but he soon discovered otherwise. Along with all other sensible souls, he had to stay indoors.3 All day long, the shutters were drawn and the doors were kept closed. It looked just as if everyone was still sleeping or not at home. The narrow street on which the man lived was lined with tall buildings and was laid out so that it was flooded with sunshine from morning until evening. It was really unbearable!4 The learned man from the cold countries—he was a young man, a clever man—felt just as if he were sitting inside a blazing hot oven. It wore him out. He grew quite thin, and even his shadow began to shrink until it was much smaller than it had been at home. The sun took its toll on it as well. Not until the evening, after sundown, did the man and his shadow come back to life.5

  VILHELM PEDERSEN

  The learned man is already overshadowed by his shadow as he reads at his desk. The illustration captures the drama that will unfold between the man and his shadow in a closed, claustrophobic space.

  It was a real pleasure to watch that happen! As soon as a candle was brought into the room, the shadow would stretch itself out all the way up the wall and would even reach the ceiling, it made itself so long. It had to stretch out like that to get its strength back. The learned man went out on the balcony to stretch, and, as soon as stars appeared in the lovely, clear sky, he also seemed to come back to life.

  People appeared on all the balconies up and down the street—and in the warm countries every window has a balcony—because you have to breathe fresh air, even if you are used to being mahogany colored. Things grew quite lively, upstairs and down. Cobblers and tailors and everyone else moved out into the street. Tables appeared, then chairs, and candles were lit—there were over a thousand candles burning. One person would be talking, while another sang. People strolled down the street, carriages drove by, and donkeys trotted along, with their bells sounding ding-a-ling-ling. Hymns were sung as the dead were buried; urchins set off firecrackers; and church bells were ringing. Oh yes, it was very lively down in that street.6

  Only one house stayed quiet7—the one directly across from where the learned man was living. Someone must have been living there, because there were flowers growing on the balcony. They were thriving, even under a hot sun, and how could they unless there was a person there to water them? Someone had to be watering them, and so there must be people living in the house. As it turns out, the door across the way was left ajar every evening, but it was completely dark inside, at least in the front room. From somewhere farther back in the house you could hear the sound of music. The learned stranger thought the music was quite fabulous, but it is possible that he was just imagining all this, for he thought that everything in the warm countries was really marvelous, except for the sun. The stranger’s landlord said that he had no idea who was renting the house across the street. No one seemed to be living there, and, as for the music, he found it terribly dreary: “It sounds as if someone is practicing a piece that is beyond him—always the exact same piece. ‘I’ll get it right one of these days,’ he probably tells himself, but he just never does, no matter how hard he tries.”

  The stranger woke up once in the middle of the night. He was sleeping right near the open balcony door, and when a breeze lifted the curtain, he thought he saw a strange, shimmering light on his neighbor’s balcony.8 The flowers were glowing like flames in the most beautiful colors. Right in the middle of the flowers stood a slender, enchanting maiden, and she seemed to be glowing too. The brightness hurt his eyes, but that was because he had just woken up and opened them too wide after rousing himself so suddenly. Then he jumped out of bed and, without making a sound, peered through the curtains, but the maiden had vanished and so had the light. The flowers were no longer in flames and looked just fine, as they always did. The door was ajar, and from far inside came the sound of music so lovely and soothing that you could lose yourself in sweet thoughts. It was enchanting. But who was living there? Where was the real entrance? The entire ground floor was nothing but shops, and people couldn’t constantly be walking through them.

  One evening the stranger was sitting out on his balcony. In the room behind him a candle was burning, and so it was quite natural that his shadow appeared over on the wall across the way. Yes, it appeared right there with the flowers on the balcony. And whenever the stranger moved, the shadow moved too, for that is what shadows do.

  “I think my shadow is the only living thing you can see over there,” the learned man thought to himself. “Look how much at home it is among the flowers. The door is wide open. If only my shadow were clever enough to
step inside,9 have a look around, and come back to tell me what it had seen.”

  “Yes, you would be doing me a real service,” he said jokingly. “Kindly step inside. Aren’t you going in?” He nodded to the shadow, and the shadow nodded back at him. “Run along now, but don’t get lost!”

  The stranger rose, and his shadow on the opposite balcony got up with him. The stranger turned, and his shadow turned as well. If anyone had been paying attention, they would have seen the shadow enter the half-open balcony door in the house across the street at the very instant when the stranger returned to his room, letting the drapes fall behind him.

  The next morning the learned man went out to drink his coffee and read the newspapers. “What’s this?” he said, as he stepped out into the sunlight. “My shadow is gone! So it actually did leave me last night, and it hasn’t come back. That’s really irritating.”

  What annoyed him most was not so much the loss of his shadow as the fact that there was already a story about a man without a shadow.10 Everyone back home in the cold countries knew that story. If he returned home and told them his own story, they would just say that he was copying the other one and shouldn’t bother going on. So he decided to say nothing at all about it, and that was certainly the sensible thing to do.

  That evening he went back out on the balcony. He put a candle directly behind him, because he knew that shadows always like to use their masters as a screen, but he could not entice it to come back. He made himself short, and he made himself tall, but there was just no shadow. It refused to show up. “Ahem, ahem!” he repeated, but it was no use.

  This was all very annoying, but in the hot countries everything grows quite rapidly, and in a week or so he noticed to his great satisfaction that a new shadow had started growing11 at his feet whenever he went out into the sunlight. The root must have been left behind. Within three weeks he had a decent enough shadow, which, when he set out to go back north, grew longer and longer until it became so long and broad that half of it would have been quite enough.