The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen

by Hans Christian Andersen

  8. behind a snuffbox. Snuff, or powdered tobacco, was imported from North America and introduced to Europeans in the sixteenth century. The use of snuff (inhaling a pinch of tobacco, then sneezing elegantly) became fashionable in Europe, and snuff-taking was seen as a mark of aristocracy in the nineteenth century. Artisans created beautiful containers to hold the tobacco, and the presence of the snuffbox in the home is another sign of a comfortable bourgeois setting.

  The novelist Kathryn Davis writes about her childhood reaction to the snuffbox in Andersen’s story: “When I was seven years old I didn’t have a clue what a snuffbox was, but I knew it was the right name for an object that sprang open unexpectedly to release a goblin. ‘Snuffbox’ dropped straight from God’s mouth, where it hadn’t yet acquired meaning, and into my brain. Recognizing its aptness, I participated in its creation” (Davis, 86).

  9. Then the toys started to play. The animation of the toys was surely inspired by E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “Nutcracker and the Mouse King” (1816), a tale in which toys come to life at midnight. In Hoffmann’s Christmas Eve tale, an army of soldiers, led by the Nutcracker, defeats an army of mice. A nutcracker also appears among the toys in Andersen’s story, and the troll who leaps out from the snuffbox is a diabolical figure resembling Hoffmann’s evil Mouse King. The uncanny effect of toys coming to life is both marvelous and magical yet also dark and sinister, suggesting a grotesque, topsyturvy world in which the mechanical becomes real. Andersen’s story, like Hoffmann’s, locates romance, violence, adventure, and passion in a childhood setting.

  KAY NIELSEN

  An angry troll seems intent on keeping tin soldier and ballerina apart, while on the surface below him, swans swim toward each other.

  10. Suddenly the clock struck twelve. Midnight is, of course, the “witching hour,” the time of night when goblins, ghosts, witches, and other demons emerge to perform their pagan rituals. The black troll who pops out of the snuffbox belongs to Scandinavian folklore and is a figure who cannot tolerate the light of day—hence the fact that he remains, like vampires and other creatures of the night, in the coffinlike snuffbox.

  11. Was it the troll or was it just a gust of wind? The rhetorical question is important, for it questions agency and proposes a natural explanation for the soldier’s fall. Given the importance of the elements in the story (water, fire, and air), the question of whether the troll or nature conspires against the tin soldier is an important one.

  12. he felt it was beneath his dignity to shout while in uniform. The tin soldier’s pride is not necessarily admirable—in many instances it undermines his chances for survival. But there is an added layer of irony in the fact that the soldier does not have the power to speak, yet rationalizes his silence with the alibi of preserving his military dignity. Here, pride is affiliated with vanity (as in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”), but in this case it leads to stoicism.

  13. two street urchins came running along. As is often the case in Andersen’s stories, schoolboys and street urchins can be counted on to engage in sadistic behavior. Saintly urchins like the little match girl are invariably female.

  14. Good heavens! With this phrase, the narrator makes it evident that he is presenting an account of the events consonant with his character’s point of view. The exclamation “Good heavens!” reveals the degree to which the thoughts of the narrator and his character merge, creating a narrative situation in which all sympathy is extended to the character.

  15. It became just as dark as it once was inside the box. The soldier can be seen as undergoing a rite of passage, a three-part process defined by the renowned anthropologist Arnold van Gennep as separation, transition, and reincorporation. In the second, or “liminal,” stage of transition, the soldier is neither here nor there, existing in a state of “betwixt and between.” Liminality, as Gennep’s disciple Victor Turner emphasized, is frequently “likened to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to darkness, to bisexuality, to the wilderness, and to an eclipse of the sun or the moon” (Turner, 95). The soldier himself, whether at home or in the gutter, displays the behavior of neophytes who are in that transitional phase: “passive or humble” and accepting “arbitrary punishments without complaint.” The soldier, unlike the neophyte, does not undergo rebirth and transformation, although he could be said, in the end, to experience a mock reincorporation.

  16. It was even darker than under the gutter plank. The tin soldier’s lot is arduous, for he sinks from the comforts of a bourgeois home into the gutter and finally into an even darker and more dangerous site.Andersen scholar John Griffith points out that “frequently the physical ordeal Andersen’s lovers must go through in pursuit of transcendent love is a descent into dark, close, filthy places—the tin soldier floats down a gutter into a sewer and is swallowed by a fish; the shepherdess and the chimney sweep have to creep up and down a chimney flue; the ball and the top meet in a garbage bin where ‘all kinds of things were lying: gravel, a cabbage stalk, dirt, dust, and lots of leaves that had fallen down from the gutter’ ” (Griffith, 83).Andersen’s tin soldier, however, seems less in pursuit of “transcendent love” than aiming to display his fortitude through his upright position.

  17. stretched out full length, with his rifle on his shoulder. The soldier is a stoic Jonah, who willingly endures life inside the belly of the fish. George Orwell once described the comforts of living within a creature: “For the fact is that being inside a whale is a very comfortable, cosy, homelike thought. The historical Jonah, if he can be so called, was glad enough to escape, but in imagination, in daydream, countless people have envied him. It is, of course, quite obvious why. The whale’s belly is simply a womb big enough for an adult. There you are, in the dark, cushioned space that exactly fits you, with yards of blubber between yourself and reality, able to keep up an attitude of the completest indifference, no matter what happens” (Orwell, 177–78). Tom Thumb and Pinocchio undergo similar experiences in the bellies of beasts, domestic and wild.

  18. everyone wanted to see the remarkable traveler. The soldier has undertaken the voyage of the hero, returning as a “remarkable” personage who has found his way back home again.

  19. She too was steadfast. There is more than a touch of irony to the fact that both soldier and ballerina have no choice but to remain immobile and that the soldier is persuaded that he and the ballerina are kindred spirits because they share the quality of steadfastness.

  20. for no reason at all, threw him right into the stove. The soldier seems to be a survivor, but in the end, he loses his life “for no reason at all”—just on a small boy’s whim. The soldier attributes the boy’s urge to an evil power, suggesting that the troll has engineered his death.

  21. He had lost his vibrant colors. Like the ballerina, the soldier is a figure on display, with an attractive, multicolored uniform. Ole Shut-Eye, in the story of that title, also wears a suit of many colors.

  22. A gust of wind picked up the dancer. Once again, a chance event—the opening of the door and the creation of a draft—leads to death. The ballerina, for all her steadfastness, cannot resist the force of the wind, just as the tin soldier succumbed to it at the beginning of the tale.

  23. in the shape of a little tin heart. Given the importance of contingency in the tale, it seems possible that the heart-shaped mass is nothing more than an accident. It is also possible that the tin soldier’s ardor was so powerful that it shaped his remains. Andersen’s paper cuttings often had heart shapes in them.

  24. it had been burned black as coal. The transformation of the brilliant spangle into a remnant black as coal contrasts with the conversion of the soldier into a little tin heart. A moral judgment in favor of the soldier is entered through the symbolic nature of the remains.

  Ole Shut-Eye

  Ole Lukøie

  Eventyr, fortalte for Børn, 1837

  Ole Shut-Eye is related to the figure of Jon Blund, an elf who sprinkles sand in children’s eyes so that they will go to sleep. Andersen not only su
bstitutes sweet milk for the sand but also turns Ole Shut-Eye into a storyteller, one who needs lights out and eyes shut to work his magic. Ole Shut-Eye is both an incarnation of dreams (with a brother named Death) and an unrivaled storyteller, who understands the importance of stories as a bridge between the real world and the world of imagination.

  Ole Shut-Eye is related to the Sandman and Willie Winkie in Anglophone countries, and Dormette in France. Wee Willie Winkie comes from a Scottish nursery rhyme of 1841 written down by William Miller in dialect: “Wee Willie Winkie rins through the toun, / Up stairs and doon stairs in his nicht-goun, / Tirlin’ at the window, cryin’ at the lock, / ‘Are the weans in their bed, for it’s noo ten o’clock?’ ” Wee Willie Winkie and his kin have been used for centuries to frighten, coerce, and entice children to go to bed. Ole Shut-Eye seems the most benevolent of these spirits.

  No one in the world knows as many stories as Ole Shut-Eye, and he certainly knows how to tell them!

  When night falls, and the children are sitting around the table or on their little stools, behaving well, Ole Shut-Eye arrives. He comes upstairs without making noise, for he has socks on. He opens the door gently, and he flicks some sweet milk on the children’s eyes—just a tiny bit, but enough to make them close their eyes so that they can’t see him. He tiptoes behind them and breathes softly on their necks, making their heads feel heavy. Yes, indeed! But it doesn’t hurt, for Ole Shut-Eye adores children and just wants them to quiet down, and that only happens after they’ve been put to bed. He wants them to be quiet so that he will be able to tell them stories.

  As soon as the children have fallen asleep, Ole Shut-Eye sits down at their bedsides. He is well dressed, with a coat made of gleaming silk that changes color as he turns around, first red, then green, then blue. Under each arm he holds an umbrella. One has pictures all over it, and he opens that one up over good children. They dream the most beautiful stories all night long. The other is just a plain umbrella with nothing on it at all, and that one he opens over naughty children. They are restless and can’t sleep, and when they wake up in the morning they have had no dreams at all.1

  KAY NIELSEN

  Hjalmar lies peacefully in bed, with his dolls at the foot of the bed. Above him Ole Shut-Eye has opened an umbrella that will enable him to have beautiful dreams.

  Now you shall hear about how Ole Shut-Eye came every day of the week to a little boy named Hjalmar and about all the things he told him. There are seven stories in all, because there are seven days in the week.

  MONDAY

  “Now listen up,” Ole Shut-Eye said one night after he had managed to get Hjalmar to go to bed. “First of all, I’m going to spruce things up.” And before long all the flowers in their pots had grown into big trees, with their long branches arching across the ceiling and back down along the wall until the room had become a beautiful bower.2 The branches were covered with flowers, each prettier than a rose and with a fragrance so sweet that, if you tasted it, it was sweeter than jam. The fruit gleamed like gold, and there were also buns bursting with raisins. No one has ever seen anything like it! 3

  Suddenly you could hear a dreadful howling over in the drawer where Hjalmar kept his schoolbooks.4

  “What could that be?” Ole Shut-Eye asked, as he went over to the desk and opened the drawer. The slate was throwing a fit and was about to fall apart. A sum would not come out right because an error had slipped into the calculations. The pencil was tugging and leaping at the end of its string like a little dog. It wanted to correct the sum but didn’t know how.

  Then Hjalmar’s copybook started howling as well. It was just dreadful to hear. On each page, capital letters ran down the page, with lowercase letters right next to them, a complete column of them all the way down. They were the models, and next to them were letters that believed they looked just the same. Hjalmar had written those, and they looked as if they had tripped over the straight line, where they were supposed to be.

  “Look here—this is how you are supposed to stand,” the model said. “See this—sloping a bit, then with a bold stroke.”

  “Oh, we would be glad to,” Hjalmar’s letters replied. “But we can’t. We’re so weak.”

  “Then you will have to take some medicine!” Ole Shut-Eye replied.

  “Oh, no,” they shouted, and suddenly they stood up as straight as you would want them to be.

  “No time for stories now,” said Ole Shut-Eye. “I have to put them through their paces. Left, right! Left, right!” And he drilled the letters until they were just as elegant and straight as their models.5 But after Ole Shut-Eye had left and when Hjalmar looked at them the next morning, they were just as miserable as before.

  TUESDAY

  As soon as Hjalmar was in bed, Ole Shut-Eye sprinkled his magic potion on all the furniture in the room, and every piece began chattering.6 They all talked about themselves except for the spittoon, which kept quiet. It was annoyed that all the others were so self-centered and constantly talking and thinking only of themselves, without paying the least bit of attention to it, sitting so humbly in the corner and allowing others to spit in it.

  A large painting in a gilt frame was hanging above the chest of drawers. It showed a landscape with tall old trees, flowers growing in a meadow, and a large lake from which a river flowed away through the woods, past many castles, far out to the open sea. Ole Shut-Eye used his magic spray on the painting,7 and birds began to sing. The branches stirred in the trees, and clouds billowed out. You could see their shadows moving across the landscape.

  Ole Shut-Eye picked little Hjalmar up and put him right at the edge of the painting so that he could step into the painting and stand in the tall grass, with the sun shining down on him through the branches of the trees. He ran down to the water and climbed into a little boat that was right there. It was painted red and white, and its sails shone like silver. Six swans, all with golden crowns down over their necks and bright blue stars on their foreheads, towed the boat past the green woods, where the trees were telling tales about robbers and witches,8 and the flowers were whispering about dear little elves and about what butterflies had told them.

  KAY NIELSEN

  Hjalmar sails on a placid river, accompanied by swans. A princess extends a treat to him from the balcony of a radiant castle on the riverbank.

  Lovely fish with scales that seemed like gold and silver swam after the boat, leaping up now and then so that the water started to speak in splashes. Birds red and blue, large and small, flew behind the boat in two long lines. Gnats danced and May bugs went boom, boom! They all wanted to go with Hjalmar, and every one of them had a story to tell.

  What a magnificent voyage it was! At times the woods were dark and deep, and then suddenly they turned into the loveliest garden filled with flowers and sunshine. You could see palaces of marble and glass, with princesses on their balconies. Hjalmar knew all of them well, for they were his playmates. They stretched their hands out to him, offering him the prettiest sugar pigs that any cake woman had ever sold. Hjalmar caught one end of a sugar pig as he sailed by, and the princess held on tight to the other end, so that each was left with a piece. The princess had the smaller piece, and Hjalmar had the larger one. Little princes with gold swords stood guard at the palaces and saluted. They showered Hjalmar with raisins and tin soldiers. You could tell that they were real princes!

  Sometimes Hjalmar sailed through forests, sometimes through what seemed to be great halls, or even straight through towns. That’s how he arrived in the town where his nanny lived, the woman who had looked after him when he was a small boy.9 She had been very fond of him, and now she nodded and waved, singing the pretty verses she had made up on her own and sent to Hjalmar:

  Hjalmar, my boy so dear,

  Once I kissed your eyes so clear

  And held you tight

  Both day and night.

  I heard your words and saw your tears,

  Then good-byes after tender years.

  God keep you
near as you grow wise,

  My joyous herald from the skies.

  Birds joined in her songs, and the flowers began keeping time on their stalks. And the old trees nodded, just as if Ole Shut-Eye were telling them stories too.

  WEDNESDAY

  Goodness, how it was pouring outside! Hjalmar could hear the rain in his sleep, and when Ole Shut-Eye opened the window, water splashed right onto the windowsill. There was a lake right outside the window, and a fine ship right beside the house.

  “Hjalmar, my boy, are you ready to go?” Ole Shut-Eye asked. “We can travel to distant lands tonight and be back by morning.”

  All at once Hjalmar was in his Sunday best on board the splendid ship. The weather had turned glorious as they sailed through the streets, rounded the church, and steered toward the open seas. They sailed on and on until you could no longer see land, and they met a flock of storks, who were also leaving home, bound for warmer climes. They had been flying in one long line, and had already covered a great distance. One of them was so weary that his wings could scarcely keep him in the air. He was the very last in the line, and, before long, he had been left behind by the others. He began to sink lower and lower, his wings still spread out, trying to make a few more feeble strokes, but it was no use. His feet touched the ship’s rigging; he glided down the sail, and, plop! There he was on the deck.10

  The cabin boy picked him up and put him in the chicken coop with the hens, ducks, and turkeys. The unfortunate stork looked miserable among them.

  “What a funny-looking fellow,” the hens declared.

  And the turkey puffed himself up as big as he could and asked the stork who he was. 11 The ducks backed off and nudged each other: “Start quacking! Keep it up!”