“Oh, how I wish that she would!” the little girl said in great distress. “I’ll give up my doll’s house if they let her return. It’s so horrible for poor Inger!”
These words went straight to Inger’s heart and seemed to do her good. It was the first time anyone had said “Poor Inger” without adding anything about her faults. An innocent little child had wept and prayed for her. She was so moved that she would have liked to weep as well, but the tears would not flow, and that too was torture.
The years passed by up there, but down below nothing changed. Inger heard fewer words from above and there was less talk about her. Then one day she heard a deep sigh: “Inger, Inger, what sorrow you have brought me! I always said you would!” Those were her mother’s dying words.
Sometimes she heard her name mentioned by her former mistress, who always spoke in the mildest way: “I wonder if I shall ever see you again, Inger. There’s no knowing where I’ll end up.” But Inger knew well enough that her honest mistress would never end up in the place where she was.
A long time passed, slowly and bitterly. Then Inger heard her name spoken once again, and she saw above her what looked like two bright stars shining down on her. They were two gentle eyes that were about to close on earth. So many years had passed since the time when a small girl had cried inconsolably for “Poor Inger” that the child was by now an old woman, and the good Lord was about to call her to himself. In that final hour, when all the thoughts and deeds of a lifetime pass before you, the woman recalled clearly how, as a small child, she had wept bitter tears when hearing the sad story of Inger. That moment and the sense of sorrow following it were so vivid in the old woman’s mind at the hour of her death that she cried out these heartfelt words: “Dear Lord, have I not too, like poor Inger, sometimes thoughtlessly trampled underfoot your blessings and counted them without value? Have I not also been guilty of pride and vanity in my inmost heart? And yet you, in your mercy, did not let me sink but held me up. Do not forsake me in this final hour!”21
The old woman’s eyes closed, and the eyes of her soul were opened to what had been hidden. And because Inger had been so profoundly present in her final thoughts, the old woman was actually able to see her and to understand how deeply she had sunk. At the dreadful sight of her, the saintly soul burst into tears. She stood like a child in the kingdom of heaven and wept for poor Inger. Her tears and prayers rang like an echo down into the hollow, empty shell that held an imprisoned, tormented soul. Inger was overwhelmed by all the unexpected love from above. To think that one of God’s angels would be weeping for her! How did she deserve this act of kindness? The tormented soul thought back on every deed she had performed during her life on earth and was convulsed with sobs, weeping in ways that the old Inger could never have wept. Inger was filled with sorrow for herself, and she felt certain the gates of mercy would never open for her. She was beginning to realize this with the deepest humility, when, suddenly, a brilliant ray flashed down into the bottomless pit, one more powerful than the sunbeams that melt the snowmen that boys build outdoors.22 And at the touch of this ray—faster than a snowflake turns into water when it lands on a child’s warm lips—Inger’s stiffened, stony figure vanished. A tiny bird soared like forked lightning up toward the world of humans.23
The bird seemed timid and afraid of everything around it, as if ashamed and wanting to avoid the sight of all living creatures. It hastened to find shelter and discovered it in the dark hole of a crumbling wall. It cowered there, and trembled all over, without uttering a sound, for it had no voice.24 It stayed there for a long time before it dared to peer out and take in the beauty all around. And, yes indeed, it was beautiful. The air was so fresh, the breeze gentle, and the moon was shining brightly. Among the fragrant trees and flowers, the bird was perched in a cozy spot, its feathers clean and dainty. How much love and splendor there was in all created things!25 The bird was eager to express in song the thoughts bursting from its heart, but it could not. It wanted to sing like the nightingale or the cuckoo in the springtime. Our Lord, who can hear even the voiceless hymn of the worm, understood the hymn of praise that swelled up in chords of thought, like the psalms that resonated in David’s heart before they took shape in words and music.26
For days and weeks, these mute songs grew stronger. Someday they would surely find a voice, perhaps with the first stroke of a wing performing a good deed. Was the time not ripe?
The holy feast of Christmas was nigh.27 A farmer had put a pole up near the wall and had tied an unthreshed bundle of oats to it, so that creatures of the air might also have a merry Christmas and a cheerful meal in this season of the Savior.
The sun rose that Christmas morning and shone down brightly upon the sheaf of oats and all the twittering birds gathered around it. A faint “tweet, tweet” sounded from the wall. The swelling thoughts had finally turned into sound, and the feeble chirp turned into a hymn of joy. The idea of a good deed had awakened,28 and the bird flew out from its hiding place. In heaven they knew exactly what kind of bird it was.
Winter began in earnest; the ponds were frozen over with thick ice; and the birds and wild creatures were short of food. The tiny bird flew along country roads, and, there, in the tracks of sledges, it managed to find a grain of corn here and there, or in the best places, a few crumbs of bread. It would eat but a single grain of corn and then alert the other famished birds so that they too could find food. It also flew into the towns, inspecting the ground, and wherever a kindly hand had scattered breadcrumbs from the window for birds, it would take just a single crumb and give the rest away.
By the end of the winter the bird had collected and given away so many crumbs that they equaled in weight the loaf29 upon which little Inger had trod to keep her fine shoes from being soiled. And when it had found and given away the last crumb, the bird’s gray wings turned white and spread out.30
“Look, there’s a tern flying across the lake,” the children cried out when they saw the white bird.31 First it dipped down into the water, then it rose into the bright sunshine. The bird’s wings glittered so brightly in the air that it was impossible to see where it was flying. They say that it flew straight into the sun.32
1. The story has been written down and put into print as well. While many versions of the ballad exist, Andersen seems to be the only writer to turn Inger’s misfortunes into a prose narrative. “The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf” is one of a small number of stories based, like the Grimms’ fairy tales, on oral sources. Andersen briefly summarizes the events in the ballad, then turns to what really interests him: the story of Inger’s salvation.
2. she enjoyed catching flies, pulling off their wings. Inger is one of many nineteenth-century brats in British and European children’s literature who manifest their “evil” by torturing animals. Inger’s sadistic streak has been seen by some readers as an appealing trait. One reader reminisces about reading the story as a child: “I was immediately smitten by Inger’s macabre sense of humor. Her wicked mirth cast a spell on me and I wished she would go even further. In her portrait, I recognized myself. Hadn’t I stranded tadpoles on sunny boulders just to watch them struggle to hop back in the water on their half-formed haunches?” (Flook, 120).
3. “some desperate remedies to cure your stubborn ways.” The mother’s lament rephrases a well-known Danish proverb that small children tread on a mother’s apron, while grown ones tread on her heart. Note that stubbornness is added to pride, vanity, and cruelty. In nineteenth-century Anglo-American and European cultures, it was the duty of parents to tame the strong will of the child. The Grimms began one of their fairy tales (“Mother Trude”) in a fashion typical for children’s stories of the time: “Once upon a time there was a girl who was stubborn and curious, and whenever her parents told her to do something, she would not obey them. Well, how could things possibly go well for her?”
4. Inger was ashamed. Although Andersen wrote fondly about both his parents—his father had a “truly poetical mind” and his mother had “a h
eart full of love”—he was haunted all his life by skeletons in the family closet: an aunt who ran a brothel in Copenhagen, a half-sister named Karen-Marie (whose name the protagonist of “The Red Shoes” shares), and a grandfather who wandered the streets singing wild tunes and being chased by schoolboys.
5. there was nothing to see but a black, bubbling swamp. In the Inferno, Dante travels to the fifth circle of hell, descending “grayish slopes” into “the marsh whose name is Styx.” There he sees unfortunate souls “within that bog, all naked and muddy—with looks / Of fury.” They are “lodged in slime” and remain sullen in “black mire” (The Inferno of Dante, pp. 71–73). In Andersen’s The Improvisatore, the main character, Antonio, is passionately interested in the works of the Italian poet. It is not surprising that Andersen, who hoped to become Denmark’s most celebrated writer, dedicated himself to the study of Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and the other great figures who became the representative writers of their culture.
6. What became of her? In his commentary on the story, Andersen explained that he had set himself the goal of showing how Inger converts from a life of sin and moves to a state of atonement, creating the opportunity for her salvation. Picking up where the ballad leaves off, Andersen’s narrative remains deeply committed to the story of Inger’s salvation but also lavishes attention on the details of her punishment, perhaps to intensify the cathartic effects of Inger’s release and transformation.
7. aunt to the elf maidens. Elf maidens, or Ellefruwen, make frequent appearances in Scandinavian folklore. They are related to Skogsnuva, creatures who look appealing from the front but turn out to be rotting when seen from behind. In Andersen’s late novel Lykke Peer (1870), the eponymous protagonist dreams of being tempted by the elf maidens to abandon his mortal existence but staunchly resists their lure. In that same work, Andersen refers to the Swedish ballad of Sir Olaf, who rode out to greet his wedding guests and became entranced by elf maidens who forced him to perform a dance of death.
8. Every vat reeks so horribly that you would faint. An overwhelming stench has been seen to symbolize moral and sexual corruption. Oddly, Inger’s effort to keep her shoes clean results in her immersion into a polluted and contaminated space.
9. just as amber attracts bits of straw. Kahroba, a word for amber derived from Persian, means “that which attracts straw,” in reference to the power of amber to acquire an electric charge by friction.
10. the brewery was being visited that day by the devil and his great-grandmother. The underground space seems dominated by women (the Marsh Woman and the devil’s great-grandmother) rather than by the devil himself. Andersen viewed the role of the devil in much the same way that Goethe presented Mephistopheles in Faust, as a necessary and, in his own way, admirable opponent to mankind. “Everyone speaks badly of Satan,” Andersen wrote. “They never recognize that he is merely fulfilling his duty. It is his job, after all, to seduce the children of humanity. He is the touchstone in this world; it is through him that we will be purified for the better; he is this struggle and flame, this aspera moving ad astram, and so he has here an important, meritorious role in the great drama of life” (Jens Andersen, 541). The devil’s grandmother makes an appearance in a Grimm tale (“The Devil and His Grandmother”) and functions as a benefactor to the hero, much like the giant’s wife who protects and assists the protagonist in “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
11. How cleverly that old great-granny could sew, embroider, and weave! The devil’s grandmother seems to serve as a folkloric version of the Norns from Norse mythology, creatures who live beneath the roots of Yggdrasil at the center of the world. There they weave the fate of humans, with each string in their loom representing a life. The Norns are related to the Greek Moirae, whose spinning activities determine fates: Clotho spins the thread at birth, Lachesis weaves it, and Atropos cuts it at the end of life. Three in number as well, the Norns (Urth or Wyrd, Verthandi, and Skuld—representing the past, present, and future, respectively) appear in Shakespeare’s Macbeth as the three weird sisters.
12. a snake had wound itself into her hair and was dangling down her neck. The snake in Inger’s hair links her with the figure of Medusa, one of the three Gorgons. Like her monstrous sisters Stheno and Euryale, Medusa has brass hands, sharp fangs, and poisonous snakes in place of locks of hair. Athena turned Medusa’s hair into snakes that coiled around her head when Medusa tried to vie in beauty with her. Anyone who dared behold Medusa was turned into stone. Inger may share Medusa’s vanity and pride, along with her serpentine tresses, but it is she who is turned into stone by the gaze of others (“they were all staring at her”).
During Andersen’s trips to Italy and Greece, he immersed himself in Roman and Greek mythology, educating himself in sculpture and in painting and spending time with Danish artists who were living in Italy. Andersen characterized himself as a traveler who was driven by curiosity—“always in motion, trying to use every minute to see everything.”
13. She began to feel so empty inside, so terribly empty. Inger’s emphasis on appearances leads to a kind of spiritual hollowness and emptiness that is literalized when her insides begin to consume themselves down in hell. Like the mythical Tantalus who is doomed to eternal hunger even when fruit and water seem within reach, Inger stands on the loaf yet cannot use it for sustenance.
14. Suddenly a hot tear fell on her forehead. The heat of the tear contrasts with the chilling cold of hell. A symbol of warmth, kindness, and empathy, the tear contrasts with the cold rigidity of the netherworld where Inger is held captive and immobilized.
15. “Pride goes before a fall.” The phrase derives from Proverbs 16:18: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
16. “I wish I had never been born!” Inger’s words echo Mark 14:21, which alludes to a far more momentous sin, the betrayal of Christ: “But woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”
17. Inger heard that a ballad had been written about her. The production of the ballad during Inger’s lifetime solidifies the chain of communication between earth and the nether regions. Despite the fact that the two realms are segregated, those above are aware of the misery of those in hell, and those below are aware of the judgments being passed on earth.
18. “such a little thing?” The one small step that leads to seemingly eternal punishment is of course not an isolated instance. Inger’s pride and vanity are to blame, yet it becomes clear that the misstep is what counts when it comes to her damnation.
19. Inger’s heart became even harder than her shell-like form. Impermeable, hard, rigid, stony, icy surfaces embody for Andersen the quintessence of sin. The hollowness of her body and the hardness of her heart turn Inger into an emblem of human degradation. Much like Kai in “The Snow Queen,” Inger becomes completely isolated in a region that is affiliated with petrifaction and loss of feeling.
20. Her story was being told to an innocent child. This child, unlike the others, manages to feel empathy. She becomes a model for Inger in her humility and embodies the wisdom of Matthew 18:3–4: “Truly I say unto you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (The ending of “The Snow Queen” also takes up the theme of becoming like children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven.)
21. “Do not forsake me in this final hour!” Note the allusion to Psalms 71:9: “Do not cast me away when I am old; / Do not forsake me when my strength is gone”; and to Psalms 38:21: “Do not forsake me, oh Lord / Oh my God, be not far from me”; and finally to Psalms 27:10, which is relevant to Inger’s plight: “When my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.”
22. more powerful than the sunbeams that melt the snowmen that boys build outdoors. Sunbeams, rays of light, and flashes of lightning are all contrasted to stone, ice, and snow. In this story, as in “The Snow Queen,�
� light, warmth, and fluidity are associated with salvation while gloom, cold, and petrifaction become the attributes of damnation.
23. A tiny bird soared like forked lightning up toward the world of humans. The mute bird, like the ugly duckling, must wait patiently for its transfiguration. But for salvation it must also perform good deeds—it cannot simply suffer silently as the ugly duckling does.
24. it had no voice. The bird’s voice returns with the performance of good deeds and adds to the beauty of nature. Like the little mermaid and Elisa in “The Wild Swans,” the bird is unable to express its true feelings and must suffer in silence.
25. How much love and splendor there was in all created things! Andersen’s description of sights, sounds, and aromas is a reminder of the degree to which he valued natural beauty and the splendors of earthly life.
26. like the psalms that resonated in David’s heart before they took shape in words and music. Inger’s story contains many allusions to the Psalms, and it is not surprising that David is invoked at last to emphasize language’s capacity to capture the richness of emotional life.
27. The holy feast of Christmas was nigh. It is in the season of Christ’s birth that Inger finds salvation. Note that the farmer’s good deed plays a role in lifting the burden of muteness from the bird, and that Inger in her avian form is enabled to perform good deeds by the farmer’s generosity.
28. The idea of a good deed had awakened. For Lutherans, it is by faith alone (sola fide) and by grace alone (sola gratia) that salvation is possible. In Luther’s doctrine of redemption, good works and merit are important, but they are no guarantee for redemption and are undertaken simply for their moral value.
29. so many crumbs that they equaled in weight the loaf. The requirement to reconstitute the loaf seems almost perverse in its fetishizing of “our daily bread.” Inger’s failure to value her daily bread, along with her obligation to recreate it by assembling crumbs, suggests that the loaf is charged with deep symbolic significance as God’s gift to man.
The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen Page 42