THE LITTLE MERMAID (DEN LILLE HAVFRUE, 1837)
Andersen first wrote a version of this tale in his play Agnete and the Merman (1833), which incorporated his tender feelings for Edvard Collin; indeed, the play and the tale “The Little Mermaid” have often been interpreted as a representation of Andersen’s unrequited love for Collin. However, the motif of a water nymph who desires a human soul has deep roots in medieval folklore about mermaids, water nixies (water sprites), sirens, and sylphs. This tale is clearly related to Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s fairy-tale novella Undine (1811), in which a sprightly water nymph seeks a human soul through marriage with a young knight. Set in the Middle Ages, this tragic story shows how Undine wins the love of a handsome aristocrat and is transformed into a devout and pious Christian. However, when her husband betrays her, she is compelled to revert to her pagan condition and to kill him. E. T. A. Hoffmann, a good friend of Fouqué, used the tale as the basis for his opera Undine (1816), and other operas, such as Antonin Dvorák’s Rusalka (1900), have been based on the plot.
Andersen recast the water nymph as a mermaid who redeems herself by refusing to take revenge on an innocent prince. Instead, she sacrifices herself, and Andersen makes it clear she will gain some kind of salvation because of her good deeds.
Andersen’s version served as the basis for numerous films in the latter part of the twentieth century. The Walt Disney Company made two important animated films based on Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” and Russian, British, Czech, and Danish filmmakers also have adapted the story for the cinema.
THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES (KEJSERENS NYE KLÆDER, 1837)
This tale can be traced to the fourteenth-century Libro de Patronio (Patronio’s Fifty Stories), by Prince Juan Manuel, who collected Arab and Jewish stories and published them in Spanish. In the Spanish tale, the weavers declare that only men who are truly the sons of their fathers can see the clothes they make; otherwise, the clothes are invisible. In the oral and literary traditions of Europe, the exposure of the emperor occurs in a variety of ways; the tricksters—con men, weavers, or tailors—use various tests to expose the gullibility and pomposity of rulers. Andersen apparently added the child in his narrative at the last moment in order to associate innocence with truth.
THUMBELINA (TOMMELISE, 1835)
Andersen’s tale—his unusual version with a female Tom Thumb—owes a great debt to oral tradition and literary versions that also can be traced to “Little Tom Thumb” (1697), written by Charles Perrault, and to “Thumbling” (1815) and “Thumbling’s Travels” (1815), published by the Brothers Grimm. Folk stories about Tom Thumb began appearing in English chapbooks in the seventeenth century. According to Arthurian Legend, the magician Merlin grants a childless couple a child who is no bigger than a thumb. Named Tom Thumb, the little creature, assisted by fairies, faces numerous dangers because of his diminutive size. Many of the situations are comic, and Tom must learn how to use his wits to survive. The plots of similar tales found in Japanese, Indian, and European lore vary, but they all begin with a separation of Tom from his parents that sets off a chain of episodes as he tries to find his way home. Andersen’s contribution is the invention of a female protagonist and her conventional marriage with a prince.
THE NAUGHTY BOY (DEN UARTIGE DRENG, 1835)
This tale is based on a work by Greek lyric poet Anacreon (c.582-c.485 B.C.), who wrote short poems called monodies (lyrical verses for a single voice) that celebrated love and wine. Andersen was probably influenced by Christian Pram’s translation of the Anacreon poem. In contrast to Anacreon, Andersen provides an ironic view of the power of love in this story.
THE GALOSHES OF FORTUNE (LYKKENS KALOSKER, 1838)
This story can be considered one of the first science-fiction tales in European literature. It consists of time-travel episodes in which people come upon “lucky” galoshes that transport them in time and compel them to consider their real situations. The galoshes are somewhat related to the folk motif of seven-league boots that enable people to travel great distances in a matter of seconds. However, seven-league boots are rarely used to carry a protagonist to the past or the future, as the galoshes do in Andersen’s tale.
THE GARDEN OF EDEN (PARADISETS HAVE, 1839)
Andersen may have first heard this tale as a child, but it is more probable that he read or heard about Madame d‘Aulnoy’s fairy tale “Île de la Félicité” (“The Island of Happiness”), which was incorporated in her novel Histoire d’Hypolite, comte de Duglas (1690), translated into Danish in 1787. In this tale the prince of Russia is transported by Zephyr, the west wind, to a paradise and spends centuries there. He loses his love and his life when he tries to return to Russia and forgets the warning of the princess of paradise never to descend from his horse, otherwise Death would capture him.
THE BRONZE PIG (METALSVINET, 1842)
Andersen conceived this tale in 1833 and 1834 while visiting Florence, where he saw the statue of the bronze boar on the Via Porta Rossa. The tale concerns the miraculous development of a poor, oppressed boy into an artist, a motif that appears in several of Andersen’s tales. It was first published in his travel book A Poet’s Bazaar (1842). He may have based the story on the life of Danish painter Wilhelm Bendz, who was born in 1804 in Odense and died in Italy in 1832.
THE ROSE ELF (ROSEN-ALFEN, 1839)
This tale, whose title is sometimes translated as “The Rose Fairy,” was based on a story taken from Boccaccio’s Decameron.
THE PIXIE AT THE GROCER’S (NISSEN HOS SPEKHØKEREN, 1852)
Andersen was often concerned with the conflict between materialism and art that is mirrored in the pixie’s existential dilemma. Pixies—intermediaries between the natural and the supernatural worlds—are important characters in Danish folklore. They appear in Andersen’s “The Traveling Companion” and “The Hill of the Elves,” among other works.
IB AND LITTLE CHRISTINE (IB OG LILLE CHRISTINE, 1855)
Andersen wrote this tale during a period of depression. It is a sentimental and moralistic picture of a poor young man who is dedicated to the simple, pure life in the country, while his childhood sweetheart, Christine, is corrupted by the materialism of the big city.
THE ICE MAIDEN (IISJOMFRUEN, 1862)
This tale, written while Andersen was visiting Switzerland, bears a strong resemblance to Johann Peter Hebel’s “Unverhofftes Wiedersehen” (“Unexpected Reunion,” 1811) and E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “Die Bergwerke zu Falun” (“The Mines at Falun,” 1819), in which a young miner is captured by a dangerous queen of an underground realm on his wedding day. His petrified body is found many years later by his former bride, now an old woman.
The allure of an erotic, mysterious woman, a common motif in romantic fairy tales, was often set in opposition to a safe, bourgeois life. Andersen’s tale is less about this dichotomy and more about the tragedy of a young man whose rise in society is undermined by immoral forces. Even though Rudy is a good and talented person who trusts in God, he does not succeed. As Andersen comments, “God gives us the nuts, but he doesn’t crack them open for us.” The episode about the eagle’s nest, Rudy’s marital test, was an actual story told to Andersen by the Bavarian poet Koppel. Andersen was originally going to write just the episode about the eagle’s nest but changed his mind after reading a travel book about Switzerland, in which he came across the incident concerning the bridal couple.