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Overview
Hans Christian Andersen was a storyteller for children of all ages, but he was more than that. He was a critical journalist with great enthusiasm for science, an existential thinker, an observant travel book writer, a passionate novelist, a deft paper cut-out artist, a neurotic hypochondriac, and a man with intense but frustrated sexual desires.
This startling and immensely readable, definitive biography by Danish scholar Jens Andersen is essential to a full understanding of the man whose writing has influenced the lives of readers young and old for centuries. Jens Andersen sheds brilliant new light on Hans Christian Andersen’s writings and on the writer whose own life had many aspects of the fairytale. Like some of the memorable characters he created, Andersen grew up in miserable and impoverished circumstances. He later propagated myths about his life and family, but this new biography uncovers much about this man that has never been revealed before.
“[An] enthralling, ground-breaking new biography . . . Jens Andersen has a novelist’s insights which enhance his meticulous biographical skills, making us appreciate (among much else) that ambiguity is as intrinsic to the life as to the art that came out of it.” —The Independent
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781468305470 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ABRAMS, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 630 |
| Sales rank: | 609,749 |
| File size: | 12 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Arrival (1819–1822)
"Please pay us a visit this evening, and you'll have a chance to see a young genius!"
These are the words of the invitation to Dr. Carl Otto sent by Fru Belfour on Norgesgade on an autumn day in 1819. The young doctor, who earlier in the year had defended his doctoral dissertation with bravura, promptly accepts the invitation, even though he is pressed for time. He's in the midst of final preparations for a European cultural tour which, over the next couple of years, will bring him into contact with many of the great artists and natural scientists of the day: Goethe, Jean Paul, Humboldt, and, in particular, the surgeon Guillaume Dupuytren, whose operations in Paris are witnessed by hundreds of French medical students. They all wait for the ritualistic moment when the flamboyant doctor cuts something off the patient, which he then, with a carefully calculated gesture, flings up to the rows of benches where the cheering students throw themselves on the treasures dripping with blood.
In his own medical practice, Carl Otto seldom reaches for the scalpel. Like the ancient Greeks who studied the earth or the sky with the naked eye and the power of the mind, he dreams of mapping human nature by means of clinical studies. The young doctor swears by phrenology, and he is completely convinced that by using a "craniometer"— to measure and feel the distances between the frontal bone and the parietal bone, the back of the skull and the temple — he can determine the most important aspects of an individual's psychological character. The young doctor is in the process of assembling a scientific collection of human skulls, and not many years will pass after his cultural tour before he has also started a journal for phrenology and published several books containing studies of craniums, some of which are those of criminals. These include the poisoner Peder Hansen Nissen, who killed his in-laws with rat poison; the five-time child murderer Ane Nielsdatter; and seven men who joined forces to set fire to an orphanage in Copenhagen. All of these heads are obtained by the doctor offering money under the table to the hangman out at Amager Commons after the executions.
Dr. Carl Otto belongs to the Romantic Zeitgeist — a collector with a sense for the freaks of nature. He is convinced that it's not among the great masses of average Philistines but among the psychopaths, eccentrics, and those who are inclined toward "Genius-Fever" that he will find human destinies which diverge from the times and can tell him something fundamentally new about nature. For that reason he has taken a seat in the front row of Widow Belfour's apartment on Norgesgade on this autumn day in 1819, so as to "ad oculos" measure the skull of the youth whom his hostess has enthusiastically labeled "a pure young man," recently arrived in the city. He is hoping that this boy possesses the sort of genius nature that Henrich Steffens, the natural philosopher, has discussed: an individual who breaks through all rules thrown before him and who always blazes his own trail.
The doctor will not be disappointed. The ungainly boy is nearly six feet tall, lanky and loose-limbed, awkward in his movements. A type straight from the lowest strata of society, wrapped in a worn brown coat with sleeves that do not properly cover his long arms and fingers, which point down to a pair of enormous boots full of holes. He is wearing a gaudy cotton scarf, wound so tightly around his long neck that it looks as if his head with the blond hair is about to separate from his body. There is something apelike about the pale, gaunt face with the narrow, deep-set eyes. His cranium looks as if it could never have had the soft round shape of an infant's head. Dr. Otto judges the circumference of the skull to be approximately twenty-five inches and the mass of his brain to weigh three pounds, more or less evenly distributed between the back of the head, where the bestial instincts reside, and the front of the head, where the centers of intelligence, morals, and an individual's spiritual constitution are to be found.
The boy is remarkably spontaneous and openhearted. With the greatest innocence he declaims snippets from various comedies and poems, untroubled by the fact that he is being observed and studied. He sings, recites, and improvises wildly from the depths of his being. The Widow Belfour's guests are compelled to follow along with the boy's favorite dramatic scenes. When the guests are finally allowed to get up and go in to dinner, the boy stumbles over a door sill. And at the table he blithely stuffs sandwiches into his mouth and several times drops his knife and fork as he looks around in bewilderment, rattling off a steady, feverish stream of words.
"Geniuses are mysterious hieroglyphs," writes Dr. Otto many years later in his memoirs, thinking about the head he would have liked to include in his huge collection of Danish craniums from the 19th century, which he donated to the University of Copenhagen. On that autumn evening in 1819 it's abundantly clear that the boy with the large, deeply etched physiognomy and the small, sunken eyes is not merely one of the many charlatans and conjurers of the day. He's not the kind who, at the marketplace, can make a roasted sheep's head bleat or snowballs burn, who can swallow bucketfuls of fire and ask riddles such as: "While you look for me and use your head to find my whereabouts, I am something. But as soon as you find me, I am nothing. Who am I?"
Yes, who was he, this strange boy? Where had he come from, and where was he going? That's what one of Dr. Carl Otto's good friends, the writer Just Mathias Thiele, asked himself one day as he sat in his lodgings on Gammel Strand and wrote out some of the folk legends and tales he had collected from the peasantry. Suddenly there was a loud knock on the door.
"Come in!" said Thiele, who was sitting with his back to the door and continued to write. Someone knocked even harder, and a moment later the door opened. In came, or practically fell, a tall, gaunt lad with a highly peculiar appearance. He stopped just inside the door and looked at Thiele, but then abruptly threw off his cap and flung out his arm. "May I have the honor of expressing my feelings for the theater in a poem which I myself have written?"
Before Thiele could manage to reply, his guest was in the midst of reciting a poem. He brought the last verse to an end with a sweeping bow, and without any sort of pause or transition, much less an introduction, he began performing a scene from Adam Oehlenschläger's play Hagbarth and Signe, acting out all the roles himself. Thiele sat there utterly speechless, astonished and enchanted. The youth was oblivious to his surroundings, becoming more and more lost in the world of illusions. At a breathless tempo he came to the end of the scene. The improvised epilogue that rounded out the whole performance was concluded with a deep theatrical bow, whereupon he grabbed his cap from near the door and vanished down the stairs without another word.
The folklorist never forgot that astonishing encounter with the importunate but naively endearing person who — like Thiele himself — was a messenger between the inexhaustible imagination to be found in the folk tales from the countryside and the salons of the big city, where people with a certain affectation had begun to cultivate the historical and natural roots of humanity.
It wasn't until a couple of days after this unannounced visit that Thiele realized who the strange boy was. At a dinner given in town, other guests happened to mention similar unannounced visits made by a fourteen-year-old boy calling himself "Hans Christian Andersen" and claiming to be the son of a deceased shoemaker. He had recently left behind his poor mother in Odense, carrying a knapsack over his shoulder, which contained nothing more than dreams of performing at the Royal Theater and a child's faith in both Our Lord and the tales in which the hero always triumphs in the end. To be an actor was the only thing in life that he desired, he said. If that failed, then ballet or singing would have to be his profession. At any rate, he was determined to go on stage.
The theater's leading dancer of the day, Anne Margrethe Schall (also known as "Madame Schall"), the poet and critic Knud Lyne Rahbek, and Lord Frederik Conrad von Holstein — both of whom sat on the board of the Royal Theater — all received visits from the boy. His frail, sickly exterior quickly proved to be inversely proportional to his outspoken manner and the almost mulelike will that he exhibited whenever he planted his big boots full of holes on the doorsteps of the city's better families and was granted an interview. The solo dancer turned him away, convinced that he was more of a lunatic than a genius. The theater directors also had little patience with him. Holstein didn't think such a gaunt figure was suited to go on stage, to which the young Andersen boldly replied — as he tells it in his memoirs — that if His Lordship would hire him at a salary of 100 rigsdaler per year, he would undoubtedly make haste to grow fat!
Last but not least, the boy from Odense sought out the theater's newly appointed choirmaster and conductor, Giuseppe Siboni, at his home on Vingårdsstræde. On that day Siboni happened to be hosting a large dinner party with prominent guests such as the poet Jens Baggesen and the composer C. E. F. Weyse. At five o'clock, just as the guests were sitting down at the table, the boy knocked on the front door and was immediately shepherded out to the kitchen, where he was offered something to eat. This also gave him the opportunity to confide in the choirmaster's housekeeper, who was given the short version of his long, touching life story. Like most romantic stories, it was both edifying and, like the amber heart the boy wore on a string around his neck, full of faith, hope, and charity. It was his intention, the boy said, to be hired by the Royal Theater. That was actually the reason why he was now sitting in Choirmaster Siboni's kitchen, wearing his brown confirmation jacket, which had been made from the coat of his late father. He also wore a pair of trousers with the legs tentatively tucked into the tops of his boots, though they kept creeping up; an enormous ruffle on his shirt; and a hat that looked as if it had been plucked from the street and was now constantly falling over the boy's small eyes.
Hans Christian, as the boy was called, told his story of the humble, impoverished, but happy shoemaker's home in Odense, where he had come into the world fourteen years before in a marriage bed that had been constructed from the remnants of a deceased counts catafalque. With a few coins in his pocket and a bundle of clothes over his shoulder he had recently left his hometown. The boy talked about his kind old paternal grandmother back in Odense who had stood at the city gates to wave farewell on the day he left. She had always said that the boy should try to become a clerk because "that was rather distinguished." And at least he could win promotions and become something better than his wretched paternal grandfather. It's true that his grandfather had once had his own farm out in the country, but he had lost his mind and now roamed the streets of Odense, wearing an emperor's crown made of gold paper and trying to sell the strange little figurines he carved out of wood. The boy's father, who had died several years ago, was a kind and clever man who thought his son should never be forced into anything, but should become whatever he liked. For his own part, the father had preferred to read books all day long and go to war for Napoleon rather than sit year after year cobbling together wooden clogs in the low-ceilinged room that served as bedroom, parlor, and workshop. The boy's mother, who had now married another shoemaker, was of the opinion that Hans Christian should become a carpenter, tailor, or bookbinder, and thus had quite a different view of his upbringing. She had only allowed her son to leave home because one of the wise women, in whom she had great faith, had foretold at the boy's confirmation that the capital of the island of Fyn would one day be lit up by a gigantic torchlight procession in honor of her Hans Christian.
It was quite a fairy tale the lanky boy had to tell. After the housekeeper had dried her eyes, she went to the dining room to clear the table, and she then whispered to Siboni what she had just heard. Soon everyone at the table had voted to take a closer look at this curiosity.
This was the age not only of absolute monarchy but also philanthropy. Among the well-educated and the intellectuals there was a sophisticated sense and an alert eye for what was extraordinary in individual people. The highest honor that could be given anyone during this period, which was both rationalistic and romantic, was to call the person in question "a genius" or "an original."
That was the main reason why the poor boy in Siboni's kitchen — and at many other places in Copenhagen where he would suddenly appear during September 1819 — was not promptly thrown out amidst a hail of curses and abuse. That was what he was accustomed to back home in the streets of his childhood town, where he was often subjected to the derision and scorn of his peers because he was different. There was one thing this boy had learned early on: if he gained admittance to the better bourgeois homes or to the palace, he would find a completely different understanding of and interest in a personality such as his. As the men at Siboni's house said to each other while the dishes were cleared from the table, he might be a "genuine savage."
A Son of Nature
Young Andersen must have done a remarkable job of promoting himself at Siboni's house on that evening in September 1819. At any rate, the boy's appearance in the parlor was of decisive importance for his fate and his career, which had been in imminent danger of ending before it even began. The last of his money was gone, and a return home to Odense with all the incumbent humiliations was fast approaching. It was all or nothing, so the improviser put his heart and soul into it when he was allowed to speak in the home of the choirmaster. His potpourri of songs, poems, and drama on that evening was presumably a mixture of highbrow culture and marketplace playacting. This was something that Andersen was fond of, both as a young man and later in life, and he often made use of it in his art. This was especially true whenever it was a matter of a stage performance, such as in Preamble to the Carnival, written for the popular Casino Theater in 1853:
Ladies and gentlemen, humble and great,
Here comes a man you have to know My name resounds through Europe's streets My great-great-great-great grandfather Was Doctor Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastius Paracelsus ...
I am of his lineage, but more a genius,
And without any boasting I say this.
The fourteen-year-old Andersen probably didn't present himself in such a self-confident or practiced manner, but the boy's repertoire on that evening was a quaint blend of the high and the low: an aria from a ballad opera, which he had learned back home in Odense from a visiting Frøken Hammer; a couple of ample scenes from plays by Ludvig Holberg; as well as some home-brewed poems that no doubt sounded both provincial and pathetic. According to Andersen's memoirs, he ended up bursting into tears, utterly overwhelmed by the goodwill that was suddenly showered upon him on that fateful day. But isn't it also possible that the young improviser was overcome by his own art and emotions? At any rate, the manner in which he presented his texts personified the words of Herder, who says that song is a reflection of the savage himself:
"All uncivilized peoples sing and take action; whatever they do, they sing, and they sing treatises ... Nature has given them a single solace for the many words that oppress them, and a single substitute for the numerous socalled blessings that we enjoy: their love of freedom, their idleness, merriment, and song."
Siboni's guests that evening included, as mentioned, the poet Jens Baggesen. He was one of the stars of Danish literature in the period 1800–1820 who had lost the battle to become Denmark's poet laureate to Adam Oehlenschläger. After the performance by the peculiar child of nature, the poet took the boy by the hand and asked him whether he wasn't afraid of being laughed at or criticized. The lad, still sniffling, shook his head vigorously, and then Baggesen looked around at the other guests and said in a deliberate and solemn voice: "I predict that he's going to make something of himself one day! But don't let it go to your head when the whole audience applauds you!" And everyone nodded in agreement when Baggesen concluded that such a rare guest was reminiscent of the pure, true naturalness that is lost with age and in human discourse. Siboni promised at once to train the boy's bright, clear voice, which was not without possibilities. And the rest of the evening a deep plate was passed around, enabling Weyse to collect 70–80 rigsdaler for the strange songbird, who had landed at one of the city's fashionable parties in such an astonishing manner. The composer also took upon himself the responsibility of ensuring that the money would be paid out to the boy in allotments and that he would receive lessons in the German language and the educational basics. This, according to Choirmaster Siboni, was an essential prerequisite for succeeding at the king's theater.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Hans Christian Andersen"
by .
Copyright © 2003 Jens Andersen.
Excerpted by permission of Abrams Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Copyright,
Translator's Note,
Foreword,
One: ARRIVAL (1819–1822),
A Son of Nature,
The Courage to Have Talent,
Dance Pupil,
Entering the Golden Age,
Hans Christian Andersen's Debut,
A Heathen Sense of Nature,
The Gentle Power of Love,
Two: IN THE HOUSE OF EDUCATION (1822–1827),
The Art of Instilling an Education,
From Heaven to Hell and Helsingor,
A Potpourri of Poetry,
Religious and Poetic Maturation,
The Dying Child,
Liberation,
Three: WILD LIKE A POET (1827–1832),
Father Collin,
The Hebraic Muller,
Romantic Walking Tour to Amager,
Playwright and Academic,
The Shadow Picture, Riborg Voigt,
Andersen's Order of Nuns,
Dear Froken Louise!,
Four: YOUR ONLY FAULT WAS LOVE (1832–1836),
The Men of Romanticism,
Brothers in Joy and Pain,
Twin Souls,
Say "Du" to Me,
Edvard Collin's Book About Andersen,
Nameless Love,
I Want to Be Kissed Too,
Our Child Agnete,
The Androgynous One,
The Improvisatore,
Wedding in the Collin Family,
Five: IN FAIRY LAND (1835–1840),
The First Fairy Tales,
The Cult of Childhood,
The Manifesto of the Fantastic,
Where Did the Fairy Tale Come From?,
Kierkegaard and Andersen,
Eternal Rivals,
Six: DISTANT SHORES (1840–1846),
Critical Headwinds,
Dining with the Form Cutters Guild,
Success at the Royal Theater,
Fru Heiberg,
"The Show-Off",
By Railroad Through Europe,
Lovers' Go-Between,
The Hereditary Grand Duke Carl Alexander,
Falling in Love with Jenny Lind,
Reunion with Weimar,
He Is Not a She,
Seven: THE WATER OF LIFE (1846–1850),
The German Autobiography,
His Childhood Home,
The Swamp in Only a Fiddler,
Immoral Fyn,
Was He the Son of a King?,
Free Shoemaker and Free Thinker,
The Odd Father and Son,
God or Napoleon,
Anne Marie Andersdatter,
A Woman with Second Sight from Fyn,
His Mother's Imploring Letters and Her Death,
Sister Karen,
Swinging London 1847,
Distant Political Clouds,
Eight: THE PATH FROM NATURE TO GOD (1850–1860),
The Modern Breakthrough During the Golden Age,
Lovely Dresden,
Wagner and Liszt,
Kaulbach and King Max,
Rebelling Against Ørsted,
Falling-Out with Charles Dickens,
Nine: AMONG BROTHERS (1860–1870),
Traveling as a Means of Rejuvenation,
With Jonas Collin in Spain, 1862–1863,
Two Strange Birds,
The Swarm of Confidants,
The Trembling Eyeglasses of the Traveling Life,
A Visit to Portugal, 1866,
At a Brothel in Paris,
Ten: THE MAN IN THE MOON (1870–1875),
Collages of Words and Pictures,
Many Picture Books,
Writing with Scissors,
Bella Italia,
Eroticism in Naples,
Innocence as Religion,
Childhood Faith,
A God Dwells Within Us,
The Author and Death,
Morphine,
The Last Journey,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,
Illustration Credits,