Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from housetop
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: fair Downy and I'm Deblin a Chuck Rewarding, and we
Speaker 1: have a story for you today. Now we are about
Speaker 1: to begin, and you must attend. And when we get
Speaker 1: to the end of the story, you will know more
Speaker 1: than you do now about a very wicked hobgoblin. But
Speaker 1: of a surprise, isn't it. Yes, But here's a twist
Speaker 1: for you. We're actually not going to be talking about
Speaker 1: hobgoblins and depth today, or are we, Sarah probably not
Speaker 1: too in depth on the hobgoblins. No, we're actually going
Speaker 1: to discuss the master of wicked creatures, snow queens, little
Speaker 1: mermaids and ugly ducklings hands Christian Anderson, who is best
Speaker 1: known as the father of the fairy tale and vying
Speaker 1: for that spot actually with former podcast subjects The Brothers Grim.
Speaker 1: So we're going to assume that most of you are
Speaker 1: probably fairly familiar with some of Anderson's work. Encyclopedia Britannica
Speaker 1: calls his fairy tales quote among the most frequently translated
Speaker 1: works in all literary history, and I mean, you probably
Speaker 1: read them in preschool, nursery schools, something like that, but
Speaker 1: they're studied at all levels, even all the way up
Speaker 1: to graduate school. They've been adapted into movies and plays
Speaker 1: and songs. Some of the best known stories include The
Speaker 1: Little Mermaid, The Red Shoes, Thumbalina, The Princess, and the
Speaker 1: pa But in addition to his famous fairy tales, Anderson
Speaker 1: wrote novels, plays, travelogs, so much material, in fact, he
Speaker 1: was often criticized for overproducing, not something you usually here
Speaker 1: about a writer. In Denmark, Anderson is considered a national hero,
Speaker 1: fulfilling a fortune teller's prophecy no less. But outside of
Speaker 1: his home country he's often a famous name with no background,
Speaker 1: the author of the Ugly Duckling, or just that guy
Speaker 1: from the Central Park statue, but nothing really more than that.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that Anderson had a really fascinating,
Speaker 1: often unsettling life, one with amazing professional success and intense
Speaker 1: personal complications, to which will go into a little bit
Speaker 1: appropriately enough, it all starts out a little bit like
Speaker 1: a fairy tale, and we should note too, before we
Speaker 1: get too much into it. We are going with the
Speaker 1: Anglicized pronunciation of hands. Christian Anderson So He was born
Speaker 1: April second, eighteen o five in a Densi, Denmark, and
Speaker 1: he was the son of a shoemaker already found very
Speaker 1: fairy tale sk who read to him from the Arabian nights.
Speaker 1: His mother was an alcoholic washerwoman with very intense superstitions
Speaker 1: that influenced Anderson a lot later in his life. Even
Speaker 1: though he had an older half sister, she didn't live
Speaker 1: with the family anymore, and he really grew up a solitary,
Speaker 1: kind of strange child. He'd play with puppets for entertainment.
Speaker 1: He had a big imagination, but didn't know too many people,
Speaker 1: and from the start he had a lot of tragic
Speaker 1: family baggage. One of his grandfathers had gone insane, a
Speaker 1: grandmother had also been put in jail young for howing
Speaker 1: too many illegitimate children, and after his father died at
Speaker 1: the young age of thirty four, Anderson left school. At
Speaker 1: some point. His mother, though, she was pretty worried about
Speaker 1: her strange, awkward son's success and what his future would
Speaker 1: be like, so she decided to take him to a
Speaker 1: fortune teller. The woman read his mother's cards and Anderson's
Speaker 1: coffee grounds and offered a somewhat surprising prediction, not surprising
Speaker 1: to us now, but at the time she said, your
Speaker 1: son will become a great man, and in honor of him,
Speaker 1: Adenzia will one day be illuminated. So it reminded me
Speaker 1: a little bit of former podcast subject Madame de Pompadour,
Speaker 1: who also had a sort of surprising fortune as a
Speaker 1: young girl, but pretty much on the virtue of that
Speaker 1: prediction alone pluf Anderson's own really endless self confidence. He
Speaker 1: left Adenisa at age fourteen for Copenhagen, and that was
Speaker 1: a pretty big journey for this young boy. It was
Speaker 1: a two day trip by coach and ship. He had
Speaker 1: only third keen tollers to his name, which was not
Speaker 1: very much money, no education, and no trade. So what
Speaker 1: was he going to do When he got to Copenhagen.
Speaker 1: He rented rooms and headed straight to the theater, where
Speaker 1: he was really hoping he could wheedle his way into
Speaker 1: some sort of career, an actor or a dancer, a singer. Instead, though,
Speaker 1: he had what sounds to me like the ultimate big
Speaker 1: city like little kid in a big city kind of
Speaker 1: awkward moment. He runs into a ticket scalper outside of
Speaker 1: the theater who hands him a ticket, Anderson, being this
Speaker 1: naive boy, thinks that it's just a gift. You know,
Speaker 1: He's going to get together the theater for free. When
Speaker 1: he realized that he had actually entered into a business
Speaker 1: transaction with this man, he flipped out, just ran away completely.
Speaker 1: Didn't know what to think, but he still had a
Speaker 1: lot of confidence and that really never went away. He
Speaker 1: started targeting these famous singers and dancers at the theater
Speaker 1: because he thought that they could help him find work
Speaker 1: him up somehow. So he had often to go these
Speaker 1: really horribly embarrassing sounding ordeals just to introduce himself. In
Speaker 1: one case, he showed up at a dancers door and
Speaker 1: was mistaken by her maid for a beggar, and then
Speaker 1: when he was admitted anyway, he asked if he could
Speaker 1: remove his boots and use his hat as an improvised
Speaker 1: tambourine to demonstrate his dancing skills. She thought he was
Speaker 1: crazy and threw him out immediately. Probably would. In another case,
Speaker 1: he crashed the dinner party of an opera singer and
Speaker 1: then just managed to make his way into the dining
Speaker 1: room where they all were. He sang to them. He
Speaker 1: recited poetryes. He even wept in front of them. Might
Speaker 1: as well go all out right then as well, if
Speaker 1: you're going to be the upstart performer. But this time
Speaker 1: it really worked. The singer promised him lessons, other guests
Speaker 1: put together enough money for him to study German, which
Speaker 1: he would need to know if he was going to
Speaker 1: study opera with this man. So he had some real gumption.
Speaker 1: And I think an important thing to keep in mind
Speaker 1: was that he was not some cute street kid. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's probably what your imagining at this point. You might
Speaker 1: have some sympathy for a cute little kid. He was tall,
Speaker 1: he was lanky. He was described in most cases as
Speaker 1: being terribly uncoordinated, almost comically uncoordinated. He had giant feet,
Speaker 1: this huge nose, tiny eyes, and for these special appearances,
Speaker 1: you know, when he was really trying to impress people,
Speaker 1: he'd break out his best outfit, which was a communion suit.
Speaker 1: He's fourteen years old at this point, so it's a
Speaker 1: little bit small, and he's grown quite a bit since then. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, he must have been quite a sight, but
Speaker 1: close aside. Things got even worse when his voice broke
Speaker 1: only a few months into singing. Lessons. So at that
Speaker 1: point his opera careers over and Anderson was advised to
Speaker 1: go home and just learn a trade. In his memoirs,
Speaker 1: he recalls considering suicide over wanting to go home. Fortunately
Speaker 1: for him, though, there were other illustrious stains around who
Speaker 1: were willing to give him a little bit of help.
Speaker 1: He'd been given Latin lessons in Danish lessons, and he'd
Speaker 1: get occasional work as a walk on at the Royal Theater,
Speaker 1: and all the while he lived in the storeroom of
Speaker 1: Madam's house at a reduced rate and costumed his little
Speaker 1: puppets with begged scraps of cloth. So he was still
Speaker 1: keeping up that imaginative work that he had been doing
Speaker 1: all along. But many of his friends, poets, dramatists, he
Speaker 1: was even friends with the discoverer of electromagnetism, helped him
Speaker 1: out in various ways like this, but his greatest benefactor
Speaker 1: ended up being Janis Colin, who was the director of
Speaker 1: the Royal Theater. This guy obtained a stipend from the
Speaker 1: King of Denmark to send Anderson to grammar school at
Speaker 1: the age of seventeen. So a lot of people have
Speaker 1: wondered how this boy you know, the shoemaker's son managed
Speaker 1: such an amazing rise. And writer Yen's Jawrenson has suggested
Speaker 1: Anderson was actually the illegitimate son of the Danish king
Speaker 1: and that it explained how he got this um, this
Speaker 1: convenient connection, this stipend. Even though a New Yorker article
Speaker 1: by Anna and Jeffrey Frank calls the argument quote improbable.
Speaker 1: It's just an interesting kind of another fairytale esque thing
Speaker 1: to throw out our possibility. But either way, school was
Speaker 1: a great opportunity for him, I mean, just naturally it's
Speaker 1: a useful pursuit for an aspiring writer. Well, and it's
Speaker 1: been suggested to that a lot of these people helped
Speaker 1: him out because he was so enthusiastic about writing. But
Speaker 1: his his writing was so bad, and he just could
Speaker 1: barely write his own language. And I would imagine to
Speaker 1: be daunting to start school when all the other kids
Speaker 1: are ten to twelve years old. And to add to matters,
Speaker 1: your teacher is a big bully who basically predicts quote
Speaker 1: that you will end your days in a madhouse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was not a nice guy, and consequently Anderson had
Speaker 1: grammar school nightmares for the rest of his life, even
Speaker 1: though it was certainly the uh the defining event in
Speaker 1: his life and that it allowed him to go on
Speaker 1: to become this great writer, it destroyed him in a
Speaker 1: way to this, this constant fear of um, of performing
Speaker 1: or not being able to perform in academic ways. But
Speaker 1: after four years of instruction, Anderson did have enough of
Speaker 1: an education to return to Copenhagen, start studying Latin and
Speaker 1: Greek with a tutor, probably a more sympathetic tutor, and
Speaker 1: enroll in the university and start composing real poetry, poetry
Speaker 1: from somebody who who knows the language. His first hit
Speaker 1: poem was published in a newspaper when he was twenty one,
Speaker 1: and after that he started to get a little bit
Speaker 1: of success. His first major work came out in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine. He followed up with a semi autobiographical novel,
Speaker 1: or a few semi out of biographical novels, actually, including
Speaker 1: o t a Danish romance from eighteen thirty six, Only
Speaker 1: a Fiddler from eighteen thirty seven, And then there were
Speaker 1: some popular plays, like an eighteen forty work on the
Speaker 1: evils of slavery called the Mulatto, And all the while
Speaker 1: he was traveling regularly to producing these humorous travelogs along
Speaker 1: the way. And when you consider the danger of travel
Speaker 1: in the first half the nineteenth century, I mean, we've
Speaker 1: got highwaymen, bad roads. You could just stumble upon a
Speaker 1: local uprising. It's really amazing to me that Anderson went
Speaker 1: to so many places. He visited Paris and Dresden, Rome, Naples, Malta, Constantinople, Athens,
Speaker 1: where he got to dine with the King of Greece.
Speaker 1: It's especially surprising, though, when you consider that Anderson suffered
Speaker 1: from a seemingly disabling list of phobias and fears. I mean,
Speaker 1: just to name a few, he was afraid of dogs.
Speaker 1: He was also afraid of fire. He'd actually carry a
Speaker 1: rope with him for a quick escape in case one
Speaker 1: broke out. He was also afraid of rabies. He was
Speaker 1: afraid of being mistaken for dead while asleep and being
Speaker 1: buried alive. That's a really creepy one. It is creepy
Speaker 1: and um, I mean, nobody would want that to happen
Speaker 1: to them, of course, but it is maybe a strange,
Speaker 1: all consuming fear, but perhaps the worst of all for
Speaker 1: a traveler. He was a goora phobic, and he needed
Speaker 1: somebody to accompany him across large open areas. So we've
Speaker 1: got all of that to deal with. But it's in
Speaker 1: the middle of the success this travel and his growing
Speaker 1: literary fame that Anderson decided to start writing down shorter
Speaker 1: stories for children, almost as a release from the literary
Speaker 1: scrutiny of his more serious work like the novels and
Speaker 1: the plays and all of that. But before his first
Speaker 1: volume was published. His first volume of short Stories or
Speaker 1: Children's Stories, was published in eighteen thirty five. Anderson wrote
Speaker 1: to a friend saying, quote, I have set down a
Speaker 1: few of the fairy tales I myself used to enjoy
Speaker 1: as a child, and which I believe aren't well known.
Speaker 1: I've written them exactly as I would have told them
Speaker 1: to a child. He told another friend, quote, I'm beginning
Speaker 1: to write some fairy tales for children. I want to
Speaker 1: win the next generation. You see. Most of the stories
Speaker 1: from his first collection were retellings, but as Anderson began
Speaker 1: writing more volumes, his own unique voice started to come
Speaker 1: out more and more. While some stories had folk roots
Speaker 1: like The Princess and the Pea, and others had literary beginnings.
Speaker 1: For example, The Emperor's New Clothes came from a fourteenth
Speaker 1: century Spanish story. The Retailing shared a similar style with
Speaker 1: his original tales. He'd use spoken language and idioms. For example, um,
Speaker 1: a type of Danish that was neither formal nor literary.
Speaker 1: So you might compare this to the way Mark Twain
Speaker 1: wrote spoken English years later. Yeah, and he'd also consider
Speaker 1: his audience too, that he was writing for children. He'd
Speaker 1: avoid difficult words. When he used them, he would explain
Speaker 1: them thoroughly, and the same went for hard to understand concepts.
Speaker 1: Elios Breddorff gave a good example of how Anderson made
Speaker 1: vague expressions like the whole world more understandable to kids
Speaker 1: by adding something that was very tangible and real. So
Speaker 1: the example he used was in The Snow Queen, the
Speaker 1: queen promises a child freedom, plus the whole world and
Speaker 1: a new pair of skate. So if your kid you
Speaker 1: can get behind that a new pair of it makes sense.
Speaker 1: It's also kind of funny too for the adults who
Speaker 1: are reading it, because that's the way kids are going
Speaker 1: to think. He also really identified a lot with his
Speaker 1: outcast heroines and heroes. Anderson was described by one of
Speaker 1: his acquaintances, for example, as a long, thin fleshless, a
Speaker 1: boneless man, wriggling and bending like a lizard with a
Speaker 1: lantern jawed, cadaverous visage. So in a way he could
Speaker 1: almost be the ugly duck Lake description for sure. And then,
Speaker 1: maybe most famously, he didn't feel compelled to keep things
Speaker 1: saccharine for kids. In fact, he wrote his stories for
Speaker 1: children and adults, saying that quote, the grown up person
Speaker 1: should be allowed to listen as well. Yeah, and really
Speaker 1: the best example of this might be The Red Shoes,
Speaker 1: they think, where the heroine of the story is punished
Speaker 1: for her obsessive love of her fine rich she's just
Speaker 1: the little girl too, and in consequence have to have
Speaker 1: her feet chopped off to stop the shoes from forcing
Speaker 1: her to dance. And things really don't end there. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's I think usually where you think the story ends. Instead,
Speaker 1: the amputated feet keep dancing independently and bar her from church,
Speaker 1: and relief only comes when, at the end of the story,
Speaker 1: alone at home with her wooden legs and her crutches,
Speaker 1: the repentant girl seas an angel who comes and forgives her,
Speaker 1: at which point her heartbirth. So I mean, that's an
Speaker 1: intense story. It is I mean, it's kind of dark
Speaker 1: and disturbing when we look at it now, But I
Speaker 1: mean I wonder if kids process it the same way
Speaker 1: when they take it in. You know, I think I've
Speaker 1: read the story or had it read to me when
Speaker 1: I was younger, and I don't remember being at all
Speaker 1: disturbed by it. Well, I actually remember this story or
Speaker 1: a variation of it, around the time the Kate Bush
Speaker 1: album The Red Shoes came out, But it was always
Speaker 1: a story of a trade. You know, a girl wants
Speaker 1: to be a good dancer, so she takes these shoes.
Speaker 1: It's not just the little girl who happens to really
Speaker 1: love her shoes. That takes it up a notch. It
Speaker 1: does intensify it a little bit, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's tragic, and some of those stories are they have
Speaker 1: that dark element to them, but others are actually really
Speaker 1: happy and they contain beauty and goodwill and triumph and
Speaker 1: or they're funny all in all, Anderson had a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty six fairy tales published during his lifetime. Other
Speaker 1: texts were printed after his death and that raised a
Speaker 1: total to two hundred and twelve. And he write many
Speaker 1: of these stories really quickly. The Snow Queen, one of
Speaker 1: his longest, was written, set, printed bound, and published in
Speaker 1: only sixteen days, which I find amazing. It's amazing and
Speaker 1: maybe a little discouraging to probably a lot of writers
Speaker 1: out there. English translations of the Fairy Tales started popping
Speaker 1: up about ten years after the first Danish volume. Um,
Speaker 1: even though it's worth noting that just because you know
Speaker 1: Anderson's stories, just because you've read a translation, I mean
Speaker 1: we of course have only read translations, doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: that you know his words. And that's because a lot
Speaker 1: of the translations are considered to be pretty bad. One
Speaker 1: of the early English translations was based not on the
Speaker 1: original language but on a German edition. That's never a
Speaker 1: great way to do a translation. And then other translators
Speaker 1: just would edit the stories that they saw fit. And
Speaker 1: I mean that's one thing. These are fairy tales, they're
Speaker 1: based on folk tales. They change, and Anderson himself did that.
Speaker 1: But it's another if it's a volume of Hans Christian
Speaker 1: Andersen's stories and they've been switched around. Some very true.
Speaker 1: But Anderson shouldn't be mistaken for just the quiet fairy
Speaker 1: tale author. He's often depicted as I mean, you'll see
Speaker 1: photos of a seated Anderson surrounded by kids, like he's
Speaker 1: some sort of father goose almost. But he was intensely
Speaker 1: interested in fame, both in cultivating it for himself and
Speaker 1: seeking out artists that he admired, kind of a groupie
Speaker 1: almost in a way. He was that that drive to
Speaker 1: do that from his teenage years, and Copenhagen only grew
Speaker 1: with his success. For example, when he was still only
Speaker 1: known within Denmark, he showed up at Victor Hugo's door,
Speaker 1: and then later as his fame grew and he really
Speaker 1: had more opportunities to meet some of the more famous
Speaker 1: people in Europe. He encountered From's list Balzac, Heinrich Kaina,
Speaker 1: who was one of the few of these people who
Speaker 1: recognized him first, Schumann, Rossini, Richard Wagner, Duma, pir and
Speaker 1: Fief and the Grimm brothers too, which I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: I would have loved to have seen that encounter. They had,
Speaker 1: of course already published a lot of their work a
Speaker 1: couple decades before. So, uh, Anderson meets the Grooms and
Speaker 1: you think they had like a dance off or something.
Speaker 1: You know, we can imagine some sort of um like
Speaker 1: fairy tale contest throw down other famous people. He knew
Speaker 1: he had an actual friendship with Dickens, but it was
Speaker 1: cut short when he accepted an invitation to dickens house
Speaker 1: and then proceeded to stay for five weeks weeks. When
Speaker 1: he finally left, Dickens put up a placard in the
Speaker 1: room that said Hans Anderson slept in this room for
Speaker 1: five weeks, which seemed to the family ages. And yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently Dickens dropped him after that, and Anderson didn't really
Speaker 1: know exactly what he had done wrong, you know what
Speaker 1: had happened. Other invitations came from the Rothschilds, from Prince Albert.
Speaker 1: I don't think he actually visited Albert and Victoria. He
Speaker 1: did visit the Spa with the King and Queen of Denmark,
Speaker 1: so you know he was He was circulating in these
Speaker 1: grand grand circles. And this fame hungry and celebrity loving
Speaker 1: aspect of Anderson's personality is really important and it did
Speaker 1: last his entire life. I mean, upon his very first
Speaker 1: success in Denmark, he said quote, I was now a
Speaker 1: happy human being. I possessed the soul of a poet
Speaker 1: and the heart of youth, all houses began to open
Speaker 1: to me. I flew from circle to circle. In his
Speaker 1: early thirties, when his work was gaining an international fall wayne,
Speaker 1: he wrote to a friend, quote, my name is gradually
Speaker 1: beginning to shine, and that is the only thing for
Speaker 1: which I live. I covet honor and glory in the
Speaker 1: same way as the miser covets gold. But for a
Speaker 1: man who's flying from circle to circle. Anderson didn't have
Speaker 1: many close relationships at all, did he? No, not really.
Speaker 1: I mean Janic's colin, who we mentioned earlier, was a
Speaker 1: true friend, and his son, Edward, became a trusted business
Speaker 1: manager of Anderson's and then later in life too. He
Speaker 1: made close friendships with a couple connected Jewish families from Copenhagen,
Speaker 1: the Heinrichs and the milk yours Um. They nursed him.
Speaker 1: They were his companions to the to the very end.
Speaker 1: But he never had a serious relationship. He never owned
Speaker 1: a house. He would rent rooms. He'd stay with friends
Speaker 1: like Dickens. I mean that gives you a pretty good
Speaker 1: picture of the way he would exactly. He just needed
Speaker 1: a place to crash and decided to choose Dickens house.
Speaker 1: But he would form the he's um. Instead of forming
Speaker 1: close relationships, he'd get these intense crushes on the daughters
Speaker 1: and the sisters of friends. And in fact, his most
Speaker 1: famous crush was another kind of celebrity idolization. It was
Speaker 1: Jenny Lynde, who was a famous singer of the day.
Speaker 1: She was called the Nightingale, and he would write love letters.
Speaker 1: He proposed to her, he proposed to other women, but
Speaker 1: he's supposedly entirely avoided sex, and consequently, since nineteen o one,
Speaker 1: scholars have really investigated Anderson's sexuality a lot and tried
Speaker 1: to figure out, um, you know, was he even gay
Speaker 1: since he was avoiding relationships with women beyond these over
Speaker 1: the top sort of proposals. Um. Another thing to consider
Speaker 1: he had a late life celebrity crush on the dancer
Speaker 1: Harold Shop, but it's likely in most scholars, I think,
Speaker 1: believed that he had no romantic relationships whatsoever. So despite
Speaker 1: being one of the best known authors of his day,
Speaker 1: he was also very much afraid of not being taken
Speaker 1: seriously by fellow writers. So it gratified him immensely that
Speaker 1: in his old age, writers like Thackeray, Ibsen and Longfellow
Speaker 1: all really admired his work. On August fourth, eighteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: he died of liver cancer in Copenhagen while still receiving
Speaker 1: visitors to the very end, and since then his life
Speaker 1: has been thoroughly researched. His autobiography, The fairy Tale of
Speaker 1: My Life detailed many of the early encounters in Copenhagen,
Speaker 1: and also an undiscovered memoir came out in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: He also, of course left behind a large body of literature.
Speaker 1: Literary work. There's two hundred twelve stories we mentioned, six travelogs,
Speaker 1: six novels, and thirty six plays. And in addition to that,
Speaker 1: Anderson wrote about fourteen letters the day, most of which
Speaker 1: are still surviving because because of all this writing this
Speaker 1: constant output. Edward Colin accused him of quote mad deplorable productivity,
Speaker 1: and also told him quote it is really extraordinarily selfish
Speaker 1: of you to assume such an interest in you among people.
Speaker 1: But maybe it's not so crazy after all. I mean,
Speaker 1: people have taken a great interest in preserving his work
Speaker 1: and details of his life. The Adensis City Museum, for example,
Speaker 1: in the H. C. Anderson Center at the University of
Speaker 1: Southern Denmark, have published the letters, and in the director
Speaker 1: of the Hans Christian Anderson Center, published a day by
Speaker 1: day timeline of his life, which I think contains some
Speaker 1: really interesting points. It contains very detailed, as you would
Speaker 1: imagine a day by daytimeline would be. But my favorite
Speaker 1: Anderson collection is actually his paper cuttings. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that he was such a master of paper cutting until
Speaker 1: I started looking at pictures that the museum's website. You
Speaker 1: can find them on the Adensist City Museum's website just
Speaker 1: like I did. But um, they're they're kind of disturbing.
Speaker 1: In some cases, they'll be beautiful hearts and bow arenas
Speaker 1: and things that you would maybe expect from this man
Speaker 1: who told fairy tales. And then it would it'll be
Speaker 1: a a tower with a man hanging from it, you know,
Speaker 1: really dark stuff that again you might expect from this
Speaker 1: teller of fairy tales. And I think Dickens's son to Henry,
Speaker 1: who mostly remembered their long term house as being kind
Speaker 1: of a strange man, also remembered this quote beautiful accomplishment
Speaker 1: he had. He could just whip out these paper cuts
Speaker 1: in no time, and um, yeah, really check them out there.
Speaker 1: They're pretty interesting, and in a way, those simple and
Speaker 1: really beautiful, sometimes disturbing cuttings are kind of reminiscent of
Speaker 1: his stories too. On Anderson's seventieth birthday, the London Daily
Speaker 1: News wrote of his ability to create life from simple things,
Speaker 1: and they wrote, it has been given to Hans Andersen
Speaker 1: to fashion beings. It may almost be said of a
Speaker 1: new kind, to breathe life into the toys of childhood
Speaker 1: and the forms of antique superstition. The tin soldier, the
Speaker 1: ugly duckling, the mermaid, the match girl are no less
Speaker 1: real and living in their way than Othello or Mr
Speaker 1: Pickwick or Helen of Troy. It seemed a very humble
Speaker 1: field in which to work, this of nursery, legend and
Speaker 1: childish fantasy. Yet the Danish poet alone, of all who
Speaker 1: have labored in it, has succeeded in recovering and reproducing
Speaker 1: the kind of imagination which constructed the old fairy tales.
Speaker 1: I think that's a nice way to to wrap up.
Speaker 1: And um, I mean to me, somebody like the Little
Speaker 1: Mermaid is maybe more real than Mr Pickwick or Helen
Speaker 1: of Troy. And I think part of that is because
Speaker 1: these stories have become so common in other ways too.
Speaker 1: I mean, when I think of the Little Mermaid, I
Speaker 1: think of Ariel and Eric getting married with all of
Speaker 1: the mur folk in attendance, and not in all their
Speaker 1: little crustacean friends exactly. Yes, under the sea happiness, not
Speaker 1: the Little Mermaid dissolving into sea foam and then having
Speaker 1: to work for three years to get her soul. But
Speaker 1: they're worth going back and reading, I think too, if
Speaker 1: you haven't checked out one for a while, I've got
Speaker 1: to figure out if if I have my hands on
Speaker 1: a good translation. Now. I never realized that with an issue,
Speaker 1: but um, yeah, I think I'll be. I'll be prousing
Speaker 1: some Anderson's stories. Yeah, it does make me curious to
Speaker 1: go back and check them out. So I think for
Speaker 1: Listener Mail today we might include a few more of
Speaker 1: our listen while things. I don't know. It seemed appropriate
Speaker 1: for this fairy Tale episode podcast, So we're gonna start
Speaker 1: off with listener Ivy, who listens to the podcast while
Speaker 1: she walks her retired racing greyhound. And then there's Blair
Speaker 1: in Montreal, who listens while working at a research library
Speaker 1: at McGill University. She says, quote sometimes it's all I
Speaker 1: can do not to rush up into the stacks and
Speaker 1: find more information on the topic. I like the sound
Speaker 1: of that one. And Kate from New York listens on
Speaker 1: long road trips with her mother to break up the
Speaker 1: Barry Manilow and the Carpenter music and Courtney and Santa
Speaker 1: Monica listens while she works on animations as a film
Speaker 1: Peter listens while making cricket bats in the UK. And
Speaker 1: Heather from California listens while she's grading diamonds, which I love.
Speaker 1: She writes quote, if you ever purchased or received a solitaire,
Speaker 1: it likely has a report attached to it. That report
Speaker 1: is what the appraisers used to price the diamond. And
Speaker 1: Lisa from Sweden, I think this one might have to
Speaker 1: top everything by default. Lisa Firm, Sweden listened while she
Speaker 1: gave birth to her third child, specifically to the five
Speaker 1: historical Hoaxes and Orson Wells episodes, which I think that
Speaker 1: destines her child for being a hoaxter. Do you think
Speaker 1: I think so? Well? I hope not, but that's interesting. Emma,
Speaker 1: a psychology student from New Zealand, listens while running rats
Speaker 1: through a May's task or running pigeons through their experiment.
Speaker 1: Angie listens while analyzing historic and prehistoric artifacts in California. Currently,
Speaker 1: she said that she's helping excavate historic privies and houses
Speaker 1: within the financial district of downtown San Francisco. And David
Speaker 1: listens to the podcast while making puppets. All right, well,
Speaker 1: that's the perfect one to end on for Hans Christian Anderson.
Speaker 1: So thank you guys for letting us know all the
Speaker 1: interesting things you do, and if you want to write
Speaker 1: into so let us know what you're up to or
Speaker 1: to suggest other episodes. We are at History Podcast at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at missed in History,
Speaker 1: and we're on Facebook. And if you're having trouble hunting
Speaker 1: down a good translation of Hand's Christian Anderson's works, you
Speaker 1: might want to to be find a little solace in
Speaker 1: an article that we have called books. Yeah that We'll
Speaker 1: just tease you with that, and you can find that
Speaker 1: by visiting our homepage at www dot how Stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
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