Immel, Andrea

English

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Marvels & TalesVolume 20 | Issue 2 Article 210-1-2006Preface to the Special Issue: "Hidden, But NotForgotten": Hans Christian Andersen's Legacy inthe Twentieth CenturyAndrea ImmelRecommended CitationImmel, Andrea. "Preface to the Special Issue: "Hidden, But Not Forgotten": Hans Christian Andersen's Legacy in the TwentiethCentury." Marvels & Tales 20.2 (2006). Web. <http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/marvels/vol20/iss2/2>.149PREFACE TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE: “HIDDEN, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN”: HANS CHRISTIANANDERSEN’S LEGACY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURYA green cloth volume of Andersen’s fairy tales in the Grosset & Dunlap IllustratedJunior Library is one of the books I remember most vividly from childhood. Andwhen my first grade teacher discovered I could read aloud “The Ugly Duckling”without any coaching, she exempted me from regular reading instruction. ButAndersen probably would not have appeared on a list of my favorite authors.Reading him was a visceral but not especially pleasant experience, because thestories that aroused a ghoulish confusion of terror and pity were the most mes-merizing. The response was triggered not so much by Andersen’s words as byArthur Syzk’s jewel-toned illustrations in the Grosset & Dunlap edition. Theupper left-hand corner of Syzk’s endpapers was dominated by the Snow Queen,whose huge, haunted yet cruel eyes compelled me to stare at its complex design.At the same time, her figure prompted an equally powerful desire to turn away.I never got more than a third of the way through that volume of Andersen,because one picture was so frightening that I always stopped at the page that, ifturned, would reveal the horrible thing. Skipping ahead to the stories that fol-lowed the picture was impossible because of a premonition that somethingdreadful might happen if all the stories were not read straight through in order.Whatever terrors that picture awakened I was never able to articulate, but foryears I disliked so much as touching the volume’s spine because of the knowl-edge that the picture was concealed within. It is the only book I recall inspiringsuch unsettling feelings, which may help explain why Danny Kaye singing “I’mHans Christian Andersen, / I’ve many a tale to tell” made absolutely no impres-sion on me. The Andersen I had glimpsed in Szyk’s illustrations had nothing todo with the Hollywood song-and-dance man on the Cinerama Dome’s bigscreen.I suspect many other people’s childhood impressions of Andersen were alsoformed by their exposure to highly distinctive or freewheeling interpretations of004 M&T 20-2 FM (137-154)  6/11/07  2:03 PM  Page 149150PREFACE TO THE SPECIAL ISSUEhis best-known works rather than by real familiarity with the unmediated texts.Most of us know only the handful of tales that have been the backbone ofAndersen anthologies for decades—“The Princess and the Pea,” “TheSwineherd,” “The Little Match Girl,” The Nightingale,” “The Red Shoes,” “TheSteadfast Tin Soldier,” “The Tinderbox” (and even those may not be familiar toa surprising number of people, as I discovered when curating an exhibition onAndersen’s illustrators). Admittedly they are wonderful stories all, but Andersenwrote many others—“The Gardener and His Master,” “Valdemar Daae and HisDaughters,” “The Shadow,” “It’s Perfectly True,” “The Elfin Mound,” “In theChildren’s Room,” and “Jumpers” to mention a few personal favorites—whichrightfully deserve places in the English-language canon. Andersen himselfregretted that the Eventyr’s (the Fairy Tale’s) best stories threatened to overshad-ow everything else he had done, convinced that his genius defied easy catego-rization as a writer of fairy tales. However, being lionized as a beloved author forchildren was by no means a bad thing for someone who craved the recognitionthat international fame conferred. Shortly after his death, Andersen attained thestatus of a writer whose “classic” works for children were obvious candidates forregular repackaging, just like the fairy tales of Charles Perrault or the Grimms.In Andersen’s case, however, the process of recycling his best-known stories inAmerica and Great Britain bestowed a form of immortality—but not withoutexacting a price.Consider the case of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” It passed long ago intothe wider cultural consciousness: few readers of Paul Krugman’s 11 November2005 New York Times editorial would miss the allusion to an emperor with noclothes with reference to President George W. Bush, even if they weren’t able toidentify Andersen as its source. “The Emperor” is also one of those stories withsuch good bones that it manages to be presentable no matter how it has beentricked out. Barbara G. Walker gives it a happy ending where the duped empressof Cathay both forgives the clever dressmakers and allows them the opportuni-ty to prove that they always had the powers to rise on their own merits inFeminist Fairy Tales (1996). The sly brilliance of the confidence scheme at thetale’s heart, which exposes the emperor’s vanity and the court’s sycophancy, israrely obscured by illustrators’ decisions to cast the protagonist as a Louis IVlook-alike, the ruler of an imaginary early twentieth-century petty principality,or even a dinosaur in drag. In dramatic adaptations, whether for film, a chil-dren’s theater piece, or opera, the story doesn’t have enough business to sustaineven a short production, so the scriptwriter is obliged to freely insert new char-acters, incidents, and dialogue into the original outline, often sacrificingAndersen’s distinctive combination of humor, pathos, and satire in the process.Ironically enough, the adapters of Andersen for stage or screen would probablybe surprised at the suggestion that the addition of garrulous anthropomorphized004 M&T 20-2 FM (137-154)  6/11/07  2:03 PM  Page 150151PREFACE TO THE SPECIAL ISSUEsidekicks—whether animal, vegetable, or manufactured—following the Disneyformula may owe an indirect debt to Andersen’s secondary characters, like thestorks in “The Marsh King’s Daughter” or the kitchen equipment in “The FlyingTrunk.”The treatment of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” may be more extreme thanmost, but it is by no means atypical. The tendency of modern reinterpretationsand refashionings of Andersen’s tales to flatten the originals out by distancingthe narrative structure from the distinctive style of telling is surely a factor inthe declining critical interest in his work since the 1970s in the Anglo-American world. While he is revered as one of the greatest masters of theKunstmärchen (literary fairy tale), the question of Andersen’s influence hasbeen somewhat neglected. His legacy is hidden, but not forgotten, to borrowthe title of one of his less familiar tales; which, although modest, is curiouslycompelling for showing an aspect of Andersen that is rarely glimpsed inanthologies. And this became the theme and title of the conference to celebratethe bicentenary of Hans Christian Andersen’s birth, which was hosted by theCotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University in November 2005. In theearly stages of organizing the program, Donald Haase and I decided to paytribute to Andersen by encouraging the participants to reconsider the natureof his impact during the twentieth century. During the proceedings, academicanalysis and performance were given equal weight as a way of re-accessing theAndersen we thought we knew. Formal sessions punctuated by lively (andsometimes heated) discussion were alternated with storytelling by StorytellingArts; a presentation of Garrison Keillor’s send-up of “The Ugly Duckling” bythe Princeton improv troop, Quickfire; screenings of films based on Andersen;and excerpts of an opera performed by the engaging young musicians of theWestminster Conservatory Youth Opera Workshop. The essays presented atPrinceton are offered here in the same spirit to the readers of Marvels & Tales—to reread and explore further dimensions of the extraordinarily complex con-tribution of Hans Christian Andersen to the fairy tale.Andrea ImmelCotsen Children’s LibraryPrinceton University004 M&T 20-2 FM (137-154)  6/11/07  2:03 PM  Page 151

Preface to the Special Issue:  Hidden, But Not Forgotten : Hans Christian Andersen\u27s Legacy in the Twentieth Century

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Preface to the Special Issue: Hidden, But Not Forgotten : Hans Christian Andersen\u27s Legacy in the Twentieth Century

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