The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories Read Online
The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, 1983
Copyright © 1974 by Erik Christian Haugaard
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday in 1974. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian), 1805–1875.
The complete fairy tales and stories.
1. Fairy tales—Denmark. 2. Tales—Denmark.
1. Haugaard, Erik Christian. II. Title.
PT8116.E5 1983a 839.8′136 83-9975
eISBN: 978-0-307-77789-8
v3.1
This translation is dedicated to the memory
of Ruth Hill Viguers, who knew that the leather
outlasts the gilding.
Contents
•37 THE SHEPHERDESS AND THE CHIMNEY SWEEP
•40 FROM THE RAMPARTS OF THE CITADEL
•57 THE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL ROSE
•64 EVERYTHING IN ITS RIGHT PLACE
•68 FIVE PEAS FROM THE SAME POD
•73 THE UTTERMOST PARTS OF THE SEA
•81 HOW TO COOK SOUP UPON A SAUSAGE PIN
•84 THE OLD OAK TREE’S LAST DREAM
•90 WHAT THE WIND TOLD ABOUT VALDEMAR DAAE AND HIS DAUGHTERS
•91 THE GIRL WHO STEPPED ON BREAD
•98 THE COCK AND THE WEATHERCOCK
•106 WHAT FATHER DOES IS ALWAYS RIGHT
•109 THE MUSE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
•113 THE SNAIL AND THE ROSEBUSH
•114 “THE WILL-O’-THE-WISPS ARE IN TOWN,” SAID THE BOG WITCH
•117 THE BISHOP OF BØRGLUM CLOISTER AND HIS KINSMEN
•120 HOW THE STORM CHANGED THE SIGNS
•122 THE SONGBIRD OF THE PEOPLE
•124 THE PIXY AND THE GARDENER’S WIFE
•138 THE ADVENTURES OF A THISTLE
•139 A QUESTION OF IMAGINATION
•140 LUCK CAN BE FOUND IN A STICK
•147 WHAT THE WHOLE FAMILY SAID
•148 “DANCE, DANCE, DOLLY MINE!”
•149 “IT IS YOU THE FABLE IS ABOUT”
•151 THE GARDENER AND HIS MASTER
•152 THE PROFESSOR AND THE FLEA
•153 THE STORY OLD JOHANNA TOLD
Acknowledgments
One day in September 1967, I translated a very short Andersen tale, which she did not know, for Ruth Hill Viguers; and then the whole idea of a new Andersen translation came into being. A few months later Peter Hyun took the initiative and set out to make the possibility into a project. Virginia Haviland, Harriet Quimby, Paul Heins, and George Woods were so kind as to lend their good names on an application for a grant to the Chapelbrook Foundation; the response of this foundation was generous and immediate and, thanks to them, the two years that this work has been in progress has not been a time of need. When the translation was nearing completion, Dr. Bo Gronbech told me many interesting and important facts about Hans Christian Andersen. Valborg Lauritzen typed the enormous manuscript; and for her ability, good nature, and patience in trying to make out the many corrections, I am, indeed, grateful. The Jubilee Fund of the Danish National Bank kindly provided a small grant so I could pay my faithful typist. To Sharon Steinhoff I owe my thanks for many an hour’s necessary but tedious labor. Most of all, I am indebted to my wife, without whose assistance and help the translation would not have been done at all.
Erik Christian Haugaard
Veksebo, Denmark
September 1972
Foreword
In the passage of inherited literature down the years, it has been recognized that changes in language have justified recurrent new looks at the great old tales—as often, it has been said, as in each generation. The judgment can apply to the translation of literary tales as well as to the translation or retelling of the traditional.
This new translation comes from a bilingual Danish author who was educated in Denmark and the United States. (He wrote in English the five novels which have won distinction in the field of children’s literature.) With his particular background—he was, he says, related to one of the families who supported Andersen—the new project was a carrying into reality of a particular dream; he had the urge and the ability to take a fresh look at Andersen’s writing in its original form.
Haugaard recognizes the rightness of Andersen’s own colloquial, simple words, which early Victorian editors too often altered to ornate, even archaic expressions. He understands Andersen’s expressed intent: “I wanted the style to be such that the reader felt the presence of the storyteller; therefore the spoken language had to be used.” Haugaard as a young man working among the rural folk of Denmark heard the vernacular. Following the text and the order of the stories in the Danish edition of 1874 which Andersen edited, he has made changes to bring the text closer to the original. His INCHELINA (5)—for “Thumbelina”—stems from a recognition of Tommelise’s derivation from tomme meaning “inch,” not from tommeltot meaning “thumb”: “… entomme lang, og defor Kaldtes hun Tommelise” becomes “… an inch long, therefore she was called Inchelina.” Another change, for a more accurate interpretation, substitutes THE MAGIC GALOSHES (10) for “The Galoshes of Fortune,” the commonly known title, which the translator perceives to be inaccurate in projecting the idea that the galoshes themselves were magic.
In the total, chronological sequence, including the lesser known tales of adult interest, is to be found the wealth of revelatory autobiographical matter which brings Andersen to life—a more accurate picture, as Haugaard knows, than the best scholar can offer. To apprehend Andersen’s feelings about writing and criticism and about his gift of poetry one may read THE MUSE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (109), THE PIXY AND THE GROCER (65), “THE WILL-O’-THE-WISPS ARE IN TOWN,” SAID THE BOG WITCH (114) AND THE PIXY AND THE GARDENER’S WIFE (124). In A QUESTION OF IMAGINATION (139) one finds his humorous musings on imagination: “There was once a young man who was studying to be an author, and he wanted to be one before Easter.… [He complained]: ‘Everything in the world has been written up; no wonder I can’t find anything to write down.’ ”
Haugaard has said that “Andersen was what Andersen wrote”; he sees him as a poet-critic whom we in our time have a need to know. Andersen’s satire and unsparing contempt are viewed through poetic Danish eyes, for Haugaard also is a poet. Clear to those eyes are Andersen’s satire and unsparing contempt expressed through the clever literary devices of animating objects like the famous darning needle and humanizing such lowly creatures as the dung beetle. Familiar is the country background of bottomless moors, storks, ancient Roskilde, and a belief in bog witches.
This volume is for those who would study Andersen as the creator of a new kind of wonder tale and contributor to an international literature, a storyteller to be understood from more than acquaintance with the beloved tales so often shared with children.
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