SOURCE: "Superiority of the North over the South," in Books, Children and Men, 5th ed., translated by Marguerite Mitchell, The Horn Book, Inc., 1983, pp. 77-110.

[In the following excerpt, originally written in 1932, Hazard celebrates the vitality and wisdom found in Andersen's tales, maintaining that the stories reflect the true meaning of life.]

Supposing that, by some stretch of imagination, we were called upon to choose the very prince of all story writers for children, my vote would go, not to a Latin, but to Hans Christian Andersen….

He is unexcelled because, within the slender framework of his tales, he brings in all the pageantry of the universe. It is never too much for children. You will find there not only Copenhagen and its brick houses, and its great reddish roofs and copper domes, and the golden cross of Notre-Dame that reflects the sun; Denmark with its marshes, its woods, its willows bent by the wind, its ever-present sea; Scandinavia, Iceland, snowy and frozen, but you will also find Germany, Switzerland, Spain flooded with sunshine, Portugal, Milan, Venice, Florence and Rome, Paris, city of the fine arts, city of revolutions. You will find there Egypt, Persia, China, the ocean to its very depths where the mermaids live; the sky where floats the whiteness of great wild swans.

It is a marvelous picture book that the moon makes in relating what she saw in the mountains, over the lakes, through the windows of human dwellings, in every place where her blue and melancholy light softly steals, plays and vanishes. If the present is not enough, evoke the past—Pompeian villas or the barbaric palaces of the Vikings. If reality is not enough, see magic scenes that the fairies build. If your eyes are not surfeited by nature's countless spectacles, close them; in your dreams will appear the luminous spirit of the truth, variable, ever changing, and more beautiful than the beauties of the waking day.

In these feasts of imagination, others will perhaps be capable of equalling him, but there are values he has revealed that are his very own sumptuous gift to children; enchanted scenes they will find only in him, the memory of which will charm them forever. Snow—Latin children hardly know it. Those at Naples or Granada never see it except from afar, way up high on the mountains. Scarcely does it appear before the eyes of small Parisians when it is changed into soot and mud. And where else would they get such another vision of icy vastness? Andersen opened up to them the fairylike domains of frost.

What strange beauty in his depiction of the glacial ocean where icebergs float like sea-faring monsters! What a sight is revealed to the fifth mermaid sister who becomes familiar with the world seen on the winter sea!

Now came the turn of the fifth sister. Her birthday, it happened, was in winter, and so she saw what the others had not seen on their first visit. The sea was all green to look at, and round about there floated large icebergs, every one looking like a pearl, she said, and yet they were far bigger than the church towers that men built. They showed themselves in the strangest shapes and were like diamonds.

Winter over the town, placing curtains on the window panes that the children must clear away with their breath if they wish to see the house opposite. Winter that turns the fingers blue, that numbs the limbs of the little match-seller, that causes Knud, the lover, to pass from his dream into eternal sleep. Winter that makes the snow man grow proud, thinking that his mere glance suffices to make the sun hurry down behind the horizon. Winter on the dunes, that the tempest seems to push back still further inland, making waves of sand that cover up the village chapels. The Winter King, as he rules in Lapland, almost burying animals and men, lord of stark immensity. These are some of the spectacles that Andersen offers and lavishes on children.

Thanks to him, we have seen through our own eyes the Snow Queen all in ice, her eyes shining like bright stars. With little Kay, we fastened our sledge to her white one. She let us sit beside her. We glided over the soft surface and were lifted into the air. We passed over forests and lakes, land and seas. Below us blew a glacial wind, wolves howled, snow sparkled. Above black crows were flying, cawing. And away up above shone the moon, large and bright. Thus we arrived at the Queen's Palace.

The walls of the Palace were made of drifting snow, and the windows and doors of biting winds. There were more than a hundred halls, shaped by the drifting of the snow. The largest of them stretched out for many miles, and all were lit up by the bright Northern Lights. These halls were tremendous—so empty, so icy-cold, so dazzling. There was never any gaiety here, not even the smallest dance for the bears, at which the storm winds could make the music, and the polar bears walk on their hind legs and show off their good manners. There was never a party where they played at muzzle-slapping and paw-clapping, and never did the white fox-girls forgather to enjoy a bit of gossip over their coffee. Empty, vast, and icy-cold were the Snow Queen's halls. The Northern Lights glowed at such regular intervals that one could reckon exactly when they would be at their highest and lowest. In the midst of the immense empty snow hall was a frozen lake, cracked into a thousand pieces, and each piece so resembled all the others that it looked like a real work of art. When at home the Snow Queen sat in the very center, and then she said she was sitting on the "Mirror of Reason," which according to her was the only one that counted in this world.¹

Fortunate indeed if in all this snow, our heart was not frozen as happened to little Kay:

Little Kay was quite blue with the cold, indeed almost black, and his heart was practically a lump of ice. But he was not aware of it, because the Snow Queen had kissed away the icy chill. He was busy fitting together a few flat sharp-edged pieces of ice, and trying to shape them into some kind of pattern, for he wanted to make something out of them, just as we do when we make Chinese puzzles with little squares of wood. Kay was arranging patterns, and most intricate ones, in that game known as the "Puzzle of Ice-cold Reason." To him these figures appeared very remarkable and of the greatest importance because of the chip of glass in his eye. He put together patterns to form a written word, but he could never manage to spell out the one word he had in his mind—the word "Eternity."¹

We should be fortunate indeed if, as in the tale, some little Gerda followed us to the end of the world, to the very palace of the Snow Queen, and with her warm tears made the block of ice melt. Fortunate if, through love, she permitted us to solve the puzzle and to recover the lost word.

Andersen is unique in his capacity for entering into the very soul of beings and of things.

That animals have an intelligible language, Andersen and children know better than anyone. When the cat says to little Rudy: "Come out on the roof; put one paw here, another a little higher; come on, hoist yourself up; see how I do it, nothing is easier," little Rudy understands perfectly. And the dog that, not satisfied with barking, expresses himself also with his eyes, his tail, and his whole body speaks a language that seems quite natural to the child. That plants talk is taken for granted also. After all, why should Mother Elder and Father Willow not exchange confidences like everybody else? Leaves are very talkative; they murmur for no reason at all.

But what is rarer and finer is to see objects become animated and to hear their voices. Not only the toys, not only the porcelain dancer on the mantelpiece so full of airs and graces, not only the grotesque Chinese figure on the console who shakes his head when looking at you. This innumerable folk, that the indifferent call "things," stirs, moves, speaks and fills the air with its complaints or its songs. Everything is alive: the ray of sunshine that dances through the window, the branch of apple tree in its spring frock, the salon furniture, the gardener's tools, the kitchen utensils, the pail, the broom, the basket, the plates and even the matches, although they are a bit stiff. Of all the objects that you can imagine, there is not one that does not want to chat with its neighbors and make merry. At night, you believe there is no longer any life. On the contrary, it is the moment when silent ones feel free to speak; when the motionless ones feel their limbs itching and gambol about gaily. The arithmetic problem fidgets about on its slate, the letters grow restless in the copy book and complain at having been badly traced.

When one is a child, and can hardly talk, one understands perfectly the language of the hens and ducks, dogs and cats. They speak to us as distinctly as father and mother. At that age we even hear grandfather's cane whinny; it has become our horse, and we see a head on it, legs and a tail. But once grown up this faculty is lost. However, there are children who keep it longer than others; we say of them that they remain big simpletons….

Big simpletons or geniuses. On this latter count, let us thank Heaven that Andersen remained a child.

If others shrivel up everything they touch by analyzing and dissecting, Andersen, on the contrary, animates and vivifies. On the summit of mountains, on the highest peaks, he is hypnotized by Vertigo who tries to make him totter and fall headlong into the abyss. In the depths of the crevices lives the Queen of the glaciers. She is asking for her victims, and you hear her voice. Andersen is never alone. He is surrounded by a multitude of little lives, by countless beings who observe and watch him. He is only one of them, perhaps a little better endowed, in the vast comedy in which thousands of actors take part. All the others, the oak, the house, the butterfly, the wave, the stick of wood, the gravestone, rejoice or suffer with him. Hallucination that is perhaps not altogether voluntary nor altogether false, if it does nothing more than translate the mystery of being and the constant vibration of things.

How conscious we are in all this of the powerful imagination of the North, instinct with sensitiveness! How different it is from the imagination of the South which etches everything sharply under the direct brilliance of the sun! Beneath this sky laden with mists, where the light remains timid and gray even on the fairest days, we grasp the significance of doubts and confusions. There the sharpness of a too clear vision will not belie the man who sees grimacing faces in the tree roots, who peoples the sea with phantoms delicately traced on its grayish expanse. When he expresses himself, as the law of our nature demands, he does so with less pride and authority. He is never entirely sure that the tricks of his imagination are really nothing more than imagination. He likes to pretend that the questions, the appeals which he attributes to the universe, come actually from the universe and not from himself. Uncertain of himself, he respects the essential character of things as though by raising them to his own sphere he were finding friends on his lonely and colorless horizon. Feeling deference for every living thing, he promotes animals to his own level. Why should they not have the right to be themselves? The storks, in appearance all alike, clothed in white and black and wearing red stockings, why should they not have their own personality? The birds of woods or field, why should they not have different characters as they have different feathers?

And, by a transition from the external to the hidden life, why should we not try to discover the individual soul of each object? If it is nothing but a diversion, at least it is generous and merciful. That old lantern which has shared existence with humans, which was useful to them for keeping off the dangers of the night, seems to have will power. It persists in struggling against the wind, against the rain. It seems to have intelligence, for it is interested in the adventures of the passers-by to whom it lends its reflection. And a sensibility, for it suffers when it sees the misfortunes around it. Its ambition is to endure, to persist in its being. It has a horror of annihilation. And so on, continuing the dream, multiplying it to infinity. The starched collar is proud of its rigid splendor. The teapot looks disgusted and will sing only when it is warm. And the silver shilling, if we tell it that it is only a counterfeit piece, shivers with indignation.

When we finish reading the Tales we are not entirely the same as we were when we began them. We would gladly become, as Rimbaud says, un opéra fabuleux. The wheat that bends, what emotion makes it tremble? Where do the white clouds go that are passing over us? Do they go in light attire to some celestial festival in the palace of Prince Azur?

But of all Andersen's claims to supremacy, the finest and noblest claim is the wisdom inherent in his tales, their inner life. There is much sorrow in the world, Andersen believes. The woman you love does not love you. She says she would like to be your sister. It is not the same thing. She becomes a great singer, or goes abroad, or marries someone else. She forgets you. There is also death, which is very badly planned. Parents die young and here are these little ones left alone; how they will suffer! We feel always insecure. Every second we are dying. Everything passes, the palaces of Caesar and the books of the poets. Animals are scarcely happier than we, and as the dog said when he was put on a chain, "Things are reasonably ordered neither for dogs nor for men."

If only one knew why, it would be a consolation, but the book of life is hard to read. The wise man may succeed in deciphering several chapters, but not the last that treats of the departure into the unknown. We would have to have the philosopher's stone to make the lines shine with a brighter light. Can we find such a stone? They tell us that all evil comes from the error of our first parents, but why should they have made any such mistake?

To all these doubts which work on your mind when you are taking a walk alone, or when you cannot sleep, is added the foolishness of man himself; for the number of fools is too great. Each one believes himself above his condition and swells with pride. The good old snow man, when evening comes, imagines, as we have said, that it is his imperious glance which has forced the sun to sink below the earth. The thistle claims descent from an illustrious Scottish family. The Portuguese duck believes herself of a superior species and despises those that are not Portuguese. The nettle proclaims that it is a distinguished plant since a delicate muslin is woven from it. And so forth, step by step, up to and including the fools who admire the Emperor's invisible clothes.

An excess of work not only makes hands callous, it may embitter the soul. Those who have no work to do risk becoming selfish and cruel. There are maidens, like the little Inger, who walk on bread to avoid soiling their slippers. "The Marsh King's Daughter" points out this double nature that is in us.

Some magic power had a terrible hold over the little one. In the daytime she was as beautiful as any fairy, but had a bad, wicked temper. At night, on the other hand, she became a hideous toad, quiet and pathetic, with sad, mournful eyes. There were two natures in her both in soul and body continually shifting.

In short, all that would not be a very pleasant sight if we saw nothing else in it. In the words of the gingerbread merchant:

I had two young gingerbread people in the window of my shop; one a man with a hat, the other a young lady without a hat. They had a human face only on one side and were not to be looked at from the other. What is more, men are like that and it is not kind to look at their wrong side.

That is what the storyteller in love with nature is thinking about, the animater of things who has himself known pain. Andersen is not one of those saints who, shivering, insist that it is always warm on this earth. He knows the meaning of life. He states resolutely the problem of evil, the problem of existence. But far from being discouraged by the truth, he seeks to release it, to face it. Truth distresses us only when we have a half knowledge of it.

Pondering over existence, he understands that we are in a transitory state from which we cannot escape except through will, faith, love. The human world is only a process of evolution, a chance for us to meet the supreme realities that await us, or at least to prepare ourselves for them. Love, true love, is stronger than absence, stronger than sorrow; it accomplishes all miracles, even that of resurrection. It is the divine spark, symbol of eternal life. Through love, spells are broken. As foretold by the oracle, the King of Egypt, through the power of his daughter's love, came back to life. "Love produces life; from the most ardent love is born the noblest life. It is love only that can save the king's life." Through love, through total sacrifice, having almost given up hope, the little mermaid won immortality. The real evil is the sin against the spirit, the lack of kindness, of humanity. The real good is the aspiration to a higher state to which men of good will shall be admitted and the animals, yes, the animals themselves. "The animal is, like man, a creature of God, and, I believe firmly, no life will be lost, each creature will receive the happiness that it is capable of receiving."

Once there was a hideous toad with a splendid diamond set in its head; always he aspired towards the best.

This precious stone, seek it in the sun, look at it if you can. You will not be able to, the light of the heavenly body is too bright. We have not yet the light that we need to recognize ourselves in the midst of the marvels that God has created. But we shall possess it some day. And then it will be the most beautiful of all the tales; it will be true.

It is this inner life that gives the Tales their deep quality. From it also comes that exaltation which spreads through the soul of the readers. From it comes, finally, a marked quality of serenity. I know only one other author who, all differences taken into consideration, creates a similar impression. Manzoni, like Andersen, admitting only as a human weakness the confusion into which the fact of evil throws him, overcomes this state of doubt, and through faith arrives at serenity. Both, before the world spectacle, possess peace. They even allow themselves humor, gaiety, because they hold the secret: "Have faith and hope; they will not deceive you." Both turn by choice towards the humble, because the hierarchy established in this transient world is only an illusion destined to be replaced by a higher law of justice. "The love of the Creator is infinite and embraces equally everything that lives and moves in Him." "All creatures are equal before the infinite love of the Almighty and the same justice governs all the universe." One feels the same Biblical inspiration moving through both Andersen and Manzoni.

The teller of tales stands at his window. He listens to the swallows and the storks that have returned to Denmark for the fine summer days. He listens to his friend the wind. Or, he mingles with the crowd and listens once more to what the gingerbread merchant is relating, to what the old eel fisherman is telling. He makes use of everything. He tells them again in his own way, these stories that provoke a smile or a tear. He gives them a lyrical style, dramatic and always simple, a style of which he alone is master. He adorns them with brighter and more delicate colors; and, lending them wings, he sends them to the very limits of the world. But he fills them also with intense feeling and therein, without doubt, added to all the other qualities, lies the final attainment which explains their great power.

The children are not mistaken. In these beautiful tales they find not only pleasure, but the law of their being and the feeling of the great role they have to fill. They themselves have been subjected to sorrow. They sense evil confusedly around them, in them; but this vivid suffering is only transitory and not enough to trouble their serenity. Their mission is to bring to the world a renewal of faith and hope. What would become of the human spirit if it were not refreshed by this confident young strength? The new generation arrives to make the world beautiful once more. Everything grows green again. Life funds its reasons for enduring. Andersen, imbuing his tales with an invincible belief in a better future, communes with the soul of children, harmonizes himself with their deep nature, allies himself with their mission. He upholds, with them and through them, the ideal forces which save humanity from perishing….

Notes

¹ As translated from the Danish by Paul Leyssac in It's Perfectly True and Other Stories. Harcourt, 1938.