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Abstract
He was right. As [Jackie Wullschlager] skillfully shows, [HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN]'s fairy tales were like nothing Denmark, or the world, had seen before. "What made Andersen revolutionary," she writes, "was that he was the first person to take the fairy tale as a literary form and to invent new ones of his own." Just as important was his language, "the colloquial, vivid style that seemed to speak itself, and which children found instantly accessible and entertaining." For the rest of his life, Andersen would return to this form, interrupted from time to time by his novels, travel books and poems, none of which are still read outside Denmark. From "Thumbelina" through "The Ugly Duckling," "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" and "The Emperor's New Clothes" to erotic and experimental late stories such as "The Ice Maiden," fairy tales were Andersen's greatest creations and the cause of his rapid rise to fame.
Yet the theme of Wullschlager's book is the persistence of the duckling in the swan. Andersen never entirely ceased to be the poor, ignorant boy from Odense, desperate to please; he could never get enough reassurance, enough acclaim, enough love. The story of his relationship with Edvard Collin, the son of his patron, is alternately sad and grotesque as Andersen's naked bids for affection are endlessly rebuffed. In 1831, Andersen wrote Edvard a letter begging to be allowed to call him "Du," the intimate form of the second-person; Edvard refused, politely but firmly ("it has saddened me that this issue should come up at all"). As Wullschlager writes, "It was a devastating blow .... At a vulnerable time when his social and sexual identity were still being formed, this crushing letter had a crucial impact."