14. as if she had been formed of snow. The white of the statue is compared repeatedly to snow, to icy mountaintops, and to other natural marvels. The artist’s art consists precisely of creating something that does not appear to be artifice but rather is completely natural. Through snow, the statue comes to be linked with Andersen’s other women in white: the Snow Queen and the Ice Maiden, both deadly to men.
15. Is a volcano aware that its eruptions produce fiery lava? In The Improvisatore, Andersen describes an amorous encounter using the same terms, but literally in this case, rather than figuratively, since the protagonist, Antonio, lives in Naples: “When I reached the street, everything was in flames, just like my blood! A current of air blew the heat toward me. Vesuvius was glowing with flames—eruptions followed one another rapidly, illuminating everything around. . . . The sea was shining like the fire of the red lava, which was rolling down the mountain. Wherever I looked, I could see her standing there, as if painted with flames.”
16. “Go away! Get out of my sight!” The young woman’s words anticipate what the artist will say first to himself after the night of revelry, then to the statue of Psyche when he lowers it into the well, and finally to his friend Angelo who tries to persuade him to return to life. In this last instance, the artist uses the term “Apage Satanas,” emphasizing a need to exorcize the devil. On two other occasions the phrase is repeated by the artist, who seems to labor under the compulsion to appropriate the words of the woman whose image he created. Ironically, the artist’s efforts to remove the statue from sight, to lower her into a grave, and to bury her in darkness lead to the return of the repressed.
17. bore a resemblance to that petrifying face with serpent hair. The artist transforms his Psyche into a Medusa figure, who returns his petrifying gaze with her own stony look. In October 1833, after seeing Leonardo da Vinci’s Medusa, Andersen wrote to his friend Henriette Wulff: “The head has something magical about it that attracted me—the foam of the abyss in its most beautiful shape. It is a hell that has created the head of a Madonna with warm poison streaming out of her mouth. The serpent’s hair is moving as the person beholding it becomes petrified.”
Andersen expressed his horror at how the animating power of imagination can devolve into the petrifying power of a Medusa in those who are mad. Visiting an asylum, he observed: “Imagination, this life’s best cherub, that conjures up an Eden for us in the sandy desert—is here a frightful chimera, whose Medusa-head petrifies reason and thoughts, and breathes a magic circle around the unfortunate victim, who is then lost to the world” (Bøggild, 79).
18. “The girls from the campagna.” “Campagna” is the Italian term for countryside, and the Roman campagna is the region around Rome. For Andersen, Rome and its surroundings were “like a book of fairy tales . . . where new wonders are constantly being uncovered so one can immerse oneself in a world of fantasy” (Travels, 256).
19. “They are all daughters of Eve.” That a painter named Angelo who is dismissed with the phrase “Apage Satanas” tries to convince the artist that women are all tainted by sin shows how deeply the story is invested in staging a religious debate about sin and innocence and about death and immortality in gendered terms.
20. a lamp was burning before the image of the Madonna. The untroubled juxtaposition of sacred and profane in the tavern reveals the degree to which the artist suffers from self-division in a unique way, with his art preventing him from partaking of the pleasures of life and the consolations of religion. Note too that the tale features both the Madonna and the Medusa.
21. saltarello. The saltarello was a lively dance whose origins can be traced to thirteenth-century Naples. It is in triple meter and is named after its characteristic leaping step, from the Italian verb saltare (“to jump”). The dance became part of the popular traditions of the Roman Carnival and appears in Felix Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony, which was written after the composer had attended the Roman festivities in 1831. In his travel diaries, Andersen describes seeing girls in Rome dancing the saltarello. The Italian dance made a strong impression on him, and during his second visit to Rome he bemoaned the fact that he no longer heard “tambourines ringing in the streets” and that the “young girls dancing the saltarello” had disappeared (Travels, 256).
22. two charming Bacchantes. The allusion to Bacchus is a reminder of the inspiration for the story—a statue of Bacchus rather than Psyche. Andersen develops in this story a distinction that Nietzsche famously made between the Apollonian and Dionysian—the serene world of Apollonian appearances, beauty, and light versus the fluid, sensual, orgiastic union of opposites in the cult of Dionysus. Angelo’s encouragement to “Let yourself go with the flow all around you” is a reminder that the artist is turning from the pleasures of the Apollonian to the delights of the Dionysian.
23. On the floor there were many sketches. The sketches of the girls from the campagna are not part of a cult of art but come to be connected, through their position on the floor, with refuse.
24. resounded within and were spoken by his own lips. If the artist first imitated the living Psyche by creating a sculpture of her, he now mimics her words, internalizing her reproaches to him and repeating them to himself.
25. He lowered Psyche down into it. Just as the block of marble was covered by refuse, so the statue returns to the earth, covered with leaves and dirt. In lowering the statue into the ground, the sculptor buries it (as if it were a living thing), represses it (trying to bury the painful conflict it produces in him), and returns it to the earth (giving it back to Mother Nature).
26. “Taste and you shall become like God.” These are the words from Genesis 3:5, used by the serpent to tempt Eve: “You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
27. which seemed as if painted in the sky. The artist has obviously not been completely converted, for God’s presence seems to radiate from images and symbols in the church, and he looks at God’s creation, not as nature, but as if it were a beautiful work of art.
28. “Have you ever read the parable about the talents?” Matthew 25:14–30 tells the parable about the talents, which are not talents in the sense of abilities or aptitudes but units of weight or currency: “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.” The master returns and rewards the first two servants, who have used their talents wisely: “For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have in abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.”
When Andersen’s compatriot the Danish artist Albert Küchler proposed that Andersen join an order to which he had converted in Rome and “live in peace with God,” Andersen replied quickly: “I could stay here for a few days, and then I would have to leave, go out in the world again . . . live in it, be in it” (Travels, 339).
29. Eternity. Eternity is the word that Kai is trying to form from blocks of ice in “The Snow Queen.” The search for immortality in “The Psyche” is also connected with whiteness, purity, and cold, hard surfaces.
30. leaping in and out of the empty eye sockets. The story turns in many ways on the visual, on beautiful images and their seductive power. The gaze, sight, vision, light, and blinding are further emphasized in the repeated invocation of the morning star, which beams down and witnesses the events taking place. The image of the white skull with its dark sockets not only negates the beauty of the “immortal” marble sculpture but also reveals that the power of vision itself is only fleeting.
31. dust returned to dust. In Genesis 3:19 God tells Adam and Eve: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until
you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
32. butterfly wings appeared. Ironically, the butterfly appears only when the statue is unearthed, not when the artist’s bones are disinterred. As noted, Psyche means both soul and butterfly in Greek. Andersen habitually connected swans, butterflies, and ballerinas in the many whimsical paper cuttings he created over the years at social events. Butterflies, related through flight to the many avian creatures in Andersen’s stories, appear frequently in the fairy tales, most notably in “Thumbelina” and in a story about a winged bachelor called “The Butterfly.”
33. Psyche will live on. Andersen develops a strong link to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a work that establishes a firm bond between poetic artistry and immortality. If Ovid ends his work about the metamorphic nature of creativity by confidently declaring “Vivam” (“I shall live”—meaning both the book and its creator), Andersen concludes by emphasizing that the work of art will triumph over its creator and attain the immortality for which he longed. Despite the artist’s efforts to plunge the statue into darkness, to lower it into the nether regions, and to bury it and return it to the earth, the statue emerges in all its pure, gleaming, transcendent glory, even as the monk’s white skeletal remains (the skull through which the lizard darts) turn to dust.
The Most Astonishing Thing
Det utroligste
Det Utroligste. Et Eventyr, 1870
First published in the United States in The Riverside Magazine for Young People, “The Most Astonishing Thing” was considered by Andersen to be one of his best stories. A tale written near the end of his life, it is an unlikely candidate for a children’s magazine, for in it Andersen summed up the essence of art. The clock that serves as “the most astonishing thing” represents both temporality and transcendence. It keeps time, but it is also an objet d’art that resists destruction, coming back to life even after it has been smashed to bits. It houses the biblical and the mythical, the seasons and the senses, the visual and the acoustical, the carnal and the spiritual. Everything that Andersen wanted in art is housed in that extraordinary clock that astonishes everyone.
The art of astonishment was no small matter to Andersen. It is telling that the winner of the contest staged in this story is a man who creates an object that shocks precisely because it provides the semblance of life. The modest craftsman makes a clock that is more than a mechanical thing—it pulses with life and captures the imagination of all who see it. The work he produces mingles the secular with the sacred and the pagan with the Christian: it brings together prophets and wise men, monks and muses. Above all, it becomes a second creation, a work with a life of its own and even a degree of immortality. The clock and the figures in it, like the statue of Psyche in Andersen’s story of that name, defy destruction and live on in a way that humans cannot. Here, as in other tales, beauty transcends decay and destruction.
Whoever could do the most astonishing thing was to earn the king’s daughter and half the kingdom. Young men, and, yes, old ones too, strained every thought, muscle, and sinew to win. Two ate themselves to death1 and one of them ate so much that he exploded. But that was not how it was meant to be.2 Street urchins practiced spitting on their own backs; that’s what they thought would be the most astonishing thing imaginable.
On the appointed day, there was to be a display of the most astonishing things, and everyone was to show his best possible work. Judges had been appointed, ranging from three-year-old children to people in their nineties. There was an exhibition of astonishing things, but everyone agreed without hesitation that the most astonishing thing of all was a huge clock in a case,3 an extraordinary contraption, both inside and out. At the stroke of each hour, lifelike figures appeared to tell the time. There were twelve performances in all, each with moving figures that could sing or speak.
LORENZ FRØLICH
Everyone agreed: “That clock is the most astonishing thing ever seen.”
The clock struck one, and Moses appeared on the mountain, writing the first commandment on the tablets4: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
The clock struck two, and there was the Garden of Eden, the place where Adam and Eve met, both quite happy even though they did not have a clothes closet, nor did they need one.
At the stroke of three, the Three Wise Men appeared. One of them was black as coal, but he couldn’t help it, the sun had baked him.5 The kings brought incense and precious gifts.
At the stroke of four, the seasons advanced in their order. Spring carried the green branch of a beech tree, with a cuckoo perched on it. Summer appeared with a grasshopper on a ripe ear of corn. Autumn had only an empty stork’s nest, and Winter emerged with an old crow that could tell tales in a corner behind the oven, tales of times past.
At the stroke of five, there was a procession of the five senses.6 Sight was a man who made spectacles. Hearing was a coppersmith. Smell was accompanied by violets and sweet woodruff. Taste was a chef. And Feeling was a mourner in black crepe that reached all the way down to the heels.
The clock struck six, and a gambler cast a die, with six on top.
Then came the seven days of the week or the seven deadly sins—no one could agree on that and they could not be told apart easily.
Next came a choir of monks to sing the eight o’clock evening song.
The stroke of nine brought the nine muses. One was an astronomer; one was a historian working in an archive; the others were connected with the theater.
When ten o’clock struck, Moses reappeared with his tablets. All the commandments were written on them, and there were ten in all.
The clock struck again, and boys and girls leaped in the air, playing and singing:
Heigh, Ho, heaven,
The clock has struck eleven.
And the clock struck eleven.
Then came the stroke of twelve, and out marched a night watchman, wearing a cape and carrying a spiked nightstick called the morning star. He was singing a song you often heard from night watchmen:
’Twas in the midnight hour,
That our Savior was born.
While he was singing, roses began to unfold and turned into the heads of angels with rainbow-colored wings on their backs.
The clock was charming to look at and lovely to hear. It was a thing of beauty superior to any other work of art. It was a most astonishing thing, as everyone agreed.
The artist who had made it was a young man, kindhearted, happy as a child, a faithful friend and also a great help to his parents, who were poor. He really deserved the princess and half the kingdom.
On the day that the winner was to be proclaimed, the entire town had been decked out, and the princess was sitting on her throne, which had been newly stuffed for the occasion but was no more snug or comfortable than it had been before. The judges winked knowingly at the apparent winner, who was beaming happily, for he had, after all, done the most astonishing thing.
“No,” a tall, bony, powerful fellow roared at the last moment. “I’m the one who will do the most astonishing thing,” and, with that, he lifted his ax to strike the work of art.
Bam, crack, crush! The whole thing was lying on the ground. Wheels and springs went flying in every direction. The whole thing had been destroyed.7
“I did that,” the lout said. “My work beat his and amazed everyone here. I have done the most astonishing thing.”
“To destroy a work of art like that!” the judges gasped. “Why, that’s the most astonishing thing imaginable!” And since everyone agreed, he was to have the princess and half the kingdom, because a promise is a promise, even if it is astonishing.
Trumpets sounded from the ramparts and towers in the city. “The wedding is about to begin!” The princess was not particularly happy about the turn of events, but she looked charming nonetheless, dressed in her costly garments.8 The church looked beautiful at night with all the candles glowing in it. The ladies of the court sang as they escorted t
he bride. The knights also sang and escorted the groom, who strutted and swaggered as if no one could ever get in his way. Then the music stopped. It became so quiet that you could hear a pin drop and then, suddenly, the great church doors flew open with a crash and a bang. Right, left, left, right, everything that had been part of the clockwork came marching down the aisle and slipped between the bride and groom. Dead people can’t get back on their feet—we know that—but a work of art can run again. Its body may have been shattered, but not its spirit. The spirit of art was on the prowl, and that was no joke.
The work of art stood there intact, as if it had never been touched. The hours struck, one after another, up to twelve o’clock, and then all the figures swarmed forth, first Moses, whose forehead had a bright flame on it. He hurled the heavy stone tablets at the bridegroom’s feet and then tied his feet to the floor of the church.
“I can’t lift the tablets back up again,” Moses said, “for you broke my arm. Stay right where you are.”
Then Adam and Eve came forward, as did the Three Wise Men as well as the four seasons. They all told him unpleasant truths. “Shame on you!” But he was not at all ashamed.
All of the figures that appeared at every stroke marched out of the clock, and they began to grow to a surprising size. There was scarcely any room left for real people. And when, at the stroke of twelve, the watchman strode out in his cape and with his nightstick, there was an odd commotion. The watchman went right up to the bridegroom and hit him over the head with his morning-star club.
“Just lie there,” the watchman said. “An eye for an eye. We are getting our revenge and our master’s too. And now we will vanish.”