II.

If we hold fast to the clue, we shall comprehend how the childlike

in diction and sphere of conception, the true-hearted manner with

which the most improbable things are announced, is just what invests

the nursery story with its poetic worth. For what renders a literary

production significant, what gives it circulation in space and lasting

value in time, is the force with which it is able to present that

which is propagated through space and which endures through time. It

preserves itself by means of the vigor with which, in a clear and

polished way, it renders perceptible the constant. Those writings which

support tendencies or emotions whose horizon is limited in time or

space, those which revolve about purely local circumstances or are the

result of a prevailing taste, whose nourishment and whose image are

found in these circumstances, will vanish with the fashion that has

called them forth. A street song, a news-paper article, a festival

oration, reflect a prevailing mood which for perhaps a week has

superficially occupied the population of the city, and therefore have

themselves a duration of about equal length. Or, to mount to a higher

level, suppose there suddenly arises in a country some subordinate

proclivity, as, for instance, the fancy for playing private comedies,

which became an epidemic in Germany in the time of "Wilhelm Meister,"

or in Denmark between 1820 and 1830. Such a tendency in itself is

not wholly devoid of significance, but psychologically considered

it is thoroughly superficial and does not affect the deeper life of

the soul. If it be made an object of satire, as it was in Denmark,

by Rosenkilde's "The Dramatic Tailor," or in "Sir Burchardt and his

Family," by Henrik Hertz, those works which, without representing the

epidemic from a higher point of view, merely imitate and render it

laughable, will be just as short-lived as it was. Let us now take a

step higher, let us turn to the works which mirror the psychological

condition of an entire race, an entire period. The good-natured

drinking-song poetry of the past century, and the poetry written for

political occasions, are such literary productions. They are historic

documents, but their life and their poetic value are in direct ratio

to the depth at which they approach universal humanity, the constant

in the current of history. With greater and more marked significance

in this gradual ascent stand forth these works, in which a people has

seen itself portrayed for a half or for a whole century, or during

an entire historic period, and has recognized the likeness. Such

works must of necessity depict a spiritual condition of considerable

duration, which, just because it is so enduring, must have its geologic

seat in the deeper strata of the soul, as otherwise it would much

sooner be washed away by the waves of time. These works incorporate

the ideal personality of an epoch; that is to say, the personality

which floats before the people of that time as its reflection and

model. It is this personality which artists and poets chisel, paint,

and describe, and for which musicians and poets create. In Grecian

antiquity it was the supple athlete and the eagerly-questioning youth

who was athirst for knowledge; during the Middle Ages it was the knight

and the monk; under Louis XIV the courtier; in the beginning of the

nineteenth century it was Faust. The works which represent such forms

give expression to the intellectual condition of an entire epoch, but

the most important of them express still more; they mirror and embody

at the same time the character of an entire people, of an entire race,

an entire civilization, inasmuch as they reach the most profound, most

elementary stratum of the individual human soul and of society, which

concentrates and represents them in its little world. In this way,

with the aid of a few names, the history of an entire literature could

be written, by simply writing the history of its ideal personalities.

Danish literature, during the first half of the nineteenth century,

is placed, for instance, between the two types, Oehlenschläger's

Aladdin and Frater Taciturnus in Kierkegaard's "Stages in the Path of

Life." The former is its starting-point, the latter its perfection

and conclusion. Now since the worth of these personalities, as before

stated, depends upon how deeply they have their growth in the character

of the people, or in human nature, it will readily be recognized that

such a personality, for instance, as that of Aladdin, in order that

it may be comprehended in its peculiar beauty, must be compared with

the ideal personality which from the beginning of the period beamed

upon us from the fancy of the Danish people. We find this personality

by bringing together a large number of the oldest mythic and heroic

characterizations of the people. If I were to cite a single name, I

would choose that of Uffe the Bashful.[3] In virtues as well as in

faults he is a colossus of a Danish hero. It can readily be perceived

how great a degree of resemblance all of Oehlenschläger's best

characters, his calm Thor, his nonchalant Helge, his indolent Aladdin,

bear to this hero, and it will be seen during the contemplation how

deeply Aladdin is rooted in the character of the people, while at

the same time he is the expression of the ideal of an epoch whose

duration was about fifty years. It could just as easily be rendered

perceptible how Frater Taciturnus is one variety of the Faust type.

Sometimes, therefore, it is possible to show how ideal personalities

extend through the most divers countries and peoples, over an entire

continent, leaving behind them their indelible stamp in a whole group

of literary works which resemble one another as impressions of one and

the same intellectual form, impressions of one and the same gigantic

seal, with wafers of the most varied colors. Thus the personality that

becomes most prominent in Danish literature, as "Johann, the Betrayer"

(in Kierkegaard's "Either--Or") is derived from Byron's heroes, from

Jean Paul's Roquairol, from Chateaubriand's René, from Goethe's

Werther, and is at the same time represented in Lermontow's Petschorin

("The Hero of Our Time"). The usual billows and storms of time will not

suffice to overthrow such a personality; it was the Revolution of 1848

that first succeeded in setting it aside.

Extremes meet. For the same reason that a universal spiritual malady

which exercises a powerful influence over humanity will spread

simultaneously through the whole of Europe, and, because of its

profundity, will cause the works that were first created as its

portraits to live as its monuments; for the same reason, too, those

works attain general European fame and become long-lived that reflect

that which is most _elementary_ in human nature--childlike fancy and

childlike emotion, and consequently summon up facts which every one has

experienced (all children lock up kingdoms with a key). They depict

the life which existed in the first period of the human soul, and

thus reach that intellectual stratum which lies the deepest with all

peoples and in all lands. This is the simple explanation of the fact

that Andersen alone of all the Danish writers has attained a European,

indeed, more than a European, circulation. No other explanation has

reached my ears, unless it be the one that would have his renown due

to his having journeyed about and provided for his own fame. Ah,

if journeys would accomplish such results, the travelling stipends

for artists of all kinds that _must_ of necessity be awarded each

year would in the course of time provide Denmark with a rich bloom

of European celebrities, as they have already furnished poet after

poet. To be sure, the poets correspond with the way in which they

are made. But even the remaining, less malicious explanations that

may be brought forward, as, for instance, that Andersen alone among

the greater Danish authors has written in prose, and is therefore

the only one whose works can be translated without effort into other

languages, or that his genre is so popular, or that he is so great a

genius, state either too little or too much. There is more than _one_

genius in Danish literature who is greater than Andersen; there are

many who with respect to their endowments are by no means inferior to

him; but there is none whose creations are so elementary. Heiberg, as

well as Andersen, possessed the courage to remodel a form of art (the

vaudeville) in accordance with his own peculiarities, but he did not

have the good fortune to find any one art form in which he could reveal

his entire talent, combine all his gifts, as Andersen was able to do

in the nursery story, nor to find materials in which interests of time

and locality are of such enduring importance. His best vaudeville "The

Inseparable Ones" (De Uadskillelige) would only be understood where

there exists, as in the Scandinavian countries, a "Temperance Society

for Happiness" (Ibsen's expression for long betrothals), at which this

vaudeville aims its shafts. But as the possessor of talent should also

possess courage, so the possessor of genius should also possess good

fortune, and Andersen has lacked neither good fortune nor courage.

The elementary quality in Andersen's poetry insured him a circle of

readers among the cultivated people of all lands. It was still more

effectual in securing him one among the uncultivated people. That

which is childlike is in its very essence of a popular nature, and

a wide circulation corresponds with an extension downward. Because

of the deep and grievous but most natural division of society into

grades of culture, the influence of good literature is confined

almost exclusively to one class. If in Denmark a series of literary

productions like Ingemann's romances make an exception, it is chiefly

because of qualities which remove them from the cultivated classes

through lack of truth to nature in the character delineations and in

the historic coloring. With Ingemann's romances it is the same as with

Grundtvig's theories: if one would defend them, it could not be done by

proving their truth, but by practically laying stress on their outward

usefulness, the advantage they have been to the Danish cause, to the

interests of enlightenment and piety, etc. Ingemann's romances stand,

moreover, in noteworthy relation to Andersen's nursery stories. The

latter are read by the younger, the former by the older children. The

nursery story harmonizes with the luxuriant imagination and the warm

sympathy of the child, and the somewhat older maiden; the romance, with

the fantastic desire for action of the child and especially of the

somewhat older boy, with his growing taste for deeds of chivalry, with

his conceit, his love of pleasing and daring. Romances are written for

grown people; but the healthy mind of the nation has slowly dropped

them until they have found their natural public in the age between

ten and twelve years. Truth is something relative. At twelve years

of age these books seem just as fall of truth, as at twenty they seem

full of innocent lies. But they must be read before the twelfth year

be gone, for at twelve and a half it is already too late for those who

are a trifle advanced in intellectual development. With the nursery

story the reverse is the case. Written in the beginning for children

and constantly read by them, they speedily rose to the notice of grown

people and were by them declared to be true children of genius.

It was a lucky stroke that made Andersen the poet of children. After

long fumbling, after unsuccessful efforts, which must necessarily throw

a false and ironic light on the self-consciousness of a poet whose

pride based its justification mainly on the expectancy of a future

which he felt slumbering within his soul, after wandering about for

long years, Andersen, a genuine offspring of Oehlenschläger, strayed

into Oehlenschläger's footsteps, and one evening found himself in

front of a little insignificant yet mysterious door, the door of the

nursery story. He touched it, it yielded, and he saw, burning in the

obscurity within, the little "Tinder-Box" that became his Aladdin's

lamp. He struck fire with it, and the spirits of the lamp--the dogs

with eyes as large as teacups, as mill-wheels, as the round tower in

Copenhagen--stood before him and brought him the three giant chests,

containing all the copper, silver, and gold treasure stores of the

nursery story. The first story had sprung into existence, and the

"Tinder-Box" drew all the others onward in its train. Happy is he who

has found his "tinder-box."

Now in what sense is the child Andersen's ideal form? There comes to

every land a certain epoch in which its literature seems suddenly

to discover what has long remained unobserved in society. Thus in

literature are discovered by degrees the burgher (in Denmark by

Holberg), the student, the peasant, etc. In the time of Plato, woman

was not yet discovered, one might almost say not yet invented. The

child was discovered at different periods in the literatures of

different countries; in England, for instance, much earlier than

in France. Andersen is the discoverer of the child in Denmark. Yet

here, as everywhere else, the discovery does not take place without

pre-suppositions and stipulations, and here, as everywhere in Danish

literature, it is Oehlenschläger to whom thanks are due for the first

impetus, the fundamental discovery which prepares the way for that of

almost every later poet. The installation of the child in its natural

poetic rights is only one of the many phenomena of the ascension

to the throne of naïveté, whose originator in Danish literature is

Oehlenschläger. The eighteenth century, whose strength lies in its

critical understanding, whose enemy is its imagination, in which it

sees but the ally and bondman of antiquated tradition, whose queen

is its logic, whose king is Voltaire, the object of whose poetry

and science in the abstract is the enlightened and social human

being, sends the child, which is neither abstract, nor social, nor

enlightened, from the parlor into exile in the remote nursery, where

it may listen to nursery tales, traditions, and robber stories, to

its heart's content, provided it take good care to have forgotten all

this worthless trash when it becomes a grown person. In the society

of the nineteenth century (I do not draw the boundary line sharply

on the frontiers) the reaction takes place. The individual, personal

human being takes the place of the social human being. Consciousness

alone had previously been valued, now the unconscious is worshipped.

Schelling's philosophy of nature breaks the spell of Fichte's _Ego_

system; war is carried on against the unfruitful intellectual

reflection, the folk-lore tale and the nursery story are restored to

their rights, the nursery and its occupants are brought into honorable

esteem once more, at times even into too great favor. In all lands the

folk-lore is collected, and in most countries poets begin to remould

it. The sentimental German authors of the transition period (Kotzebue

and Iffland) bring children on the stage, in view of touching the

audience, even Oehlenschläger introduces children into his works

and is, therefore, obliged to endure the censure of Heiberg. So far

as society is concerned, silence has been enforced by Rousseau with

his pedagogic declamations and theories, such attention as was never

known before, is bestowed on the child and above all on the childlike

_nature,_ and the enthusiasm for the education of children (Campe)

is gradually supplanted by the enthusiasm for the child's "state

of nature" (see Rousseau's tendency, as displayed even in Götz von

Berlichingen's conversation with his little son).

There is but a step from the child to the animal. The animal is a child

that will never be anything else than a child. The same tendency to

make life a social life, which thrust aside the child, also banished

the animal. The same thirst for simplicity, for nature, for all that

is innocent and _unconscious_ which led poetry to the child, led it

also to the animal, and from the animal to all nature. Rousseau who

champions the cause of the child, champions at the same time the cause

of the animal; and first and foremost, as his Alpha and Omega, his

"præterea censeo," the cause of nature. He studies botany, writes to

Linné, expresses to him his admiration and affection. The scientific

contemplation of nature determines the social, which in its turn

determines the poetic. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, through his exquisite

story "Paul and Virginia," introduces descriptions of nature into

French prose, and, what is particularly noteworthy simultaneously with

his discovery of the landscape he introduces, as his hero and heroine,

two children. Alexander von Humboldt takes "Paul and Virginia" with

him on his journey to the tropical regions, admiringly reads the book

aloud to his travelling companions in the midst of the nature which it

describes, and refers with gratitude to what he owes to Saint-Pierre.

Humboldt influences Oersted who in his turn profoundly influences

Andersen. The sympathetic contemplation of nature operates on the

scientific, which in its turn operates on the poetic. Chateaubriand,

in his highly-colored brilliant manner, depicts a nature closely

related to the one which Saint-Pierre has received in his peaceful,

nature-worshipping soul. Steffens, in his celebrated lectures, first

introduces to Denmark the natural system of nature. About the year

1831, at the period, therefore, when Andersen's nursery stories

originated, there is founded in England (the land which took the lead

in bringing forward the child in literature) the first society for the

prevention of cruelty to animals. Branches are established in France

and Germany, where societies spring up in Munich, Dresden, Berlin and

Leipsic. Kierkegaard in his "Enten--Eller" (Either--Or) turns the

establishment of these societies into ridicule; he sees in it but a

phenomenon of the tendency to form associations, which in his eyes is

a proof of the lamentable condition of individual personality. If we

return now to Denmark, we will observe that the national landscape

painting, with its literal imitation of nature, takes its decisive

upward soaring flight at precisely the time when nursery stories are

devised. Skovgaard paints the lake in which "the ugly duckling" went

splashing about, and at the same time--as by a miracle--the large city

becomes too small for the citizen of Copenhagen. He finds it wearisome

to gaze the whole summer long on its paving-stones, its many houses

and roofs, he longs to see a larger bit of the sky, he repairs to the

country, lays out gardens, learns to distinguish barley from rye,

becomes a rustic for the summer months. One and the same idea, the

recovered idea of nature, extends its influence through all the spheres

of life, just as the water of an upland stream flowing downward is

distributed through a series of different basins. Could an idea produce

a more singular effect, or a more suggestive one for contemplation?

During the past century there has been nothing similar. We may, as has

been wittily remarked, rummage through Voltaire's "Henriade," without

finding a single blade of grass; there is no fodder for the horses in

it. We may turn over the leaves of Baggesen's poems, without stumbling

on a single description of nature, used even as an accessory. What a

leap from this poetry to such poetry as that of Christian Winther,

in which the human figures are merely used as accessories and the

landscape is almost universally the main point of interest, and how far

removed was the world, even in his day, from so much as dreaming of

a poetry like that of Andersen, in which animals and plants fill the

place of man, indeed, almost make man superfluous![4]

Now what is there in plants, in animals, in the child, so attractive to

Andersen? He loves the child because his affectionate heart draws him

to the little ones, the weak and helpless ones, of whom it is allowable

to speak with compassion, with tender sympathy, and because when he

devotes such sentiments to a hero,--as in "Only a Fiddler,"--he is

derided for it (compare with Kierkegaard's criticism),[5] but when he

dedicates them to a child, he finds the natural resting-place for his

mood. It is owing to his genuine democratic feeling for the lowly and

neglected that Andersen, himself a child of the people, continually

introduces into his nursery stories (as Dickens, in his novels), forms

from the poorer classes of society, "simple folk," yet endowed with

the true nobility of the soul. As examples of this may be mentioned

the washerwoman in "Little Tuk" and in "Good-for-Nothing," the old

maid in "From a Window in Vartou," the watchman and his wife in "The

Old Street-Lamp," the poor apprentice boy in "Under the Willow-Tree,"

and the poor tutor in "Everything in its Right Place." The poor are as

defenseless as the child. Furthermore, Andersen loves the child, because

he is able to portray it, not so much in the direct psychologic way of

the romance,--he is by no means a direct psychologist,--as indirectly,

by transporting himself with a bound into the child's world, and he

acts as though no other course were possible. Rarely, therefore, has

charge been more unjust than that of Kierkegaard when he accused

Andersen of being unable to depict children; but when Kierkegaard, who,

moreover, as a literary critic combines extraordinary merits with great

lacks (especially in point of historic survey), takes occasion, in

making this criticism, to remark that in Andersen's romances the child

is always described "through another," what he says is true. It is no

longer true, however, the moment Andersen, in the nursery story, puts

himself in the place of the child and ceases to recognize "another." He

seldom introduces the child into his nursery stories as taking part in

the action and conversation. He does it most frequently in the charming

little collection "A Picture-Book without Pictures," where more than

anywhere else he permits the child to speak with the entire simplicity

of its nature. In such brief, naïve child-utterances as those cited

in it there is much pleasure and entertainment. Every one can recall

anecdotes of a similar character. I remember once taking a little

girl to a place of amusement, in order to hear the Tyrolese Alpine

singers. She listened very attentively to their songs. Afterward, when

we were walking in the garden in front of the pavilion, we met some

of the singers in their costumes. The little maiden clung timidly to

me, and asked in astonishment: "Are they allowed to go about free?"

Andersen has no equal in the narration of anecdotes of this kind.[6]

in his nursery stories we find sundry illustrations of the fact, as in

the charming words of the child in "The Old House," when it gives the

man the pewter soldiers that he might not be "so very, very lonely,"

and a few kind answers in "Little Ida's Flowers." Yet his child forms

are comparatively rare. The most noteworthy ones are little Hjalmar,

little Tuk, Kay and Gerda, the unhappy, vain Karen in "The Red Shoes,"

a dismal but well-written story, the little girl with the matches and

the little girl in "A Great Sorrow," finally Ib and Christine, the

children in "Under the Willow-Tree." Besides these real children there

are some ideal ones, the little fairy-like Thumbling and the little

wild robber-maiden, undoubtedly Andersen's freshest child creation,

the masterly portrayal of whose wild nature forms a most felicitous

contrast to the many good, fair-haired and tame children of fiction.

We see her before us as she really is, fantastic and true, her and her

reindeer, whose neck she "tickles every evening with her sharp knife."

We have seen how sympathy with child-nature led to sympathy with the

animal which is doubly a child, and to sympathy with the plants, the

clouds, the winds, which are doubly nature. What attracts Andersen to

the impersonal being is the impersonal element in his own nature, what

leads him to the wholly unconscious is merely the direct consequence

of his sympathy. The child, young though it may be, is born old; each

child is a whole generation older than its father, a civilization of

ages has stamped its inherited impress on the little four-year-old

child of the metropolis. How many conflicts, how many endeavors, how

many sorrows have refined the countenance of such a child, making

the features sensitive and precocious! It is different with animals.

Look at the swan, the hen, the cat! They eat, sleep, live, and dream

undisturbed, as in ages gone by. The child already begins to display

evil instincts. We, who are seeking what is unconscious, what is naïve,

are glad to descend the ladder that leads to the regions where there

is no more guilt, no more crime, where responsibility, repentance,

restless striving and passion cease, where nothing of an evil nature

exists except through a substitution of which we are but partially

conscious, and which, therefore, robs our sympathy of half its sting.

An author like Andersen, who has so great a repugnance to beholding

what is cruel and coarse in its nakedness, who is so deeply impressed

by anything of the kind that he dare not relate it, but recoils a

hundred times in his works from some wanton or outrageous deed with

the maidenly expression, "We cannot bear to think of it!" Such an

author feels content and at home in a world where everything that

appears like egotism, violence, coarseness, vileness, and persecution,

can only be called so in a figurative way. It is highly characteristic

that almost all the animals which appear in Andersen's nursery stories

are tame animals, domestic animals. This is, in the first place, a

symptom of the same gentle and idyllic tendency which results in making

almost all Andersen's children so well-behaved. It is, furthermore,

a proof of his fidelity to nature, in consequence of which he is

so reluctant to describe anything with which he is not thoroughly

familiar. It is, finally, an interesting phenomenon with reference to

the use he makes of the animals, for domestic animals are no longer

the pure product of nature; they remind us, through ideal association,

of much that is human; and, moreover, through long intercourse with

humanity and long education they have acquired something human, which

in a high degree supports and furthers the effort to personify them.

These cats and hens, these ducks and turkeys, these storks and swans,

these mice and that unmentionable insect "with maiden's blood in

its body," offer many props to the nursery story. They hold direct

intercourse with human beings; all that they lack is articulate speech,

and there are human beings with articulate speech who are unworthy

of it, and do not deserve their speech. Let us, therefore, give the

animals the power of speech, and harbor them in our midst.

On the almost exclusive limitation to the domestic animal, a double

characteristic of this nursery story depends. First of all, the

significant result that Andersen's animals, whatever else they may be,

are never beastly, never brutal. Their sole faults are that they are

stupid, shallow, and old-fogyish. Andersen does not depict the animal

in the human being, but the human in the animal. In the second place,

there is a certain freshness of tone about them, a certain fulness of

feeling, certain strong and bold, enthusiastic, and vigorous outbursts

which are never found in the quarters of the domestic animal. Many

beautiful, many humorous and entertaining things are spoken of in

these stories, but a companion piece to the fable of the wolf and the

dog--the wolf who observed the traces of the chain on the neck of

the dog and preferred his own freedom to the protection afforded the

house dog--will not be found in them. The wild nightingale, in whom

poetry is personified, is a tame and loyal bird. "I have seen tears

in the Emperor's eyes; that is the real treasure to me," it says. "An

emperor's tears have a peculiar power!" Take even the swan, that noble,

royal bird in the masterly story, "The Ugly Duckling," which for the

sake of its cat and its hen alone cannot be sufficiently admired,--how

does it end? Alas! as a domestic animal. This is one of the points

where it becomes difficult to pardon the great author. O poet! we

feel tempted to exclaim, since it was in your power to grasp such a

thought, to conceive and execute such a poem, how could you, with your

inspiration, your pride, have the heart to permit the swan to end thus!

Let him die if needs must be! That would be tragic and great. Let him

spread his wings and impetuously soar through the air, rejoicing in

his beauty and his strength! let him sink down on the bosom of some

solitary and beautiful forest lake! That is free and delightful.

Anything would be better than this conclusion: "Into the garden came

little children, who threw bread and com into the water. And they ran

to their father and mother, and bread and cake were thrown into the

water; and they all said, 'The new one is the most beautiful of all!

so young and handsome!' and the old swans bowed their heads before

him." Let them bow, but let us not forget that there is something which

is worth more than the recognition of all the old swans and geese and

ducks, worth more than receiving bread-crumbs and cake as a garden

bird,--the power of silently gliding over the waters, and free flight!

Andersen prefers the bird to the four-footed animal. More birds

than mammals find place with him; for the bird is gentler than the

four-footed beast, is nearer to the plant. The nightingale is his

emblem, the swan his ideal, the stork his declared favorite. It is

natural that the stork, that remarkable bird which brings children into

the world,--the stork, that droll, long-legged, wandering, beloved,

yearningly expected and joyfully greeted bird, should become his

idolized symbol and frontispiece.

Yet plants are preferred by him to birds. Of all organic beings, plants

are those which appear most frequently in the nursery story. For in the

vegetable world alone are peace and harmony found to reign. Plants,

too, resemble a child, but a child who is perpetually asleep. There is

no unrest in this domain, no action, no sorrow, and no care. Here life

is a calm, regular growth, and death but a painless fading away. Here

the easily excited, lively poetic sympathy suffers less than anywhere

else. Here there is nothing to jar and assail the delicate nerves

of the poet. Here he is at home; here he paints his Arabian Nights'

Entertainments beneath a burdock leaf. Every grade of emotion may be

experienced in the realm of plants,--melancholy at the sight of the

felled trunk, fulness of strength at the sight of the swelling buds,

anxiety at the fragrance of the strong jasmine. Many thoughts may flit

through our brain as we follow the history of the development of the

flax, or the brief honor of the fir-tree on Christmas evening; but we

feel as absolutely free as though we were dealing with comedy, for

the image is so fleeting that it vanishes the moment we attempt to

render it permanent. Sympathy and agitation gently touch our minds, but

they do not ruffle us, they neither rouse nor oppress us. A poem about

a plant sets free twofold the sympathy to which it lays claim; once

because we know that the poem is pure fiction, and again because we

know the plant to be merely a symbol. Nowhere has the poet with greater

delicacy invested plants with speech than in "The Fir-Tree," "Little

Ida's Flowers," and in "The Snow Queen." In the last named story, every

flower tells its own tale. Let us listen to what the Tiger-lily says:

"Hearest thou not the drum? Bum! bum! those are the only two tones.

Always bum! bum! Hark to the plaintive song of the old women! to the

call of the priests! The Hindoo woman in her long robe stands upon the

funeral pile; the flames rise around her and her dead husband, but the

Hindoo woman thinks on the living one in the surrounding circle; on him

whose eyes bum hotter than the flames; on him, the fire of whose eyes

pierces her heart more than the flames which soon will bum her body to

ashes. Can the heart's flame die in the flame of the funeral pile?"

--"I do not understand that at all," said little Gerda.--"That is my

story," said the Tiger-lily.

Yet a step farther, and the fancy of the poet appropriates all

inanimate objects, colonizes and annexes everything, large and small,

an old house and an old clothes-press ("The Shepherdess and the Chimney

Sweep"), the top and the ball, the darning needle and the false collar,

and the great dough men with bitter almonds for their hearts. After

it has grasped the physiognomy of the inanimate, his fancy identifies

itself with the formless all, sails with the moon across the sky,

whistles and tells stories like the wind, looks on the snow, on sleep,

night, death, and the dream as persons.

The determining element in this poetic mind was, then, sympathy

with all that is childlike, and, through the representation of such

deep-seated, elementary, and constant spiritual conditions as those of

the child, the productions of this imagination are raised above the

waves of time, spread beyond the boundaries of their native land and

become the common property of the divers classes of society. The time

when genius was looked upon as a meteor fallen from the skies, has

long since passed away; now it is known that genius, as all else that

comes from nature, has its antecedents and its conditions, that it

holds relations of general dependence with its epoch, is an organ for

the ideas of the age. Sympathy for the child is only a phenomenon of

the sympathy of the nineteenth century for whatever is naïve. Love of

the unconscious is a phenomenon of the love of nature. In society, in

science, in poetry and in art, nature and the child had become objects

of veneration; in the realms of poetry, art, science, and society,

there takes place a reciprocal action. If there arise, therefore,

a poet whose affections are attracted to the child, whose fancy is

allured by the animal, by plants, and by nature, he dares follow his

impulses, he gains courage to give utterance to his talent, because a

hundred thousand mute voices about him strengthen him in his calling,

because the tide he believes himself to be stemming, rocks him gently

as it bears him onward to his goal.

Thus it will be seen we can study the poet's art by studying the ideas

which are his inspiration. To contemplate these in their origin and

their ramifications, in their abstract essence and their concrete

power, is, therefore, no superfluous act, when it becomes our task to

make a study of individual poetic fancies. For the bare idea cannot

make poetry; but neither can the poet make poetry without the idea

and without the surroundings which give it its impetus. About the

fortunate poet there gathers a multitude who, in a less felicitous way,

are working in his own vein; and about this multitude the people swarm

as mute but interested fellow-laborers. For genius is like a burning

reflector, which collects and unites the scattered rays of light.

It never stands alone. It is merely the noblest tree in the forest,

the highest ear in the sheaf, and it is first recognized in its real

significance and in its true attitude when it is seen in its rightful

place.