Translated from the German of Hans Andersen.
‘How astonishingly cold it is! My body is cracking all over!’ said the
Snow-man. ‘The wind is really cutting one’s very life out! And how that
fiery thing up there glares!’ He meant the sun, which was just setting.
‘It sha’n’t make me blink, though, and I shall keep quite cool and
collected.’
Instead of eyes he had two large three-cornered pieces of slate in his
head; his mouth consisted of an old rake, so that he had teeth as well.
He was born amidst the shouts and laughter of the boys, and greeted by
the jingling bells and cracking whips of the sledges.
The sun went down, the full moon rose, large, round, clear and
beautiful, in the dark blue sky.
‘There it is again on the other side!’ said the Snow-man, by which he
meant the sun was appearing again. ‘I have become quite accustomed to
its glaring. I hope it will hang there and shine, so that I may be
able to see myself. I wish I knew, though, how one ought to see about
changing one’s position. I should very much like to move about. If I
only could, I would glide up and down the ice there, as I saw the boys
doing; but somehow or other, I don’t know how to run.’
‘Bow-wow!’ barked the old yard-dog; he was rather hoarse and couldn’t
bark very well. His hoarseness came on when he was a house-dog and used
to lie in front of the stove. ‘The sun will soon teach you to run! I saw
that last winter with your predecessor, and farther back still with his
predecessors! They have all run away!’
‘I don’t understand you, my friend,’ said the Snow-man. ‘That thing up
there is to teach me to run?’ He meant the moon. ‘Well, it certainly did
run just now, for I saw it quite plainly over there, and now here it is
on this side.’
‘You know nothing at all about it,’ said the yard-dog. ‘Why, you have
only just been made. The thing you see there is the moon; the other
thing you saw going down the other side was the sun. He will come up
again tomorrow morning, and will soon teach you how to run away down the
gutter. The weather is going to change; I feel it already by the pain in
my left hind-leg; the weather is certainly going to change.’
‘I can’t understand him,’ said the Snow-man; ‘but I have an idea that he
is speaking of something unpleasant. That thing that glares so, and then
disappears, the sun, as he calls it, is not my friend. I know that by
instinct.’
‘Bow-wow!’ barked the yard-dog, and walked three times round himself,
and then crept into his kennel to sleep. The weather really did change.
Towards morning a dense damp fog lay over the whole neighbourhood; later
on came an icy wind, which sent the frost packing. But when the sun
rose, it was a glorious sight. The trees and shrubs were covered with
rime, and looked like a wood of coral, and every branch was thick with
long white blossoms. The most delicate twigs, which are lost among the
foliage in summer-time, came now into prominence, and it was like a
spider’s web of glistening white. The lady-birches waved in the wind;
and when the sun shone, everything glittered and sparkled as if it were
sprinkled with diamond dust, and great diamonds were lying on the snowy
carpet.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ exclaimed a girl who was walking with a young
man in the garden. They stopped near the Snow-man, and looked at the
glistening trees. ‘Summer cannot show a more beautiful sight,’ she said,
with her eyes shining.
‘And one can’t get a fellow like this in summer either,’ said the young
man, pointing to the Snow-man. ‘He’s a beauty!’
The girl laughed, and nodded to the Snow-man, and then they both danced
away over the snow.
‘Who were those two?’ asked the Snow-man of the yard-dog. ‘You have been
in this yard longer than I have. Do you know who they are?’
‘Do I know them indeed?’ answered the yard-dog. ‘She has often stroked
me, and he has given me bones. I don’t bite either of them!’
‘But what are they?’ asked the Snow-man.
‘Lovers!’ replied the yard-dog. ‘They will go into one kennel and gnaw
the same bone!’
‘Are they the same kind of beings that we are?’ asked the Snow-man.
‘They are our masters,’ answered the yard-dog. ‘Really people who have
only been in the world one day know very little.’ That’s the conclusion
I have come to. Now I have age and wisdom; I know everyone in the house,
and I can remember a time when I was not lying here in a cold kennel.
Bow-wow!’
‘The cold is splendid,’ said the Snow-man. ‘Tell me some more. But don’t
rattle your chain so, it makes me crack!’
‘Bow-wow!’ barked the yard-dog. ‘They used to say I was a pretty little
fellow; then I lay in a velvet-covered chair in my master’s house. My
mistress used to nurse me, and kiss and fondle me, and call me her dear,
sweet little Alice! But by-and-by I grew too big, and I was given to the
housekeeper, and I went into the kitchen. You can see into it from where
you are standing; you can look at the room in which I was master, for so
I was when I was with the housekeeper. Of course it was a smaller place
than upstairs, but it was more comfortable, for I wasn’t chased about
and teased by the children as I had been before. My food was just as
good, or even better. I had my own pillow, and there was a stove there,
which at this time of year is the most beautiful thing in the world. I
used to creep right under that stove. Ah me! I often dream of that stove
still! Bow-wow!’
‘Is a stove so beautiful?’ asked the Snow-man. ‘Is it anything like me?’
‘It is just the opposite of you! It is coal-black, and has a long neck
with a brass pipe. It eats firewood, so that fire spouts out of its
mouth. One has to keep close beside it-quite underneath is the nicest of
all. You can see it through the window from where you are standing.’
And the Snow-man looked in that direction, and saw a smooth polished
object with a brass pipe. The flicker from the fire reached him across
the snow. The Snow-man felt wonderfully happy, and a feeling came over
him which he could not express; but all those who are not snow-men know
about it.
‘Why did you leave her?’ asked the Snow-man. He had a feeling that such
a being must be a lady. ‘How could you leave such a place?’
‘I had to!’ said the yard-dog. ‘They turned me out of doors, and chained
me up here. I had bitten the youngest boy in the leg, because he took
away the bone I was gnawing; a bone for a bone, I thought! But they were
very angry, and from that time I have been chained here, and I have lost
my voice. Don’t you hear how hoarse I am? Bow-wow! I can’t speak like
other dogs. Bow-wow! That was the end of happiness!’
The Snow-man, however, was not listening to him any more; he was looking
into the room where the housekeeper lived, where the stove stood on its
four iron legs, and seemed to be just the same size as the Snow-man.
‘How something is cracking inside me!’ he said. ‘Shall I never be able
to get in there? It is certainly a very innocent wish, and our innocent
wishes ought to be fulfilled. I must get there, and lean against the
stove, if I have to break the window first!’
‘You will never get inside there!’ said the yard-dog; ‘and if you were
to reach the stove you would disappear. Bow-wow!’
‘I’m as good as gone already!’ answered the Snow-man. ‘I believe I’m
breaking up!’
The whole day the Snow-man looked through the window; towards dusk the
room grew still more inviting; the stove gave out a mild light, not at
all like the moon or even the sun; no, as only a stove can shine, when
it has something to feed upon. When the door of the room was open, it
flared up-this was one of its peculiarities; it flickered quite red upon
the Snow-man’s white face.
‘I can’t stand it any longer!’ he said. ‘How beautiful it looks with its
tongue stretched out like that!’
It was a long night, but the Snow-man did not find it so; there he
stood, wrapt in his pleasant thoughts, and they froze, so that he
cracked.
Next morning the panes of the kitchen window were covered with ice, and
the most beautiful ice-flowers that even a snow-man could desire, only
they blotted out the stove. The window would not open; he couldn’t see
the stove which he thought was such a lovely lady. There was a cracking
and cracking inside him and all around; there was just such a frost as a
snow-man would delight in. But this Snow-man was different: how could he
feel happy?
‘Yours is a bad illness for a Snow-man!’ said the yard-dog. ‘I also
suffered from it, but I have got over it. Bow-wow!’ he barked. ‘The
weather is going to change!’ he added.
The weather did change. There came a thaw.
When this set in the Snow-man set off. He did not say anything, and he
did not complain, and those are bad signs.
One morning he broke up altogether. And lo! where he had stood there
remained a broomstick standing upright, round which the boys had built
him!
‘Ah! now I understand why he loved the stove,’ said the yard-dog.
‘That is the raker they use to clean out the stove! The Snow-man had a
stove-raker in his body! That’s what was the matter with him! And now
it’s all over with him! Bow-wow!’
And before long it was all over with the winter too! ‘Bow-wow!’ barked
the hoarse yard-dog.
But the young girl sang:
Woods, your bright green garments don!
Willows, your woolly gloves put on!
Lark and cuckoo, daily sing-- February has brought the spring!
My heart joins in your song so sweet;
Come out, dear sun, the world to greet!
And no one thought of the Snow-man.