During a brief visit to Copenhagen in 1958 to spend some time at the Niels Bohr Institute, I took a walk to the harbor where I saw the beautiful statute Den Lille Havrue (The Little Mermaid). Like scores of others there, I took a picture of the famous icon inspired by a tale by Hans Christian Andersen. There she was seated sadly and serenely on multiple rocks, almost life-like. She had been seen and admired by millions since her creation in 1913: the year Bohr proposed his theory of the hydrogen atom.
At the harbor I chanced to talk to a Danish student named Karen Thomsen who was so struck by my admiration of that statute that she said I should make a trip to Odense, the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, where her parents were living. So it was that one August morning in 1958, I went to Odense, the birthplace of the great Danish fabulist.
Mr. Jens Thomsen, Karen’s father, welcomed me at the platform of the Odense station and wanted to carry my small suitcase to his car. I refused: the idea of an older person, and that too a Pastor in the local church, carrying my suitcase was unacceptable to me.
As we drove, Mr. Thomsen told me that Odense was the third largest city in Denmark, near the Odense Fjord. The city was Odin’s vi which meant The Sanctuary of Woden, the Norse god of war and death. He and his brothers Vli and Ve helped their father Bor slay the demon [rakshasa] Ymir. The godly brothers made Man and Woman, night and day, sun and moon. I was reminded that every culture has its lore, and this was a Norse one.
We stopped at the Town Hall which had been renovated a couple of years earlier with a big concert hall with paintings of abstract art, as well as a list of some celebrity visitors.
Then we went to St. Canute’s cathedral where Knud (St. Canute, the Holy patron saint of Denmark) and his men were killed (ç 1088) during an insurrection. The crypt reportedly enclosing the skeletons of King Knud and his brother is still there.
We walked through some old quarters of the town and reached the garden where Hans Christian Andersen had worked. Here I heard about this eccentric son of a poor shoe-maker, who created toy theaters. When he lost his father at a tender age, he wanted to go to Copenhagen. Only when a soothsayer told Hans’s mother that he was destined to become the pride of Denmark did she let him go. In Copenhagen, Hans tried unsuccessfully to be in the opera, and eventually wrote some of the greatest tales that stir our longing for fantasies.
We entered the home, now a museum, of the great story-teller, on Hans Jensens Straede. His writings, letters, books, and other memorabilia are all preserved there. I looked into the translations of his books in several languages, including Bengali. I bought a biography of the immortal Danish writer and a collection of his tales.
From there we drove to the Thomsen residence where I met Mrs. Thomsen who had prepared a nice lunch for us. We discussed my impressions of Copenhagen, and talked about Hans Christian Andersen. Later that night, I read some of the stories: The story of the poor girl with no shoes to wear for winter who was eventually carried by an angel to a church; the duck that was hatched from a huge egg that looked so ugly it was ostracized, but eventually became as lovely as a swan; the emperor who was fooled into believing he was wearing the finest linen until a child pointed out that he had no clothes on; the steadfast Tin Soldier, the Tinder Box, and more. It is amazing how he brings in simple things like bird and doll, cat and cloud in his stories. His tales brim with compassion for the less fortunate and also with an uplifting optimism so direly needed in every age.
Mr. Thomsen told me that the movie Hans Christian Andersen, starring Danny Kaye, had been filmed right there in Odense. He added that the Danish people did not like “the Yankee version” of their national hero. But one result of the movie was that they started getting hundreds of tourists to Denmark and to Odense.
That night I composed in my journal the following verse:
Andersen was the one who made
This tale about the Little Mermaid:
She loved a prince she had rescued,
Became half-human and him pursued.
At first this made her oh so glad
But she lost her voice, which made her sad.
It was sadder still for her to find
That the prince had ’nother woman in mind.
So she went back home in the sea
With waves and waters and again was free.
The humans that God creates in flesh and blood die in a few decades, but the characters created by poets and writers take on a permanence that far exceeds human longevity. They never age with the passage of time. They can speak to us in more than one language. Often they also bring more cheer and chuckle, more enjoyment and entertainment than the life-stories of millions of mere mortals. So it has been with the creations of Hans Christian Andersen, whether it is Karen with her red shoes, the Show Queen, or the Tin Soldier.
Spurts of Thought 