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An unsurpassed storyteller of all ages and peoples. But at the same time, his character was very nasty. We have collected the most interesting moments from the life of the writer.

1 Hans's childhood

April 2, 1805 in a small town located on one of the Danish islets - Fionse, was born Hans Christian Andersen... Grandfather Andersen, old man Anders Hansen, a woodcarver, was considered insane in the city, because he carved strange figures of demihumans - half animals with wings. Interestingly, from childhood, Andersen was attracted to writing, although he studied poorly at school, and until the end of his life he wrote with mistakes.

2 friendship with Prince Frits

In Denmark, there is a legend about the royal origin of Andersen. This is because in his early autobiography the author himself wrote about how he played with Prince Frits, later - King Frederick VII, and he had no friends among the street boys. Only the prince. Andersen's friendship with Frits, according to the storyteller's fantasy, continued in adulthood, until the latter's death, and, according to the writer himself, he was the only one, with the exception of relatives, who was admitted to the coffin of the deceased.

3 sickness and fear

Andersen was tall, thin and stooped. The storyteller's character was also very unpleasant and disturbing. His whole life was filled with phobias: he was afraid of robberies, dogs, losing his passport; he was afraid to die in the fire, so he always carried a rope with him so that during a fire he could get out through the window.

All his life he suffered from toothache, and seriously believed that his fertility as an author depends on the number of teeth in his mouth.

He was afraid of poisoning - when the Scandinavian children chipped in for a gift to their beloved storyteller and sent the world's largest box of chocolates, in horror he refused the present and sent it to their nieces.

4 women writer

From the above information, it is clear why Hans Christian Andersen did not have success with women - but he did not strive for it either. However, in 1840 in Copenhagen, he met a girl named Jenny Lind.

He dedicated poetry to her and wrote fairy tales for her. She addressed him exclusively as "brother" or "child", although he was 40, and she was only 26 years old. In 1852, Lind married a young pianist Otto Holshmidt... It is believed that in old age, Andersen became even more extravagant: spending a lot of time in brothels, he did not touch the girls who worked there, but simply talked to them.

More recently, Andersen's hitherto unknown fairy tale was discovered in Denmark called "Greasy candle"... The manuscript was discovered among papers in the archives of the Danish city of Odense by a local historian. Experts have confirmed the authenticity of the work, which may have been written by a famous storyteller during his school years.

6. Translation of fairy tales was cut

IN Soviet Russia foreign authors were often published in an abridged and revised form. Andersen's fairy tales suffered the same fate, they were published in retellings, and thin collections were printed instead of thick collections of his works and fairy tales. The works of the world famous storyteller were performed by Soviet translators, who were forced to either soften or remove any mention of God, quotations from the Bible, reflections on religious topics.

It is believed that Andersen does not have any non-religious things at all, it is just that somewhere it is noticeable with the naked eye, and in some fairy tales the religious subtext is hidden. For example, in the Soviet translation of one of his fairy tales there is a phrase: "Everything was in this house: wealth and arrogant gentlemen, but the owner was not in the house." Although the original says: "but was not in the house of the Lord." And take the "Snow Queen", - says Nina Fedorova, renowned translator from German and Scandinavian languages"Do you know that Gerda, when she is afraid, prays and reads psalms, which, of course, the Soviet reader did not even suspect."

7 Pushkin's autograph

Andersen was the owner of the autograph Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin... It is known that, being a younger contemporary of the great Russian poet, Andersen asked very much to get Pushkin's autograph for him, which was delivered to him. Andersen carefully kept the "Elegy" signed by the poet in 1816 until the end of his life, and now it is in the collection of the Danish Royal Library.

8 Andersengrad

In 1980, not far from St. Petersburg, in the town of Sosnovy Bor, a children's play complex Andersengrad was opened. The opening was timed to coincide with the 175th anniversary of the famous storyteller. On the territory of the children's town, stylized as medieval Western European architecture, there are various buildings that belong to Andersen's tales. Throughout the town there is a children's road. In 2008, a monument to the Little Mermaid was erected in the town, and in 2010 - to the Tin Soldier.

9 children's book day

17.05.2018

"The Little Mermaid", "The New Attire of the King", "Flame", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" - which of us has not read these fairy tales? Any child without hesitation will call the name of the author - Hans Christian Andersen. To better understand the writer's works, to feel his soul, let's open his biography - what Interesting Facts from the life of Andersen, this storyteller of all times and peoples, do we know?

Hans Christian was born into a very poor family, his father was a shoemaker, and his mother was a laundress.
It is curious that the writer himself firmly believed all his life: his real father is the king, who got rid of the illegitimate child, giving him up to a foster family.
Hans did not want to go to school: he was frightened by the cruel methods of treating students. Then the mother sent the child to a Jewish school, where physical ways impacts, "driving in knowledge" were not applied.
When Hans was 14 years old, he went to Copenhagen. The boy had a burning dream: to become rich and famous.
The teenager had a hard time in the capital. He lived in poverty, did not shy away from any work.
Young Hans Christian was admitted to the Royal Theater. But, distinguished by an unprepossessing appearance (the young man was extremely tall and lanky), he remained on the sidelines. At the same time, the future writer himself believed that he had an outstanding acting talent.
Andersen managed to get a royal scholarship, for which he continued his education. This only strengthened him in the idea that his father was superior person the state.
State money was allocated to the young Andersen for travel. He received a certain amount for a cycle of verses about Denmark, presented to His Majesty. And the writer went abroad. He was warmly received by Paris, Rome, London and other capitals of Europe. In general, he traveled all his life, made 29 trips with rich programs.
On his travels, the writer met the most talented people of his time. So, he personally knew Hugo, Dumas, Balzac, Heine.
Andersen had a book autographed by Pushkin. He was very sensitive to this autograph, kept it all his life.
The writer had many phobias. For example, he was afraid of dogs, and also feared any cuts on the skin, thinking that they could lead to blood poisoning and death. He was a real hypochondriac.
At the same time, Andersen was distinguished by activity, loved movement, rode well and swam well.
For some reason, the writer believed that he could be buried alive. To prevent this terrible event, he put a note next to his bed every evening: "I am alive!"
Andersen wrote not only fairy tales. His creative heritage includes poems, travel sketches, as well as a libretto for operas. But he gained fame almost exclusively as a storyteller.
Andersen hated being called a children's storyteller. He said that his fairy tales could be read by an adult audience.
Hans Christian fell in love several times, but never married.
When Andersen felt the approach of death (at the age of about 70), he came to a friend - the composer Hartman - with a request to compose a march for the funeral. At the same time, Andersen noted as a special wish: the rhythm should be fine-tuned to the child's step. The writer believed that many children would come to his funeral.

Andersen's tales are sad rather than funny. He does not spare either his heroes or his little readers and often saves a sad end for them. Perhaps that is why it was not immediately perceived by the reading public, accustomed to completely different works. But over time, glory came and does not fade to this day. Andersen teaches the little reader to think and empathize. His fairy tales are life as it is, without embellishment.

There are few people in the world who are not familiar with the name of the great writer Hans Christian Andersen. More than one generation has grown up on the works of this master of the pen, whose works have been translated into 150 languages of the world. In almost every home, parents read to their children before bedtime fairy tales about the Princess and the Pea, Eli and little Thumbelina, whom the field mouse tried to marry off a greedy mole neighbor. Or the children watch films and cartoons about the Little Mermaid or the girl Gerda, who dreamed of freeing Kai from the cold hands of the callous Snow Queen.

The world described by Andersen is amazing and beautiful. But along with magic and flight of fantasies, there is a philosophical thought in his fairy tales, because the writer devoted his work to both children and adults. Many critics agree that under the cover of Andersen's naivety and simple style of storytelling lies a deep meaning, the task of which is to give the reader the necessary food for thought.

Childhood and youth

Hans Christian Andersen (generally accepted Russian-language spelling, Hans Christian would be more correct) was born on April 2, 1805 in the third largest city in Denmark - Odense. Some biographers claimed that Andersen was the illegitimate son of the Danish king Christian VIII, but in fact the future writer grew up and was raised in a poor family. His father, who was also called Hans, worked as a shoemaker and barely made ends meet, and his mother, Anna Marie Andersdatter, worked as a laundress and was an illiterate woman.

The head of the family believed that his ancestry began from a noble dynasty: the paternal grandmother told her grandson that their family belonged to a privileged social class, but these speculations were not confirmed and were challenged over time. There are many rumors about Andersen's relatives, which to this day excite the minds of readers. For example, they say that the grandfather of the writer - a carver by profession - was considered insane in the town, because he made obscure figures of people with wings, similar to angels, out of wood.

Hans Sr. introduced the child to literature. He read to his offspring "1001 Nights" - traditional Arabian fairy tales. Therefore, every evening little Hans plunged into the magical stories of Scheherazade. Also, father and son loved to take walks in the park in Odense and even visited the theater, which made an indelible impression on the boy. In 1816, the writer's father died.

The real world was an ordeal for Hans, he grew up an emotional, nervous and sensitive child. In such a state of mind of Andersen, the local bully, who simply handed out cuffs, and the teachers are to blame, because in those troubled times, punishment with rods was a common thing, so the future writer considered school an unbearable torture.

When Andersen flatly refused to attend classes, the parents assigned the young man to a charity school for poor children. After receiving his primary education, Hans became an apprentice weaver, then retrained as a tailor, and later worked in a cigarette factory.

Andersen's relations with colleagues in the workshop, to put it mildly, did not work out. He was constantly embarrassed by vulgar jokes and narrow-minded jokes of the workers, and once, under a general cackle, Hans pulled his pants down to make sure he was a boy or a girl. And all because in childhood the writer had a thin voice and often sang during the shift. This event made the future writer finally withdraw into himself. The boy's only friends were wooden dolls once made by his father.

When Hans was 14 years old, in search of a better life, he moved to Copenhagen, which at that time was considered "Scandinavian Paris". Anna Marie thought that Andersen would leave for the capital of Denmark for a short time, so she let her beloved son go with a light heart. Hans left his father's house because he dreamed of becoming famous, wanted to learn the craft of acting and play on the stage of the theater in classical productions. It is worth saying that Hans was a lanky young man with a long nose and limbs, for which he received the offensive nicknames "stork" and "lamppost".

Andersen was also teased as a "play writer" as a child, because in the boy's house there was a toy theater with rag "actors". A diligent young man with an amusing appearance gave the impression of an ugly duckling who was admitted to the Royal Theater out of pity, and not because he was a master of soprano. On the stage of the theater, Hans played secondary roles. But soon his voice began to break, so his classmates, who considered Andersen primarily a poet, advised young man concentrate on literature.

Jonas Kollin, a Danish statesman who was in charge of finances during the reign of Frederick VI, was very fond of the unlikely young man and persuaded the king to pay for the education of the young writer.

Andersen studied at the prestigious schools of Slagelse and Elsinore (where he sat at the same desk with students who were 6 years younger than himself) at the expense of the treasury, although he was not a zealous student: Hans never mastered literacy and made multiple spelling and punctuation mistakes all his life in a letter. Later, the storyteller recalled that he dreamed of his student years in nightmares, because the rector constantly criticized the young man to smithereens, and, as you know, Andersen did not like this.

Literature

During his lifetime, Hans Christian Andersen wrote poems, stories, novels and ballads. But for all readers, his name is primarily associated with fairy tales - the master's record includes 156 works. However, Hans did not like being called a children's writer, and claimed that he wrote for both boys and girls and for adults. It got to the point that Andersen ordered that there should not be a single child on his monument, although initially the monument was supposed to be surrounded by children.

Illustration for the fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling" by Hans Christian Andersen

Hans gained recognition and fame in 1829 when he published the adventure story Walking from Holmen Canal to the eastern end of Amager. Since then, the young writer did not leave his pen and inkwell and wrote literary works one after another, including fairy tales that glorified him, in which he introduced a system of high genres. True, the novels, short stories and vaudeville were given to the author hard - at the moments of writing, as if in spite of him, a creative crisis befell him.

Illustration for the fairy tale "Wild Swans" by Hans Christian Andersen

Andersen drew inspiration from everyday life. In his opinion, everything is beautiful in this world: a flower petal, a small bug, and a spool of thread. Indeed, if we recall the works of the creator, then even every galosh or pea from a pod has an amazing biography. Hans based both on his own imagination and on the motives of the folk epic, thanks to which he wrote "Flame", "Wild Swans", "Swineherd" and other stories published in the collection "Tales Told to Children" (1837).

Illustration for the fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen

Andersen loved to make protagonists of characters who are looking for a place in society. This includes Thumbelina, the Little Mermaid, and the Ugly Duckling. Such heroes evoke sympathy from the author. All of Andersen's stories from cover to cover are imbued with philosophical meaning. It is worth remembering the fairy tale "The New Dress of the King", where the emperor asks two crooks to sew him an expensive dress. However, the outfit turned out to be complicated and consisted entirely of "invisible threads". The crooks assured the customer that only fools would not see the extremely thin fabric. Thus, the king flaunts the palace in an obscene manner.

Illustration for the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen "Thumbelina"

He and his courtiers do not notice the intricate dress, but they are afraid to make themselves look fools if they admit that the ruler walks about in what his mother gave birth to. This tale began to be interpreted as a parable, and the phrase "And the king is naked!" entered the list of catch phrases. It is noteworthy that not all Andersen's tales are saturated with luck, not all of the writer's manuscripts contain the “deusexmachina” technique, when a coincidence that saves the protagonist (for example, the prince kisses the poisoned Snow White) appears out of nowhere by God's will.

Illustration for the fairy tale "The Princess and the Pea" by Hans Christian Andersen

Hans is loved by adult readers for not painting a utopian world where everyone lives happily ever after, but, for example, without a twinge of conscience, sends a staunch tin soldier into a burning fireplace, dooming a lonely man to death. In 1840, the master of the pen tried his hand at the genre of short stories-miniatures and published a collection "A book with pictures without pictures", in 1849 he wrote the novel "Two Baroness". Four years later, the book "To Be or Not to Be" was published, but all Andersen's attempts to establish himself as a novelist were in vain.

Personal life

The personal life of the failed actor, but the eminent writer Andersen, is a mystery shrouded in darkness. Rumor has it that throughout his existence, the great writer remained in the dark about intimacy with women or men. There is speculation that the great storyteller was a latent homosexual (as evidenced by his epistolary legacy), he had close friendships with friends Edward Collin, Crown Duke of Weimar and dancer Harald Schraff. Although there were three women in Hans' life, the matter did not go beyond a fleeting sympathy, let alone marriage.

Andersen's first darling was the sister of schoolmate Riborg Voigt. But the indecisive young man did not dare to talk to the object of his lust. Louise Collin - the writer's next potential fiancée - thwarted any attempts at courtship and ignored the fiery stream of love letters. An 18-year-old girl preferred a wealthy lawyer to Andersen.

In 1846, Hans fell in love with the opera singer Jenny Lind, who was nicknamed the "Swedish nightingale" because of her sonorous soprano. Andersen watched Jenny backstage and presented the beauty with poetry and generous gifts. But the charming girl was in no hurry to reciprocate the sympathy of the storyteller, but treated him like a brother. When Andersen found out that the singer had married the British composer Otto Goldschmidt, Hans plunged into depression. Cold-hearted Jenny Lind became the prototype of the Snow Queen from the writer's fairy tale of the same name.

Illustration for the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen "The Snow Queen"

In love, Andersen was unlucky. Therefore, it is not surprising that the storyteller, upon his arrival in Paris, visited the red-light districts. True, instead of racking the night away with frivolous young ladies, Hans talked with them, sharing the details of his unhappy life. When one of Andersen's acquaintances hinted to him that he was visiting brothels not for his intended purpose, the writer was surprised and looked at his interlocutor with obvious disgust.

It is also known that Andersen was a devoted admirer, talented writers met at a literary meeting hosted by the Countess of Blessington in her salon. After this meeting, Hans wrote in his diary:

"We went out onto the veranda and I was happy to speak to the living writer of England whom I love the most."

Ten years later, the storyteller returned to England and came as an uninvited guest to Dickens's house to the detriment of his family. Over time, Charles stopped correspondence with Andersen, and the Dane sincerely did not understand why all his letters remained unanswered.

Death

In the spring of 1872, Andersen fell out of bed, hitting the floor hard, due to which he received multiple injuries from which he was never able to recover.