Reflections of Kierkegaard in the Tales

of Hans Christian Andersen

By Jacob Bggild
Abstract
In the so-called Golden Age in Denmark in the nineteenth century, two writers of
present world fame, Hans Christian Andersen and Sren Kierkegaard, lived and
wrote. It is remarkable that these two writers apparently did not understand each others work and that there was very little contact between them. At least this is how
posterity has understood the (lack of) relationship between these two writers. The
general idea concerning this almost non-existent relationship is that when the young
Kierkegaard published the vicious attack upon Andersen as a novelist, From the Papers of One Still Living, it was the end of a story that might have been. In my paper, I
will argue that there is more to this picture than what immediately meets the eye. I will
attempt to demonstrate that there is an ongoing dialogue or indirect correspondence
with Kierkegaards work in some of Andersens tales and that Kierkegaards theology
and anthropology thus had more than a fleeting influence upon Andersen as a writer.
The tales of Andersen under scrutiny in my paper will be The Story of a Mother,
The Snow Queen and The Marsh Kings Daughter.

The so-called Golden Age around the middle of the nineteenth century in Denmark is a remarkable period. One of the most remarkable
things is the fact that two writers of world fame lived within the walls
of Copenhagen, a city the size of a small town at the time. Those two
writers were, of course, Hans Christian Andersen and Sren Kierkegaard. It is perhaps even more remarkable that these two writers apparently did not understand each others work and that there was very
little genuine contact between them.
Kierkegaard wrote a ruthless review of Andersens novel Only a
Fiddler (1837), From the Papers of One Still Living (1838), which
completely slated Andersen as a novelist. According to Kierkegaard,
Andersen had no philosophy of life and therefore too easily fell prey
to his own shifting moods and humours and identified with the heroes
of his novels in nave ways. Kierkegaard might have made his point in
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more gentle terms, but one is inclined to agree with him. Andersens
shortcomings as a novelist are quite obvious. Still, there might also
be some naivet in Kierkegaards critique of Andersen. Must a novelist of necessity have a philosophy of life which can be formulated
in positive terms? Not if you ask the most influential thinkers that
have written about the genre. In Theorie des Romans, Lukacs argues
that the basic mode of the novel is irony, something one would not
expect Kierkegaard to be ignorant of. And Bakhtin, of course, points
to polyphony as the fundamental feature of the genre. As a novelist,
Bakhtins Dostoyevskij is not guided by a philosophy of life and he is
not found wanting for that reason. Moreover, when Andersen does
in fact attempt to represent his philosophy of life directly in the form
of a novel, the result, To be or not to be (1857), is arguably the most
mediocre of all his novels.
Andersen, however, would hardly be consoled by this critique of
Kierkegaards conception of the ideal novelist in From the Papers of
One Still Living. And nothing indicates that he was later on able to
change the unfavourable opinion his slightly younger colleague had of
him. In the eyes of Kierkegaard, the writer of fairy tales did not fare
far better than the novelist. For example an entry in Kierkegaards
Journals from 1847 goes as follows:
Andersen can tell the fairy tale about the galoshes of good fortune but I can tell the
fairy tale about the shoe that pinches, or, more correctly, I could tell it, but because I
do not want to tell it but hide it in deep silence I am able to tell something quite different. 
Ironically, a passage from this novel indicates that Andersen was aware of the nature
of Kierkegaards work. The following passage relates the debate about this work
between two of the characters of the novel, Mr. Svane and the Jewess Esther: The
Writings of Kierkegaard, this stalactite-fount [Drypsteens-Vld] of humour and
thinking, which tendency, according to Mr. Svane, is to fashion orthodox, gothic
church arches, he, whom many a Danish woman, with the mind of a needlewoman,
claims to understand and in so doing fastens a Kierkegaardian favour on her shoulder in order to appear in livery and demonstrate her supremacy all the words of
Mr. Svane Esther could not go along with. She admired the brilliance of his mind
but fatigued from climbing the pavement of language in order to enter the temple of
thought. It was such a long way and what green sprouts she found were not fresh.
(Quoted from vol. V of Romaner og Rejseskildringer, ed. by H. Topse-Jensen, vols.
I-VII, Copenhagen 1943-44, pp.196-197, my translation.) Of course, none of there
two characters should be taken as straightforward mouthpieces of Andersen. But
it should be noted that some knowledge of Kierkegaards writings is presupposed
and that those who claim to understand him without having read him properly are
ridiculed.

JP 5:5988 / Pap. VIII 1 A 44.


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And according to his servant Kierkegaard somewhat condescendingly

added: Why should Andersen bother about literature [Poesie], he
has a gentle heart and that is all that is needed.
Well, I shall here attempt to demonstrate that Andersen, in some of
his best tales, not only relied on his gentle heart, but that he could in
fact keep up a dialogue with several of Kierkegaards works and some
of his key concepts and ideas about Christianity. The first tale I will
focus on is The Story of a Mother (1847).
The Story of a Mother
As the title makes clear, the main character of this tale is a mother.
She is, in a certain way, a fairy tale heroine, a protagonist who leaves
the security of her home in order to embark on a quest. Her quest,
however, is not typical of a fairy tale. She sets out to get back her child
who has been claimed and taken away from her by Death personified
an impossible task, one should think. But the mother is not only
certain that she can successfully obtain her goal, she is also certain
that God is on her side and that her project is therefore justified to
the highest possible degree. And this would indeed appear to be the
case as she quite miraculously especially when considering all the
obstacles she has to overcome on her way arrives at the greenhouse
of Death before he does so himself.  When she arrives, she is met by
an old woman, who asks her who has helped her to find her way there.
She answers in the following way: The Lord helped me, she said.
He is merciful, and so will you be. Where can I find my little child!
The quotation does not end with a question mark but with an exclamation mark, thus stressing that this is not a modest request but an
order.  Thus the mothers notion that God is on her side and that her
As one can gather from the following quote, Death in this piece of fiction is Gods
Gardener. In his garden he grows flowers, each one representing a human life. Every
time a person dies, Death transplants it to the Garden of Paradise.

All quotes from Andersens tales are from Jean Hersholts translations into English.
They can be found via the following address: http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/titler/vis.
html. In some cases, I have restored Andersens own punctuation and use of italics.
Whenever I have found it necessary to further modify the translation as I have in this
passage it is indicated in the footnotes.

During the discussion at the research seminar, Niels Jrgen Cappelrn questioned
whether such an act of interpretation could legitimately be based on mere punctuation. He asked other pertinent questions as well (and so did other participants during
the discussion thank you to all!), so I forgot to answer this one. Instead, my answer


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Reflections of Kierkegaard in the Tales of H.C. Andersen

71

endeavours are therefore absolutely justified is also stressed. When

Death returns shortly afterwards, she directly states that it is because
of her maternal love that she is absolutely justified. When Death asks
her how she could get to his garden so quickly she simply replies: I
am a mother! This reply initiates a rhetorical power struggle between
them. During this struggle the mother appeals directly to God:
You have no power to resist me! Death told her. But our Lord has! she said. I
only do his will! said Death, I am His gardener! I take His flowers and trees and
plant them again in the great Paradise gardens, in the unknown land. But how they
thrive, and of their life there, I dare not speak!

The mothers desperation just deepens, though. She even uses this
desperation as further justification and also acts in a more physical
way:
Give me back my child! the mother wept and implored him. Suddenly she grasped
a beautiful flower in each hand and as she clutched them she called to Death: I shall
tear out your flowers by the roots, for I am in despair!

This act, however, is a mistake which Death can capitalize on and use
as a means to make her realize that she is in the wrong, no matter how
understandable her desperation is:
Do not touch them! Death told her. You say you are desperate, yet you would drive
another mother to the same despair ! Another mother! the the blind woman said
and immediately let go of the flowers.

From now one Death has the upper hand in their struggle. He asks her
to look down a well where she sees two courses of life depicted. One
is characterized by joy and blessings, the other by want and misery.
Death informs her that one of these lives would have been her childs
(but that is not possible according to the logic of the tale. Death tricks
her, in other words, dupes her by means of a piece of fiction in order to
make her realize that she is in the wrong). Confronted with the (thus
false) possibility that her childs life could have turned out in such a
miserable way, the mother gives in:
follows here. I think that the absence of a question mark is significant in this case. Of
course, exclamation marks are all over the place in Andersens manuscripts. In fact,
they flourish to an extent sometimes bordering on anarchy. Subsequently, they have
been replaced with commas and full stops and thus Andersens punctuation has been
changed to conform to the norm in almost all translations I have come across. But if
a question is to be perceived as genuine, Andersen will most often stress this by means
of a question mark. And he does not do this in the case under discussion here.

Translation slightly modified.

Translation modified.

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Then the mother shrieked in terror, Which was my child! Tell me! Save my innocent
child. Spare him such wretchedness! Better that he be taken from me! Take him to
Gods kingdom! Forget my tears, forget the prayers I have said, and the things I have
done!

And she even prays to God for forgiveness: Then the mother wrung
her hands, fell on her knees, and prayed to God: Do not hear me when
I pray against your will. It is best. Do not listen, do not listen! And she
bowed her head, as Death took her child to the unknown land. In all
of the mothers earlier exclamations, the name of God was italicized.
But that is no longer the case here. This fact might be meant to indicate that the revolt against God has been instilled and that the necessary distance between God and his creation (which Kierkegaard would
also underscore) is again recognized and respected by the mother. The
great artistic strength of the tale is that it makes this point while permitting its reader to maintain the greatest possible understanding of
and sympathy for the desperation of the devastated mother.
At the same time, the tale might correspond indirectly with Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling, in a certain respect The Story of a Father
par excellence. This correspondence I shall now try to reconstruct.
In the beginning of the tale, Death visits the mother in the shape of
an old man. Her vigil has been so prolonged that she momentarily falls
asleep: For three days and three nights she had not closed her eyes. Now
she dozed off to sleep, but only a moment [ieblik]. Something startled
her and she awoke, shuddering in the cold. This short moment proves
fatal. Death takes advantage of it and sneaks away with her child.
The moment, of course, is a key concept in the work of Kierkegaard,
denoting a situation in which the worldly sphere and the eternal one
cross or intersect and such a Kierkegaardian moment in a tale by
Andersen I shall indeed point out below. But this moment of slumber
is clearly not a Kierkegaardian one in this strict sense of the term.
Neither, however, are all moments referred to by the various pseudonyms of Kierkegaard. For example, this is not the case in the following passage from Fear and Trembling, which describes the state
that Abraham is in immediately prior to his sacrifice of his child:
He had faith by virtue of the absurd, for human calculation was out of the question,
and it certainly was absurd that God, who required the sacrifice of him, should in the
next moment [ieblik] rescind the requirement. He climbed the mountain, and even
in the moment [ieblik] when the knife gleamed he had faith that God would not
require Isaac. 
FT, 35-36, translation modified / SKS 4, 131.

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According to Johannes de silentio, Abraham is nonetheless held captive in a paradoxical state of anxiety and affliction. Therefore, he
argues, anyone who hears the story about him and profoundly identifies with his affliction must become an insomniac. The mother in
Andersens tale sleeps for a moment thereby losing her child while
Abraham after all did not lose his. There might thus be some discreet
indirect correspondence with Fear and Trembling in The Story of a
Mother.
This might also be the case in the already quoted passage:
You have no power to resist me! Death told her. But our Lord has! she said. I
only do his will! said Death, I am His gardener! I take His flowers and trees and
plant them again in the great Paradise gardens, in the unknown land [det ubekjendte
Land]. But how they thrive, and of their life there, I dare not speak!

This phrase, The unknown land [det ubekjendte Land] is also employed by de silentio when he writes about the domain or region of
faith:
It was also pointed out that none of the stages described contains an analogy to Abraham; they were explainedonly in order that in their moment of deviation they could,
as it were, indicate the boundary of the unknown territory [i Misvisningens ieblik
kunde ligesom antyde det ubekjendte Lands Grndse].

The question of paternity, however, is not easily answered in this case,

since de silentio might well be quoting or alluding to Andersen and
Andersen thus quoting or alluding to himself. Thus, Andersen in fact
employs the phrase the unknown land in his fictive and thoroughly
ironic travel book Journey on Foot from 1829. So it is not easy to determine who is quoting or alluding to whom here. The state of the
evidence is complicated indeed. But there is in fact further evidence
that The Story of a Mother is part of an ongoing correspondence
with Kierkegaard which is not limited to this tale.
In 1859 Andersen published the tale The Child in the Grave [Barnet i Graven]. The thematic and the moral of this tale is very similar
to The Story of a Mother, though it cannot in any way match the artistic strength of this text. At any rate, The Child in the Grave mentions the sick pain [syge Smerte] of its mourning mother and states
that she sinks into the bottomless nothing of despair [Fortvivlelsens
bundlse Intet]. As we might remember, the mother of The Story of
a Mother also claimed that she was in despair. What is new in the
latter tale is that the feeling of despair is connected to sickness, sick
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pain. The combination of despair and sickness, of course, seems

reminiscent of The Sickness unto Death (1849) in which despair is
this very disease. So if Andersen in 1859 to some extent rewrites The
Story of a Mother in the form of The Child in the Grave, it seems
quite likely that he alludes to The Sickness unto Death which had
been published during the years that separate the two tales. And if he
indeed does that, the more likely it seems that he alludes to Fear and
Trembling in The Story of a Mother.
The next tale I will discuss here is The Snow Queen (1845).
The Snow Queen
The Snow Queen is a more regular quest story than The Story of
a Mother, a more regular fairy tale. But it is also Andersens tale of
repetition par excellence. In fact, repetition is at work at numerous
levels of this text. It is quite evident that, if we forget about the initial
story about the Devils splintered mirror and only consider the story
about Gerda and Kay, the end of the story is a repetition of its beginning. After Gerda has rescued her soul mate, Kay, from the spell
of the Snow Queen, they return to the home of their grand mother
where they rediscover the idyll of their childhood. And even though
they have now grown up, they are said to be children still, children
at heart.
Another kind of repetition in the text is the doubling of various
exclamations and phrases. Utterances of humans, animals and flowers are all doubled in this way. It is an effect that Andersen very often
employs but nowhere to the extent that can be found in The Snow
Queen.
Another conspicuous kind of repetition in the tale is the fact that
Gerda repeatedly, in situations where it seems that she is completely
stuck, tells the story of her quest thus far and thereby arouses sympathy in her listeners, who therefore decide to help her continue it. This
is not only a repeated motif, but also a case of the story repeating itself
and thereby advancing itself, making itself move forward.10
How this is connected to the arabesque poetics of Andersen I explain here in the
article Fortllingens arabeske allegori: Sneedronningen, which can be found in
the anthology Det (h)vide Spejl. Analyser af H.C. Andersens Sneedronningen,
ed. by Finn Barlby, Copenhagen: Drben 2000, pp.137-164. An English version of
this article, Arabesque and Allegory in H.C. Andersens The Snow Queen, will

10

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Even though repetitions are so prolific in the tale, it is, however,

also a fragmented one. As the subtitle informs us, it is A Tale in Seven Stories. And, as mentioned, every story is very close to becoming
a kind of short-circuit in which Gerda gets irredeemably stuck, something she overcomes by telling her story. Whether these different stories really add up to a coherent whole is a question which is implicitly
asked when Gerda and Kay are on their way back to their hometown
after Gerda has rescued him. On their way, they meet the little robber
girl who helped Gerda by lending her her reindeer. The little robber
girl can now tell them what has happened to some of the others who,
in the other stories, also helped Gerda:
Through the woods came riding a young girl on a magnificent horse that Gerda recognized [kjendte]11.The girl wore a bright red cap on her head, and a pair of pistols in
her belt. She was the little robber girl. She recognized [kjendte] Gerda at once, and
Gerda knew [kjendte] her too.Youre a fine one for gadding about, she told little
Kay. Id just like to know whether you deserve to have someone running to the end
of the earth for your sake.
But Gerda patted her cheek and asked her about the Prince and the Princess. They
are traveling in foreign lands, the robber girl told her. And the crow? little Gerda
asked. Well, the crow is dead, she answered. His tame ladylove is now a widow, and
she wears a bit of black wool wrapped around her leg. She takes great pity on herself,
but thats all stuff and nonsense.12

Here, it is almost as if the story is playing itself backwards another

repetition! in order to confirm that all those mentioned here, and
thereby also the stories they belong to, have all been integral parts of
the same larger whole.
Well, all of these repetitions indeed appear to be motivated thematically. The tale is obviously about the problem of repetition in a
very Kierkegaardian sense. It is about the problem of whether it is at
all possible to stay a child at heart, to maintain the uncomplicated
faith of childhood after having embarked on the quest of growing up
in this world. The problem of faith as repetition, in other words, as
Kierkegaard discusses it repeatedly; for example in one of his early
be published in a forthcoming anthology of narratological readings of Andersen
from Odense University Press.
11
In fact, the tale contains a sustained allusion to the famous passage from Pauls
First Letter to the Corinthians 13:12, in which the partial and fragmented nature of
our knowledge in this life is pointed out. The Danish word kende [know] which permeates especially the latter part of The Snow Queen, in contexts where genkende
[recognize] would have been a more obvious choice is crucial in this connection,
since this word is employed in the Danish translation of this passage.
12
Translation slightly modified.

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upbuilding discourses, Think About Your Creator in the Days of Your

Youth from 1844.
It is therefore interesting to compare the passage describing the
homecoming of Kay and Gerda with a passage from Kierkegaards
Repetition (1843), which describes the state of Constantins lodgings
after his homecoming from his second repeated trip to Berlin. The
passage from The Snow Queen is as follows:
They walked straight to Grandmothers house, and up the stairs, and into the room,
where everything was just as it was when they left it [Alt stod paa samme Sted som fr].
And the clock [Uhret] said tick-tock, and its hands were telling the time.

While this is how the passage from Repetition goes like this:
Some time went by. My servant, like a housewifely Eve, had remedied his earlier
wrongdoing. A monotonous and unvarying order was established in my whole economy. Everything unable to move stood in its appointed place, and everything that
moved went its calculated course: my clock, my servant, and I, myself, who with measured pace walked up and down the floor [Alt hvad der ikke kunde gaae, det stod paa
sit bestemte Sted, og hvad der kunde gaae, det gik sin beregnede Gang: mit Stueuhr,
min Tjener og jeg selv, der med afmaalte Skridt gik op og ned ad Gulvet].13

With everything placed where it used to be, while the clock is ticking, there are clearly some parallels between the two passages. Thus,
the end of The Snow Queen, too, might correspond indirectly with
Kierkegaard, in this case underscoring that this tale is indeed about
repetition.
In this light, one of the robber girls remarks, which I have already
quoted, is especially interesting. I am thinking of this one: Youre a
fine one for gadding about, she told little Kay. Id just like to know
whether you deserve to have someone running to the end of the earth
for your sake. This remark implicitly points out that this is the one
question that Gerda never asked. She never questioned whether Kay
was really worth going through all this trouble for. In fact, this might
be the very moral of the tale, a moral which seems to be in perfect accordance with the main tenet of Kierkegaards Works of Love (1847),
namely, that Christian Love worthy of its name does not expect anything in return for what it gives or performs and thus is the antithesis
to any kind of calculation. The work Gerda has done in rescuing Kay
is clearly stressed as a work of love in this sense.
Still, as I have mentioned, Kay is the soul mate of Gerda and he
might therefore not be the ideal prototype of the neighbour in the
terms of Works of Love. Of course, when Andersen was writing The
R, 179 / SKS 4, 50.

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Snow Queen, Works of Love had not yet been published. I shall
therefore end my inquiry by focusing on one of Andersens later tales,
The Marsh [or Bog, as it has also been translated] Kings Daughter (1858), in which further allusions to Kierkegaard in general and
Works of Love in particular can be found.
The Marsh Kings Daughter
Since this is not one of Andersens best known tales and the plot is
rather convoluted I should provide a brief summary. Most of the tale
takes place in the time of the Vikings more precisely the time of
Ansgar. It obviously draws upon the myths connected to the so-called
Fisher King, which is a part of the legends about King Arthur, but
is also known from ancient Egypt. In The Marsh Kings Daughter,
it is an Egyptian king of fairy-breed who is wasting away. It has been
prophesied that only a flower from a marsh way up north in fact in
Jutland in Denmark can cure him. His three daughters fly there by
means of magical swan guises. But the two of them leave the third in
the marsh, steal her swan guise and fly back to Egypt with it. She sinks
down in the quagmire where the marsh king seizes her and makes her
pregnant. When the resultant child, a girl, is born, it rises up to the
surface of the quagmire on the leaf of a water lily. A stork father finds
it and leaves it with the childless wife of a Viking. The stork family
will later steal the swan guises of the two evil sisters in Egypt and take
them back to Denmark. The girl is named Helga. She is, however, not
an ordinary child, but a so-called changeling [Skifting]. During the
daytime she is a beautiful girl but has the wicked temper of her father,
the marsh king. At night she becomes a frog-like creature, while the
gentle temper of her mother takes over. When she is about sixteen
years old her foster father, the Viking, returns from one of his raids,
bringing a Christian priest whom they have captured with him. He is
going to be sacrificed the next day. But at night, Helga, in her frog-like
guise, frees him and they ride off together. The priest sings psalms,
says prayers and fabricates a crucifix but because of her changelingnature all this is, at first, to no effect. At night they are attacked by
robbers who kill the priest and the horse they rode off on. However,
they get scared by the big frog and take flight and thus Helgas life
is spared. She does not possess the necessary strength to dig a deep
enough grave so she covers the corpses with sticks and leaves and
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ters the name of Christ and, as a consequence, she is now a human girl
and no longer a changeling. The next night, the priest and the horse
return in a kind of dream vision. He takes Helga to the mire where
she is reunited with her real mother, the Egyptian princess. The storks
provide them with the two swan guises they took from the evil sisters.
After having said goodbye to her foster mother, Helga and her real
mother fly to Egypt by means of the guises. They are accompanied by
the stork family. Helga proves to be the marsh-flower that the prophecy had been talking about. The sick king is cured by his joy in his
grandchild. Some years later, on her wedding night, Helga disappears
and only the story about her and her disappearance remains. This
story has been passed on from one generation of storks to the next.
To be sure, Christian and pagan motifs are thoroughly mixed in this
tale. But as is the case in other Andersen tales, it is a Christian perspective which prevails. In the case of The Marsh Kings Daughter
this Christian ethic is, as mentioned, remarkably reminiscent of the
one which can be found in Works of Love. The antithesis to this ethic
if you will permit me to progress by means of such a via negativa is
represented by the stork mother whose primary motto or maxim is:
Think first of yourself, and then of your family. Never mind about
outsiders. But when Helga frees the Christian priest, she, naturally
and very literally, does think about an outsider. This indicates that
neighbourly love in a Christian sense has been awakened in her, at
least when she is in her night guise and has her mothers temper. What
is most remarkable, however, is how the tale relates the way the priest
thanks her for saving him: Gently he spoke to her of the work of love
[Kjerlighedens Gjerning] she had performed during the night, when
she had come in the guise of a hideous frog to sever his bonds, and to
lead him out into light and life again.14 Work of love are indeed the
words of the text!15 Moreover, both words are employed several times
more. In fact, they seem to be key words in the tale.16 For example, we
read about Helga elsewhere that:
Every kindness that had been done her, and each loving word spoken to her, were fresh
in her mind. Now she understood how it had been love that sustained her through
Translation modified.
Of course, the concept of works of love [operum caritatis] has been a basic Christian
concept since early Christianity and is thus no invention on Kierkegaards part. But
the way the ethic of Kierkegaards Works of Love seems operative in The Marsh
Kings Daughter renders it likely that there is indeed an allusion to this work in the
passage just quoted.
16
Much like the word kende in The Snow Queen.
14

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those days of trial, during which progeny of soul and mud [Afkom af Sjl og Dynd]
work and strive. She realized that she had only obeyed the impulse of her inclinations. She had not saved herself, everything had been given to her and Providence had
guided her.17

That you are nothing without God and that you therefore cannot take
pride in what great or good things you achieve is in fact a theological idea which Kierkegaard stresses again and again. In The Marsh
Kings Daughter, this idea is not only expressed by Helga but also
by the stork father. If he had not stolen the two swan guises and hid
them until they were needed, Helga would never have returned to her
grandfather. This kindles the expectations of the stork mother: Now
you will become a somebody at last! the mother stork whispered. Its
the least we can expect! But her husband replies in this way: Oh,
what would I become! said the father stork, and what have I done?
Nothing!18 In the tale he thus represents the immediate contrast to
the mother stork who, as pointed out above, will only think about or
consider what benefits herself and her family.
The passage above, however, contains another important motif.
When Helga is referred to as progeny of soul and mud, this phrase
is, I believe, certainly not just meant to refer to her nature as a changeling. Rather, this appellation highlights the fact that the changelingnature of Helga in the tale figuratively represents the composite and
complex nature of a human being as such19 and, moreover, in a way
which is very similar to the understanding of human nature put forward by Vigilius Haufniensis in the Concept of Anxiety where it is
stated that Man is a synthesis of the psychical [det Sjelelige] and the
physical [det Legemlige]. 20 It appears that not only the Christian ethic
of Works of Love, but also the anthropology of Haufniensis, is a point
of reference in The Marsh Kings Daughter.
A little before giving his definition of the composite nature of a
human being, Haufniensis brings his famous definition of anxiety:
Anxiety is a sympathetic antipathy and an antipathetic sympathy.21
This structure of this definition is chiastic. The chiasm is a rhetorical
Translation modified.
Translation modified.
19
This interpretation is further supported when the priest addresses Helga in the following way which paraphrases the Christian burial ritual: Daughter of the marsh,
the priest said, out of the earth and the marsh you came, and from this earth you
shall rise again.
20
CA, 43 / SV3 6, 137.
21
CA, 42 / SV3 6, 136, Kierkegaards italics.
17

18

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Jacob Bggild

figure which consists of a syntactical reversal in which the order ab is

repeated as that of ba sympathetic (a) antipathy (b) / antipathetic (b)
sympathy (a) and it has a certain affinity to Christianity, since Khi is
the first letter in the Greek spelling of Christ and has the same shape
as St. Andrews cross. In the negative dialectics of Haufniensis, and
Kierkegaard on the whole, the chiasm is applied to underscore the
ambiguity and uncertainty which conditions the knowledge of a human being because he is a limited and composite creature. 22
In The Marsh Kings Daughter, there is a passage which tells of a
minor intermezzo taking place while mother and daughter are flying
back to Egypt in their swan guises. At first this passage appears to be
somewhat irrelevant, but if you examine it closer, it is shaped like a
genuine chiasm, a perfect syntactical cross. Here it is:
Are those the high mountains (a) of which I have heard? Helga asked as she flew
along in the swan plumage.
These are thunder clouds (b), billowing below us, her mother told her.
And what are the white clouds (b) that rise to such heights? Helga asked.
Those heights that you see are the mountains (a) that are always capped with
snow, her mother said.

This chiasm clearly hints at the ambiguity just mentioned: what appear
to be mountains are really clouds and vice versa. It points, one could
say, to the changeling-nature of reality as we are able to know and perceive it. Moreover, as a changeling Helga is in a way a chiasm; the ab
of her appearance and temper at daytime becomes the ba of her appearance and temper at night. The correspondence with Kierkegaard
in fact seems to be strikingly profound and persistent in this tale! But
there is even more to the picture than I have hitherto pointed out.
During her wedding party, Helga ventures to go outside on a balcony for a little while. Standing there she is again visited by the apparition of the dead Christian priest. This time, he comes forth as an
envoy from Heaven. Helga begs him to let her peep into this domain,
if only for a brief moment. And then the following takes place:
Then he raised her up in splendor and glory, through a stream of melody and thoughts.
The sound and the brightness were not only around her but within her soul as well.
They lay beyond all words. We must go back, or you will be missed, the priest said
to her. Only one more glimpse [Blik], she begged. 23
I write about Kierkegaards use of the chiasm in my article Chiasmens Kors: Korsets Chiasmer om en Kierkegaardsk tankefigur, in vol.83 of the periodical K &
K, Holte: Medusa 1997, pp.29-45.
23
Translation slightly modified.
22

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Reflections of Kierkegaard in the Tales of H.C. Andersen

81

The last utterance, she repeats: Only one more glimpse [Blik]! The
last! It is, I think, no coincidence that the Danish word for glimpse
or peep, blik, is being applied here because when the worldly and the
eternal spheres cross or intersect, as is the case in this passage, we are,
as discussed earlier, dealing with a Kierkegaardian moment. And in
Danish the name of this moment is jeblik, a word which precisely
contains the word blik.
That we are in fact dealing with such a moment is emphasized in the
text beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever. When Helga returns
after these glimpses into the eternal sphere, after what was only a couple of brief moments to her, almost a millennium has passed in earthly
time. This is indeed an intersection or crossing between earthly time
and eternity!
It is a number of storks as mentioned, it is generations of storks
who have passed down the story about Helga and her disappearance
who make her realize what amount of time has elapsed. When she
realizes it, she drops down upon her knees and the following takes
place:
The sun shone brightly in all its splendor. As in the old days when at the first touch of
sunlight the frogs skin fell away to reveal a beautiful maiden, so now, in that baptism
by the light a form of heavenly beauty, clearer and purer than the air itself, rose as a
bright beam to join the Father. The body crumbled to dust, and only a withered lotus
flower lay where she had knelt. 24

I think this bright beam is meant to represent the sparkle of love that
God has endowed each human being with and which, according to
Kierkegaard in Works of Love, any upbuilding act must presuppose
as its own foundation.
The time has come to briefly sum up. Since it is only in Kierkegaards writings we find the aforementioned specific meaning of the
Danish word jeblik, there can be no doubt, when you consider the
evidence I have put forward, that the theology of Kierkegaard permeates The Marsh Kings Daughter to a quite striking degree. And
it seems more likely that the possible indirect correspondence with
Kierkegaard that I have argued could take place in The Story of a
Mother and The Snow Queen does indeed take place. This indicates that Kierkegaards Christian theology and anthropology have
made a deeper mark upon Andersen than has previously been acknowledged, and that he is a more sophisticated writer than he is generally believed to be.
24

Translation slightly modified.

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Jacob Bggild

It thus appears that Andersen returned Kierkegaards ruthless attack in From the Papers of One Still Living by, in some of his tales,
subtly but loyally communicating central aspects and ideas from
Kierkegaards thinking.25 To redress a wrong in such a way must be
said to be very much in the spirit of Works of Love if not, that is, it
was also a way of laughing last and thereby longest.

The state of the evidence, however, does not really enable us to fathom the profundity of this communication or dialogue with any degree of certainty. The word reflections shimmering between the mind and the mirror in my title is intended
to point in the direction of this fact.

25

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