Shards of Glass
The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen is my favourite, right up there with Rumpelstiltskin.
This unusually long fairy tale grasps hold of the imagination with something inherently wondrous and magical--snow--as well as a vast northern landscape, a turn of seasons, a queen of merciless nature, and a brave and strong little girl determined to find her best childhood friend.
One might be confused, then, when The Snow Queen begins with a tale that seems to have little to do with what the title suggests.
The "First Story"* tells of a "real demon," who takes delight in wickedness and creates a mirror in which all good things it reflects are distorted. He and his fellow demons (disciples), in their pride, decide to carry the mirror up to heaven, to mock even the angels or the gods (or to eclipse the sun), but the mirror is far too heavy for them. It slips and falls to earth, shattering into infinitesimal pieces that lodge into the hearts and eyes of human beings.
Some of the fragments were so big that they were used for windowpanes, but it was not advisable to look at one's friends through these panes. Other bits were made into spectacles, and it was a bad business when people put on these spectacles meaning to be just.
On The Snow Queen annotations of the web's number one fairy tale resource, SurLaLune, Francesca Matteoni provides interested readers with some context:
The looking-glass is a recurrent symbol in fairytales, see for example Snow White. In this specific case, as Lederer notes, the reflecting surface can represent the illusion of the senses in which the reality of the soul is misshaped. A similar concept is traceable in the Gnostic doctrines, according to which the Abrahamic LORD was not responsible for the creation of the world: the earthly world was in fact the result of a separation from the realm of the spirit, and of the illusory work of an evil demiurge (Lederer 1986, 6-7).
This is very interesting, especially, as Ms. Matteoni mentions, because mirrors appear so frequently in fairy tales.
When I first read about the distortion-mirror, however, it didn't seem to me that the mirror revealed the untrustworthiness of the five senses. Rather, I thought this was an ice-clear commentary by the author about the taint of the fallen human soul.
Readers of Dante and Milton, or even those passingly familiar with the western classics, might recognize the shattering mirror, the demons' pride and their fruitless revolt against the heavens, as a "mirror-image" of the Fall. The bits of glass that scatter to earth and that later contaminate little Kai are like the residual effects of that fall, be it original sin, concupiscence, or what have you.
It's not literally Kai's eyes that are the distorting instrument, but the illusory mirror which transforms the physical things--things that are real and in the temporal world, like the children's roses--into ugliness.
Perhaps Andersen meant the mirror as commentary on the politics of his day, perhaps of people that he knew, but more than that, of human nature itself, of people who, for whatever reason--be it a grudge, bigotry, jealousy, or a sense of entitlement--view their fellow human beings through a distorted lens.
Everyone probably knows one or two of these people. Maybe they are the kind of people whose mouths are always ready with complaints, who don't know how to take a compliment and are quick to judge and mistrust, or insist that "all the best people [become] hideous, or else they [are] upside down and [have] no chests or bellies."
At any rate, it prepares readers for little Gerda's redemption-esque quest to restore Kai to innocence and safety.
What were your thoughts, if any, on the introduction to this classic Andersen tale? Am I wrong about the symbolic role the mirror plays in the First Story?
Snowflakes and Roses
Kai said, "Oh, something struck my heart, and I have got something in my left eye!"
The little girl put her arms round his neck, he blinked his eye, there was nothing to be seen.
"I believe it is gone," he said, but it was not gone. It was one of those very grains of glass from the mirror, the magic mirror. You remember that horrid mirror, in which all good and great things reflected in it became small and mean, while the bad things were magnified, and every flaw became very apparent.
Poor Kai! a grain of it had gone straight to his heart, and would soon turn it to a lump of ice.
In Story Two of The Snow Queen, the mirror shards act as stepping stones connecting the mischief of the magic mirror to the body of the tale and disclosing why the mirror is significant to the characters.
But the mirror shards that lodge into into Kai's heart and eye don't appear to have any effect on the plot, other than to make Kai cruel to Gerda. Unless perhaps, they have some bearing on Kai's going out to sled with the bad boys in the square, where he is picked up by the Snow Queen. Then the Snow Queen's kiss finishes the process of turning his heart into a lump of ice, the process started by the mirror shard.
Though the demons and the Snow Queen are not direct accomplices, their methods are similar. The glass shards make Kai blind to the living beauty of the roses and storybook illustrations... and only able to appreciate the inorganic geometry of the snowflakes, as well as statistics and multiplication tables.
"Do you see how cleverly they are made," said Kai. "Much more interesting than looking at real flowers, and there is not a single flaw in them, they are perfect, if only they would not melt."
This is the doing of the magic mirror shard. But it couldn't have been more appropriate if the Snow Queen had contrived it herself.
The bitter winter season must have been a harsh reality for Scandinavians and other northern Europeans, hence the ancient emphasis on the winter solstice and pre-Christian traditions of looking forward to the end of darkness. For people before our modern age, summer was an essential to life, a time of year without which they would not have the means to survive.
No doubt related to pagan winter deities, the Snow Queen acts as an embodiment of the winter season--not necessarily evil in intention but ruthless in execution. In winter, Nature is indifferent and, short of miracle, follows only those laws that have been set out for it. So the Snow Queen is beautiful and meticulous:
She was delicately lovely, but all ice, glittering, dazzling ice. Still she was alive, her eyes shone like two bright stars, but there was no rest or peace in them.
So reason, science, and logic without imagination and emotion are utilitarian but barren as ice.
The Garden of Springtime
At the beginning of Book 3 of The Snow Queen, little Kai is gone and taken for dead. The grown-ups in Gerda's life tell her that Kai is no longer living, and she believes what they say about him.
But something happens to break winter's spell. Spring. And spring brings sunshine, and with sunshine comes hope.
How promising must have been the return of the sunshine in the old world, especially in the far northern regions. After the winter solstice, the days lengthened, promising an end to the hard, bleak winter.
So Gerda goes to the river, the place where Kai is supposed to have drowned (or rather have frozen to death), and throws her little red shoes into it in hopes that the river will return Kai.
Red is the color of blood, of sacrifice. Gerda offers up nothing less when she throws her shoes, "her most cherished possessions," into the river in exchange for Kai.
Thinking she has not thrown her shoes far enough, Gerda climbs into a rowboat and drifts away through spring into the borders of summer (late May - June).
Here, another season spirit like the Snow Queen is encountered: "the old woman was learned in magic art, but she was not a bad witch, she only cast spells over people for a little amusement, and she wanted to keep Gerda." Like her winter sister, the springtime witch appears to act as a force of nature, not out of maliciousness. She would keep the child Gerda in the drowsy forgetfulness of eternal springtime.
But something happens to break winter's spell. Spring. And spring brings sunshine, and with sunshine comes hope.
"Kai is dead and gone," said little Gerda.
"I don't believe it," said the sun.
"He is dead and gone," she said to the swallows.
"We don't believe it," said the swallows, and at last little Gerda did not believe it either.
How promising must have been the return of the sunshine in the old world, especially in the far northern regions. After the winter solstice, the days lengthened, promising an end to the hard, bleak winter.
So Gerda goes to the river, the place where Kai is supposed to have drowned (or rather have frozen to death), and throws her little red shoes into it in hopes that the river will return Kai.
Red is the color of blood, of sacrifice. Gerda offers up nothing less when she throws her shoes, "her most cherished possessions," into the river in exchange for Kai.
Thinking she has not thrown her shoes far enough, Gerda climbs into a rowboat and drifts away through spring into the borders of summer (late May - June).
Here, another season spirit like the Snow Queen is encountered: "the old woman was learned in magic art, but she was not a bad witch, she only cast spells over people for a little amusement, and she wanted to keep Gerda." Like her winter sister, the springtime witch appears to act as a force of nature, not out of maliciousness. She would keep the child Gerda in the drowsy forgetfulness of eternal springtime.
The cherries that bring on Gerda's forgetfulness juxtapose with the fruit of knowledge (forbidden fruit) in the biblical Paradise. But Gerda is not to be tempted with a natural Eden when she has the supernatural gift of love and true friendship.
So the old witch causes Gerda to forget Kai and banishes the roses--those symbols of eternity and friendship that would remind Gerda of her love for Kai--but forgets to hide the roses painted on her hat. "This is the consequence of being absent-minded." Gerda remembers, and when her tears fall, the roses are released from underground. She asks them,
Like the sparrows and the sun, the roses speak the truth.
But they also speak to resurrection. Gerda's suffering, her tears, have brought them out of the ground. Like angelic messengers, they announce that the one she seeks is not dead but living. "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here" (Luke 24:5-6).
Then she goes to ask the other flowers if they have seen little Kai. But all the other flowers, as are so many others we encounter in life, are concerned only with themselves and their own dreams and stories. So little Gerda escapes out of the garden into the wide world, where it is no longer springtime or summer but autumn.
"Do you think he [Kai] is dead and gone?"
"He is not dead," said the roses. "For we have been down underground, you know, and all the dead people are there, but Kai is not among them."
Like the sparrows and the sun, the roses speak the truth.
But they also speak to resurrection. Gerda's suffering, her tears, have brought them out of the ground. Like angelic messengers, they announce that the one she seeks is not dead but living. "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here" (Luke 24:5-6).
Then she goes to ask the other flowers if they have seen little Kai. But all the other flowers, as are so many others we encounter in life, are concerned only with themselves and their own dreams and stories. So little Gerda escapes out of the garden into the wide world, where it is no longer springtime or summer but autumn.
ON FROZEN
My problem with Frozen is that it was virtually gutted of all things Faerie.
I don't mean that it was hardly recognizable from its inspiration, Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, although it was that. I mean the magic was all but absent.
Oh, there was magic, as in the powers of Princess Elsa to make ice and snow from the touch of her fingertips. But there was an utter lack of the magic of Faerie; the sense of and cautious reverence for the Otherworld; of danger from an almost-but-not-quite pernicious sentience; of the fickle, and uninterested, yet inexplicably connected existence just beyond the reach of of our own. There was no alarm at Elsa's powers or inkling that something deeper was going on in relation to them (the curse of a slighted fairy, or the residual trait of an ancestor's mingling with gods); and even the characters' fear of Elsa was not found in the nature and source of the powers but in her potential to do damage with them. After the ball scene when the new queen's secret is revealed, Anna doesn't even pause to wonder at this astounding development; it's all par for the course. "So that's why she's shut me out all these years." O-kay.
Granted, in traditional fairy tales, fantastic events are often presented without any commentary on their fantasticness. But the fairy tales never mean to make the fantastical belong to the mortal. There is always an explanation of sorts, even if that explanation shuts out further investigation, like the lid of box snapping shut on a hand. "She was actually a faerie changeling in disguise." That's it, that's all that's needed. A recognition of the Other, of some always-and-ought-to-be unknown.
Even the trolls are pared down to their lowest common denominator, emptying them of all the mystery and danger of the otherfolk and making them mere comical, cartoonish creatures.
Finally, the glass shard in the heart* loses its potency. Rather than darkening the sight of Anna,** the shard in the eye (generalized to "head" in the movie) only knocks her unconscious and turns white a strand of her strawberry-blond hair. All her memories have to be erased so she forgets her sister's gift-curse and doesn't question Elsa's separation from her. But that is a secondary, and not a direct, result of the ice shard. The second ice shard slowly freezes Anna's body but leaves her heart untainted. What kind of congress with Faerie only touches the outside of a person, only their physical existence; leaves their perception of the world unshaken?
When Anna finally reaches the palace of her ice queen sister, it is opposite of what little Gerda finds when she arrives at the sheer and terrible fortress of the Snow Queen. Anna finds only a very human girl, with very human hurts and emotions and fears, and the rest of the palace empty. But Gerda finds the Snow Queen absent--as her nature, one might say, is a great, gaping absence--and dear Kai with his soul half-killed, working away mechanically at a puzzle made of shards of ice, trying, yet ever failing, to form the word eternity (and/or the shape of a sun). Anna's act of sacrificial love for her sister Elsa breaks the spell, as one would expect. When Elsa feels and knows her sister's love for her, her frigid emotional walls falter and crumble. It is a self-administered cure. But when Gerda finds poor Kai enslaved to logic--the ice-cold logic of the mind, of science, of nature, and of winter seasons--her shed tears melt his heart and wash loose the shards of glass.
I don't mean that it was hardly recognizable from its inspiration, Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, although it was that. I mean the magic was all but absent.
Oh, there was magic, as in the powers of Princess Elsa to make ice and snow from the touch of her fingertips. But there was an utter lack of the magic of Faerie; the sense of and cautious reverence for the Otherworld; of danger from an almost-but-not-quite pernicious sentience; of the fickle, and uninterested, yet inexplicably connected existence just beyond the reach of of our own. There was no alarm at Elsa's powers or inkling that something deeper was going on in relation to them (the curse of a slighted fairy, or the residual trait of an ancestor's mingling with gods); and even the characters' fear of Elsa was not found in the nature and source of the powers but in her potential to do damage with them. After the ball scene when the new queen's secret is revealed, Anna doesn't even pause to wonder at this astounding development; it's all par for the course. "So that's why she's shut me out all these years." O-kay.
Granted, in traditional fairy tales, fantastic events are often presented without any commentary on their fantasticness. But the fairy tales never mean to make the fantastical belong to the mortal. There is always an explanation of sorts, even if that explanation shuts out further investigation, like the lid of box snapping shut on a hand. "She was actually a faerie changeling in disguise." That's it, that's all that's needed. A recognition of the Other, of some always-and-ought-to-be unknown.
Even the trolls are pared down to their lowest common denominator, emptying them of all the mystery and danger of the otherfolk and making them mere comical, cartoonish creatures.
Finally, the glass shard in the heart* loses its potency. Rather than darkening the sight of Anna,** the shard in the eye (generalized to "head" in the movie) only knocks her unconscious and turns white a strand of her strawberry-blond hair. All her memories have to be erased so she forgets her sister's gift-curse and doesn't question Elsa's separation from her. But that is a secondary, and not a direct, result of the ice shard. The second ice shard slowly freezes Anna's body but leaves her heart untainted. What kind of congress with Faerie only touches the outside of a person, only their physical existence; leaves their perception of the world unshaken?
When Anna finally reaches the palace of her ice queen sister, it is opposite of what little Gerda finds when she arrives at the sheer and terrible fortress of the Snow Queen. Anna finds only a very human girl, with very human hurts and emotions and fears, and the rest of the palace empty. But Gerda finds the Snow Queen absent--as her nature, one might say, is a great, gaping absence--and dear Kai with his soul half-killed, working away mechanically at a puzzle made of shards of ice, trying, yet ever failing, to form the word eternity (and/or the shape of a sun). Anna's act of sacrificial love for her sister Elsa breaks the spell, as one would expect. When Elsa feels and knows her sister's love for her, her frigid emotional walls falter and crumble. It is a self-administered cure. But when Gerda finds poor Kai enslaved to logic--the ice-cold logic of the mind, of science, of nature, and of winter seasons--her shed tears melt his heart and wash loose the shards of glass.
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