ELIAS BREDSDORFF ON H.C. ANDERSEN

In November 1843, Andersen wrote to Ingemann: "Two new adventures/fairytales (eventyr) are now as good as finished: one of them, Troldespejlet (The Magic Mirror) is not stupid, as I believe. 'Fan' (ie 'Old Nick') invents one day something that makes him very happy; he makes a mirror that has the power that everything beautiful that is reflected therein shrinks to nothingness, but each and every flaw increases and is lifted to the foreground. If a good thought rises in anyone's head, a sickening grin appears on this mirror. Once the whole Earth has reflected itself therein, 'Fan' flies up to the Heavens for the angels to see themselves in that mirror, but then the glass grins more and more as they gradually approach Heaven, so that it trembles and falls out of his hands. Thus the mirror crashes to the ground on Earth and shatters into trillions of shards; everything flies into the eyes of people, who subsequently get more eyes for the weak and flawed than for the remarkable; if a shard lodges in someone's heart, then they become cynics who know how to grin at everything! Now comes the story itself of the adventure, in which we see how this comes to light, and how, only by shedding many tears and looking deep into Nature, the shard of glass is cried out!"
Here, the idea for the premise of The Snow Queen is clearly sketched, but then, that time, it did not yield anything more. On the 5th of December 1844, he writes in his diary: "Writing The Snow Queen." Three days later, he records: "Written The Snow Queen; read it and 'The Christmas Tree' aloud at Fräulein Bülow's. Finished both fairytales." The book Nye Eventyr (New Adventures/Fairytales) containing both these Yuletide stories was released on the 21st of December the same year. To Ingemann he writes in January 1845: "My latest adventure tale, The Snow Queen, has been a pleasure to write down; it imposed itself upon my thoughts so intensely that the words just flowed forth on the paper."

In The Snow Queen there is no clear discerning line between the real world and the supernatural world. The title character herself is at first introduced as the stuff of legends, but she takes human form and spirits Kai away to the realm of cold reason because the glass shard from the demonic mirror has made him apt to live there. In his last moment of fear, before the kiss of the Snow Queen makes him forget everything, he tries to say his prayers or scream for help, but can only remember the nine times table.
Gerda has preserved all the innocence and warmth that Kai has lost, and, even though she can be of course delayed on her quest (by the old lady in the straw hat, by the confusion with the young prince, by the wild and obstinate robber maiden), nothing can stop her from carrying on until she has found him. After the male reindeer has taken her out of the woods (literally and metaphorically), she arrives in the Finmark where she seeks up the wise woman who is so wise that she can tie up all the winds on Earth into a knotted thread and make a potion that will give Gerda the strength of an army. But even that is not enough, as the Finnwoman explains to the reindeer:

"I cannot give her more power than she has already! Don't you see how powerful she is? Don't you see how people and animals have served her, how she has made it on her own two feet walking unscathed through fire and ice across the wide world? We can't tell her what power she harbours in her heart -- it consists of the fact that she is pure and innocent. If she herself cannot reach the Snow Queen's fortress and take out the glass shards from Kai's heart and eyes, we cannot help her either!"

At last Gerda arrives at the Snow Queen's palace, where the walls are made out of swirling snow, and the windowpanes and doors out of ice quenched by the piercing north winds. In the very centre of the endless throne room, before the throne of ice, there is a frozen pool, and there is Kai walking about and carrying some sharp, flat ice pieces, eagerly employed with solving the "Ice Puzzle of Reason," yet unable to arrange the ice shards so that they form a sun with the word ETERNITY written on it. "If you can make this shape and this word, only then you shall be once more your own lord and master of yourself; and I shall give you the whole wide world and a pair of brand new ice skates!" Gerda's tears of joy defrost the lump of ice in Kai's heart and dissolve the little glass shards, and Kai's own tears make the liquified shards to be washed out through his eyes. So great is their elation that even the glass shards dance out of sheer joy and arrange themselves in that very shape, spelling out that very word, that Kai was not able to lay down.
Brorson's carol Den yndigste rose er funden echoes as a leitmotif throughout the whole original novella, whose moral is in these words from the Gospel of Matthew: "Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

In spite of Andersen's undogmatic Lutheran Christianity, there was a dogma that he accepted without reserves: precisely the immortality of the soul. This thought he has succeeded to give such beautiful and genuine expressions in some of his tales, for example The Little Mermaid or The Snow Queen.
His religious conviction can be summed up in that he believed in the existence of a god, in that one had to behave themselves decently, and in the immortality of the soul. This well-known trinity of divinity, virtue, and immortality, which are the pillars of all theological rationalism, were also the foundations of Andersen's personal faith.
He believed as firmly as could be in some kind of higher plan, and he was so convinced that Providence had completely decided plans for him that he often took the name of the LORD in vain. To Jonas Collin he wrote on the 2nd of October 1825 that he thought "'tis really a pity that the LORD has made me so bad when it comes to learning Latin." And, when he felt himself overwhelmed with elation, he felt a desire to "press the LORD to my heart."
Andersen's religion was primitive and undogmatic; he regarded Jesus Christ as a role model that people were supposed to learn from and do their best to fashion themselves after, and he regarded Nature as the greatest and most spacious of churches. He went himself rarely to church to hear the service. One of the passages that were nearest to his heart was: "Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." That is the original message of The Snow Queen.
Once when Andersen was living at Holsteinborg, he read two of his tales aloud to a dying Frøken Borup, and, when he took his leave of her, he said "See you later." "Yes, up there," she replied. "Maybe," said the author, "and, if you reach that place before me, send my regards to my friends; I have many up there."

The Fairytale Author

H.C. Andersen was a creative artist, and his strength lies to a far higher degree in the original literary tale than in the retelling of old magic tales from folklore. It is therefore a fallacy to compare him to the Grimm brothers or to Asbjørnsen and Moe, something that is not unusual outside Scandinavia.
Yet it is equally true that a little number of fairytales, especially some of his very first, are based upon memories of Danish magic tales that he had heard in his childhood. He writes himself about this:

Throughout my childhood, I listened eagerly to adventures (magic tales) and stories, and many of them are still quite alive in my memories; some of them, in my own humble opinion, appear to be Danish from the start, straight from the word of mouth, and I have not found them in any other sources. In my own style have I retold them, allowing myself the licences that I found convenient, and letting fancy refresh the faded colours of the remembered pictures.

This statement concerns the following nine stories: "The Firelighter," "Big Jack and Little Jack," "The Princess and the Pea," The Travelling Companions, The Six Wild Swans, The Garden of Eden, "The Pig-Keeper," "Simple Simon" (AKA "Clod Hans"), and "Hans in Luck." Even into these stories has Andersen put his own personal style.
The greater number of his up to 156 adventures and stories are, however, of his own device. Of those he often wrote these so often quoted words: "they lay in the mind like seeds, and all they needed was a stream, a ray of sun, or a drop of absinthe, and they grew into flowers."
Andersen called his tales eventyr og historier, because he consciously told "adventures/magic tales/fairytales" from "stories;" the criterium being that the former contained supernatural elements, while the latter were completely realistic. Therefore, The Little Mermaid is a fairytale or adventure, while "The Emperor's New Clothes" is a story. But the divisive line is not always so clear, and Andersen himself not always so consequent.

The most unforgettable opening line in the Andersenian corpus is the introduction to The Snow Queen: "All right! Let us begin this story. And when we reach the end we shall know more than we already know, for here's a wicked troll, one of the most evil ones ever!" (The translation used in the Swedish version I translate the Bredsdorff analyses from, a 1980s Swedish version by Bengt Anderberg, renders "trold" as "vidunder")
Of how revolutionary Andersen's subversive, oral style was regarded by his contemporaries, we get an impression upon reading the leading conservative critic of the era, C. Molberg, rant about how the style and spoken form of the magic tale had to be. In 1842, he wrote that the genre had to be "as pure, correct, and cultured as the spirit of the language and its degree of development as the given time of setting requires. Wanting to tell eventyr to children or peasants in one particular style or another, or giving an artificial impression of the peasantry's natural, yet also circumstantial and not always equally successful or clear narrative technique, or in a so-called childish style, can only lead to ruining them in an insipid or incomprehensible fashion. To precisely translate the oral tale into a written medium often implies an incomprehensible and irksome purple prose or laconism; it is the spirit, the national character and completeness of the national stylistic form that have to be preserved; not the flaws and the shapelessness in the narrative style." To sum up in the same critic's words: "There is only one style that has to be used for telling magic tales: the good style or the pure and natural one -- the style that enables all readers, in the right fashion according to their circumstances, to connect to the text as its natural expression."
Even though Andersen is not mentioned by name, there was and is no doubt of whom Molberg is therefore clearly referring to.

In Andersen's fairytales, a queen is naturally not contented with a normal pair of scissors, but owns (like in "The Firelighter") a large pair of golden scissors.
And a fairytale princess does not abide by common social rules. She can perfectly decide to proclaim that she is to marry the one who can speak best for his own cause and not someone who can only stand still and look distinguished -- this occurs in both The Snow Queen and "Simple Simon."

There is a special reason that Andersen still feels so alive to Scandinavian readers, and that is the lack of humour in many translations into English and other languages, that makes foreign adults often unwilling to read his tales.
Even into the most serious sagas there is humour smuggled in secretly. Think only of the two crows -- the wild male and his fiancée, the tame royal pet -- who have the run of the castle grounds and address Gerda in such a cultured and courteous way: "My fiancé has spoken so beautifully about you, Mademoiselle! Your biography, as 'tis called, is quite a moving story, too!" As a reward for helping Gerda, the princess offers the crows the choice to either be free or receive fixed positions as courtiers, with all the leftovers from the kitchen that this entails. "And both crows bowed low and asked for their fixed positions, for they thought of their autumn years and said: 'It would be good indeed to have a nest egg at the end of the day,' in Crowatian." When Gerda resumes her journey in a carriage of pure gold that the princess has offered her on behalf of her quest, she is escorted with company for a while on the road:

The woodland crow, who was newly wedded, tagged along on board for the first three miles. He sat down by her side, for he could not stand riding a carriage backwards; it made him carriage-sick. And his wife stood on the garden gate flapping her wings; she did not tag along because she had a terrible headache, after receiving her fixed position and too much palace fare to eat.

On the way home, when Gerda asks about the fate of the crows, the robber maiden tells the end of their story:

"Yeah, the wild crow is dead! His tame wife is now widowed and walks about with bows of black crêpe tied round her ankles; she laments horribly, but it's all much ado about nothing!"

The Finnwoman, who in Story or Part the Sixth of The Snow Queen says the most decisive and deeply serious things about the power Gerda harbours, is at the same time a comic relief character. When she has received the message that the Sápmi woman has written on a dry salted codfish, and has read this message thrice, "she knew it by heart and dropped the fish into the pot, for it was still edible, and she never let anything go to waste."

Andersen is a master when it comes to what we might as well call humourous platitudes, for instance: "There were a lot of people, and twice as many feet as there were heads." "They travelled by train, in  fourth class, which travels as fast as first class." "The General was born the day after his daughter; naturally, earlier than she was born, decades before." "Three princes danced the waltz with her, which means first one of them, then the second, then the third." "Suddenly two will o'wisps came hopping in, the first one quicker than the second, and that was why that one came first." "'Sixth comes before seventh!' said the elven king, for he knew how to count." When Andersen addresses children in many of his tales, he makes an effort not to use words or expressions that might be difficult to understand. He contrives to write about microscopes without using the term itself. He writes "a young student, who was studying to become a vicar," instead of mentioning any "Theology degree." Whenever he occasionally uses a word that maybe children will not know, he makes an effort to explain the term. He says for example about a performer among his leading characters that "he devoted himself to be able to talk through his belly; that is called ventriloquy."
It happens that he uses French words or expressions in dialogues, and, in such cases, this occurs very consciously, with a lot of purpose:

"Superbe! Charmant!" said the court ladies, for all of them spoke French, each one of them worse than the other.

"Prenez garde aux enfants!" said Mr. Owl. "This is nothing for the owlets to hear!"

Another characteristic trait of Andersen's style is his ability to tie abstract concepts to a concrete reality. When the hero of "The Firelighter" has hefted down the third guard dog (the one with eyes like rose windows) to the ground, the tale explains how much gold there is in the treasure chest in a way that children can easily understand: "There would be enough to buy each and every candy cane in each and every sweetshop, and all the toys in each and every toy shop, in this whole wide world!"
Even in other cases there is concretisation of wealth. In The Six Wild Swans it is told that Eliza's older brothers, a half dozen young princes, "wrote on gold-framed blackboards with diamond chalk," and the elven king "had his crown dusted with chalk dust; it was chalk from university blackboards, and that is not easy to get for elves!"
Instead of only writing that the hero's father in "The Flying Saratoga Trunk" is wealthy, Andersen tells us that "he could as well have paved the whole high street, and almost a pair of little backstreets too, with silver coins." The addition of the little backstreets gives an impression of exactitude when it comes to measuring the extent of his fortune.
We hear in The Snow Queen that Kai is very rational, but we hear so much more than that. He himself tells the Snow Queen that he can "do maths in his head, and even with fractions, as well as the size in square miles of every country in Europe and how many inhabitants each country had."
The character of the messages depends of the narrator. In The Snow Queen, the woodland crow begins his conversation with Gerda: "In this kingdom where we presently now are, there lives a princess who is incredibly bright and well-read; one has to say that she is subscribed to all the newspapers that are published across the known world, and she has read all of them; 'tis true that she is so bright that she forgets what's in the papers as soon as she's read them, so clever is she."
Expressions like "everyone," "all people," or "the whole wide world" were too abstract for Andersen, so he often added something that was more concrete. The best example of this is surely the reward that the Snow Queen has promised Kai if he can arrange the ice puzzle pieces right, so that they form a sun with the word ETERNITY written in its centre: "only then you shall be once more your own lord and master of yourself; and I shall give you the whole wide world and a pair of brand new ice skates!" One such quote explains something crucial about Andersen's genius, since behind this expression there is both a sharp humour and a deep understanding about children's thinking. In 1861, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson wrote to Jonas Collin Jr.:

'Tis completely wrong to call what Andersen is writing "fairytales." Those were his first ones, those little completed thingamies that one could fit inside a nutshell, and that one could pull out again and encompass a world with. In these tales, there also reigns a completely fulfilled form that does not seize anything else but the innermost core of the text. But nowadays, since Andersen, often unfairly, has been repressed from the realms of novel, poetry, drama, and philosophical essay, it was only to let all these suppressed shoots spring up like oaks through a ground of rock elsewhere; now he has, Heaven help me, his drama, his novel, his poetry, and his philosophy all present in the fairytales. That these are no longer magic tales is obvious. It's something Andersenian, and thus it does not fit into any literary categorisation... Now this genre is something that knows no limits, whether upwards, downwards, or sideways; neither in its form, and thus something that only the most ingenious nature is able to control...
But all of this unchainedness, that all the forms and all the worlds --tragedy, comedy, lyrism, epic, analysis, song, sermon, quip, the living, the lifeless-- are fused together as in a paradise, make someone shiver in anticipation of his next works! What kind of secret does he take to, what kind of journey must we undertake, and will we succeed or not?

Many of Andersen's tales are diverse.

Some of Andersen's tales were penned within a few days or even hours, while others took ages to write. In 1845, as we have said before, Andersen wrote to Ingemann that the text of The Snow Queen "danced directly upon the paper." It is a fact, incredible as it might sound, that he began to write The Snow Queen, one of his longest tales, on the 5th of December 1844, and that it was released in storybook format (along with "The Christmas Tree") on the 21st of December the same year. The whole novella was written, sent, printed, bound, and published within the lapse of a fortnight!


PS. The Andersen quotes in this article are my own translations straight from the Danish from the original tales and correspondences by Andersen and his Victorian contemporaries. The translations of the remarks and analyses are also of my own device, but via the Swedish, from Elias Bredsdorff.

Truth in Sorrow, Truth in Joy

Truth in Sorrow, Truth in Joy

Summary:

Jehan Prouvaire has lent Feuilly a book, and rambling discussion of Othello, of being an outsider, and of the roles of sorrow and joy in perceiving reality ensues. Basically, a book club run rampant.

Jehan looked up as Feuilly laid the thin black volume on the table. “Did you enjoy it?” he asked, examining his friend’s sober face.

Feuilly’s forehead creased. He lowered himself into a chair across from Jehan, taking a deep breath. “It… it is a sad text,” he said.

Jehan smiled softly, sympathetically. “A very sad text,” he murmured. “A foreigner working his way into society that despises his people. A woman who loves him, and is loved in return, but never fully trusted. A man who wants to wreak destruction, and a woman who—despite the fact that her loyalty lies elsewhere—is bound to him. In the end, chaos, stemming from one person’s hatred and another’s mistrust.”

“I do not think I have understood all the levels yet,” Feuilly said, running his hands along the cover. “This Shakespeare has a great deal of depth.”

“So he has.” Jehan’s smile widened a bit. “I admire him a great deal for his insights into humanity. But you did not answer my question: did you enjoy it?”

Feuilly stared at the cover for several long moments before looking up again. “Yes,” he said slowly. “It is a sad text, but I enjoyed it. There is something—something very true—”

He trailed off. “What specifically caught your attention?” queried Jehan, his head tilted with interest. “I have seen a great many true things in Othello.”

But Feuilly found that he could not speak. All the thoughts that had been so clear in his head when he’d sat on his bed talking them out alone the night before, that had fallen neatly into sentences when he had looked over some scenes again during his lunch break, were now muddled and locked behind some solid door. “I—” he started, “well, I am interested in—I mean, the character of Othello is…”

And he looked at his hands, helplessly. Parbleu, he thought, why had he ventured to discuss literature with Jehan? History, politics—they accepted him there, even though his education was so shaky. But literature was utterly foreign to him, and Jehan was so well-versed in it. He must be looking down on Feuilly for his fumblings even now—

No, he hastened to correct himself, that was doing Jehan’s kindness an injustice. But still he must get his thoughts together, must try to sound like a person with legitimate things to say…

But Jehan was looking at him with gentle curiosity. “It’s Othello himself who catches your interest, then, above all? I can see that.”

“Yes,” said Feuilly, “because—because—” Oh hell, he wasn’t getting any more articulate. The only thing he could think of to say was that Othello made him the saddest, and that was hardly an insight.

Jehan waited.

“Because he tries so hard,” Feuilly finally managed. “And like you said, he can’t trust anyone. The one person he decides to trust ruins him.”

“He can love, but he can’t trust,” Jehan put in.

“Yes,” said Feuilly. “Because—because he is an outsider.”

And then Jehan gazed at him again with those keen eyes, and Feuilly felt uncomfortably, lovingly known, and he ducked his head.

“You know,” he said, slowly, “the issue with his marriage, for example. Even though he’s so well-renowned, he can never escape who he is and the inferiority that society has attached to that. Is he even called by name very often? He is always the Moor.”

(And Feuilly thought—and knew in the silence that Jehan was thinking—of the men from other Republican groups that had come to their meetings, and met Feuilly, and yet referred to him as the worker or the fanmaker long after they should have known his name. There had been one such contact joining them just last week, and Courfeyrac had led the charge in saying Feuilly’s name as many times as possible throughout the evening, which had flustered the man—as well as Feuilly himself—but had not convinced him to rectify his behavior.)

“He’s set off, separated from the rest of humanity by the way they refer to him,” Jehan mused. “But he is more than what they deem him to be by use of the label.”

Feuilly looked at Jehan bleakly. “…or is he?” he said. “In the end, he is violent and dangerous, deceived and suspicious. In the end he is the murderer of the very woman who consecrated her soul and fortunes to his honor and his valiant parts. He fulfills worse than their suspicions.”

“But not because that is his nature,” said Jehan. “Rather, he is manipulated by one of the characters who most maligns his identity.”

“So instead of his nature creating their attitude,” Feuilly said, slowly, “their attitude pushes him into being something that he otherwise would not be.”

(And he thought of all the people that surrounded him on a daily basis—the people who called the grasping poor, because they were not given fair pay and thus had to cling to each sou, or the lazy poor, because there were not enough jobs, or the deserving poor, because they tried to survive by conforming to the standards of a society that was designed to crush them, or the criminal poor because they rioted and drank and stole when they had had enough of getting nowhere by being “deserving.” He thought of talk he’d heard of the working class being bloodthirsty and restless, and needing a firm hand to prevent them from launching another ’89, and of the finely-dressed women who clutched their purses more tightly when he passed them in the streets. But would the working class have sought blood in ’89 if they had not been so oppressed to begin with? To assume that they were dangerous and thus keep them down and treat them with suspicion was to render them more dangerous yet.)

It was heavy, so heavy, and he ran a hand over his face as Jehan murmured, “Such, alas, is the way of the world,” and waited for him.

“It makes me—” Feuilly hesitated. “When I read it, and feel for him, it feels like grief. But it is a grief which makes me want to go on reading. It is—I don’t know how to explain it, exactly.”

But Jehan nodded at once. “It is a grief which feels somehow satisfying? Right and good, although in no way lessened in sorrow because of that?”

“Yes,” said Feuilly. “Yes, exactly. It is as if I am not merely grieving a character in a play, but an actual state of injustice which…which needed my grief.”

A melancholy smile crossed Jehan’s face. “That,” he said, “is because there is truth to be found in fiction…truths that come clearer for us because they are portrayed through another lens than that of our daily life. So through Othello, you have a new perspective on a reality somewhat similar to that which he faces, and you grieve because you have come face to face with truth all over again, and that truth is painful, but it needs to be known. And you are right, I think—it also needs to be grieved. Combeferre would say that grief is an essential stage in progress.”

“Hmm.” Feuilly ran his fingertips over the cover of the book again, tracing the lettering. “So sorrow is fitting, because it reflects reality.”

“Our sorrow acknowledges the weight of the world’s pain.” Jehan was talking to the tabletop, not from timidity or distance but from a depth of contemplation. “And its meaning as well.”

“In sorrow, truth,” summed up Feuilly, and he was about to take up Othello again and scan its pages to point out to Jehan passages which had affected him most, when a large hand fell on his shoulder.

“But,” said Bahorel, to whom that hand belonged, “in joy and laughter and cheer, truth as well!” He swung a chair over to the end of the table near Jehan and Feuilly.

“Come,” he continued, “my friends laden with melancholy and with heavy thoughts, we must see both sides of the world in order to have a fair picture of reality.”

Feuilly raised his eyebrows. “The ‘two sides’ of the world, as you put it, are hardly equal at present.” He moved his shoulder out from beneath Bahorel’s touch, turning to face him better. “Focus your attention on laughter, and you risk becoming blind to misery, just as so many have who see and do nothing because their eyes are fixed on their own pleasure.”

“Ah,” said Bahorel, “but what of laughter amid misery? Surely you would agree that those who are miserable need not always contemplate it?”

Feuilly’s brow contracted. “They should not be deceived by false pleasures,” he said tentatively, “things that would persuade them that their oppression is not so bad after all. But no, I do not begrudge pleasure of anyone who is suffering; that would be unkind.”

“I think,” said Jehan, “that the pleasures of those who are oppressed and suffering are not likely to be false, or cheap—to be designed to cloak hard truths. There is truth in joy, even for those in hard circumstances, and perhaps by finding joy they make joy true.”

Bahorel grinned. “It’s defiant,” he said. “Laughter defies circumstance, defies the world which seeks to crush. There are men, scores of men, in these days here in Paris, who look down on me because my parents are peasants, calling me farm boy, but I laugh at their idiocy and backwards ideas more heartily than they at my birth. Who wins?”

Feuilly hesitated, knowing his own indignation and sorrow at being looked down on, but Jehan smiled at him gently. “Both sorrow and joy, laughter and grief, exist, Feuilly,” he said. “Both are meant to be known and used; both are a means of finding truth. By sorrow we find the truth of current circumstance; by laughter we find the truth of our ability to surpass circumstance.”

“Balance,” Feuilly said. “Balance is key.”

“Yes,” said Jehan. “But balance by knowing both fully, not by limiting our experience of either.”

Feuilly looked down at the book on the table, and thought of his deep experience of vicarious sorrow while reading it, and of his keen awareness of how much of an outsider he sometimes was. But if balance was the key to truth—and since it was true, he realized, that different as he was he was accepted and equal here in this discussion—then perhaps now was the time for laughter.

He took a deep breath. “Let us, then, defy our circumstances,” he said.

Bahorel clapped him on the back and called for wine, and Jehan gave him a melancholy smile as he slipped Othello into his bag. 

Prog as a Dead Horse Genre

ie: A music genre that critics (and the mainstream) hate on principle. If a work or creator is from one of the forbidden genres, it is automatically bad, no matter what the creator or work makes. A critic who actually likes any of this stuff has to bend over backward, apologizing that these works are Guilty Pleasures and they know they shouldn't like the stuff. Some critics seem unable to write a review of works they like without an obligatory kick to the dead horse — "this is so much better than that other crap!" Times when these genres were mainstream popular are declared to be the Dork Ages (by mainstreamers at least).

Amateur critics on the Web aren't quite as dogmatic as the professionals, because the amateurs aren't part of an establishment that declares who is hot and who is not. But since anybody with an internet connection and library can be a critic, amateurs often have their own personal Dead Horse Genre, which they flog as hard as the professionals do with theirs.

Of course, a lot of these genres really are full of rubbish. But so are genres that the critics like — Sturgeon's Law strictly applies. If you're a fan of this stuff and you want reviews, you may have to go to a specialized web site that only covers that one genre.

So why kick a genre until it's a dead horse? Because critics regard what they do as Serious Business. They're trying to calculate the canon of Great Works here, and there's no room for anything less. They seem to think that if enough people consume good works, people will start giving out flowers and candy and overthrow The Man and cure cancer, but if they consume bad works, people will have their souls crushed and vote to establish fascism. Some music critics with strong political beliefs go further — some are still angry that the decline of music in the late 60s prevented the revolution that was so, so close at hand! (They seem to forget, or never even realized, that so many of these works were brought to us by - and perhaps never would have been without - corporate entities.)

Another reason for this is that entire genres have been created by taking a style the creators hate, and then doing the exact opposite. Critics who like these rebel genres have to pan the ones they rebelled against. Maybe both genres have something to offer? Don't be silly! This is art, and there's only one way to do things.

Sometimes, a genre turns into a dead horse through a mix of Hype Backlash and It's Popular, Now It Sucks!; the work hit a peak level of popularity where it appears to be everywhere, and both the public and the critics get sick of it.

Most of these genres have one or two exceptions, the creators that the critics like in spite of it all. Of course, the critics usually spend their time trying to explain that no, these bands aren't really part of the hated genre at all— although it should be noted that in some cases this is more true than others.

Arena Rock

There ain't no respect for 1970s bands who made songs specifically for arena spectacles, like Foreigner and REO Speedwagon. Critics regard them as pompous, fake, and not real music because their songs aren't really played — they're performed. Especially to fans of Three Chords and the Truth, this is unacceptable. And since arena rockers usually wrote straightforward lyrics, those who feel that True Art Is Angsty have nothing.

Arena rock is notable for being a Dead Horse Genre that also has a band that is usually loved or liked even by the people who hate the genre: Queen, who were a lot more willing to experiment and do odd things than most Arena Rock bands.

Progressive Rock

Similar to the criticisms of Arena Rock: these bands offend critical sensibilities, which tend sharply toward Three Chords and the Truth. Not only do they do extremely long songs, they tend to write incomprehensible lyrics to go with them.

CHARLES DICKENS ON FECHTER'S IAGO

Charles Dickens, for example, in his praising of his ‘intimate friend’ the thespian actor Mr Fechter,  makes clear his distaste for the usual fare on offer in Victorian British theatres:

[Fechter’s] Iago is not in the least picturesque according to the conventional ways of frowning, sneering, diabolically grinning and elaborately doing everything else that would induce Othello to run him through the body very early in the play. Mr Fechter’s is the Iago who could, and did, make friends; who could dissect his master’s soul, without flourishing his scalpel as if it were a walking-stick; who could overpower Emilia by other arts than a sign-of-the-Saracen’s-head grimness [...]. Mr Fechter’s Iago is no more in the conventional psychological mode than in the conventional hussar pantaloons and boots.

Klaus Müller-Wille - TSK-IV KOMMENTAR

(Illustration von Giorgio Baroni)

Tatsächlich wird sie auch nach ihren Übertritt in den nächsten nur vage als "Königreich" ("Kongerige") beschriebenen Raum mit einer Lautfolge konfrontiert, die sie nicht mehr imaginär interpretieren kann, sondern die sie symbolisch dekodieren muss: ... Im deutlichen Gegensatz wird die Prinzessin, die diesen Raum dominiert, als "ungeheuer klug" beschrieben, wobei diese Klugheit vor allen Dingen an der alltäglichen Umgang mit schriftlichen Medien -- nämlich "allen Zeitungen, die es in der Welt gibt" festmacht: "I dette Kongerige, hvor vi nu sidde, boer en Prindsesse, der er saa uhyre klog, men hun har ogsaa laest alle Aviser, der ere til i Verden." (ASV 1,316)
"In diesem Königreich, in dem wir nur sitzen, wohnt eine Prinzessin, die ist so ungeheuer klug, aber sie hat auch alle Zeitungen gelesen, die es auf der Welt gibt."
Im Schloss selbst allerdings ist von diesem Mediengebrauch nichts zu spüren. Ganz in Gegenteil wird sie hier wieder mit einen reinen Bildmedium konfrontiert, das entfernt an die Darstellung der Arabesken und der modernen optischen Technologien in Paradisets Have erinnert. So gleicht die Decke in zentralen Schlafzimmer eine Palme mit Blättern aus Glas und an den Wänden des Schlosses, die mit "rosenrotem Atlas mit künstlichen Blumen" ("rosenrödt Atlask med kunstige Blomster oppad Vaeggen"; ASV 1,319) ausgekleidet sind, huschen Traumbilder vorbei. Die narkotische Wirkung dieser medialer Apparatur wird durch das in jeglicher Hinsicht verschlafene Betragen der Schlossbewohner eindrücklich illustriert.
(Gerd) wird auch diese mediale Traumwelt verlassen. Dabei nimmt die Emanzipation von den imaginären Medien zunächts bedrohliche Züge an. (Nichts von Vernichtung der Eskort - wenn man nicht rechnet dieses Paragraph) (Gerd) wird nicht mehr mit Traumbildern, sondern mit einer beunruhigenden körperlichen Realität konfrontiert.
(Nichts von der Reise in der Fremde)


(Althea Ann review)

I think that one of Andersen's main intentions here is, clearly, to show women as brave, capable, and self-sufficient. Throughout the story, they keep appearing: ... But there's also ...  the princess, who had no intention of marrying until she met a man who appreciated her intellect; ...


(Glory review)

The different adventures ... all represent a progression of love, of possession. ... the Princess who thought love was choosing a man who was handsome and talked well, ...
Hans (in Frozen), like the Princess of the tale, is almost shallow in his view of love, "true love" found so quickly and from nothing more than a day's meeting and a quick-witted word.

A.S. Kline's Reflections on Hermaphroditus

Lastly there are the fascinating transformations of sexuality. Salmacis and Hermaphroditus merge bodies (Book IV:346): Ovid subversively both attests to the fluidity of sexuality, and to the possibilities of female erotic delight, even self-sufficiency.

Ovid evokes nature constantly through pastoral description, sheer visual charm that prompted later a wealth of Renaissance landscape imagery. There is Daphne pursued by Apollo, through the pathless woods and the windblown fields, and along the banks of the Peneus, in that vale of Tempe beneath Parnassus. The girl destined to be laurel: to hurl herself into ‘shining beauty’, into the silence of her own leaves, so that Phoebus held his cool immortal hand against the bark, to feel her still-beating heart (Book I:525). There is Narcissus by another ‘unclouded fountain, with silver-bright water’ that is untouched and inviolate, watching his reflection under the shadows of the trees, and falling for himself, chasing the fleeting and intangible image (Book III:402). Salmacis entwines Hermaphroditus in the pool ‘clear to its very depths’, clasping his ivory-white neck (Book IV:346). 

Mercury-Hermes, son of Jupiter and the Pleiad, Maia, is also possessed of intriguing attributes. He is a god of exchange. Trade: communication: theft, that not so subtle transfer of property: and the music of the reed pipes and the tortoiseshell lyre that he invented, trading the instruments with Apollo for a golden staff, and the art of divination from pebbles dancing in a basin of water, taught to him by the Fates. He is mental dexterity and cunning. He achieves his ends by seductive speech, and the swiftness of his mental passage on winged feet; having he gained his herald’s staff with the entwined snakes, the caduceus that brings sleep and healing, on the boundaries of wakefulness and illness. The tales of his early life reveal a strong link between him and Apollo, with echoes of Phoebus’s medicine, oracular power, and musical arts.

His son by Venus-Aphrodite is Hermaphroditus, with whom Salmacis falls in love and begs to be joined to him eternally. The gods grant her prayer and the two form a bi-sexual product of mind and beauty (Book IV:274).  

And Venus-Aphrodite is the goddess of the forbidden, the force that breaks human conventions. Incest is her dark doing. And surely it is only ‘human concern that has made malign laws.’ (Book X:298).

But Venus-Aphrodite is not merely lust, no mere sexuality. Though she is the prostitute and the goddess of prostitutes, she is the deeper movement of love also. She is committed passion that dies of love for its object: she is a tenderness that stirs to heart-broken mourning. She is the betrayed and the betrayer but also the faithful and the entangled. She is the body’s remorseless stirring, but she is also the mind and spirit’s sweet embrace. So Echo wasted away with love for Narcissus (Book III:359) ‘the more she followed the closer she burned’: and Salmacis fused with Hermaphroditus (Book IV:346) ‘hanging there’, twined round his head and feet: and indeed beauty may be loved by the beast, Galatea by poor Polyphemus. ‘Oh, Gentle Venus’, says Ovid, ‘how powerful your rule is over us!’ (Book XIII:738).

If she is exceptionally fortunate she will find love and affection, [···] or fused like Salmacis with her lover (Book IV:346).

AMY RICHLIN'S CRITIQUE OF THE SALMACIS MYTH

We may compare two feminist works on the nature of ‘the gaze’ in Ovid to illustrate how the poet has held a problematic fascination for feminist classicists and how his poetry lends itself to a variety of receptions and interpretations. The first of these is Amy Richlin’s now seminal work of feminist classical scholarship from 1992, Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, and the second, Patricia B. Salzman-Mitchell’s A Web of Fantasies: gaze, image, and gender in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Both authors are indebted to feminist film theory for the debate surrounding the nature of ‘the gaze’, and both examine how the nature of the viewer/ the viewed is constructed in Ovid to reflect his constructions of the male/ female (following Mulvey). 

Richlin positions her work within cultural studies, as written for both classicists and feminists, and unlike earlier scholarship she tackles a mixture of Greek and Roman sources that are specifically concerned with sex and sexuality. It is a radical feminist text in opposition to earlier feminist scholarship, which was heavily (and, Richlin thinks, to its detriment) influenced by Foucauldian theory. In contrast, Richlin wanted to focus on the ‘sameness rather than difference’ between classical and contemporary cultures. Taking the radical feminist standpoint on ‘pornography’ outlined above, Richlin argues that Ovid’s poetry, and particularly the Metamorphoses, are pornographic.

Richlin’s assertions about the nature of pornography are essentialist and reductive as they perpetuate the patriarchal concept that there is one ideal, non-violent female sexuality. She also does not distinguish in texts between the literal and the figurative, arguing, for example, of the trope of ‘lover-as-soldier’ throughout Ovid’s work, that ‘metaphors often convey a literal perception, and a poet who sees love as comparable to battle might well see violence as part of love.’ Richlin’s agenda thus creates great bias in her use of sources and blinds her to alternative readings (for example, the theory discussed below that Ovid’s puella may be a poetic construct or device), forcing the source material to conform to her theory. 

However, her treatment of the rape of the boy Hermaphroditus by the nymph Salmacis at Metamorphoses 4.285-388 deserves comment as the episode’s conclusion has implications for Ovid’s treatment of the myth of Iphis and Ianthe. Richlin argues that the reversal of traditional roles in the Hermaphroditus story is shown by Ovid to be abhorrent as it ‘results in a permanent and threatening confusion of gender’, not only for Hermaphroditus and Salmacis, but for all future male bathers in their pool, who Hermaphroditus prays will be turned into semiviri (eunuchs, or literally half-men, 386). Richlin comments: 

We see male rapists who dress as women, even a male raped because he is dressed as a woman, and these events turn out well; when a female acts male, the result is the unmanning of all men, and the narrative makes it clear that this is a bad thing (e.g., 4.285-86). 

When we then come to the story of Iphis and Ianthe five Books later, we are mindful of this ‘permanent and threatening confusion of gender’, and so perhaps understand why Iphis’ biological sex must change in canon in order for there to be a happy ending to her tale.


Ali Smith also chooses to include two passages from Woolf in an edited volume of her favourite writing by other authors, including a section of Woolf’s diary and a scene from Orlando; Smith 2006. Although I have used Woolf here predominantly to explore the use of water imagery in Girl Meets Boy, Woolf’s metabiographical novel Orlando (1928) is another crucial intertext containing both an exploration of the fluidity of gender and the blurring of generic boundaries. As well as purporting to be the autobiography of a young man who one day wakes up as a woman, many of the novel’s characters display both female and male attributes (Sash), change sex (Shelmerdine), or wear the clothes of the opposite sex (Archduke / Archduchess Harry / Harriet), and boundaries are blurred between fiction and biography, author and creation. Orlando’s story is framed by two recurring Ovidian tales from the Metamorphoses, those of Daphne and Apollo, and Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. That both of these tales also appear in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew suggests that this was a mediating text for Woolf in her reading of Ovid. Woolf uses gender fluidity and Ovid’s particular brand of metamorphosis (that something of the original character is maintained post transformation) in Orlando to explore the very different roles and expectations of men and women in 1920s Britain. The opening line of Orlando reads: ‘He – for there could be no doubt of his sex…’ (5). This statement immediately makes the reader question the veracity of this assertion and foreshadows the unstable gender categories that we meet throughout the novel, and we are also reminded of Ovid’s own characteristic tendency to subvert statements that he has just presented as fact. The line also pleasingly foreshadows Ali Smith’s own assertion that ‘She was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life’ (Smith 2006: 45).

EL FINAL DE LA HOJARASCA

Here are my English and Spanish versions of an assignment I had to do for a course on García Márquez:

La hojarasca, The Leaf Storm, ends with the foreshadowing of the whistle of a ghost train and the disappearance of Macondo into that corner for heaping up "villages that no longer do a service to the nation." But it also ends, on a more personal note, with the funeral train of the late French doctor leaving the colonel's mansion, right before their confrontation with the local community. 
The last words are said by the grandchild: "Now they (the villagers) will sense the smell. Now all the curlews will begin to sing." These seabirds, that stand for tradition and the voice of the people, are clearly a leitmotif in the story, as much as the railway train and the leaf storm that represent the fruit company and the hinterland's connection to a globalised outside world, the impact that the arrival of the fruit company in general, illustrated in the particular case of the grass-eating and cohabitating European physician, has on traditional Macondo society. 
The railway is a powerful symbol of modernity and progress. In Clarín's story "Adiós, Cordera", the appearance of railroads and trains in a rural landscape (in that case, in northern Spain) also symbolizes the connection of the hinterland/backwater with a nineteenth-century globalized world and its market economy (market agriculture, market industry...), bringing in the outside world with all of its progress and all of its threats to traditional life. The final ghost train stands obviously for the decadence and return to isolation of Macondo as a discarded cog in the works of globalisation. Back to the childlike wonder even adults had at the start of 100 Years of Solitude, seeing a magnet and a block of ice brought by Romany peddlers from the outside world as magical objects. Back from railroads to curlews once more. 
The epigraph being Creon's decree (that anyone who buries the corpse of the traitor, exposed according to the law to scavengers and the elements, will be disgraced and executed in public) really foreshadows the fact that La hojarasca is basically going to be a retelling of Antigone in a (fictional) tropical rural village during wartime. 
The decrees of the social establishment (leave the traitor exposed as a mark of shame, execution awaits whoever buries or even mourned him) against those of the heart (every dead body deserves the same dignity; after all, we are all equal in death). That is not only a classical but even a UNIVERSAL theme; it's for instance at the heart of Hamlet (regarding revenge) or Romeo and Juliet (regarding young love). 
But the interesting thing is that Gabo didn't know he was unwittingly rewriting Antigone until one of his friends pointed it out. It's because this theme and this dilemma, like those of Shakespeare, are universal. The open ending is clearly enticing; how will the community and the family react during the funeral? Every reader is free to imagine their own ending. 
Would the villagers lunge at the colonel's family like an angry mob, and would he have to speak for the cause he defends? I imagine that ending. Furthermore, I'm sure the mob will learn their lesson and finally respect the colonel. The curlews will be hushed by the commanding voice they had hitherto overlooked until this moment, and sing in chorus with the old veteran.


La hojarasca concluye con la predicción del silbido de un tren fantasma y de la relegación de Macondo al rincón donde se almacenan "los pueblos que han dejado de prestar servicio a la nación". Pero también concluye, de forma más personal, con el cortejo fúnebre del difunto doctor francés dejando la mansión del coronel justo antes de su enfrentamiento con la gente del pueblo. 
El nieto dice las últimas palabras de la novela: "Ahora (los macondenses) sentirán el olor. Ahora todos los alcaravanes se pondrán a cantar". Estas aves marinas, también llamadas zarapitos, representan la tradición y la voz del pueblo en el relato y son, por ende, un Leitmotif, tanto como los trenes y la hojarasca (tormenta de hojas) que representan a la compañía bananera y la conexión entre el ambiente de periferia o hinterland de Macondo y un mundo exterior globalizado; el impacto general de la compañía frutera en la sociedad rural tradicional se ilustra con el caso particular de la llegada de cierto médico europeo amancebado y comedor de hierba. 
La ferrovía es un símbolo muy potente de la modernidad y del progreso: en "¡Adiós, Cordera!", de Clarín, la aparición del tren en un ambiente rural tradicional (del norte de España, en este caso) también representa la conexión de una sociedad periférica/de hinterland con el mundo exterior globalizado y su economía de mercado (agricultura de mercado, industria de mercado...), trayendo al terruño el mundo exterior con todo su progreso y todas sus amenazas a lo tradicional. 
El tren fantasma final representa, por ende, la decadencia y el retorno al aislamiento de Macondo como un engranaje desechado por la maquinaria de la globalización, de la economía internacional. Un retorno al asombro infantil que mostraban incluso los adultos al principio de Cien años de soledad, al ver un imán y un bloque de hielo que los gitanos nómadas han traído del mundo exterior como objetos mágicos. De vuelta de la ferrovía a los alcaravanes. 
El que el epitafio sea el decreto de Creonte (quien se atreva a sepultar o incluso a llorar al traidor, expuesto en público a los carroñeros y a los elementos, pagará con la pena de muerte), realmente predice que La hojarasca va a ser una reescritura de Antígona en un ambiente rural tropical (ficticio) en tiempos de guerra/posguerra. 
Los decretos de las autoridades sociales (dejar al traidor expuesto en público como marca de vergüenza, la ejecución espera a quien le entierre e incluso a quien le llore) en conflicto con los decretos del corazón (todos los cuerpos inertes merecen ser tratados con dignidad; al fin y al cabo, la muerte nos hace a todos iguales): he aquí un tema no sólo clásico, sino UNIVERSAL: también está en el fondo de Hamlet (a propósito de la venganza) o de Romeo y Julieta (a propósito del amor adolescente). 
Pero lo interesante es que Gabo no se dio cuenta de que había reescrito Antígona sin proponerse la idea hasta que uno de sus amigos hizo hincapié en ello. Es porque el tema y el dilema, como los de Shakespeare, son universales. El final abierto es realmente incitante: ¿cómo reaccionarán el pueblo y la familia durante el funeral? Cada lector/a es libre de imaginar su propio final. ¿Atacarán los macondenses a la familia del coronel en turba furiosa, y tendrá él que defender su causa ante el pueblo? Tal es el final que yo imagino. Y encima, estoy segura de que la turba habrá aprendido la lección y respetará al coronel. Los alcaravanes callarán ante la voz de mando que habían despreciado hasta la fecha, para cantar a coro con el anciano militar.