TSQ-IV: BENEATH THE MOON, YOSHI YOSHITANI

 First things first, greetings from Gothenburg, which was founded by Gustavus Adolphus 400 years ago!!! I'll be staying up north until mid-August and then return to "sunny" Spain (actually, I loathe the hot sun because it causes chafing and triggers cold sores!)...

So I went to this bookshop here in Gothenburg and picked up the lavishly illustrated storybook Beneath the Moon, by Yoshi Yoshitani. Looked up The Snow Queen then scrolled down to what would be the Fourth Story or Part the Fourth. It was only one sentence or clause long, but remarkably well abridged!!! Mind that each story in this book only takes up one page, opposite its illustration, and therefore the longest of these tales are abridged to fit into the one-page format. Hence why the Fourth Story in this Snow Queen is only one sentence/clause long.

Before we move into the long story cut remarkably short, I would like to quote the introduction by Yoshitani-sensei. I have underlined some passages which are true for my experience of the prince and princess in the Andersenian subplot that I adore:

"This collection of stories is meant to serve as a short window into many different cultures. The average reader will recognise a few but many more will be unfamiliar. Some readers will see two or more pieces of themselves never seen before. As much as possible I've tried to indicate each story's point of origin, [...]

Like the tarot cards, each of these stories is equally relevant, and each offers valuable insights to the human experience.

I hope you enjoy this collection and leave wanting to learn even more about each other, all of us living beneath the same moon.

Yoshi Yoshitani."

And of course in Part the Fourth, AKA the Fourth Story, no matter if the telling is the usual five-page length or a single clause like here, I see two pieces of myself, or actually one piece broken into two and brought back together. This subplot also offers a valuable insight into the human experience or two: kindred spirits and altruism (the latter when the subplot crosses with the main plot of The Snow Queen), both of which I hold very dear..

And thus, without further ado...

The Snow Queen

DENMARK, DANISH FAIRY TALE

[...] 

[...] it was only a clever prince who had married a very wise princess.

[...] 

That's all, folks. No mention of the coach/carriage or the massacre of the redshirt servants in the dark forest (in Part/Story 5), neither of the young royal pair's honeymoon in foreign lands (in Part/Story 7). It's just this clause. Talk about "long story short!" A lengthy subplot condensed into just this single clause or sentence. The two secondary yet favourite characters described with matching, near synonymous adjectives, and her intelligence being heightened by a "very" that may not have its match in his descriptions, yet puts her on a pedestal compared to other fairytale princesses (and again, no other fairytale princess is so well-read, and to quote Maria Tatar "no other fairytale princess seeks such qualities in a man") and allows for more intellectual equality on a more equal footing given traditional gender roles.

I hope you have enjoyed this one-clause retelling and that you feel curious to click on my "the snow queen fourth story" tag in this post to get to know more about this pair of favourite characters of mine.