“I have scarcely closed my eyes the whole night through” reads the caption for this image of a distraught princess.
1. The Princess and the Pea. The literal translation of the title is “the princess on the pea,” emphasizing the test embedded in the story. I have kept the conventional English title, despite the fact that some translators insist that there is a critical difference in the formulation “on the pea.”
2. And he traveled all over the world in search of one. The prince leaves home to search the world for a wife, but his quest will prove to be in vain, for what he seeks, he will find at his doorstep. Unlike his mother, he has no accurate test for measuring authenticity and simply relies on his feeling that something is “not right.”
3. One evening a terrible storm broke out. As in “The Little Mermaid,” a storm signals a life-threatening situation, but it typically produces the opportunity for a romantic alliance. Lightning and thunder, once again, produce the chiaroscuro effects that repeatedly flash through Andersen’s fairy tales.
W. HEATH ROBINSON
The old king goes to the door, candle in hand and massive keys at his side, to let in the princess.
4. It was a princess, and she was waiting outdoors. Like the French Donkeyskin and Cinderella, this princess conceals her nobility until it is put to a test. Rather than matching a foot to a shoe or a finger to a ring, she must reveal her sensitivity to a hidden object. Note that she appears out of nowhere and seems to be more of an orphan than a young woman of royal parentage.
5. “I barely closed my eyes all night long!” In a speech full of double entendres, the princess declares herself to have passed the test of authentic sensitivity but also creates the opportunity for risqué humor in retellings for adults.
6. she had felt the pea. Folklorists have noted that the pathological sensitivity, or “marvelous sensitiveness,” found in Andersen’s story is not common in fairy tales, but they have identified a few examples of it in fairy tales from some cultures. An Indian tale recounts the restlessness of a prince who thinks that he has slept on a wooden beam although nothing more than a hair is found in his bed. An Italian folktale called “The Most Sensitive Woman” describes how a prince’s quest for a marriage partner ends when he encounters a woman whose foot is bandaged after the petal of a jasmine blossom falls on her toe.
The Grimms had included “The Princess on the Pea” in one edition of their Children’s Stories and Household Tales, but they removed the tale once they realized that it belonged to a Danish literary tradition. Knowing that the Brothers Grimm were aware of his work, Andersen decided to pay them a surprise visit when he was in Berlin during the summer of 1844. It is not difficult to imagine his deep mortification when Jacob, the only one of the two brothers at home, was mystified by the presence of the Danish caller and declared that he had no idea who he was. A few weeks later, Jacob apologized in person to Andersen (he had read some of the tales in the interim and reported, “Now I know who you are”). The brothers remained on good terms with Andersen, and their Danish admirer spent time with them during the Christmas holidays in 1845.
Negative responses to the princess are based on what one critic calls “the cultural association between women’s physical sensitivity and emotional sensitivity, specifically, the link between a woman reporting her physical experience of touch and negative images of women who are hypersensitive to physical conditions, who complain about trivialities, and who demand special treatment” (Esrock, 25). The princess’s sensitivity is therefore often recalled by readers as a signal of bad manners rather than of her noble birth.
The feminist writer and essayist Vivian Gornick has read the princess’s sensitivity as a form of dissatisfaction that will define her life in negative terms: “She’s not after the prince, she’s after the pea. That moment when she feels the pea beneath the twenty mattresses, that is her moment of definition. It is the very meaning of her journey, why she has traveled so far, what she has come to declare: the dissatisfaction that will keep her life at bay.” For Gornick, the princess falls into “a petulance that mimick[s] the act of thinking. . . . Soon enough, through the painful logic of inborn grievance, the irritation becomes a wound, an infliction: a devotion and a destiny” (Gornick, 156–57).
W. HEATH ROBINSON
A boy, book in hand, and a girl gaze with reverence and astonishment at the pea on the pedestal in the cabinet of curiosities.
The folklorist Christine Kawan has documented the existence of stories about boys who are subjected to a so-called bed test. These “pea seekers” or “bean kings” discover a pea or bean that appears to be an object of value. They journey to a castle, are given a bed of straw, and, after spending the night tossing and turning for fear of losing the pea or bean, are assumed to be of aristocratic lineage (they are unaccustomed to sleeping on straw) and are married to the princess (Kawan, 102).
7. the pea was sent to the Royal Museum, where it is still on display. For Andersen, the material objects of everyday life—needles, pincushions, and whistles—are endowed with special whimsical human qualities. Here, the pea is never endowed with human feelings, but it becomes an iconic object, signaling the princess’s special sensitivity, presumably not only to a pea under the mattress but also, in an optimistic interpretive move, to the wishes of her human subjects. Once placed in the Royal Museum, the pea becomes an objet d’art, a cult object endowed with an aesthetic and material value that creates the risk of theft.
8. that was a real story! The last line, in declaring the story to be “real,” suggests a parallel between the princess and the narrative about her. And yet, for the narrative, there is no “pea,” no object that will test for its authenticity. It is the narrator who vouches for the “real,” proclaiming the aristocratic lineage of his tale.
The Nightingale 1
Nattergalen
Nye Eventyr. Første Samling, 1843
“The Nightingale” reveals Andersen’s deep commitment to natural beauty over the artful and artificial. In choosing the fairy tale as his medium, Andersen hoped to align himself with the spontaneity of simple, “natural” forms and to empower his art with the same capacity as the nightingale’s song to create beauty, to provide pleasure, and to animate and transform.
Poets and singers are frequently referred to as “nightingales,” and Andersen’s contemporary, the singer Jenny Lind (whose repertoire included folk songs) was famously referred to as the “Swedish nightingale.” “Her voice stays with me, forever, in my story ‘The Nightingale,’ ” Andersen wrote in his travel diaries (Little, 215). Andersen’s friends dubbed him the “nightingale from Fyn”—a man whose literary song had earned him adulation and fame—and Andersen referred to himself as a “male Jenny Lind.” In The Fairy Tale of My Life, he hailed her vocal powers: “Her lovely youthful voice penetrated all hearts! Here truth and nature prevailed; everything assumed significance and clarity” (208). In a memoir published by Charlotte Bournonville, daughter of the famous ballet master who counted himself among Andersen’s friends, the following story (which Andersen may well have heard) is recounted:
One of my father’s dearest friends, a very musical young man, was seriously ill, and his sadness at not being able to hear Jenny Lind sing did quite a lot to make his condition even worse. When Jenny learned that news, she cried: “Dear Mr. Bournonville, allow me to sing for this man who is so ill!” Perhaps it was a dangerous experiment to expose a person who was mortally ill to such an emotional experience, but it worked. After he heard the beautiful singing . . . he was on the road to recovery.
The modesty, generosity, and passion of true art produced by those devoted to their craft contrasts sharply with the empty pleasure of an art as it is practiced by mechanical creatures, who can engage in little else but vacuous mimicry.
Igor Stravinsky’s opera The Nightingale, based on Andersen’s story, premiered in Paris in 1914. Several years later, Stravinsky composed a symphonic poem, “Song of the Nightingale,” for Sergei Diaghile
v’s Ballets Russes. The ballet was first performed in 1920, with sets by Henri Matisse and choreography by Léonide Massine.
Jerry Pinkey’s account of his decision to illustrate Andersen’s “Nightingale” reveals how new images for old stories can have designs on the reader. For him, the girl in the kitchen, who is attuned to nature, becomes as important as the nightingale in restoring the Emperor’s health:
The remarkable story of “The Nightingale” has always intrigued me, and in the creation of this adaptation, the plain little bird with a magnificent voice and a big heart became a symbol of the healing power of nature. The little kitchen girl, who knows where the nightingale lives, became a symbol of hope for the downtrodden. And the king, who cares for his people but is out of touch with them, learns what it means to feel vulnerable through his own illness. In the end the king’s recovery is made possible by two of his most humble subjects, the little kitchen girl, and the nightingale.
Kara Dalkey’s novel The Nightingale (1991) situates the events in Japan and transforms the nightingale into a young woman who plays the flute.
In China, as you may know, the Emperor is Chinese,2 and everyone there is also Chinese. This story took place many years ago, but that’s exactly why you should listen to it, before it’s forgotten.3
The Emperor’s palace was the most magnificent in the world. It was made entirely of fine porcelain, so costly and delicate that you had to be careful when you touched it. In the garden you could find the most wondrous flowers. The most splendid among the flowers were trimmed with little silver bells that jingled, and you couldn’t walk by without noticing them. Yes, everything was arranged quite artfully in the Emperor’s garden,4 which stretched so far back that even the gardener could not say where it ended. If you kept on walking, you reached the loveliest forest with tall trees and deep lakes. The forest stretched all the way out to the deep, blue sea. Tall ships sailed right under the branches of the trees. In those branches lived a nightingale whose song was so enchanting that even a poor fisherman, who had many chores before him, would pause when taking his nets in at night to listen. “My God! That’s really beautiful,” he would say. But then he would return to his chores and forget all about the bird’s song. The next evening, when the fisherman was back at work, the bird would start singing again, and he would say the same thing:5 “My God! That’s really beautiful.”
EDMUND DULAC
The fisherman pauses to listen to the nightingale hidden behind the branches of the tree. Marked by poverty, he experiences a moment of sublime respite from his labors.
Travelers came from all over the world to visit the Emperor’s city and to admire his palace and gardens. If they happened to hear the nightingale singing, they would all agree: “That’s just the best of all.”
When the travelers returned home, they would describe what they had seen, and learned men wrote many books about the city, the palace, and the garden. They never forgot the nightingale—in fact they praised the bird above all other things. Those who could write poetry composed the loveliest poems about the nightingale6 that lived in the forest by the deep sea.
The books themselves traveled around the world, and some of them found their way to the Emperor of China. One day, he was sitting on his golden throne, reading one book after another, nodding his head in delight over the splendid descriptions of his city, palace, and garden. “The nightingale is the best of all!” the books declared.
“What on earth!” the Emperor exclaimed. “A nightingale! I don’t know a thing about it! Is it possible that a bird like that exists in my empire, let alone in my own garden?7 And to think that I had to read about it in a book.”
The Emperor summoned the Chamberlain, who was so refined that when anyone of a lower rank had the audacity to address him or to ask a question, his only reply was “Puh!”8 which really means nothing at all.
“Apparently there is a truly extraordinary bird around here called a nightingale,” said the Emperor. “They say it’s better than anything else in all my domains. Why hasn’t anyone said a word to me about it?”
“I’ve never heard anyone say a word about it,” the Chamberlain said. “And no one has ever presented the bird at the imperial court.”
“I want it to appear here tonight to sing for me,” the Emperor said. “The rest of the world knows more about what’s in my kingdom than I do!”
“I’ve never heard anyone say a word about it,” the Chamberlain said again. “But I shall look for it, and I will find it.”
But where could the nightingale be? The Chamberlain sped up and down the stairs, through rooms and corridors, but nobody he met had ever heard of the nightingale. And so the Chamberlain raced back to the Emperor and told him that the bird must have been in a fable invented by those who write books. “Your Imperial Majesty should not believe what people write today. It’s all made up and about what can be called black magic.”
“But the book I was reading was sent to me by the mighty Emperor of Japan,” the Emperor said. “So it really must be true. I am determined to hear this nightingale. It must be here by this evening. I’ve granted it my high imperial favor. If it doesn’t show up by then, I’ll have every courtier punched in the stomach right after supper.”9
“Tsing-pe!”10 the Chamberlain shouted, and once again he sped up and down the stairs, through all the rooms and corridors. And half the court ran along with him, for no one wanted to be punched in the stomach. Everyone was asking questions about the mysterious nightingale, which was so famous all over the world but unknown at home.
They finally found a poor little girl in the kitchen,11 who said: “Good Lord! The nightingale? Of course I know all about it. Yes, indeed, it can really sing! Every evening they let me take home a few scraps from the table to my poor, sick mother. She lives down by the sea. When I start back, I am so tired that I have to stop to rest in the woods. That’s when I hear the nightingale sing. It brings tears to my eyes. It’s just as if my mother were giving me a kiss.”
“Little kitchen maid,” the Chamberlain said. “I’ll arrange a lifetime post for you in the kitchen and give you permission to watch the Emperor dine if you can take us to the nightingale. It is supposed to give a command performance at court tonight.”
KAY NIELSEN
The nightingale is little more than a speck in the landscape, but the kitchen maid, in a setting of rare beauty, listens to his song enthralled. She is able to renew her journey after the restorative song.
And so they all set off for the forest, to the place where the nightingale was said to sing. Half of the court followed. On the way into the forest a cow began mooing.
“Aha!” said the royal squires. “That must be it. What remarkable power for such a tiny creature. We’re sure that we’ve heard that song once before.”
“No, those are cows lowing,” the little kitchen girl said. “We still have a long way to go.”
Then the frogs began croaking in the marshes.
“How lovely!” the imperial Chinese chaplain declared. “It sounds just like little church bells.”
“No, those are just frogs,” said the little kitchen maid. “But I have a feeling we will hear the nightingale soon.
Then the nightingale began to sing.
“There it is,” said the little kitchen maid. “Just listen. And now you can see it!” And she pointed to a little gray bird perched on a branch.
“Can it be?” exclaimed the Chamberlain. “That’s not at all how I imagined the bird to be. How plain it looks!12 It must have lost all its color from seeing all the distinguished persons gathered around.”
“Little nightingale,” the kitchen maid called out in a loud voice. “Our gracious Emperor so wants you to sing for him.” “With the greatest pleasure,” the nightingale replied, and it sang to everyone’s delight.
“It sounds just like crystal bells,” the Lord Chamberlain said. “And just look at the bird’s little throat—you can tell it’s singing with all its might. It’s astonis
hing that we have never heard it before. It will be a great success at court.” “Shall I sing again for the Emperor?”13 the nightingale asked, for it believed that the Emperor was present.
“My splendid little nightingale,” the Lord Chamberlain said. “I have the great honor of inviting you to court this evening, and there you will enchant his Imperial Grace with your charming voice.”
“My song sounds best outdoors,” the nightingale replied, but it was glad to return with them when it learned of the Emperor’s wishes.
The palace had been cleaned and polished with great care. The walls and floors, made of porcelain, were gleaming from the light of thousands of golden lamps. The loveliest flowers, trimmed with little bells, had been placed in the corridors. The commotion from all the comings and goings made the bells start ringing, and you could scarcely hear yourself think.
In the middle of the great hall in which the Emperor was seated, a golden perch had been set up, and it was for the nightingale. The entire court had assembled there. The little kitchen maid had been given permission to stand behind the door, for she now held the title of Real Kitchen Maid. People were dressed in their finery, and, when the Emperor graciously nodded, everyone fixed their eyes on the little gray bird.
The nightingale’s voice was so lovely that tears began to fill the Emperor’s eyes and roll down his cheeks. The bird sang even more beautifully, and the music went straight to his heart. The Emperor was so delighted that he ordered his own golden slipper to be hung around the nightingale’s neck.14 But the nightingale graciously declined it and declared that it had received reward enough.
“I have seen tears in the eyes of the Emperor,” it said. “For me that is the greatest treasure. The tears of an Emperor have a wondrous power. God knows that I have received my reward.” And it sang once again with a sweet, sublime voice.