2. household goblin. In Scandinavian countries, the nisse, or household goblin, figures importantly in Christmas traditions. Often sporting a white beard and wearing a red cap, he is a benevolent local spirit who guards the security and prosperity of the family with whom he lives—not at all like the gremlins and imps we associate with goblins in Anglo-American cultures. His annual reward at Christmas is a big bowl of porridge with a pat of butter floating in it.
3. it was a book of poetry. The mingling of the sacred and the profane—a page of poetry used to wrap cheese—introduces the story’s major theme, for the goblin finds himself divided between his allegiances to the grocer, who provides porridge, and the student, who provides beauty and poetry. One sustains the body; the other warms the soul.
4. suddenly had a voice. Speaking objects play an important role in Andersen’s works: a jack-in-the-box uses menacing words with other toys, a tub talks to a pot, and a collar proposes to a pair of scissors. When it was said of Andersen that he could create a story in which a darning needle came to life, Andersen obliged with a talking darning needle that aspires to become a sewing needle. The gift of gab that is said to belong to the grocer’s wife is circulated among the items in the shop. The glib linguistic fluency found downstairs takes the form of emotional outbursts and sentimental effusions. The different voices at one point form “the opinion of the majority,” and they could represent a satirical thrust at the many Danish critics who disparaged Andersen’s works in the popular press. In contrast, the poetry that radiates from the book purchased by the student has a quite different effect.
5. the goblin peeped through the keyhole. The goblin lives a vicarious existence, staying behind the scenes and finding pleasure in witnessing and listening rather than acting. He becomes a charming connoisseur and gourmand.
6. A dazzling ray of light rose up from the book. The visionary tableau in the student’s garret resembles a utopian moment in “The Golden Pot: A Modern Fairy Tale” by E.T.A. Hoffmann. Anselmus, the student-poet in that tale, takes a job working as a scribe, and, when he begins to study the exotic characters he must copy, the room in which he is writing begins to transform itself: “He heard strange music coming from the garden, and he was surrounded by sweet and lovely fragrances. . . . At times it also seemed to him that the emerald leaves of the palm trees were rustling and that the clear crystal tones which Anselmus had heard under the elder tree . . . were dancing and flitting through the room. . . . He discovered that he was looking at a lovely and glorious maiden who was coming towards him from the tree, looking at him with ineffable longing with those dark blue eyes which lived in his heart. The leaves appeared to reach down and to expand” (Kent and Knight, 63). Beauty, in the form of sights, sounds, and aromas, emanates here too from the words on the page.
7. A house was on fire. Here once again, as in “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” is evidence of the phoenix principle at work in Andersen’s stories. The conflagration produces the same light and heat as the book, yet is seen as destructive rather than creative—hence the goblin’s race to rescue the book. And yet, like the phoenix which rises from the ashes, the book that is consumed by fire might turn the student from a reader and consumer of words to a writer and creator of words. As one critic puts it, “Loss of identity as the first step to renewal of identity, failure as success, defeat as necessary condition for a triumphant victory of poetry” (Detering, 56).
Auntie Toothache
Tante Tandpine
Nye Eventyr og Historier. Anden Samling, 1872
A story about the failures of poetry, “Auntie Toothache” ends by validating the power of poetry. “Everything ends up in the trash,” the story famously ends, and the trash is precisely the place where the story “Auntie Toothache” is found, but then revived, circulated, retold, and put into print in a way that assures its power to endure. One critic has classified “Auntie Toothache” as a “euphoric” text, for in it, “the poetical dimension more and more wins over, permeates and sees through the terrible phenomenal and psychological mess” (Barlby, 516). To be sure, poetry and pain are secret accomplices, both signs of absence and decay, but in this story poetry wins the day by representing the life and writings of the student-poet and assuring that imagination will triumph over pain. “Auntie Toothache” was written in 1872, the year Andersen had his last remaining tooth extracted. He joins a pantheon of writers ranging from Dostoevsky and Poe to Thomas Mann and Martin Amis who have written about the poetry of dental pain, yoking suffering and art and also taking advantage of what has been called the nexus of “potency, beauty, and pain” associated with teeth (Theodore Ziolkowski 1976, 11). As Leonato puts it in Much Ado about Nothing, “For there was never yet philosopher / that could endure the toothache patiently” (5, 1).
“Auntie Toothache” is more in the mode of the uncanny short story than the fairy tale. It represents the writing of a mature poet who is struggling to find meaning in a life dedicated to creating “immortal” works of art even as he is experiencing the pains of mortality. Andersen began to feel the first symptoms of the liver cancer from which he died shortly after finishing this story, which is his last tale. “Auntie Toothache” represents one of his greatest achievements, yet it is rarely included in anthologies of his work, in large part because it takes up existential questions in a savagely nihilistic manner. Auntie Toothache gives voice to morbid anxieties that haunted the poet in the final year of his life but that also trouble our faith in the power of art to create effects that rival (or compensate for) the force of a simple toothache.
Where did we get this story?1
Would you like to know?
We took it out of the basket, the one in which you throw wastepaper.
Lots of good rare books end up at the delicatessen or at the grocer’s, not to be read but for more basic purposes. They are needed as wrapping paper for starch and coffee beans,2 as well as for salt herring, butter, and cheese. Used writing paper also comes in handy.
Things are sometimes tossed in the trash when they don’t really belong there.
I know a grocery boy,3 the son of a butcher. He worked his way up from the cellar to the street-level shop. He is a well-read person, who has seen a lot of printed and handwritten material on the paper used for wrapping. He has an interesting collection, consisting of important official documents from the wastepaper baskets of busy, absentminded officials, a few confidential letters from one lady friend to another, and scandalous news that was to go no further, not to be mentioned by a soul. He is a living rescue operation for more than a significant portion of our literature, and his collection covers a range of topics. He has the run of his parents’ shop as well as the shop of his employer. In both places he has saved many a book or pages from books that are well worth reading more than once.
He showed me his collection of printed and handwritten materials from the trash, the most valued items coming from the delicatessen. There were several pages in it from a large composition book. The unusually clear and beautiful handwriting caught my eye at once.4
“A student wrote that,” he said. “The student who lived just across the street and who died about a month ago. He was suffering from a terrible toothache, as you will learn. It is rather amusing to read. There is not much left of what he wrote. Once there was a whole book and more on top of that. My parents gave the student’s landlady half a pound of green soap5 in exchange for it. Here’s what I managed to save of it.”
I borrowed it, I read it, and now I’ll tell you what it said.
LORENZ FRØLICH
The grocer’s boy shows the author his collection of papers that come from the trash can.
The title was: AUNTIE TOOTHACHE6
I
Auntie gave me sweets when I was little. My teeth could stand it then, and they weren’t ruined. Now I’ve grown up and become a student, and she still spoils me with sweets and tells me that I am a poet.
There’s something of the poet in me,7 but not enough. Often w
hen I go walking through the streets of the city, I feel as if I am walking through a vast library.8 The houses are bookcases, and each floor is a shelf lined with books. Over there you’ll find a story of everyday life; next to it is a good old-fashioned comedy; and there are scholarly books from every field. Over here you’ll find trash and some good reading. I can fantasize and philosophize about all those books.
I have something of the poet in me, but not enough. Many people have just as much of it in them as I do, but they don’t carry a sign or wear a collar with the word “Poet” on it.
We’ve all been given a divine gift, a blessing large enough for ourselves, but much too small to be portioned out to others. It appears like a ray of sunshine and fills your soul and your mind. It comes like the scent of a flower, like a melody you know but can’t remember from where.
The other evening I was sitting in my room, and I felt the urge to read but didn’t have a book, not even a page. Just then a leaf, fresh and green, fell down from a linden tree.9 The breeze carried it to me through the window.
I examined the veins that branched out on it. A little bug was crawling across them, as if it were planning to make a thorough study of the leaf. That made me think about human wisdom. We also crawl around on a leaf, and that’s all we know. And yet we immediately start lecturing about the whole big tree, its roots, trunk, and crown. The big tree: God, the world, and immortality, and all we know of that is one little leaf!
While I was sitting there, Auntie Millie came to visit.
I showed her the leaf with the insect and told her about my thoughts. Her eyes lit up.
“You’re a poet!” she declared. “Perhaps the greatest we have! If I live to see it happen, I will go to my grave with joy. Ever since Brewer Rasmussen’s funeral, you have never ceased to astonish me with your powerful imagination.”
That’s what Auntie Millie said, and then she kissed me.
Who was Auntie Millie, and who was Brewer Rasmussen?
II
As children, we always called my mother’s aunt “Auntie”—we had no other name for her.
She would give us jam and sweets, even though it was very bad for our teeth.10 But she claimed to have a weakness for sweet children. It was cruel to deny them a few sweets when they were so fond of them.
That’s why we loved Auntie so much.
She had been a spinster for as far back as I remember, and she had always been old. Her age never seemed to change.11
She had once suffered a good deal from toothaches12 and was always talking about them. And so it happened that her friend, Brewer Rasmussen, who was a great wit, started to call her Auntie Toothache.
He had not done any brewing for the last few years and was living on the interest from his money. He frequently visited Auntie, and he was older than she. He had no teeth at all, just a few black stumps.13
As a child he had eaten too much sugar,14 he told us children, and that’s how he came to look as he did.
Auntie couldn’t possibly have eaten sugar as a child, for she had the most beautiful white teeth.
She also used them sparingly. In fact, she didn’t even sleep with them at night,15 Brewer Rasmussen told us.
We children felt that this was a nasty thing to say, but Auntie told us that he didn’t mean anything by it.
One day at lunch she told us about a terrible dream she had had during the night. A tooth had fallen out.
“That means that I’m going to lose a true friend soon,” she said.
“Was it a false tooth?” the brewer asked with a chuckle. “If it was, that means that you will just lose a false friend.”
“You are a rude old man!” Auntie said, angrier than I’ve ever seen her before or since then.
She later told us that her old friend had only been teasing and that he was the noblest soul on earth. The day that he died he would become one of God’s little angels in heaven.
I wondered a good deal about this transformation and whether I would be able to recognize him in his new state.
When Auntie was young, and he was young too, he had proposed to her. She decided to think it over and didn’t do anything, then thought for too long. She became a spinster but always remained his true friend.
Then Brewer Rasmussen died.
He was carried to his grave in a very expensive hearse and was followed by a procession of mourners, some in uniform wearing medals.
Dressed in mourning, Auntie stood at the window, together with all of us children, except our little brother, whom the stork had brought just a week ago.
When the hearse and the procession had passed and the street was empty, Auntie was preparing to leave, but I didn’t want to. I was waiting for the angel named Brewer Rasmussen. Surely he had now become a child of God with wings and would make an appearance.
“Auntie,” I asked. “Don’t you think he’ll be here in a moment? Or maybe the next time the stork brings us a baby brother, he’ll also bring us Angel Rasmussen?”
Auntie was quite overwhelmed by my imagination, and said: “That child is going to become a great poet!”16 She repeated those words during all the years I went to school, even after my confirmation and right into my university days.
She was, and still is, my most devoted friend, when I have toothaches and poet-pains.17 I get attacks of both.
“Just write down all your thoughts,”18 she said, “and put them in your desk drawer. That’s what Jean Paul19 did, and he became a great poet, although I’m not a great fan of his. He just doesn’t inspire me. You have to be inspiring. And, yes, you will be inspiring!”
The night after that speech, I lay awake in agony, longing with the desire to become the great poet that Auntie saw in me and sensed I was. I was suffering from poet-pains, but there is an even worse pain: a toothache. It was grinding and crushing me. I became a writhing worm, with an herb compress and a mustard plaster.
“I know just what that’s like,” Auntie said.
She had a sorrowful smile on her lips, and her white teeth gleamed.
But I must now begin a new chapter in this story about me and my aunt.
III
I moved into new lodgings and had been living there for about a month. I told Auntie all about it.
“I’m living with a quiet family. They don’t pay any attention to me, even if I ring the bell three times. And, by the way, it’s a very noisy house20 full of commotion and disturbances from whatever or whoever blows through. I live right above the entryway. Every carriage driving in or out makes the pictures on the wall rattle. When the gate slams, it’s just like an earthquake hitting the house. When I’m lying in bed, I can feel the shock going right through my body, but they say that’s good for the nerves. When the wind blows, and it always blows in this country, the long window latches outside swing to and fro, hitting the wall. The bell on the neighbor’s gate clangs whenever there’s a gust of wind.
“The lodgers come trickling in at all hours, from late in the evening until deep into the night. The one right above me, the one who gives trombone lessons in the daytime, is the last one home and does not go to bed until after he has taken a little midnight stroll, with heavy footsteps and hobnail boots.
“There are no double windows, but there is a broken pane in my room. The landlady has pasted some paper over it, but the wind still blows through the crack and makes a sound like a buzzing fly. It’s the kind of music that puts you right to sleep. When I fall asleep at last, I’m soon awakened by the sound of the rooster crowing. The rooster and hens in the chicken coop kept by the basement tenant announce that it’s morning. The little ponies don’t have a stable, but they are tied up in the storeroom under the staircase, and they constantly kick against the door and the paneling for exercise.
“The day dawns. The porter, who lives with his family in the attic, comes barreling down the stairs. His wooden clogs clatter, the gate bangs, and the house shakes. Then, when that’s over, the lodger living above me starts his exercises, lifting heavy iro
n balls that he somehow can’t keep in his hands so that they end up falling on the floor. At just about that time the children living in the house are getting ready for school and rush out, screaming, with all their might. I go over to the window and open it up for some fresh air, and it is such a relief—when I can get it—as long as the young woman in the back building isn’t cleaning gloves with a stain remover, which is how she makes a living. Otherwise, it’s a perfectly nice house, and I’m living with a quiet family.”
That’s the report I gave Auntie about the flat. It was livelier at the time, for spoken words have greater vibrancy than written words.21
“You’re a poet!” Auntie exclaimed. “Just write down everything you told me, and you’ll be as good as Dickens.22 To my mind, you are far more interesting. You paint when you speak.23 You describe the house in a way that lets me see it. It sends chills up my spine. Keep writing! Enliven it with some people—charming people, but also be sure you have some unhappy ones.”
I actually did write down my description of the house, with all its noises and nuisances. But I was the only one in the story24—there was no plot. That came later.
IV
One evening during the wintertime, late at night, after the theaters had closed, a dreadful snowstorm blew in that made it almost impossible to get anywhere.
Auntie had gone to the theater,25 and I was there to escort her home. It was hard enough for me to walk on my own, let alone look out for someone else. The hansom cabs were all engaged. Auntie lived on the outskirts of town, but my flat was not far from the theater. If it had not been for that, we would have had to seek shelter for a while in the sentry box.