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The Dryad by H.C. Andersen
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Jalilah
(last edited Sep 16, 2014 05:52PM)
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Sep 14, 2014 04:14PM
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But you can find it in the complete collections or you can read it online. It's pretty short.
Here's a couple of sites:
http://hca.gilead.org.il/dryad.html
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27200
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I so love this story. Colorfully descriptive and thought-provoking. Possibilities and hope. It makes me wonder at people's choices.(view spoiler)To each his own; enjoy the journey.
Another thought...the various perspectives/points of view are quite good. For example (view spoiler)
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http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006...
The Dryad is mentioned.
Greetings, on this fine morning in Perth Western Australia. I read Dryad bu HCA. Thank you for putting it up. it was a touching tale, but I did feel such sorrow dor The Chesnut Tree. He seems to have a taste for the melan holy with a touch of a lesson to learn doesn't he.
Sorry, I read the article in the Guardian, and it made me feel a little sick afterwards. Secondly, I skimmed the last section of it where it referred to a few of his stories. I suppose I had not thought about his mobidness before ie. little girl who danced in her red slippers, and could not stop until an axe was used to chop off her feet etc. Is that uplifting, I think not. However, who am I to judge these great works.
Carole wrote: "...it was a touching tale, but I did feel such sorrow dor The Chesnut Tree. He seems t..."Sad for the Chestnut tree, yes, but I found my joy for the Dryad's ability to choose and experience previously unattainable adventures outweighed that aspect.
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Honestly I debated posting the link to that article in the first place. It was not my intent to make Andersen look bad! I figure if we stopped reading all the male 19th century European authors who went to brothels, there would be hardly any left to read! The worst one was Gustave Flaubert. After reading his Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour I really did not like him and want to read him again! In comparison Hans Christian Andersen is really innocent!
I have not started The Dryad yet. It was interesting to read in the article that this story was intended for adults!
Greetings, He is also looking at the results of ones wants and their desires and how they impact on others. There is a moral theme here too and in more of his stories. I will need to read more of them. The little Match girl was very sad however I do not judge his private life, that is not my business. I have a large book of his tales, I will read more of them
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I think I enjoy reading him more one tale at a time versus all at once. I read his complete works last year, and found them moralistically overwhelming. But on their own the preachiness doesn't bother me, though this one has less in your face Christian ethics than a lot of his others. But, I noticed his lovely language and descriptions more this time around, and the same went when we read The Little Mermaid.
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I have to say, after reading everyone's comments I thought HCA was going to be more of a perv than the was! I knew he visited brothels to talk to prostitutes, but I always thought that was for "research," which, I guess it was!
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World's Fairs aren't a big deal today, but back when traveling was rarer and there wasn't TV/Movies to bring you images from afar, they were really popular as sort of a way of being able to experience a lot of different cultures in one city.
And like the Dryad - most of those exhibits were ephemeral too - they'd last one or two years for the duration of the fair, then they'd be dismantled. Even the Eiffel Tower was originally meant to be dismantled eventually - but luckily they never got around to it!
And I agree with Margaret, I enjoyed this a lot more individually than I did as part of the collection. (view spoiler)
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(view spoiler)
That second sentence - "After hitting 60, Andersen wrote some of his best stories, aimed more at adults than children and much more experimental than his earlier, better-known work." - that reflects what I saw when I read his collection last year. Most of his stories with an actual plot and typical fairy tale structure were in the very beginning of his career and they got progressively less plot heavy and more whimsical and focused on the moralistic.
Thanks, the comments about the background of the story helped put it more in context. I have to say this is not my favorite Anderson story, as many of you mentioned -- he does write a sad tale.
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World's Fai..."
I agree that what you say Melanti, about what HCA's moral is, but if that is the case, it's kind of awful! That everyone should just stay where they are and not try anything new or different?!?
And what do you all think of the pretty woman with the red flowers in her hair?
Was she supposed to represent a human version of the Dryad? A woman gone astray?
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But look at that news article. What did HCA do when he visited exotic foreign cities? He visited brothels! Gasp! How sinful! So of course, cities are full of sinful things. It's a bit of "Do as I say, not as I do" with the story, I think.
And yes, I think the woman was supposed to be some woman gone astray - the clergyman implies that, at least. Though she does return briefly and seems to be rich. This would have been pre-industrial revolution, so I'm sure jobs for women in cities would have been scarce. I can't think of many legitimate and non-sinful ways an unaccompanied woman would have become rich in a city back then short of a lucky marriage.
And only, what, about a quarter? less? of the world's population at the time was urban. And I'm sure the same rule of thumb applied back then about cities being less conservative than the rural populations.
Jalilah wrote:I agree that what you say Melanti, about what HCA's moral is, but if that is the case, it's kind of awful! That everyone should just stay where they are and not try anything new or different?!?..."HCA was himself quite the traveler/adventurer. In hindsight, did he have regrets? Or was he scarred from his ill-fated visit with Charles Dickens? (See excerpt below.)
Ten years later, [circa 1857] Andersen visited England again, primarily to visit Dickens. He extended a brief visit to Dickens' home at Gads Hill Place into a five-week stay, to the distress of Dickens' family. After Andersen was told to leave, Dickens stopped all correspondence between them, much to the great disappointment and confusion of Andersen, who had quite enjoyed the visit and never understood why his letters went unanswered.
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I agree about the woman with red flowers being a woman (the girl who'd gathered at the tree and went to Paris?) who has gone astray. But I think I would've been like the Dryad and said, look at her! She's following her dreams! A contemporary of HCA I imagine would have had a different reaction.
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Oh, that's interesting! Is there anything on why Dickens didn't like him?
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I found this quote from a letter by Dickens: "whenever he [HCA] got to London, he got into wild entanglements of Cabs and Sherry, and never seemed to get out of them again until he came back here, and cut out paper into all sorts of patterns, and gathered the strangest little nosegays in the woods. His unintelligible vocabulary was marvelous" (Dickens, letter to William Jerdan, July 21, 1857).
He also said he was a "bony bore."
Anyone know what Cabs and Sherry is?
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Yep, that's where I went too! Thanks!
I'm guessing that Cabs (Cabernet) and Sherry is booze!
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Melanti wrote: "Booze would be my guess too. But I suppose cabs could also mean cabarets as well, but I think it's a more common abbreviation for Cabernet."Oh yes, cabarets makes more sense...booze and food/entertainment.
Into the Forest
Books mentioned in this topic
Flaubert in Egypt (other topics)The Golden Key (other topics)
The Dryad (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Gustave Flaubert (other topics)Hans Christian Andersen (other topics)
