What kind of life did Hans Christian Andersen, known as the "sun of world children's literature", go through? Aside from fairy tales, do you know his creative code? On the occasion of 5.18 World Museum Day, "Listening to the World Fairy Tales and Feeling the True Meaning of Life - 2019 Hans Christian Andersen Museum Theme Activity" was held in Shanghai Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tale Park, Zhang Jinjiang, professor of East China Normal University and president of the Shanghai Children's Literature Research and Promotion Society, said that Hans Christian Andersen was born in poverty and was well aware of folk suffering, "His broad humanistic mind is full of human wisdom and light for human suffering, which is what we need to reflect and learn from today's children's literature writers who are keen to write kittens and puppies and children's campus paradise." Andersen's vision is the vast world, and our children's literature writers have to come out of the narrow world in order to make a difference. ”
Hans Christian Andersen wrote about 168 fairy tales in his lifetime, such as "The Girl with the Finger", "The Daughter of the Sea", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Little Girl Who Sold Matches", "The Princess on the Pea" and other classic works, which have been translated into more than 150 languages and almost all over the world. Fu Guangming, a translator and researcher at the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature, recently introduced by Shanghai Translation Publishing House, said that people's understanding of Hans Christian Andersen is mostly limited to his fairy tale writer written in Danish, and it seems that he has never written anything other than fairy tales in his life. But in fact, looking at his life's literary creation, it is not just about writing fairy tales for children. People like to portray him as an amiable gentleman who devoted his life to fairy tales, but the opposite is true: he was a neurotic, short-tempered, ambitious, self-centered poet whose life was in constant crisis. As a writer, his best works are novels and plays. Fairy tales were second in his creation, and they did not attract much attention from critics at the time. ”
Fu Guangming said that Andersen's debut work that really attracted the attention of the literary world was "Walking from the Holmen Canal to the East Corner of Amaue Island", he loved the German fantasy writer Hoffmann, and when he walked with him Hoffmann's "Devil's Ecstasy", "Walking" had a Hoffmann-style narrative style; not many people know that Andersen was still a dramatist, and seven years after his fairy tales had been published, the German version of Andersen's complete works still excluded his fairy tales. Of course no one doubts that Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales have made a great contribution to literature. But to truly understand him, you still need to enter his rich and complex spiritual world. ”
During a 44-year creative cycle, Andersen wrote the famous fantasy travelogue "Amabenga Island", as well as the comedy "Love on nikolai Nafta" staged at the Royal Opera House and the novel "Improv poet" that sensationalized Europe. "This great soul has entered China, thanks to a group of talented young writers and translators in the history of modern Chinese literature." Zhang Jinjiang recorded this history in the theoretical monograph "Fairy Tale Aesthetics", a literary society "Literary Research Society" that is very influential in the history of modern Chinese literature, representative figures include Mao Dun, Zheng Zhenduo, Ye Shaojun, Bing Xin, Wang Tongzhao, Yu Pingbo, Zhao Jingshen, etc. One of their important tasks is to translate and introduce the works of foreign fairy tale writers such as Hans Christian Andersen and Wilde.
For example, Mao Dun's early literary activities were related to the promotion of Andersen's fairy tales, and in 1923 he translated and published Andersen's fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes", and also translated the first parts of Brandt's "Hans Christian Andersen", and he praised Andersen so much that he wrote a "Recent Children's Literature" in the January 1924 "Novel Monthly": "All in all, it seems that modern times have not yet produced great children's literature writers like Hans Christian Andersen. ”
Zhou Zuoren, an important member of the Literary Research Association, exchanged letters with Zhao Jingchen in the supplement of the Morning Post from January 9 to April 6, 1922 on the "Discussion of Fairy Tales", as well as three papers written by Zhou Zuoren, "Fairy Tale Studies", "Outline of Fairy Tales", and "Interpretation of Ancient Fairy Tales", which have introduced and commented on Andersen's fairy tales, and he praised Andersen's fairy tales as "not changing children's hearts" and "familiar with children's psychology". Among the members of the Literary Research Society, the main papers and translations evaluating Andersen's life and works include Gu Junzheng's "Biography of Hans Christian Andersen" and "Annals of Hans Christian Andersen"; Xu Tiaofu's "Brother, Who is Andersen?" Jiao Juyin translated "Andersen's Childhood"; Zhang Yousong translated "The Origin and System of Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales" and so on.
Andersen's paper-cut works
The literary research society's promotion of this world fairy tale master with such fanfare is rare in the history of modern Chinese literature, and since then Andersen's name and his fairy tales have been spread in China. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the translator Ye Junjian was the first translator in China to translate the sixteen-volume "Andersen's Fairy Tales" from Danish, and was awarded the "Danish National Flag Medal" by the Queen of Denmark; Ren Rongrong, a translator and children's literature writer who translated the four-volume "Complete Andersen's Fairy Tales", wrote in the afterword: "Andersen can make people read from childhood to old age."
Before anderson was born, he had always longed for China and mentioned China in many works, but unfortunately he could not do so. Now that he has a "new home" in Shanghai, Qi Ruizhen, director of the Hans Christian Andersen Museum, revealed that in the future, he plans to set up an "Andersen Fairy Tale Life Research Room" to transform the research results into a cultural industry.
Author: Xu Yang
Editor: Xu Yang
Editor-in-Charge: Wang Lei
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