Salt * Wet * Fish

Gasp, I wonder if Focus on The Family will request all kindergartens and schools to ban all his “fairy” tales because it may turn their kids gay!

From http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/lifestylenews/view/156598/1/.html

Hans Christian Andersen a sad storyteller
By David Chew, TODAY

The man behind some of the world’s best-loved stories for children led a life of great sadness.

Hans Christian Andersen was born 200 years ago, in a crib whose wooden frame once held the coffin (and body) of a deceased Count. His father, a poor and sickly shoemaker who was barely 22 when Andersen was born, died when the boy was 11 years old. Despite his background, the ever-optimistic Andersen said in his autobiography, The True Story of My Life, that he lived like a child who was raised in a nobleman’s house.

His stories were full of humour because he didn’t want the children who read them to experience share his sadness.

Forced to work when his father died, Andersen apprenticed as a weaver and tailor. He also worked in a cigarette factory, where his co-workers once bet that he was a girl and pulled down his pants to see.

It was only when he was 14 and had left home to join the Royal Danish Theatre that Andersen came into his own. It was only when a co-worker noted his talent as a poet that Andersen began writing in earnest.

Despite gaining the attention Denmark’s King Frederick VI, who sent him to a prestigious school on a scholarship and later gave him a stipend, Andersen never found true happiness in life.

Andersen called his school days some of the “darkest and bitterest of his life”. And, though he had always wanted to excel as a novelist and dramatist, it was his fairy tales that earned him success.

He was also disappointed in love, setting his sights at different times on a young man named Edward Collin, Danish dancer Harold Scharf and the then young Duke of Weimar, none of whom reciprocated his feelings.

It is believed the tale of The Little Mermaid, who takes her own life because she cannot be loved by her beautiful prince, came out of those episodes in his life.

Andersen’s private journal reveals his refusal to have sexual relations with either men or women throughout his life.

Other sources for his stories ranged from the little garden in his home - which was featured in the story Snow Queen - to the spinning wheel he saw as a child in the nearby asylum. Andersen often visited the site because his grandmother tended the garden there.

One of Andersen’s best-known tales, The Emperor’s New Clothes, has its
origins in the poverty of his childhood, when new clothes were unaffordable.

Many have noted that Andersen’s stories express his sorrow at being different. A critic once noted ironically that if Andersen knew that he would be best remembered for The Ugly Duckling, “he would probably be
rolling over in his grave”.

Andersen’s stories were dark, often cruel and suggested that redemption was hard to come by.

Judging by his life’s work, it seems to be something he believed in right up until his death on Aug 4, 1875. - TODAY/jt