With huge, sort of cinematic snow falling, our cities covered in white fluff, he will soon (if the concierge deigns to rake it, of course) soon build meter-long walls for narrow pedestrian corridors, with only a dozen hours to New Year’s Eve, let’s read you a fairy tale .
It’s very tender, fluffy, and something in the middle – the ringing of a bell.
Ding-ding, says the bell. And for your reassurance, I turn on a mismatched Andersen and say, “Oops.” I’m not a bell, I know how to be afraid.
Take, for example, The Girl Who Hits Bread. Maybe the girl didn’t do well, but Andersen was cruel to her: he’s sending her straight to hell.
“… at worst was a terrible feeling of hunger. Is it really impossible for him to bend over and break a piece of bread he’s stepping on? No, his back wasn’t bent, his arms and legs didn’t move, he looked completely petrified, and he could only move his eyes in all directions, even pop them out of their sockets and look back. Phew, how bad it turned out! Then the flies came and began to crawl back and forth over his eyes; he blinked, but the flies did not fly away – their wings were broken and they could only crawl. That was agony! And then there’s this hunger! Finally, Inge began to feel herself swallowing and she was empty, horribly empty!
In general, you already see the bitter truth: Our childlike Dane, as if tamed from our first cartoons, Andersen, our best storyteller in the world, is so cruel.
Take care of him, my child. After midnight he’ll sneak up on you and open the wrong umbrella over your head: everything your parents have read to you, skipping parts, anything the children’s publisher has cut (adapted), everything Walt Disney hasn’t shown you before (and now, by the way, indicates) – everything will come to you in your terrible dreams.
The hero will defeat the departed shadow only in our Yevgeny Schwartz, based on the play “Shadow” from Andersen’s fairy tale of the same name. Andersen will end much more sadly. No one knows a scientist as a person. His shadow, his dark twin, triumphed.
The princess will sigh like a woman, pity the unfortunate supposed shadow, saying it would be a real blessing to “redeem her from that particle of life that is still in her.” He only advises to finish it as soon as possible and without noise.
“Still cruel!” said the shadow. He was my faithful servant! And the shadow sighed.
You have a noble soul! said the princess. In the evening, the whole city was illuminated with lights, gunfire roared, the soldiers stood guard with their guns. It was a wedding, that is, a wedding! The shadowy princess stepped up to the balcony, and the crowd said once more, “Hurray!” yell.
The scientist did not hear any of this – he was already done with it.
Strong move. We even climb. How so? We have been taught that good always conquers evil, that good is beautiful, and evil is ugly. And here there is no light, no shred of hope.
Good uncle Evgeny Schwartz, come! Soothe our fear, appease your sexually mature child before the New Year. What does the coming New Year have in store for us? Is everything around so scary and empty?
Yes, yes (yes, hell), they answer you, whisper other tales, now folk tales.
Not adapting, they lie in their furry cradles, the bear hides in their corners, their fiery eyes glow from the dark. Scary Russian fairy tales. Terrible folk French. Freezing German.
That’s where Hton really climbs.
Famous fairy tale collector Alexander Afanasiev prepared and published Russian folk tales in eight editions in the 19th century. And if you read them in a form that has not been softened by Soviet publishing houses, you will not fall asleep with fear on New Year’s Eve (and you should get enough sleep before the night with the lights and champagne). In addition, real Russian folk tales, as a rule, are obscene. This is not at all surprising: a fairy tale is the younger sister of legends and myths, and legends and myths are not very interested in morality: they are sex hooligans, incestuous thugs, space executioners.
Good grandfather Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky, come! Be our Santa, tell us a fairy tale, and then we will want to live, not cry.
But Korney Ivanovich does not go, and the dark shadow of someone next to the bed smuggles us a new fairy tale: here is a Mexican, for example. Like a rope.
A villager found a rope in the cave and decided to pocket it like a normal villager: “everything is useful at home.” He started pulling it. It was filmed day and night. Then I decided to just shoot and shoot. Pulled – broke. And blood flowed. The fairy tale about the rope suddenly turned into a wonderful cosmic legend about the Milky Way, about the path of heroes, about the blood ties of everyone to everyone. It doesn’t matter how the rope is twisted, as they say.
By the way, back to Andersen. He always carried a rope with him when he traveled: he was afraid of dying in a fire, so he stuffed a bobbin of rope in a bag to get out of the window in time. (The reference neurotic wrote fairy tales for our children.)
They say that the same Andersen, when they wanted to erect a monument to him, refused in horror, seeing himself in a “monument” surrounded by children. Almost Kharms (another creepy writer considered funny for a reason). Directly from the reader: “Leo Tolstoy loved children.” Andersen is an adult writer. He’s just acting childish.
Don’t pull the rope, wrap this rope from the winter bag, don’t step on the snow-covered bread, girl.
“I must say, there were few things I feared more as a child than the ‘beautiful fairy tales of the Danish writer Andersen.’
(Dear anonymous reader and commentator at the bottom of one of the books of our Christian Hans, put my name at the bottom of this complaint.)
The fairy tale world is cruel, but we are not cruel.
Maybe I’ll find out about ancient Scandinavian runes on the Internet for free, perhaps for all of us.
We (all of us) will translate Odal, the 24th rune of the elder, the 23rd rune of the Anglo-Saxon and younger runic alphabets and reverse.
This means the answer is no.
“You have to separate from what you think you are. You don’t have to hold on to the past. You will have to disobey traditions and old authorities, not act as you used to. Losses are likely in the near future.”
Well, thanks Santa. It got easier. So old friends will come back to us to spit in our faces virtually. (“I’ve come to set you free” should now be “I’ve come to spit in your face.”) Once again we’ll have to set out to fish in a new, ever-changing sea—purse-purse and netless. -World. Look for new love, new ideas, new money, new meaning.
On the other hand, if we decipher this destiny, which is common to all of us, then a sharp turn awaits us. It’s our job to stand on our feet. At the same time, not all of us should rely on previous experiences. Our instruction is to seek balance only within ourselves, and only then will we find balance in the world. Advice – “He who knows how to close the door does not use constipation.” And the consolation is the best: in the end, everything happens by itself. In essence, this is almost the fate of Thumbelina. Or a paper ballet dancer and a loyal tin soldier.
Cruel Andersen, get out of here.
Dear Korney Chukovsky, come.
Happy new year with new snow, new fear, new laughter and new light.
We will still live Thumbelina.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.