[00:00.00]Text ans Christian Andersen's Own Fairy Tale(1)
[00:05.98]Once upon a time there was a poor boy who lived in Denmark.
[00:11.34]His father,a shoemaker,had died,and his mother had married again.
[00:18.31]One day the boy went to ask a favor of the Prince of Denmark.
[00:23.88]When the Prince asked him what he wanted,the boy said,
[00:28.73]"I want to write plays in poetry and to act at the Royal Theater."
[00:34.80]The Prince looked at the boy,at his big hands and feet,
[00:40.25]at his big nose and large serious eyes,and gave a sensible answer.
[00:47.33]"It is one thing to act in plays,another to write them.
[00:53.19]I tell you this for your own good;learn a useful trade like shoemaking."
[01:00.32]So the boy,who was not sensible at all,went home.
[01:06.19]There he took what little money he had,
[01:10.16]said good-bye to his mother and his stepfather
[01:15.02]and started out to seek his fortune.
[01:19.07]He was sure that some day the same Hans Christian Andersen
[01:24.74]would be known all over Denmark.
[01:28.58]To believe such a story one would have to believe in fairy tales!
[01:34.46]Hans Christian knew many such tales.
[01:38.51]He had heard some of them from his father,who had worked hard at his trade,
[01:44.44]but liked to read better than to make shoes.
[01:49.11]In the evenings,he had read aloud from The Arabian Nights.
[01:54.57]His wife understood very little of the book,
[01:58.65]but the boy,pretending to sleep,understood every word.
[02:04.89]By day,Hans Christian went to a house where did women worked as weavers.
[02:11.74]There he listened to the tales that the women told
[02:16.70]as they worked at their weaving.
[02:20.36]In those days,there were almost as many tales in Denmark
[02:26.91]as there were people to tell them.
[02:30.44]Among the tales told in the town of Odense,where Andersen was born in 1805,
[02:37.57]was one about a fairy who brought death to those who denced with her.
[02:43.63]To this tale,Hans Christian later added a story from his own life.
[02:49.56]Once,when his father was still alive,a young lady ordered a pair of red shoes.
[02:57.21]When she refused to pay for them,unhappiness filled the poor shoemaker's house.
[03:03.98]From that small tragedy and the story of the dancing fairy,
[03:09.65]the shoemaker's son years later wrote the story that millions of people
[03:15.58]now know as The Red Shoes.
[03:19.52]The genius of Andersen is that he put so much of everyday life
[03:25.40]into the wonder of his fairy tales.
[03:29.06]When Hans Christian's mother was a little girl,
[03:33.50]she was sent out on the streets to beg.
[03:37.26]She did not want to beg,so she sat out of sight under one of the city bridges.
[03:44.24]She warmed her cold feet in her hands,for she had no shoes.
[03:50.30]She was afraid to go home.Years later,her son,in his pity for her
[03:57.84]and his anger at the world,wrote the angry story
[04:03.10]She's No Good and the famous tale The Little Match Girl.
[04:09.26]Through his genius,he changed every early experience,
[04:14.85]even his father's death,into a fairy tale.
[04:19.50]One cold day the boy had stood looking at the white patterns
[04:24.57]formed on the window by the frost.
[04:28.33]His father showed him a white,woman-like figure among the frost patterns.
[04:34.39]That is the Snow Queen,"said the shoemaker.
[04:39.25]"Soon she will be coming for me."A few months later he was dead.
[04:45.20]And years later,Andersen turned that sad experience into a fairy tale,
[04:51.55]The Snow Queen.
[04:54.43]After the Prince told him to learn a trade,Hans Christian went to Copenhagen.
[05:00.90]He was just fourteen years old at the time.
[05:05.27]When he arrived in the city,
[05:08.74]he went to see as many important people as he could find
[05:13.89]dancers,writers and theater people of Copenhagen.
[05:19.66]But none of them lent a helping hand to the boy with the big hands,
[05:25.02]the big feet and the big nose.Finally,he had just seven pennies left.
[05:32.88]The boy had a beautiful high,clear voice.
[05:37.53]One day a music teacher heard him singing and decided to help him.
[05:42.70]He collected money from his friends and gave it to the boy
[05:47.98]so that he could buy food and clothing while he studied singing.
[05:53.31]Hans Christian was happier than he had ever been in his life.
[05:58.87]But soon his boy's voice broke.
[06:03.23]The beautiful high voice was gone forever.
[06:07.49]The boy soon found new friends who admired his genius.
[06:12.53]There was even a princess who gave him a little money from time to time
[06:17.99]for food and clothes.
[06:21.26]But Hans Christian bought little food and no clothes. |