“Once upon a time in Denmark there lived the son of a shoecobbler, who had an enormous nose and very large feet. His father had died, his mom was a drunk, his grandfather was insane and his aunt ran a brothel. When the boy turned fourteen, he left home to travel the world and become famous. Half of his live he spend traveling. He sat at the table of kings and princess, drank with artists and scientists, but he didn’t have any real friends. The only thing that remained of his infatuations was a broken heart, and apart from that he also suffered from insomnia, headaches, constipation, haemorrhoids, terrible tooth-aches, and all kinds of anxieties and chronic feelings of insecurity. He failed as balletdancer, singer, theatre-, and fiction writer. He lived long and unhappily, but wrote 156 fairytales, which makes him immortal” 1)
Well, that’s a version of the life story of Hans Christian Andersen. Here is the normal biography if you’re interested, and you can read all of his fairytales here.
Fellow blogger Mica wrote about his amazing papercuttings, which I think is very interesting indeed!
1) Bregje Boonstra http://www.kb.nl/dossiers/andersen/andersen.html
It reminds me of the newest movie about Hans Christian Andersen – Life without Love, directed by Russian director Ryazanov. Not exactly, but close to… I can’t provide the link, sorry. It’s interesting, how Andersen’s life and his tales reflect our modern dreams and problems. One more incarnation of Anderson’s spirit – illustrations for The Snow Queen by award winning Ukrainian artist Vladyslav Yerko, also well known for his illustrations of the Harry Potter books. Here is the link – http://www.snowqueen.us. Take a look at the slideshow page.
This movie sounds very interesting, I hope I can see it one day. The illustrations are absolutely beautiful too.
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