isn't it interesting how "the snow queen" is nearly everyone's favourite, or best remembered, andersen? yesterday i had a classmate here who was browsing along my fairy tale shelf and saying, oh that's a really good one! when she came to the snow queen. it is one that seems to survive more or less intact in people's memories, and has a circulation (and a lot of imaginative currency too, in literary circles) that is wider than most tales that have not received attention from disney.

i refer to "the snow queen" most often, but the andersen that as a child i was most attracted to was "the wild swans" - the toads (ha2ma3 in chinese, much more sinister than the homely word, toad) that sat upon her breast and forehead floating as red poppies in the bathwater, the bundles of faggots piled up at the stake, instead of bursting into flame, bursting into leaves and blooms, the cave, the chainmail woven of nettle, the youngest brother who wept for her bleeding hands, the eleven swans regaining their human form, last brother still with one swan wing.

even with the less overtly literary tales there are always details that leave you with impressions. yesterday my friend was talking about the grimms, and said, what's there that's interesting about snow white, it's very straightforward, and i'm thinking about the blood on the snow, the red hot iron shoes, and the glass coffin, and the tree stump the coffin bearers fall over. just as what i remember most about the frog king - from whence comes the jokes about kissing frogs, i suppose? - is the violence - of the frog flung across the room and striking the wall, and of the servant heinrich, of how the iron binds around his heart burst one after the other with a noise.

argh. i want a new andersen collection. although i remember widener has a three-volume jean hersholt translation that is pretty good and tomorrow i'll go check it out again.)