Andersen, Hans Christian
He became famous thanks to fairy tales, but he considered himself a serious writer and was offended by the title of storyteller.
And in general, the image of a good wizard with a northern fairy-tale name in a top hat and with a sly smile crumbles when reading his biography.
He was born into a very poor family, was ugly, awkward, and suffered from bullying. True, his parents loved their only son very much, but the early death of his father caused serious damage to the psyche of the sensitive child, because his father was his best and only friend, it was he who introduced Andersen to the world of literature and theater.
Andersen was nervous, sickly, touchy from childhood, suffering from many phobias (he was afraid of fires and therefore always carried a rope with him so that he could climb down from a burning building. He was afraid of poisoning and preferred to slip questionable food to someone else for testing ). He did not know how to communicate with children, and with adults he was not distinguished by empathy, he could be intrusive to the point of indecency.
There is a story about how Andersen came to stay with Dickens, where he overstayed his welcome and with his antics alarmed the whole family, who no longer knew where to get away from their dear guest, and Dickens himself simply ran away from home for an indefinite period of time, inventing himself urgent business. Then, however, he returned and almost personally packed Anderson’s things, almost with his own hands pawned the carriage, sat down as a coachman himself and drove our Hans Christian to the nearest station, providing him with detailed instructions on how to get to Copenhagen. So that he definitely won’t come back.
Even during his lifetime, Andersen became very famous in Denmark, traveled a lot, was quite wealthy, but was not happy. He fell in love several times, but all his passions rejected him, breaking the writer’s sensitive heart.
Andersen never had a wife or children (and according to contemporaries, he did not particularly like children).
This is the figure of the “best storyteller in the world” that we get. Not canonical. But time has put everything in its place, and who now cares how he got along with people and what he was afraid of? We simply read fairy tales and award the highest literary prize named after Andersen.
