Speaker 1: Back to back. This week we sat through to three
Speaker 1: hour movies over three hours long. Monday night we saw
Speaker 1: Babylon and Tuesday night we saw Avatar. That's that's also.
Speaker 1: Babylon was stressful, but I think it had a reason
Speaker 1: to be stressful. It worked. Avatar was like the opposite
Speaker 1: because it took its time on things and you know
Speaker 1: it was like, let's look at the beautiful things and
Speaker 1: you were like, I feel so chill. That's very different
Speaker 1: three hour experience. Yeah, Babylon was like, by by the
Speaker 1: ninety minute mark in Babylon, I was like scratching at
Speaker 1: my shoulder like I need a Zanex or something like
Speaker 1: I'm so hyper stimulated and stressed out. And then yeah, Avatar,
Speaker 1: it was like I am at a meditative retreat in
Speaker 1: the Maldives on the water. Which is not to say
Speaker 1: the action wasn't good. It was very exciting, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was just having seen those back to back,
Speaker 1: I was like, my emotions are very different. Well enough
Speaker 1: about the movies. We're gonna go back to what was
Speaker 1: before movies. Books, those used to stories down and tell
Speaker 1: them to each other. We are back with a part
Speaker 1: three of Hans Christian Anderson who knew Thanks again to
Speaker 1: our VID for suggesting that we look into Hans Charles Dickens.
Speaker 1: I mean, you knew this was going to spin out
Speaker 1: into the whole thing, but who knew it was going
Speaker 1: to spread out into so much. But we're going to
Speaker 1: close it out today, still not getting to everything in
Speaker 1: Hans Christian Anderson's life, but hopefully hitting the biggest points
Speaker 1: that really kind of round out his character and give us,
Speaker 1: I don't know, some some sort of idea as to
Speaker 1: who this guy was and what his whole deal was
Speaker 1: in the romance department. It's really nothing. Nobody liked him.
Speaker 1: But I can think that we've looked at so far.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Yeah, he's an interesting guy. I mean,
Speaker 1: so far we talked about Hans Christian Anderson and his
Speaker 1: challenging love life. I mean, he fell for men and
Speaker 1: women alike. They were totally unattainable for him, many of them.
Speaker 1: And this guy also was an absolutely unhinged masturbator. He
Speaker 1: seemed to be afraid of actually having sex with anyone,
Speaker 1: so he just went home and wrote plus signs in
Speaker 1: his diary. Look, this guy maybe had some difficulties and
Speaker 1: understanding his own feelings, we've kind of concluded, and his
Speaker 1: feelings were usually very strong. Yet guy was playful and
Speaker 1: imaginative and friendly, but underneath he was also obsessive and
Speaker 1: lonely and confused. On one hand, you know, we could
Speaker 1: be grateful because this gave us some great literature. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it did drive a lot of
Speaker 1: people crazy. But there are so many stories about the
Speaker 1: people that Anderson loved in his own way, we're never
Speaker 1: going to fit them all in. So today we want
Speaker 1: to talk about a couple of his more passionate love affairs.
Speaker 1: We also are going to talk about some famous French
Speaker 1: authors who tried to get him laid, and we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss how latent life he found himself at most
Speaker 1: dangerously tempting place he could imagine a Parisian brothel, la la.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I said, we jump right into this story
Speaker 1: because there's just so much to tell. Let's go, hey
Speaker 1: the French, come listen. Well, Eli and Diana got some
Speaker 1: stories to tell. There's no matchmaking, a romantic tips. It's
Speaker 1: just about ridiculous relationships, a love. It might be any
Speaker 1: type of person at all, and abstract cons at a
Speaker 1: concrete wall. But if there's a story. Were the second
Speaker 1: Glance Ridiculous Roles a production of I Heart Radio? Okay, all,
Speaker 1: before we get into the story today, first things first,
Speaker 1: we have made some egregious mistakes during our Hans Christian
Speaker 1: Anderson experience, so we have got to put ourselves in
Speaker 1: corrections corner. You're such a loser. Yes, we're both losers
Speaker 1: for this one. Uh. Last time we said something about
Speaker 1: the Danish and the Dutch. I believe my exact quote
Speaker 1: was I think Dutch is the language and Danish is
Speaker 1: the people and the pastry. Well, thank goodness that at
Speaker 1: menvel Zinc on Instagram commented quote, um, Dutch is the
Speaker 1: language of the Dutch for sure, but Danish is the
Speaker 1: language of the Danes. Cannot believe you fell into that trap.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you won't be the last. Thanks for a
Speaker 1: great podcast. As always, we really that up. Also, thank
Speaker 1: you Manveel for softening. That was a great podcast. It
Speaker 1: was a very dumb mistake. Uh. And Randy Jensen who
Speaker 1: got us into this mess in the first place by
Speaker 1: requesting that we do terrible Danish accents. She wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: we speak Danish. I know because I'm a Danish teacher,
Speaker 1: but you said my name perfectly. Thank you so much so. Also, Randy,
Speaker 1: thank you for softening that blow, letting us at least
Speaker 1: you said Jensen and that Jensen right. Fine. We did
Speaker 1: find a great YouTube video about the Danish accent that
Speaker 1: helped a bit, but we still got a lot to learn.
Speaker 1: I know. I was like, we need work, okay, I
Speaker 1: think we watched that video for like five then if
Speaker 1: we had some time now. So we wanted to figure
Speaker 1: this out because Manuel is right, this is a common trap.
Speaker 1: And we walked right into it, and we did a
Speaker 1: little digging, and we found that for some reason, there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of dummies out there just like us,
Speaker 1: who get Denmark and the Netherlands confused, or they like
Speaker 1: merge them together into some weird Scandinavian Frankenstein country that
Speaker 1: does not exist. In fact, the Netherlands is not even
Speaker 1: part of Scandinavia, while Denmark is Scandinavia. Facts dot Com says,
Speaker 1: quote with enough common threads, these two nations and their
Speaker 1: respective peoples are often tied together, whether they like it
Speaker 1: or not. Sorry, and they sites as part of the
Speaker 1: problem that the countries are kind of within proximity to
Speaker 1: each other. Although they're not adjacent. And they also say, well,
Speaker 1: both countries are also very flat, and the people in
Speaker 1: both are happy and love bicycles. So easy mistakes because
Speaker 1: you can see, I mean happy people have bicycles, those
Speaker 1: countries might as well be the same. Basically twins. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: that's embarrassing. It's Dennis, he said it to you. I
Speaker 1: was like, what the would of course you want to
Speaker 1: bring Dutch into this in the edit could have caught
Speaker 1: it too, didn't you know? We just do things so
Speaker 1: fast round here, and we're dumb dumbs. Well. I also
Speaker 1: found a woman named Kay Zander Melish who was a
Speaker 1: little more forgiving. She says on her blog how to
Speaker 1: Live in Denmark dot Com that quote confusing the Dutch
Speaker 1: and the Danes is understandable. They both represent small, peaceful
Speaker 1: countries with seafaring traditions, countries which are today best known
Speaker 1: for healthy, blonde people on bicycles, rushing home to see
Speaker 1: their monarchs on TV and eat Potato Bay East dishes.
Speaker 1: The Dutch are also known for their windmills, while the
Speaker 1: Danes are known for their wind turbines. It's an understandable mistake,
Speaker 1: so thank you Kay for forgiving us on that one.
Speaker 1: Thanks Manveel, and thank you Randy for helping us get educated.
Speaker 1: It's at least we've learned a little geography. Today we
Speaker 1: learned a little bit more about a silly mistake Demark
Speaker 1: and the Netherlands. Very nervous that throughout the last two
Speaker 1: Hans Christian Anderson episodes, I referred to him as Dutch.
Speaker 1: I know, I'm very well may have Okay, well, let's
Speaker 1: just blanket statement. Hans was not Dutch. He was Danish
Speaker 1: in fact, from Denmark. Not involved in this story at all,
Speaker 1: were there? We don't know why we drugged them into this. Alright,
Speaker 1: So today on the Hans Christian Anderson Show that this
Speaker 1: has turned into we're going to talk about the time
Speaker 1: as a young man he fell in love with a
Speaker 1: woman named reb Vote and she was the sister of
Speaker 1: one of his classmates and the daughter of the richest
Speaker 1: man in this girl was extroverted and charming, and this
Speaker 1: good natured optimism is really what attracted Anderson to begin with.
Speaker 1: Yen's writes in his biography that by traditional standards, she
Speaker 1: wasn't even that pretty. Apparently the drive by on party
Speaker 1: board what value. But she was great. Everybody loved her personality.
Speaker 1: All personality right, She's got a great personality, Hans im Well.
Speaker 1: Hans Christian Anderson wrote a letter to a friend of his,
Speaker 1: and he called her a quote witty, childish creature, which,
Speaker 1: as we know, Hans Christian Anderson is basically like him
Speaker 1: saying she's an absolute ten. But this girl also falls
Speaker 1: right into the same pattern as many of his other loves.
Speaker 1: When they met, she was already engaged to someone else.
Speaker 1: So surprise, Hans Chrisnanerson fell for someone that he knew
Speaker 1: was unattainable. As we've said many times, he wrote her
Speaker 1: some weird letters, but he didn't really seem to be
Speaker 1: trying to interrupt her wedding plans like he would later
Speaker 1: do with Edward Collins when he married Henriette. So we
Speaker 1: talked to about in Part one. Hunter's biographer YenS Anderson
Speaker 1: says the first letter was quote duplicitus, with contradictory proclamations
Speaker 1: of love and the exact opposite of a proposal, just
Speaker 1: like I don't want you to marry me, I just
Speaker 1: want to tell you nice things. I guess I'd like
Speaker 1: to ask that you please not marry me. Would you
Speaker 1: not be my bride. Would you not make me the
Speaker 1: happiest man on earth? Please? She's like, yeah, no problem.
Speaker 1: I've actually engaged this other guy, so that should not
Speaker 1: be very easy. Then three months later he wrote to
Speaker 1: her quote, I will never be happy, but that's how
Speaker 1: it must be, and so forget me, never give me
Speaker 1: a thought. You will be happy. And there is nothing
Speaker 1: more that I wish. Live well. Only once more will
Speaker 1: I hear from you. Then never again do not feel
Speaker 1: sad for me. Rewards. God is good and merciful, Live well,
Speaker 1: Live well forever. She gets this letter that's just like no, no,
Speaker 1: go on without please, and she's like, okay, I was
Speaker 1: gonna that was my plan all along. A lot of
Speaker 1: exclamation points, so many exclamation points. He didn't do the
Speaker 1: very twenty one century thing of going back and putting
Speaker 1: a period at least once, so didn't look crazy, a
Speaker 1: little too hard. He's just like, I feel it, so
Speaker 1: I'm writing it had respect, I guess. But look, Hans
Speaker 1: Christian Anderson was not just a love lorn author who
Speaker 1: was confused about his sexuality. There's more to this guy.
Speaker 1: He was a lifelong traveler. He was a collector of stories.
Speaker 1: Remember we heard him Part one that him traveling across
Speaker 1: Europe is a big part of what inspired him to
Speaker 1: write the stories that he read. He was meeting other people,
Speaker 1: he was learning folklore, and that's really going to shine
Speaker 1: through in this episode. I think it's so easy to
Speaker 1: focus on his misery, but it's only fair to point
Speaker 1: out that the guy did some really cool stuff too.
Speaker 1: For example, Uh, we all know Mount Vesuvius, the Italian
Speaker 1: volcano that buried Pompey in d Great Spot Honeymoon Alerteymoon Alert.
Speaker 1: It was a very cloudy day. So it's so cloudy,
Speaker 1: we're literally walking into the clouds and we get to
Speaker 1: the top and I think, Diana, you turned to me
Speaker 1: and you were like, look at this gorgeous view nothing.
Speaker 1: You couldn't see anything. It was twenty degrees colder as well.
Speaker 1: It was a nice hot day in Italy, but then
Speaker 1: we were up there cold as hill then. But it
Speaker 1: was kind of cool too because it was sort of thundery,
Speaker 1: like it was going to rain. It did rain while
Speaker 1: we were up there, but it kind of sounded like
Speaker 1: it was coming from the volcano, like a little rumble
Speaker 1: from the volcano. And then you had all this like fog,
Speaker 1: But even our Mount Vesuvius pales in comparisons Mount Vesuvius experience. Seriously,
Speaker 1: I mean, this guy and his buddies hiked this volcano
Speaker 1: in their twenties while it was erupting. Apparently it was
Speaker 1: erupting kind of all the time back then, and so
Speaker 1: the locals turned it into sort of a tourist attraction.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't like you know, Pompey erupting, but
Speaker 1: it was always making little spurts and spew and smoke
Speaker 1: and lava. I mean, it would black out the sky.
Speaker 1: And I'm imagining if that was the case today, like
Speaker 1: the waiver, you'd have to sign to go up there
Speaker 1: right like you may be buried forever in ash and lava.
Speaker 1: Sign But it am Hans wrote in his diary quote,
Speaker 1: we were sinking up to our knees in ash coal,
Speaker 1: black smoke swirled upwards, and then a ball of fire
Speaker 1: and gigantic glowing boulders rolled down onto the plane. There
Speaker 1: was no path at all. We had to crawl between
Speaker 1: huge pieces of lava. But showing off how tough he was,
Speaker 1: he wrote, quote, I sang loudly to show how little
Speaker 1: it was tiring me. Really defying the lava. Right. I mean,
Speaker 1: this guy was an experienced junkie, clearly right, I can
Speaker 1: relate to that. He just wanted to go do stuff
Speaker 1: and see stuff and meet people. He often wrote about
Speaker 1: how frightened he was during his travels, but he wrote
Speaker 1: about his quote double nature, a fear of day jer
Speaker 1: and the desire to try it. So despite facing you know,
Speaker 1: many travels that were like horrific, grueling voyage across Europe,
Speaker 1: he wrote in his diary once quote to turn around
Speaker 1: is utterly against my nature. I'm taking this route. I
Speaker 1: dread it, and I submit to it absolutely, which I
Speaker 1: think is such a great affirmation for when you're traveling
Speaker 1: and it's scary, right, like, you just gotta do it.
Speaker 1: You've got to submit to that and go for it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: don't do something stupid, but like climbing an active volcano.
Speaker 1: I wonder, because um, he talks about his double nature,
Speaker 1: I wonder if he had very similar feeling about sex,
Speaker 1: Like He's like, I am a little afraid of and
Speaker 1: grossed out by sex, but I also like I like
Speaker 1: to try things, and I do want to see what
Speaker 1: it's like, but I just can't bring myself you know,
Speaker 1: like if he just ever if he kind of felt
Speaker 1: the same way about about his intimacy issues. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean definitely, I think that's going to come through a
Speaker 1: lot in in seeing him sort of explore sex and
Speaker 1: how close he gets to it a few times. Well,
Speaker 1: his travels, at least, we're almost always worth the fear
Speaker 1: that he faced. Um In eighty three, Hans Anderson was
Speaker 1: hanging around Paris and he got to meet other authors
Speaker 1: like Honore de Balzac, Alexandre Duma, and none other than
Speaker 1: our old buddy Victor Hugo. Victor, how you been? We know,
Speaker 1: was busy, busy, getting busy. Hans seemed to have an
Speaker 1: amazing time in Paris, which you gotta be trying pretty
Speaker 1: hard to not have a good time in Paris. I
Speaker 1: feel like hey wrote in one letter quote, I thought
Speaker 1: it would be so difficult to gain admittance to Parisian salons,
Speaker 1: but nothing is easier. I challenged that notion, you know,
Speaker 1: from probably a lot of other people who are trying
Speaker 1: to get into Parisian salons, because like the crop, you
Speaker 1: were still Hans Christian Anderson. I mean, by the eight forties,
Speaker 1: he was a well known author that'd be like Graham
Speaker 1: Norton or somebodying Like I thought it would be really
Speaker 1: hard to go to Jennifer Anderson's party, but it was
Speaker 1: the easiest thing in the world to get invitation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're freaking some See see what happens when I asked
Speaker 1: Jennifer Aniston for the fight and invite. So far she's
Speaker 1: always said no. So far, been real, real bit about
Speaker 1: what are you doing in my house? Who let you
Speaker 1: in here? How did you get this dress? How did
Speaker 1: you get the dress? Had you how did you get
Speaker 1: past the dogs? Dogs love me? What can I say?
Speaker 1: I brought a steak. I've gotten my way past some
Speaker 1: dogs obviously. Now, so he's in these salons and ball
Speaker 1: Zach invited Hans to sit down on this deep velvet
Speaker 1: sofa and then sat at Anderson's side, And it sounds
Speaker 1: like he was a real close talker, so he was
Speaker 1: getting real in his face. I can imagine, and on
Speaker 1: Anderson's other side, ball Zach invited quote a flutatious court
Speaker 1: is Anne who called herself a baroness and wore a
Speaker 1: cold black gown with jewels. And nothing happens at this party,
Speaker 1: of course, partly because Anderson was terrible at speaking French.
Speaker 1: He's just not good at languages. Yeah, Baz, that called
Speaker 1: his French quote original but incomprehensible. And Anderson himself said,
Speaker 1: sometimes I talked my way into a standstill, but then
Speaker 1: I say vols two and then I let the other
Speaker 1: person take the floor. I love that. Just I've exhausted
Speaker 1: all my French. So I'm just gonna say, anyway, that's
Speaker 1: it your turn to talk, now, go ahead. Now. Anderson
Speaker 1: was also invited to hang out with Alexandra Duma, of course,
Speaker 1: wrote the Three Musketeers. Yeah now, Anderson showed up at
Speaker 1: Duma's Parisian home and after knocking on his door, he
Speaker 1: kind of just stood there and waited for a while
Speaker 1: and no one answered. Finally a housemaid showed up and
Speaker 1: she brought him up to Duma's room. Hans described it
Speaker 1: as they're being papers everywhere, just scattered all over the floor,
Speaker 1: and he had to tiptoe because he was afraid of
Speaker 1: stepping on the Great Alexander Dumas work. Right right now.
Speaker 1: Duma was in there in the center of the room,
Speaker 1: in a big pile of pillows, practically naked, and he's
Speaker 1: like writing furiously and he only briefly looked up to say,
Speaker 1: I lived like a regular Garson, but you'll have to
Speaker 1: take me as I am, and then he goes back
Speaker 1: to writing, and after quite a while of huns Christian
Speaker 1: Anderson just standing there awkwardly, Dumas shouted, Viva, the third
Speaker 1: act is done. And he's kind of like a big guy,
Speaker 1: and he jumped up out of his pillow pile. He
Speaker 1: wrapped himself in a blanket like a toga and he
Speaker 1: starts stomping over towards Anderson, who's like freaked out. He
Speaker 1: just nervously backs away towards the door, and then Alexandre
Speaker 1: Duma grabs him by the lapels and says, isn't it grand?
Speaker 1: Unworthy of it? A scene which Anderson is just like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure man, whatever you say. I think it's great. Please
Speaker 1: stop molesting my coach down. What is this? They all
Speaker 1: right naked? That a writing thing? Maybe we should all
Speaker 1: be trying it because these guys were prolific and successful.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I want to like travel back to my
Speaker 1: creative writing class and be like, also everybody and everyone
Speaker 1: wrote naked. Maybe that's the answer. Now. A few days later,
Speaker 1: Duma took Hans to one of his plays, and he
Speaker 1: tried to set him up with the famed French actress
Speaker 1: Mademoiselle Rachel feature episode Alert by this woman, She's got
Speaker 1: quite the connection now. Anderson saw Rochelle perform four times,
Speaker 1: and he also got to visit her private quarters where
Speaker 1: he saw her quote receive a bevy of admiring men
Speaker 1: at the stroke of eight against the backdrop of a
Speaker 1: glowing heart, red velvet draperies and a red carpet. I mean,
Speaker 1: he must say clearly. He was clearly in the corner,
Speaker 1: like so glad to be here, high Hans, Um, he's
Speaker 1: got to write about these red velvet draperies. Well, you
Speaker 1: guys and all the men groping them. Everyone's snaked, okay,
Speaker 1: glowing heart, what can we talk about? He's like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna save this visual for later when I'm at home
Speaker 1: busing in my diary. This is for me privately. Duma
Speaker 1: also dragged Hans into the green room after a ballet show,
Speaker 1: and then two of them were suddenly surrounded by scantily
Speaker 1: clad ballerinas. So of course Hans got really uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: he tried to dip squeeze his way through the crowd,
Speaker 1: but Duma grabbed him by the arm, pulls him back
Speaker 1: into the group of dancers and said, quote, no shirking,
Speaker 1: my good friend, come over here, and they pleasant to
Speaker 1: the ladies. Hans is like my worst nightmare being pleasant
Speaker 1: to the lady. Also, why do these experiences get wasted
Speaker 1: on Hans Christian Anderson. I know I never get brought
Speaker 1: back to the green room after a ballet show. I
Speaker 1: mean not in a few years anyway, not since I
Speaker 1: was doing more theater. Yeah, you've been around some scantily
Speaker 1: clad dancers before in life, I'm sure, and I probably
Speaker 1: did the same thing. I was probably like, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna go I'm respectful or I'm uncomfortable and not confident. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's which can be often mistaken for respectful. It's
Speaker 1: worked out great for me. Wait a minute, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: this whole time, I haven't been respecting you. I've just
Speaker 1: been afraid to be an asshole. Keep that fear going,
Speaker 1: all right. Well. Victor Hugo was a much more pleasant
Speaker 1: visit for Anderson. He first met him in eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: three when Victor Hugo invited Hans Christian Anderson over his
Speaker 1: place and Anderson wrote in his biography The fairy Tale
Speaker 1: of My Life that Victor only wore quote his dressing
Speaker 1: gown and elegant house slippers. We know he's a busy man,
Speaker 1: getting laid four or five times a day. What's the
Speaker 1: point of getting dressed? And he was writing naked, so
Speaker 1: he probably came by and Anderson knocked on the door
Speaker 1: and he's like, oh shit, hang, I'm only put on
Speaker 1: a robe. At least that's all you get. Well a
Speaker 1: decade later, in eighteen forty three, during this trip, he
Speaker 1: met with Victor again, and Anderson said he was still
Speaker 1: in his slippers and dressing gown, and he invited Hans
Speaker 1: to a for dinner. Victor was lovely, he was kind,
Speaker 1: He was very sweet to Hans Christian Andersen, and he
Speaker 1: gave him some advice in the form of a little
Speaker 1: poem that he wrote in Anderson's scrapbook, kind of like
Speaker 1: a yearbook signature, have a great summer next summer. So
Speaker 1: let's go down to poetry corner and here Victor Hugo's
Speaker 1: poem to Hans Christian Anderson. Happy is the one who
Speaker 1: loves and who in the black of night while he
Speaker 1: seeks faith can find love. He has at least a
Speaker 1: lantern while he awaits the day blessed is his heart
Speaker 1: to love. That is half a faith. That's nice. I
Speaker 1: love these French guys are like, I don't get it,
Speaker 1: man telling me. You're telling me you're in Paris and
Speaker 1: you don't want to get laid. These women are ready
Speaker 1: for you, sir r. He's like, while you seek faith,
Speaker 1: you know, you can be worried about your faith and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and also in the middle of it
Speaker 1: and be getting laid. You know, gets up. It's like
Speaker 1: a lantern that lights your way in the darkness. It's
Speaker 1: half of faith. Yeah, love is half of faith, so
Speaker 1: you've got to experience it right, So if you have to,
Speaker 1: you have a full faith. He goes like, you don't
Speaker 1: believe how much faith that guy? Well? This time, the
Speaker 1: early eighteen forties were the most romantically intense period of
Speaker 1: Hans Krishnanderson's life. His tour of Parisian horn Dogs was
Speaker 1: only shortly after the opera singer Jenny Lynde had made
Speaker 1: clear to him that he was like a brother to her,
Speaker 1: you remember from part one, And around this same time
Speaker 1: early eighteen forties, he had two passionate pseudo love affairs
Speaker 1: that actually might have almost turned into something. And we're
Speaker 1: going to hear about those right after this. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the show, Oh beautiful, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show. Remember very flipfl Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the show. Welcome back to a show. That's great.
Speaker 1: I think for getting somewhere, we can finally go to
Speaker 1: the Netherlands and they'll be like, oh, are you from Denmark.
Speaker 1: So in eighteen forty three, Hans Anderson was feeling restless.
Speaker 1: His writing was switching back and forth between these tragic
Speaker 1: poems and these pious children's fairy tales. But in November
Speaker 1: of that year he bumped into an old acquaintance at
Speaker 1: a party whom he had met once before, like years earlier,
Speaker 1: and this was a law student named Hendrick Stamp. After
Speaker 1: the party, Anderson wrote in his calendar quote Hendrik exceedingly lovable.
Speaker 1: And after that they started to exchange a lot of letters,
Speaker 1: and it almost looks like Hans might have really fallen
Speaker 1: for someone who actually loved him back. Maybe early Hans
Speaker 1: wrote Hendrick a letter that said, my darling, Henrik, writing
Speaker 1: to you seems a little odd. Saying, as I could
Speaker 1: just as spell be with you, speak with you and
Speaker 1: shake your hand whenever I wish. However, it is easier
Speaker 1: at least for me to express myself in writing, which
Speaker 1: we know that about Hans. Let me think about Jenny
Speaker 1: lind Or. He could barely speak to her, but he
Speaker 1: like wrote her a marriage proposal in a letter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: right exactly, which makes sense. I feel like right. I mean,
Speaker 1: you want to choose your words very carefully. And he
Speaker 1: always felt so uncomfortable. Yeah, he was gen z. He
Speaker 1: was like, I don't like a phone calls. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't want to be asked questions unprepared text only.
Speaker 1: Hans goes on to apologize for being curt with Henrick
Speaker 1: the night before because he wasn't feeling well, and he
Speaker 1: ends the letter quote, you the person I often believe
Speaker 1: that I would give up my life board talk to me.
Speaker 1: You often say yes, that is what I wished to do,
Speaker 1: But I, lonely, as always, must do this evening. Henrick
Speaker 1: wrote back that never before in his life had he
Speaker 1: quote opened my whole, undivided heart anyone as I have
Speaker 1: to you, And he asks Hans once quote to have
Speaker 1: absolute faith in me and always take my part. Now
Speaker 1: it's come up in our show before that. You know,
Speaker 1: affectionate letters between men, especially in this time period, can
Speaker 1: be really easily misconstrued by today's standards. Men would use
Speaker 1: very flowery language writing expressing their love for each other
Speaker 1: women too. Honestly, that's very passionate and it is. It
Speaker 1: was very romantic in a way, even if the relationship
Speaker 1: is totally platonic and not physical in any way. To
Speaker 1: be like you, you know, some two Parisian guys right
Speaker 1: to each other. Oh, you are my best friend in
Speaker 1: the whole world. You're so important to me. I love
Speaker 1: you more than anyone I've ever loved. I want to
Speaker 1: put my head between your legs. And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're friends. They were really really good friends. I mean,
Speaker 1: but they're really they're really were people who wrote like
Speaker 1: that and didn't mean anything like that, like that very much.
Speaker 1: I love you your like I have your kiss on
Speaker 1: my lips. I think of it every day or something.
Speaker 1: But it's like, it's not about that, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just like and then it's it kind of makes me
Speaker 1: sad a little, like I wish that men today felt
Speaker 1: like they had the permission to be that intimate with
Speaker 1: one another. Obviously we have a loneliness problem, and at
Speaker 1: least American men that I think, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: too bad that you couldn't write that now without someone thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: you want to you want me to jump in them pants? Man,
Speaker 1: if somebody ever wrote to me in a letter that
Speaker 1: they want my kiss on their lips, all right? So anyway,
Speaker 1: that is, that is a common and very easy trap
Speaker 1: to fall into. I think when you're looking at historic
Speaker 1: relationships and you're trying to find like that hidden like, oh,
Speaker 1: is there real feelings here, you know, of romance or not.
Speaker 1: So that might be confusing to us today, but it
Speaker 1: also might have been just just confusing for our friend,
Speaker 1: poor Hans Christian Anderson, because he seemed to have a
Speaker 1: real problem with how he and Henrick felt for each
Speaker 1: other over time. And you know, we know he had
Speaker 1: this problem with Edwards letters too. Yeah. Now, Hanss calendar
Speaker 1: really kind of paints a picture here for us, and
Speaker 1: it's cited in YenS Anderson's biography. In December, Hans makes
Speaker 1: small notes like Henrick lovable or h trusting, sweet little notes,
Speaker 1: and then just after Christmas, he wrote in his calendar
Speaker 1: letter from my beloved Henrick. A few days later spoke
Speaker 1: sensibly with h who promised me everything. And then in
Speaker 1: late January he wrote every day at Hendricks, and then
Speaker 1: on March eleven he wrote, Henrick was here tonight, loving
Speaker 1: and kind. Then a week later, March eighteenth, he wrote,
Speaker 1: Henrick suffering from jealousy. Then six weeks pass and on
Speaker 1: April Henrick indifferent to me. Then may SWO have not
Speaker 1: seen Hendrick for two days. That's not kind of him.
Speaker 1: Then May six I went to see him. He was
Speaker 1: not as he was before. Is love over and departed
Speaker 1: at seven in the evening. Henrik saw me out. And
Speaker 1: during all this Yen's writes Hans is February diary is
Speaker 1: loaded with little plus signs more than usual. And in
Speaker 1: March and April, Hans started getting a type of eggs
Speaker 1: ema and rash, which the biographer calls psycho somatic. So
Speaker 1: kind of self inflicted stressed out, Hans wrote in his
Speaker 1: diary things like penis tender, penis sick, and penis very bad,
Speaker 1: which I guess means it hurts. I thought when I
Speaker 1: originally saw that, I was like my penis really acted
Speaker 1: After misbehaved. Hans knew that he just had to get
Speaker 1: away from Henrick. His dick could not handle it anymore,
Speaker 1: so he took his vener to get some schnitzel and
Speaker 1: spend the whole long, beautiful summer in Germany. And this
Speaker 1: is where he met the hereditary Grand Duke of Weimar,
Speaker 1: Carl Alexander von sased Weimar Eisenach. Amazing name, so long
Speaker 1: Now Anderson and the Grand Duke had another deep and
Speaker 1: intense emotional relationship. But maybe finally, this one was actually
Speaker 1: just more than just a platonic couple of ros who
Speaker 1: spoke in misleading ways to each other, because Anderson once
Speaker 1: wrote quote, the hereditary Grand Duke walked arm in arm
Speaker 1: with me across the courtyard of the castle to my room,
Speaker 1: kissed me lovingly, asked me always to love him though
Speaker 1: he was just an ordinary person, asked me to stay
Speaker 1: with him for this winter. Fell asleep with the melancholy
Speaker 1: happy feeling that I was the guest of this strange
Speaker 1: prince at his castle and loved by him. It is
Speaker 1: like a fairy tale. Ah, But like was it? Maybe
Speaker 1: a fairy tale? You know? He wrote this in his diary,
Speaker 1: But a lot of scholars don't really trust a lot
Speaker 1: of Anderson's own accounts of his life, Like his autobiography
Speaker 1: is literally called the fairy Tale of My Life? So
Speaker 1: is he dressing this up? Is he creating this prince? Like?
Speaker 1: You know? His biographer writes that he makes himself sound
Speaker 1: like one of the princesses from his fairy tales, that this,
Speaker 1: you know, this prince, this duke came in and just
Speaker 1: swept him off his feet and carried him away and
Speaker 1: kissed him and said stay with me for the winter.
Speaker 1: They were closed, Yeah, but that you kind of want
Speaker 1: to take it with a grain salt, I see. But
Speaker 1: they did exchange loving letters often. This was a tough
Speaker 1: point in history for them as well, because revolutions were
Speaker 1: breaking out in Germany in the late eighteen forties and
Speaker 1: war was brewing between Germany and Denmark. They worked hard
Speaker 1: to remain friends, and the Grand Duke even wrote to
Speaker 1: Hans Christian Andersen and sort of posed the question quote,
Speaker 1: did we love each other because of our political ideas?
Speaker 1: But he kind of answers himself and says, quote, no,
Speaker 1: truly not, but because of the sympathy of our souls,
Speaker 1: of our hearts, our imagination. It was these things which
Speaker 1: attracted us to each other, which bound us together, and
Speaker 1: God willing will also keep us together in the future.
Speaker 1: Promise me that the opinions and views of the present
Speaker 1: shall never never influence our friendship, which is a sweet
Speaker 1: thing to say, but also like, well, you're the you're
Speaker 1: the grand Duke, you know, like you're basically saying, promised
Speaker 1: me that your opinions and views of the politics I'm
Speaker 1: directly involved with aren't ever going to bother you a
Speaker 1: little different than like a regular citizen of Germany being like,
Speaker 1: I mean, whatever happens between our countries, I hope we
Speaker 1: can stay friends. You're like, you have some power in
Speaker 1: the situation about what happens between these countries. It's a
Speaker 1: little harder to separate you from those politics. And Anderson
Speaker 1: was really heartbroken by this conflict. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: really happy to hear Carl say this to him in
Speaker 1: this letter. But he also couldn't help pointing out some
Speaker 1: of the terrible things that were going on with this war,
Speaker 1: like German newspapers, for example, were saying patently unshrew things
Speaker 1: about Denmark and the Danes, and so when Anderson wrote
Speaker 1: about these things in his letters. Carl just wouldn't respond
Speaker 1: to them in his replies, just didn't bring it up.
Speaker 1: And when the Grand Duke got directly involved with the
Speaker 1: war by commanding troops in this disputed territory between the
Speaker 1: two nations, Anderson was really hurt by this. He was
Speaker 1: kind of shocked that he got so directly involved. The
Speaker 1: Hans wrote back to his old buddy Edward Collins, remember
Speaker 1: him from part one, and he said he'd received a
Speaker 1: letter from the Grand Duke saying, hey, buddy, I'm really
Speaker 1: sorry I haven't heard from you in months. Anderson's like, well,
Speaker 1: but you've been off fighting this war. I haven't heard
Speaker 1: from you. And Anderson wrote that Carl said he quote
Speaker 1: had thought politics would have nothing to do with our friendship,
Speaker 1: and I would be very sorry if i'd been to
Speaker 1: seeved in you. What. Yeah, the Grand Duke here is saying, wow,
Speaker 1: you know you're so upset about this war. But I
Speaker 1: thought we promised that we wouldn't let politics get in
Speaker 1: our way. I guess I was mistaken about you, which
Speaker 1: is such a twisted thing to say, like, oh gee,
Speaker 1: I thought you didn't care about that stuff. But maybe
Speaker 1: I was wrong about you. Like that's so fucked up
Speaker 1: for him to treat haunts like that, right, and again
Speaker 1: because it's like, well, you have some say on this,
Speaker 1: like I'm writing to my friend who should actually do
Speaker 1: something about this horrible propaganda against Denmark, but you're not.
Speaker 1: And then you're telling me to just like shove it,
Speaker 1: shove it somewhere so you could still be friends and
Speaker 1: you have no consequences for actions Like that's not really
Speaker 1: very fair. Yeah, and wow, I you to me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when I'm the one who said promised me that you
Speaker 1: know this will never come between us. Yeah. He just
Speaker 1: wanted permission to see whatever he wanted to do and
Speaker 1: not have to again not suffer any consequences. So unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: their relationship kind of fell apart after that, and the
Speaker 1: letters eventually stopped in eighteen sixty two when a Second
Speaker 1: War broke out. Anderson did not hear from Carl Alexander
Speaker 1: again until eighteen seventy four, when Carl heard that Anderson
Speaker 1: was dying and decided to try to reconnect. So it
Speaker 1: really took a long time for this wound to heal.
Speaker 1: But back in eighteen sixty six, just a few years
Speaker 1: after the Second War broke out, with Germany, Anderson took
Speaker 1: another trip through western Europe because he felt unsafe and
Speaker 1: uneasy at home, so he decided to visit some friends
Speaker 1: in Spain. But on his way home, he stopped back
Speaker 1: in Paris and he ended up in the last place
Speaker 1: you'd expect him, a brothel. And we will hear about
Speaker 1: that little trip right after this little trip to the commercials.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show. So the famed authors in
Speaker 1: Paris weren't the only ones that were trying to get
Speaker 1: Hans Christian Anderson laid because during a three month trip
Speaker 1: to Portugal in eighteen sixty six, he visited a friend
Speaker 1: named Jose O'Neil in CenTra. Now CenTra was made famous
Speaker 1: as a romantic pilgrimage destination after Lord Byron himself passed
Speaker 1: through in the eighteenth century. At the time, Byron had
Speaker 1: been staying in Lisbon, but he basically got chased out
Speaker 1: by the husbands of a few women that he was
Speaker 1: sleeping with. So he was on the run and he
Speaker 1: fled to CenTra, and he just ended up falling in
Speaker 1: love with this city, and he called it glorious Eden
Speaker 1: in one of his poems. And this just set off
Speaker 1: like a whole tourism campaign for CenTra. So shortly after
Speaker 1: Hans Christian Anderson arrived some hundred years later, Jose, his host,
Speaker 1: told him, quote, I suppose you'll also want to screw
Speaker 1: and make the acquaintance of young people who screw everybody.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, it's like that. So you're here, I'm
Speaker 1: imagining you're gonna to go have sex with the locals.
Speaker 1: That's what people do when they're in Cintra. Jose just
Speaker 1: kept pestoring Anderson to quote fulfill his obligations as a
Speaker 1: modern tourist, and you know, go get busy. I don't understand.
Speaker 1: We have an entire economy around that. Yes, how dare
Speaker 1: you not take part? But Anderson said he quote had
Speaker 1: not wished to galivant around like an Englishman. Instead, every
Speaker 1: day he took a long hike up a steep road
Speaker 1: to palasticod Pina, which is Cintra's main landmark. This was
Speaker 1: a beautiful fairy tale style castle painted in bright primary colors.
Speaker 1: You can you can see why Hans is interested. I'm interested.
Speaker 1: I'm interested. It looks gorgeous like We immediately started planning
Speaker 1: a trip to Portugal and Spain. If you're give us
Speaker 1: an hollar, we will come stay on your couch. We
Speaker 1: might have to work forward every day. Jose bugged him, like, hey,
Speaker 1: should you be all doing some thing else while you're here?
Speaker 1: Someone else, you know which I don't know if our
Speaker 1: CenTra hosts will say the same thing. Jose asked Hans, well,
Speaker 1: what are you going to say back home in Denmark
Speaker 1: when people ask you whether you saw anything in CenTra
Speaker 1: besides this palace, to which Anderson replied, quote, I'll say no,
Speaker 1: which I like. In Denmark, we say what we mean.
Speaker 1: But he loved CenTra. He stayed as long as he could,
Speaker 1: particularly because he was worried about this second war with
Speaker 1: Germany back home. Oh, nobody likes the second war with Germany.
Speaker 1: It's never it's never good. The first war with Germany
Speaker 1: is always bad enough. The second I know, like, we
Speaker 1: got to do this. So we've talked a lot about
Speaker 1: how Hans Christian Anderson is not only seemingly kind of
Speaker 1: terrified of sex, but it sounds like he's outright disgusted
Speaker 1: by it. Whether this is religious or personal or what
Speaker 1: his deal is, we're not really sure, but he still
Speaker 1: seems really fascinated by it. And at times it feels
Speaker 1: like he's considering sex like in the same way that
Speaker 1: somebody might stand on the edge of a cliff and
Speaker 1: peer over the precipice, like daring yourself to plunge into eternity. Right.
Speaker 1: Remember we mentioned earlier Hans himself wrote about his quote
Speaker 1: double nature, fear of danger and the desire to try it. Okay,
Speaker 1: right there, right, And so maybe sex was part of that.
Speaker 1: I have this I want to try it, but it's
Speaker 1: scary to me. I don't want to try it, so
Speaker 1: I just want to get close to it and then
Speaker 1: back away. I wonder too, if he's like seeing all
Speaker 1: these people dedicate a lot of their time and energy
Speaker 1: to having sex or finding sex or paying for it
Speaker 1: or whatever, and he's like, if I do it once,
Speaker 1: do you just like go off a deep end and
Speaker 1: all you care about? Or like maybe he was a
Speaker 1: little concerned about the effect it has on you to
Speaker 1: have done it. It could be or I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: people like Tesla, And we've heard of other people, especially
Speaker 1: in the more modern tech world, not like today. I
Speaker 1: don't know maybe to but but some of the inventors
Speaker 1: we've heard of in the past, who who legitimately thought like, oh,
Speaker 1: sex and romance just gets in the way of my
Speaker 1: my genius and my ingenuity, and I need to stay
Speaker 1: away from that otherwise I won't put out the things
Speaker 1: I do. And I mean, I don't know. Maybe they're right,
Speaker 1: Maybe they if they had fallen in love and had
Speaker 1: a bunch of eggs, they would have not done the
Speaker 1: things they did. But maybe Hugo is the exception that
Speaker 1: proves the role. He was like, I still got a
Speaker 1: lot dumb. I don't know what you are doing. It's
Speaker 1: called multie. So this sort of fear of sex and
Speaker 1: wanting to get close but not too close to it
Speaker 1: might be why. In eighteen sixty six, on his way
Speaker 1: home from Portugals, Christian Andersen stopped for a brief twenty
Speaker 1: four hour visit in Paris, and he really challenged himself
Speaker 1: there because he himself once called Paris quote the most
Speaker 1: lustful city under the sun in a letter, and he
Speaker 1: had even more fun things to say in a poem
Speaker 1: that he wrote. So let's go down to poetry corner
Speaker 1: and here Hans Christian Andersen's take on Paris rushing, shifting, fatigueing,
Speaker 1: jumble all around me. I am in Paris. Every day
Speaker 1: here is like a carnival day, a travesty of a
Speaker 1: new paradise. Whitewashed graves with painted roses, human souls and
Speaker 1: swaying reads dance around me, smiling, lowering testify the moment
Speaker 1: that is life. The fig leaf has gone along with
Speaker 1: all that is ordinary in humankind. I am thinking of Babylon.
Speaker 1: Eden's tree of Knowledge now grows in Babylon. Wow, sin city.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm talking about Babylon and Eden's tree
Speaker 1: of Knowledge. He's like, this is a This is a
Speaker 1: city of intellectualism, right, the city of culture and art.
Speaker 1: And also you know knowledge is a sin, right, so
Speaker 1: there's all this kind of sin creeping in around it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder. I always find that so strange to consider
Speaker 1: knowledge a sin. But that, I guess is the story
Speaker 1: of the Garden of Eden, right, so interesting. Sometimes I'm like,
Speaker 1: now they're right, we'd be better off if we were dumb.
Speaker 1: I mean, ignorance is bliss. So while Hans was in
Speaker 1: town in Paris, he took a brief meeting with his
Speaker 1: old buddy Alexander Duma and his daughter, and then he
Speaker 1: went to dinner by himself and had a few glasses
Speaker 1: of wine. The Veno gave him the courage that O'Neill,
Speaker 1: baal Zack and Duma could not, and Anderson decided to
Speaker 1: go to the last place you'd expect him to visit,
Speaker 1: a Parisian brothel. He wrote about this in his diary
Speaker 1: on August sixty six, saying, quote, during this whole trip,
Speaker 1: I've been urged to pay a visit to a prostitute.
Speaker 1: No matter how tired I was, I decided to see
Speaker 1: one of these kinds. I went to a house. A
Speaker 1: woman came who was sold human flesh. Four pressitudes appeared
Speaker 1: for me. The youngest was eighteen. I told her to stay.
Speaker 1: She was wearing hardly anything more than a shift, and
Speaker 1: I felt so sorry for her. I paid her five francs,
Speaker 1: but didn't do anything. Just looked at that poor child,
Speaker 1: who uncovered herself completely and seemed astonished that I merely
Speaker 1: looked at her. Huh, few sold human flesh. He's really
Speaker 1: bringing it, breaking it down to baree a translation thing?
Speaker 1: Or is that just how he put it? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's how he felt about it. To his literatey.
Speaker 1: He was such a literal guy, like both in terms
Speaker 1: of being a literary person, but also like he took
Speaker 1: things as he saw them kind of, so I think
Speaker 1: he was like, that's what's happening. But how weird that
Speaker 1: he just went in paid this girl and just was like,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna sit here and you can kind of
Speaker 1: take a clothes off of you want, but we're not
Speaker 1: going to do anything. But they talked well, and how
Speaker 1: funny that how astonished she was that he's going to
Speaker 1: pay her to just stand there little that was that
Speaker 1: common thing. No, imagine the Victor hugoes that are usually
Speaker 1: coming in there, like last guy exhausted me, I need
Speaker 1: some stamina. You just want to talk, my god? Okay
Speaker 1: about well after this, Anderson headed home, but there was
Speaker 1: something different. Now. It was the closest that he had ever,
Speaker 1: you know, physically been to having sex with someone. He
Speaker 1: wrote in his diary, quote many Parisian thoughts. It's good
Speaker 1: that I'm leaving at once. The flesh is weak, Parisian thoughts.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm gonna call it. Next time I get
Speaker 1: all hot and bothered Parisians they get in here, Oh
Speaker 1: my goodness. But yeah, I think that's kind of I mean, again,
Speaker 1: you see him on the precipice. Here, this fearful thing.
Speaker 1: The flesh is weak. I'm so glad that I'm leaving
Speaker 1: right away, or God, something might happen, which is exactly
Speaker 1: what I don't want to happen. But the next year,
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty seven, he returned. Officially, he was in
Speaker 1: town to see the World's Fair, which was called for
Speaker 1: by Napoleon the third, our friend, uh, and he was
Speaker 1: marking the beginning of the Second French Empire. But as
Speaker 1: the biographer ends says, unofficially he was going to test
Speaker 1: himself further and maybe try and dip more than a
Speaker 1: toe into the murky waters of his h Parisian thoughts.
Speaker 1: And over at twelve month period, Anderson went to Paris
Speaker 1: three more times, and in those he visited four brothels.
Speaker 1: So did he go through with it well? He wrote
Speaker 1: in his diary in May of eighteen sixty seven, quote,
Speaker 1: after dinner, I walked up and down in concupiscence. Then
Speaker 1: suddenly went into a human shop. One woman was plastered
Speaker 1: with powder, the second ordinary, the third quite a lady.
Speaker 1: I spoke to her, paid her twelve francs, and left
Speaker 1: without having sin. Indeed, but certainly in my thoughts. She
Speaker 1: asked me to come back, said I was very innocent
Speaker 1: for a gentleman. I was so relieved and happy when
Speaker 1: I exited from that house. Man the same thing again,
Speaker 1: or just like, oh thank god I got out of there.
Speaker 1: When I did, I almost had zech woman, I know,
Speaker 1: and human shop, human shop. I'm saying, like, bro, get
Speaker 1: a little flowery with it. Talk you're a writer. These
Speaker 1: little judge too. Is like first woman was plastered in powder,
Speaker 1: the second was ordinary, but the third was quite a lady,
Speaker 1: I know. And it's like that he wanted her because
Speaker 1: she was a lady, so she was a little better.
Speaker 1: When the younger, the eighteen year old, he felt that
Speaker 1: she was maybe more innocent or something like. He definitely
Speaker 1: got his own ideas about what these women are like
Speaker 1: in their private lives. See, all of his visits were
Speaker 1: basically like this. He would slip into one of these
Speaker 1: human shops, pay for time with a woman, talk to her,
Speaker 1: and then leave and that was it. And each time
Speaker 1: they were all surprised and delighted by his kindness. They
Speaker 1: all tried to get him into it, but he always
Speaker 1: just ran home to his diary and marked a plus sign.
Speaker 1: He wrote quote many would call me a coward? Is
Speaker 1: that what I am? But YenS writes that maybe this
Speaker 1: wasn't just about challenging himself and putting his chastisy to
Speaker 1: the test, because he wrote about the women that he
Speaker 1: spoke to in these brothels and all the details that
Speaker 1: they gave him about their lives. And remember we talked
Speaker 1: about this. Anderson loved traveling and meeting people and hearing
Speaker 1: their stories, hearing local folk tales, hearing just like what
Speaker 1: someone was like in their day to day life, and
Speaker 1: he often incorporated that into his own stories. Yends references
Speaker 1: a fairy tale that Anderson wrote called Auntie Toothache. And
Speaker 1: this story has a boy in it who has a
Speaker 1: real talent for writing poetry, but he is discouraged from
Speaker 1: doing so. So we remember that about his early life.
Speaker 1: And the boy goes through garbage bins to collect little
Speaker 1: scraps of paper that people have written on and thrown out,
Speaker 1: and the voice starts piecing their lives together and discovers
Speaker 1: all these random, intricate human experiences and he gets this
Speaker 1: picture of a very diverse and fascinating world. YenS writes, quote,
Speaker 1: we should understand Hans Christian Anderson as a traveler, his
Speaker 1: prayer to the world was allow me to develop freely
Speaker 1: in accordance with my own nature, and take me as
Speaker 1: I am. That's so beautiful because everyone's prayer to the world,
Speaker 1: I mean, and a lot of it. Yeah, or he's
Speaker 1: just like, look, I'm I'm just me. I know I
Speaker 1: don't do things the same way as you do. Take
Speaker 1: it or leave it. I just I want us to
Speaker 1: get along. I want us to be friendly with each other.
Speaker 1: I want us to love each other. Maybe it's hard
Speaker 1: to love me, but I'm just trying to collect as
Speaker 1: much as I can in this world while I'm here, right.
Speaker 1: And maybe that, like we said, maybe that turned him
Speaker 1: away from sex a little bit because he's like, why
Speaker 1: am I gonna waste my time with that when I
Speaker 1: could be out doing all these like other passionate intimate
Speaker 1: things with the whole wide array of people. And maybe
Speaker 1: he thought it even ruined your objectivity about a person.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, maybe so. So I don't know. He was
Speaker 1: just an interesting guy, he really. I can't decide if
Speaker 1: he would have like identifies an asexual person today or not,
Speaker 1: because it seems like he really felt a lot of
Speaker 1: sexual energy he wanted that kind of release, he just
Speaker 1: couldn't allow himself to do it for whatever reasons, whether
Speaker 1: it was religious or physical or or whatever. I think
Speaker 1: that's honest to me. That's the most important thing to
Speaker 1: take out of this story, because I think that he
Speaker 1: really lacked the language and the and the community to
Speaker 1: describe or explore or understand his sexuality, right. And you know,
Speaker 1: things were so much more rigid back than in terms
Speaker 1: of what people thought of sex, and in some ways
Speaker 1: they were less rigid to like, you go to Paris
Speaker 1: and everybody was whatever. I mean, he described Harris as
Speaker 1: Adam without his fig leaf. He was like, there's just
Speaker 1: dicks wagging around everywhere you go. Um. But but you know,
Speaker 1: but it does sort of speak to that sort of
Speaker 1: how much rigidity around sexuality has evolved since then too,
Speaker 1: now in terms of some of the more open conversations
Speaker 1: we're having about how like I don't fit in a box,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people still don't fit in a box.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think this is that's an important
Speaker 1: part of this story, is that this isn't new. This
Speaker 1: isn't because you know, Twitter came around and people are
Speaker 1: pushing agendas and and trying to I don't know what
Speaker 1: people think people are trying to do in terms of
Speaker 1: breaking open sexuality into a larger conversation. But there's always
Speaker 1: been a lot of people who don't fit the traditional
Speaker 1: mold of their sexuality or how they want to experience
Speaker 1: sex or intimacy or romance. This is not new. This
Speaker 1: has always been the case, And there's been people like
Speaker 1: Ella Gablus and Hans Christian Anderson all through his three
Speaker 1: who just like, sure, maybe most people are totally comfortable
Speaker 1: with the traditional way that we've always done it, but
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with or weird about people who want
Speaker 1: to experience that differently. No, I would say the only
Speaker 1: problem with the way we talk about it today is
Speaker 1: that we're so desperate for people to label themselves one
Speaker 1: or the other um of anything. Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: you know, you can see it being a little frustrating
Speaker 1: when you're like, okay, so are you buy or pan
Speaker 1: or what's the difference? Like why I have to learn
Speaker 1: all these things? And there's a million flags. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can see why people get a little like, all right,
Speaker 1: what's going on? But it's almost like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: the it's sort of the other side of that coin.
Speaker 1: It's like Anderson couldn't explore because there wasn't any conversation,
Speaker 1: and now it's like you're exploring so much, but there's
Speaker 1: still this desire to really be able to place you
Speaker 1: into some neat little category so that I can understand
Speaker 1: you and conceptualize your life for whatever reason that I
Speaker 1: need to do that, and not not even a malicious thing,
Speaker 1: just like trying to understand another person. But it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, the thing about a spectrum is that it's
Speaker 1: weird and there's blurry parts, and I think sexuality is
Speaker 1: a spectrum and things blur together, and there's so much
Speaker 1: that goes into a desire for sex and who you
Speaker 1: want to have sex with and why and when where
Speaker 1: you know. I like, it's uh, and it's very different
Speaker 1: for each person. I think it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that you could probably make a million, million, billion different
Speaker 1: categories and you could still find someone doesn't fit into
Speaker 1: single one of them absolutely, And I think that's sort
Speaker 1: of what we're learning at the conversation is messy. I mean,
Speaker 1: I see people within one sort of umbrella category of
Speaker 1: sexuality or gender, and they're fighting with each other about
Speaker 1: of course, you know how how that breaks down. And
Speaker 1: I think for anyone to get angry about that is
Speaker 1: silly because it is messy and there aren't a lot
Speaker 1: of clean answers. And we're good. Then twenty years from
Speaker 1: now people are going to think differently about it than
Speaker 1: they do today. Um, hopefully in more open and interesting
Speaker 1: ways and less judgmental. But but you're right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's still messy, um, and it's good that it's
Speaker 1: just being talked about. I mean, we are living in
Speaker 1: a conversation and is wacky, and you know, you could
Speaker 1: just sit back and watch it happen and that's fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: most of you, most of us don't need to be
Speaker 1: involved in that conversation. I'm just like what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes I'm like, what how do I keep up with this?
Speaker 1: Who are you? Wait? You can love this person, but
Speaker 1: your title is that? Okay? Like, so what if I
Speaker 1: get confused? Sorry? And if I get it wrong, let
Speaker 1: me know. And I'm not here to sit here and
Speaker 1: tell you you're wrong for telling me that. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't care. Yeah exactly. There's a million ways to
Speaker 1: live a life and there's really no wrong one. Unless
Speaker 1: your life is wrapped up in misery and violence and degradation,
Speaker 1: whether you're the victim or the perpetrator, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's like, that's kind of, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: the only wrong way to be. And otherwise I really
Speaker 1: don't care. I think the world is so weird and
Speaker 1: big and has so much space and room for so much,
Speaker 1: and it's so weird that we limit ourselves every moment
Speaker 1: of every day. And again, I think it comes from
Speaker 1: a real human thing of trying to understand each other
Speaker 1: in the context of one another and where you fit
Speaker 1: with me, and where I fit with you, and what
Speaker 1: role I could play in your life. And that's very normal,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not something to be ashamed of. But
Speaker 1: I think it's cool that we're kind of trying to like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shake that off. But what does it matter
Speaker 1: if if my soul cares about your soul, your essence,
Speaker 1: your personality, the person you are inside, who cares about
Speaker 1: the rapper? I don't know why I care about the rapper,
Speaker 1: you know. So, I mean, I think it's nice to
Speaker 1: be thinking about a little outside of that literal box
Speaker 1: that our bodies are for our insides, you know, um,
Speaker 1: and if you like a body, and no problem with that.
Speaker 1: Plenty of bodies to enjoy. Speaking of enjoying bodies, I
Speaker 1: was really thinking during Anderson's visit these brothels. I was
Speaker 1: flashing back to a friend of mine who used to
Speaker 1: be an exotic dancer. Right. She worked at a at
Speaker 1: a local strip club and during the day mostly um,
Speaker 1: she was like night times or bachelor parties and it's
Speaker 1: awful and it's chaos, and but she said during the
Speaker 1: day what she would get was rich guys would come in,
Speaker 1: they drop a few hundred bucks on a v I
Speaker 1: P room. They'd go in there and she'd you know,
Speaker 1: she'd start dancing or whatever, and they're like, Nah, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna I'm just gonna talk about the day I
Speaker 1: had or my home life or whatever. And she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm doing more therapy here than I am stripping. How
Speaker 1: many times, though, have we seen that with the with
Speaker 1: the courtisan comes there, the concubines or stuff where they're like,
Speaker 1: half the time, I'm not even trying to sleep with you.
Speaker 1: I just need a sympathetic woman to listen to me.
Speaker 1: And like, for whatever reason, if they're not finding it
Speaker 1: in your wife or whatever, and who is you might
Speaker 1: be a piece of ship to your wife and that's
Speaker 1: why she don't listen to you. I don't know. She
Speaker 1: might suck. I have no idea, but they've found this
Speaker 1: other woman who, for whatever reason they could put that
Speaker 1: stuff on, and maybe because she's getting paid, doesn't have
Speaker 1: to care. So she's like, all right, great, I can
Speaker 1: listen to that. You can dump all over me, and
Speaker 1: I can leave that in the VI I p room
Speaker 1: and head my ass onto my life and I'm not
Speaker 1: weighed down by your stuff the way a wife or
Speaker 1: someone who has to like live with your stuff every
Speaker 1: day would be. I could see that being very therapeutic.
Speaker 1: And maybe there's all I know a lot you know,
Speaker 1: and again making wide assumptions, but I know there's sort
Speaker 1: of an issue with men in our country going to therapy. Um,
Speaker 1: so maybe that's what they're finding an outlet in that way.
Speaker 1: They should just there should really be some kind of
Speaker 1: crossover industry where therapists the sexy therapists instead of therapist
Speaker 1: sex therapist, yeah, sexy therapist. So it's sex workers every
Speaker 1: time you break there. I take the look. I know
Speaker 1: quite a few sex workers who have their agree in psychology?
Speaker 1: Hey why not? And what a study of human psychology?
Speaker 1: And if we would legalize sex work in this country,
Speaker 1: they could probably put both those skills to work and
Speaker 1: really make some serious money if we If we added
Speaker 1: you had sex work into any industry in this country,
Speaker 1: and it will skyrocket. I don't know about food service,
Speaker 1: but made service too, Like they got buffets at strip clubs.
Speaker 1: People are you know what? And actually I think they
Speaker 1: even had some drive through. They had a drive through
Speaker 1: strip club during the pandemic. And I want to say, uh,
Speaker 1: Seattle or Portland or somewhere up in the north. I
Speaker 1: remember hearing about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I guess
Speaker 1: there was a drive through strip not to drive through.
Speaker 1: I was like, they're serving fries. I'm over here. That shake,
Speaker 1: it's right there. It's all working out. The other thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to point out too. Back in his trip,
Speaker 1: it's very briefly mentioned that he stopped to see Alexandra
Speaker 1: Dumah the day before he went to the brothel for
Speaker 1: his twenty four hours Harris, and I wonder if it
Speaker 1: wasn't the same thing where he was like, oh, Alexander
Speaker 1: will try to get me laid again and I'll come
Speaker 1: real close, you know. And that's what he was looking for.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if that was the purpose of that visit. Well,
Speaker 1: we know he couldn't ask Victor because Napoleon the Third
Speaker 1: was celebrating the Second French Empire, which my Victor was right. Um, well,
Speaker 1: Hans Christian Ederson, he did pass away in eighteventy five. Uh.
Speaker 1: It seems to be of liver cancer. And I thought
Speaker 1: this was really sweet. Shortly before his death, he consulted
Speaker 1: a composer about the music for his funeral and he said, quote,
Speaker 1: most of the people who walk after me will be children,
Speaker 1: So make the beat keep time with little steps. So sweet.
Speaker 1: I mean, he just like, I don't know, he wasn't
Speaker 1: basically a big kid his whole life, and he knew
Speaker 1: kids he he was. We didn't get too much into
Speaker 1: his literature in this story because obviously we're looking at
Speaker 1: his romances. But he was always talking about He's like,
Speaker 1: you don't understand me, but do you know who does?
Speaker 1: Kids that read my books? And that's I think that's
Speaker 1: really what he just kind of wanted to be in
Speaker 1: that place of just childishness. Yeah, I mean, and why
Speaker 1: not I don't know. I feel like again, I feel
Speaker 1: like Margaret wise Brown had a little bit of that
Speaker 1: as well. Like I just I don't understand why you
Speaker 1: don't want to look at the world with this wonder
Speaker 1: and excitement, interest and innocence instead of cynicism and you know, fear,
Speaker 1: like adults seem to have a lot. You know, there's
Speaker 1: something beautiful about that. I was just reading a poem
Speaker 1: earlier today that was like, why not Everyone always says
Speaker 1: live each day as it it's your last, But why
Speaker 1: not live at each day as as if it's your first,
Speaker 1: and just being astonished by everything you see and like
Speaker 1: bowled over with enthusiasm about so many normal things and
Speaker 1: nothing is mundane, you know. And I was like, that's
Speaker 1: a really cool question. Why not let me answer first
Speaker 1: and just like rubbing your eyes in wonderment, maybe like
Speaker 1: your sixty fifth day, because like, we just met my
Speaker 1: newborn niece who's like five days old, and she don't care.
Speaker 1: She's not wondered by anything. She's just like, what the
Speaker 1: hell am I doing here? Yeah, we should leave each
Speaker 1: day as if we're about three months old. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: trip and ball two hands, WHOA? But I know that
Speaker 1: is that is something cool about that that energy Hans
Speaker 1: had it, that's for sure. Yeah, um, what what a
Speaker 1: guy there's I'm so fascinated by. I mean, talk about
Speaker 1: just someone. If I did have my psychology degree and
Speaker 1: I was doing sex work on the side to pay
Speaker 1: my bills, I would be really fascinated to analyze was
Speaker 1: Christian Anderson? You know? And to uh, well, I guess
Speaker 1: last time we mentioned that maybe he would be diagnosed
Speaker 1: as being on the autism spectrum. Today and Randy again
Speaker 1: shared a link with us, saying that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of scholars who believe that now. It's very hard to
Speaker 1: diagnose that sort of thing, you know, later when they're
Speaker 1: not here to talk to you, obviously, but a lot
Speaker 1: of people are thinking that now. So yeah, it's definitely
Speaker 1: been said. He's just a fascinating character to me. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: I always love when people's crazy lives lead to them
Speaker 1: writing these timeless books and novels and stories and stuff
Speaker 1: that's always so interesting to dig into. But then there's
Speaker 1: so much more with this guy. Well, and it's nice
Speaker 1: to remember that there's people, you know, legendary people who
Speaker 1: you feel like, oh, it's cool that they you know,
Speaker 1: sort of marked to the beat of their own drum
Speaker 1: and they did their own thing. And but you know,
Speaker 1: it's really cool to like dive into his private world
Speaker 1: like this and realize that that's really hard to do.
Speaker 1: That's hard to do no matter who you are, when
Speaker 1: it is that you know in in history that you're
Speaker 1: doing it. It's very hard to be out of step
Speaker 1: with everybody around you. As much as we act like
Speaker 1: we value that, it really is hard to watch. And
Speaker 1: I think people are like, oh, why aren't you little
Speaker 1: do do the normal thing, you know, So it's nice
Speaker 1: to see how, you know, how it really messed with
Speaker 1: his head a lot, to be like, I don't know
Speaker 1: why I'm different, but I just am. And that's what
Speaker 1: makes him special. Literally, that's why we care about him.
Speaker 1: That's why he was able to write what he could write.
Speaker 1: To that point, like seeing these legends and their lives
Speaker 1: were so not mundane but just like they were just
Speaker 1: they were small people in a giant world. You know,
Speaker 1: we see them as these like marker points on the
Speaker 1: historical timeline, right, and that makes someone so epic, so
Speaker 1: much bigger than than life. And when you could like
Speaker 1: go to their day to day life. They were just
Speaker 1: trying to get through it like the rest of us,
Speaker 1: and confused and worried, and some of them were trying
Speaker 1: to get laid. Someone were trying desperately to not get laid, right, Um,
Speaker 1: making decisions based on emotions on nothing, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: and being worried and and and uh, you know, war
Speaker 1: and stuff around them having such an impact on their lives.
Speaker 1: They just anybody else. And I think that that does
Speaker 1: a couple of things. It takes the idea of celebrity
Speaker 1: and legendary people off the pedestal a little bit. And
Speaker 1: it also, I think teaches us that, you know, despite
Speaker 1: our struggles, that kind of impact on the world is
Speaker 1: not out of reach for us as normal as people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if you're weird and feeling weird about it, stay
Speaker 1: weird and let us know about your weirdness. We'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you right around here. And uh, and
Speaker 1: how you related to this story and what you thought
Speaker 1: of Hans and you know, tell us how offended you
Speaker 1: are as a Dutch or Danish person for being confused
Speaker 1: between the two. I will never not be mad that
Speaker 1: we did that. But again, thank you so much to
Speaker 1: Arvid for suggesting this story to everyone who's reached out
Speaker 1: about it. I'm so glad that we got to spend
Speaker 1: a few episodes with this guy, and I hope you
Speaker 1: are too. Please let us know your thoughts absolutely send
Speaker 1: us then email at to ridict Romance at gmail dot
Speaker 1: com right or we're on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at
Speaker 1: Dianamite Boom, and I'm at Oh Great, It's Eli and
Speaker 1: the show is at ridict Romance. Thank you again for
Speaker 1: tune and in for these three episodes spending your time
Speaker 1: with us. We hope you enjoyed it and we will
Speaker 1: catch you the next one. I love you, bye, so long, friends,
Speaker 1: it's time to go. Thanks so listening to our show.
Speaker 1: Tell your friends name's uncle Sandez to listen to a
Speaker 1: show Ridiculous Romnance.