Speaker 1: I gotta say, I just glanced over. I'd even cleaning
Speaker 1: off the bookshelves lately, and so there's some rearranged books
Speaker 1: and there's a stackling in its side, and the book
Speaker 1: on the top is a Rick Steves travel book and
Speaker 1: it's called Europe through the back Door. Listen, we had
Speaker 1: this conversation and I was given that book. I don't
Speaker 1: remember ever seeing it before. We were like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I want to explore Europe through the back Door,
Speaker 1: but Rick Steves is the guy. I guess it does
Speaker 1: have a lot of good information. Still, what a life.
Speaker 1: I just want to get paid to go places and
Speaker 1: tell people about how I went there. I already do
Speaker 1: it so much, I know, for free. Yeah, hell, I
Speaker 1: paid to It's almost you know, Christmas in the way
Speaker 1: that we celebrate it. We got our tree up, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're commercial holiday celebrators around here. And so
Speaker 1: we watched what we watched some TV episodes last night.
Speaker 1: But it's almost movie time because the days leading up
Speaker 1: to Christmas you gotta crank out the movies. So true.
Speaker 1: What's what's your giving? Your top three? Well, Christmas Caro
Speaker 1: number one easily easy. I mean, I still love home alone.
Speaker 1: I could probably do it from memory, but it feels
Speaker 1: so nostalgic. Spirited is kind of a new fade. I guess,
Speaker 1: my god, why is it so good? It was so fun.
Speaker 1: I also love Klaus the animated movie where he has
Speaker 1: to go to the North Pole and make the post
Speaker 1: office work and he invents writing letters, Cutlanta and stuff.
Speaker 1: It's so fun and good and I love it. That
Speaker 1: movie doesn't get the respect to deserve. That movie was
Speaker 1: hand drawn. Still look like c G stop motion. It's
Speaker 1: it's just like every animation silent once, but it was
Speaker 1: all done by hand. Its gorgeous, it really is. The
Speaker 1: voices are great, like, the cast is really great. The
Speaker 1: story is really sweet, and I mean he goes up
Speaker 1: there and the town is like horrible. It's like, okay, awesome.
Speaker 1: Everybody's really mean to each other, so it's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: I love it. It was. It was really good. It's
Speaker 1: a really good for kind of a newer one. I guess.
Speaker 1: I don't know new years ago. It was a few
Speaker 1: years ago, seventeen or something like that. It sounds right.
Speaker 1: It's on Netflix. It's really good. Yeah, Muppets is so good.
Speaker 1: Clouds is great. I also really weirdly love The Guardians.
Speaker 1: What's it called, Oh, Rise the Guardians. Yes, that's a
Speaker 1: great movie. Jack Frost and Santa and the Easter Bunny
Speaker 1: and Fairy and all that. Baldwin is like this slavic
Speaker 1: Santa Clause this big Zoe, which makes sense. It seems
Speaker 1: like Santa Claus a bee would have like a SMaL
Speaker 1: barty in accent or something totally, but he's like like tattoos.
Speaker 1: It's dude. I remember seeing trailers for this movie going
Speaker 1: and really rolling my eyes and the game looked dumb,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was really charming. It's a really
Speaker 1: sweet story. I loved it. I love Jack Frost, well,
Speaker 1: you love Crispine. I do love christ Whatever I'm interested
Speaker 1: look right off the bat, I'm just gonna say, send
Speaker 1: us your favorite Christmas movies, because we always like recommendations.
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch we haven't seen. There are a
Speaker 1: bunch we haven't seen, and sometimes it's just like that,
Speaker 1: you see one and you're like, no, I don't want
Speaker 1: to see that, and then then somebody tells you, like no, seriously,
Speaker 1: do it, and it's worth watching and and ends up
Speaker 1: being one of your favorites. So shoot us your lists
Speaker 1: would love to hear him. Well, we're going to get
Speaker 1: into our story today. And this was sparked by a
Speaker 1: little Christmas idea because we were looking at Charles Dickens,
Speaker 1: you know Mr Christmas, and he has you might have
Speaker 1: heard quite a silly story involving the author Hans Christian Anderson.
Speaker 1: Well that led us to Hans Christian Anderson. And this
Speaker 1: guy's love story is out of this world. But the
Speaker 1: man himself is very interesting. So we really wanted to
Speaker 1: get into that today because you know author Hans Christian Anderson.
Speaker 1: He's most well known for stories like Thumblina, the Princess
Speaker 1: and the Pa the Snow Queen, on which Frozen is
Speaker 1: very loosely based, and of course The Little Mermaid, on
Speaker 1: which The Little Mermaid is sort of loosely based. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: Hans was a tall, awkward, odd looking man who was
Speaker 1: a self proclaimed virgin his entire life, but not for
Speaker 1: lack of trying. He felt deeply in love with men
Speaker 1: and women alike, but they were always people that he
Speaker 1: knew he could never get. But he turned his heartbreak
Speaker 1: into fairy tales and gave the world some of its
Speaker 1: most classic children's stories. So let's hear all about the
Speaker 1: awkward love of Hans Christian Anderson, and then in our
Speaker 1: next episode we'll tell just the story of him and
Speaker 1: Charles Dickens. Let's do this, Hey the French, come listen. Well,
Speaker 1: Eli and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking,
Speaker 1: a romantic tips. It's just about pridiculous relationships a lover.
Speaker 1: It might be any type of person at all, and
Speaker 1: abstract consent are a concrete wall. But if there's a
Speaker 1: story where the second glance, we'll show ridiculous role. That's
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hans Christian Anderson was
Speaker 1: born in Odense, Denmark, in eighteen o five, and his
Speaker 1: parents were poor. His father was a twenty two year
Speaker 1: old man also named Hans, and he was just a shoemaker.
Speaker 1: He had almost no education, and his mother was a
Speaker 1: forty year old woman named Anna Maria and hers daughter
Speaker 1: a big age gap between those two. Now. She washed
Speaker 1: laundry for neighbors to help with the family income. But
Speaker 1: though they had little to their name, his parents really
Speaker 1: cared for him and they spoiled him as much as
Speaker 1: they could, and they would build their own toys for him,
Speaker 1: and they would encourage him to use his imagination to
Speaker 1: entertain himself, because they couldn't just go out and you know,
Speaker 1: by a PlayStation or Dikolie Elmo or whatever it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his father would read to him at night from Arabian
Speaker 1: nights and this gave Hans a real love of fantasy
Speaker 1: and adventure stories. And like I said, this kid is
Speaker 1: kind of tall, it's really awkward. He was gangly, but
Speaker 1: he loved singing and dancing. He looked very silly doing it,
Speaker 1: but he just didn't care. That's how we should all being. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just do it. It's so good for you. I wish
Speaker 1: I know some like tall, gangly clown types and I
Speaker 1: love them singing dancing around. That's great. I often was
Speaker 1: like I would do it more if I was, like
Speaker 1: if I look like a marionette. Absolutely Sadly, Hans's father
Speaker 1: died in eighteen sixteen, when Hans was just eleven years old,
Speaker 1: and the next year his mother remarried and Hans started
Speaker 1: going to a local school for poor children. He got
Speaker 1: a very basic education there, but like any time you
Speaker 1: go to school, he was also teased a lot for
Speaker 1: being odd looking and wearing cheap, hand me down clothes.
Speaker 1: They were like, where are your air Force ones or
Speaker 1: something cooler from today? Air a shoe. Yeah, Nelly had
Speaker 1: a whole song about it. Look, this is me dating myself,
Speaker 1: but that's what was really in. It's you dating yourself
Speaker 1: and me showing how outside of pop culture I am.
Speaker 1: We both sounded real cool. Just when Hans was fourteen,
Speaker 1: he managed to move to Copenhagen to find other weirdos
Speaker 1: like himself. The purpose of life, in my opinion, is
Speaker 1: to find your weirdos, and he wanted to pursue his
Speaker 1: dreams of being an actor and a singer. He was
Speaker 1: actually quite a talented soprano, so he was quickly accepted
Speaker 1: to the Royal Danish Theater in Copenhagen. Good job, Hans. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: shortly after being accepted, his voice change. I was a
Speaker 1: soprano when I was a kid. Oh yeah, I was
Speaker 1: a very high pitched singer. Yeah, they gave me solos.
Speaker 1: They're like, some of the girls can't hit these notes.
Speaker 1: It must be tough for a person looking for good singers,
Speaker 1: like a choir director. And you find this prepubiscent boy.
Speaker 1: So the most beautiful, angelous voice and you're like, I
Speaker 1: sort of want to go back to the times when
Speaker 1: we could make you a Unich so he could present forever.
Speaker 1: Coral instructors didn't think that. I mean, I'm glad we
Speaker 1: wouldn't away from that practice. But I bet there's a
Speaker 1: choir director out there who has every now and then
Speaker 1: been like in a different age I was. I was
Speaker 1: a star soprano as a child. So maybe maybe it
Speaker 1: was considered so he couldn't pursue the soprano dream like
Speaker 1: he had had before. But one of his colleagues at
Speaker 1: the theater had told Hans, dude, you are a poet.
Speaker 1: And Hans took that and ran with it, and he
Speaker 1: started writing like crazy. Now. One of the directors at
Speaker 1: the Royal Danish Theater, Jonas Colin, saw a lot of
Speaker 1: potential for this kid, and he said, all right, you
Speaker 1: know what, You're gonna be a poet. You're gonna be
Speaker 1: a writer. I'm sending you to grammar school in and
Speaker 1: Hans is like, you kid me in that place is
Speaker 1: so expensive, like my mother washes laundry. I cannot pay
Speaker 1: for this one day. It's right. Well, Jonas Collins said,
Speaker 1: don't you worry about that? Kid, We're going to make
Speaker 1: it work. And he believed so hard in this boy,
Speaker 1: and he had such good connections that he managed to
Speaker 1: get Hans's tuition covered by King Frederick the Six. And
Speaker 1: you might wonder why King Frederick the six was paying
Speaker 1: for this random, poor kid to go to this expensive
Speaker 1: grammar school. Well there's a little bit of a conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory behind this. And here, as our friend and producer
Speaker 1: Ben Bolan puts, it is where it gets crazy. Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Times published an article in that says, for years,
Speaker 1: Hans Christian Andersen's biographers haven't really trusted the author's own
Speaker 1: story about his birth. According to biographer Yen's Jorgensen, at
Speaker 1: Broholm Castle, a seventeen year old noble girl named Elise
Speaker 1: as felt Larvig was known to be pregnant out of
Speaker 1: wedlock in eighteen o five, around the time that Hans
Speaker 1: Christian Andersen was born. The next year she married Crown
Speaker 1: Prince Christian of Denmark against everyone's wishes, and the whole
Speaker 1: marriage was brief, happy and kept pretty quiet. But the
Speaker 1: child she was pregnant with before their marriage, there is
Speaker 1: no record of. Yeah, this Prince Christian of Denmark who
Speaker 1: went on to be king in his Wikipedia in any
Speaker 1: articles I could find about him, no mention of Elise
Speaker 1: ali felt Larvic, but in documents about her she definitely
Speaker 1: was in love with them and was briefly married to him.
Speaker 1: But they really were just like she's It was a
Speaker 1: class thing, like she was out of his class. So
Speaker 1: it was this marriage nobody was really happy about. And
Speaker 1: they also allegedly had a second child together after they
Speaker 1: were married, a daughter who was hidden away and taken
Speaker 1: away from Denmark. Damn and get this, at Castle Broholm
Speaker 1: there was a housekeeper named Anna Maria and HER's daughter
Speaker 1: the exact name of Hans Christian Anderson's mother. And after
Speaker 1: eighteen o five, when this woman was Ignanton, then mysteriously
Speaker 1: not there's suddenly no record of Anna Maria anderstaughter working
Speaker 1: at Castle Broholm anymore. Suddenly, around the same time, this
Speaker 1: forty year old woman shows up in a village with
Speaker 1: a brand new baby. And wherever this twenty two year
Speaker 1: old husband came from. Okay, if that's not suspicious enough.
Speaker 1: Crown Prince Christian, who like I said, would later be
Speaker 1: King Christian the eighth of Denmark. Apparently he had ten
Speaker 1: children outside of his marriages, and all of them were
Speaker 1: diligently provided for. So if it felt a little weird
Speaker 1: to you that the royal purse was being used to
Speaker 1: pay for this random, poor child's education, then this conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory might be the answer for you. I mean, sounds
Speaker 1: legit right now. None of this is officially proven, of course,
Speaker 1: and other scholars highly doubt the claim. But Jorgensen, who
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties was actually the principle of the
Speaker 1: slay Elsa school where Hans Christian Andersen study, wrote in
Speaker 1: his biography that in the time that Hans attended school there,
Speaker 1: townspoke wrote letters to each other talking about how amazed
Speaker 1: they were with just how often Prince Christian visited this
Speaker 1: small town. What's he doing here again? What is there
Speaker 1: to see in Slasa? He comes to see every school play,
Speaker 1: every baseball game. It's almost like his son is there.
Speaker 1: Jorgenson also checked the records and saw that Anderson's tuition
Speaker 1: was more than twice the usual costs to go to
Speaker 1: that school, like they paid double to go to that school,
Speaker 1: and all the payments were traced back to the royal family.
Speaker 1: Even stranger Anderson's name never appears on the rolls. Jorgenson wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: to enroll, you had to show a birth certificate, but
Speaker 1: Hans didn't have one. That's so wild. I'm starting to
Speaker 1: believe this more and more. And it's true. Hans Christian
Speaker 1: Anderson did not get a birth certificate get until he
Speaker 1: was seventeen years old in November. So random noble girl
Speaker 1: has a baby that disappears, and at the same time
Speaker 1: a housemaid with the same exact name as his mother
Speaker 1: suddenly has a baby at forty years old with a
Speaker 1: two year old band. And then that baby is cared
Speaker 1: for by the royal family for his whole life. Come
Speaker 1: on and visited and visited. Was he born of a
Speaker 1: secret romance between the crown prince and a noble girl?
Speaker 1: Did they just hand this baby off and promised to
Speaker 1: make sure his life was comfortable? This biographer Jorgenson really
Speaker 1: makes it seem like that was the exact case, and
Speaker 1: to me, it just seems like that's got to be
Speaker 1: what's happened, right, It's too obvious. They didn't even do
Speaker 1: a very good job at covering it up from my perspective.
Speaker 1: But the Hans Christian Anderson Center in Denmark says Jorgenson's
Speaker 1: theories quote rest on a scandalous abuse of sources and
Speaker 1: have been phatically denounced by experts on King Christian eighth.
Speaker 1: But of course, as with many conspiracy theories, those denouncements
Speaker 1: have only furthered people's belief in the idea. Well, why
Speaker 1: are you trying to cover it up? Then? I know
Speaker 1: right now it's a little strange. Christian Anderson technically might
Speaker 1: have been heir to the throne of Denmark. Weird, and
Speaker 1: if I know one thing about heirs to the throne
Speaker 1: of Denmark. Uh, those stories always end well and they're
Speaker 1: kind of whiny. Well, whoever his parents were, and for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, the royal family paid his tuition. Hans Christian
Speaker 1: Anderson was actually not a great student. Dam You know,
Speaker 1: the king wants you to be here in maybe you
Speaker 1: should apply yourself. No, he was very weak. It's spelling.
Speaker 1: He could not write formally, which, according to famous author's
Speaker 1: dot org Is quote, probably why his writing style was simplistic,
Speaker 1: with everyday spoken language, something that would later prove to
Speaker 1: be more of a feature than a bug. Right's set
Speaker 1: his writing apart. Yeah, his basic simple children's writing was
Speaker 1: like what made his stuff so easy? To read and
Speaker 1: what made children love it so much? Yeah? Absolutely, But
Speaker 1: at the time his headmaster was cruel and his instructors
Speaker 1: discouraged him from writing, which made him really depressed. But
Speaker 1: he persevered and he managed to finish school in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight, at which point he fiercely dedicated himself back
Speaker 1: to writing again. He had written some short stories during school,
Speaker 1: despite the discouragement he got. He had had a few
Speaker 1: little things published here and there, so he knew that
Speaker 1: this was a potential future for him still, and the
Speaker 1: next year after graduating, he published a short story called
Speaker 1: a Journey on Foot from Holman's Canal to the East
Speaker 1: Point of Amager, and he found decent success with that
Speaker 1: publication short story long title. Yes. In eighteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: he got himself a little grant from the King other
Speaker 1: random little benefit from the royal family here, dude, I
Speaker 1: mean King and Christian. Now, this grant allowed him to
Speaker 1: travel all across Europe, and while he's doing this, he's
Speaker 1: hearing local folk tales and fables, and he's taken in
Speaker 1: all these random stories and different cultures. And this allowed
Speaker 1: him to eventually write multiple collections of fairy tales that
Speaker 1: he released I think in three volumes, and these included Thumb, Bolina,
Speaker 1: the Princess and The pa Tom Thumb, The Emperor's New Clothes,
Speaker 1: and of course The Little Mermaid, Classic Tales, Classic Tales.
Speaker 1: Now on and on his writing career went until he
Speaker 1: became the Hans Christian Anderson that we know and love today.
Speaker 1: But what about his love life? So many authors we
Speaker 1: have talked about were absolutely drowning and sex just talked
Speaker 1: about him. Walt Whitman like to go troll around for
Speaker 1: young men, right about it in his diary. And these
Speaker 1: weren't necessar early hot studs either. No, no, no, Well,
Speaker 1: Anderson's own sexuality has been debated by scholars for decades,
Speaker 1: and we're going to start digging into those dirty details
Speaker 1: right after this. Bright Welcome back to the show, everybody.
Speaker 1: So Hans Christian Anderson. Biographer Elias Bredsdorf analyzed Hans's diaries
Speaker 1: and concluded that he lived and died a virgin, but
Speaker 1: was also a compulsive masturbater. And he made little plus
Speaker 1: signs in his diary every time he well, they love
Speaker 1: these little codes. They had a sex code. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody snatches my diary, I don't want him
Speaker 1: quite to know that's going on, although he makes it
Speaker 1: pretty obvious, as The Guardian paraphrases, Hans would write, quote today,
Speaker 1: I had a visit from so and so. They're so sweet.
Speaker 1: When they left, I had a double sensuous plus plus again,
Speaker 1: just like, what could he mean? Historian Richter Norton writes
Speaker 1: that Alfred Kinsey, the American sexologists, read a bunch of
Speaker 1: Anderson's original manuscripts and quote could say unequivocally that they
Speaker 1: were straight out homosexual stories. Scholars have found that when
Speaker 1: analyzing Hans's stories, while many of them are tales of
Speaker 1: goodness triumphing over evils such as the Snow Queen, others
Speaker 1: are pessimistic and sad. Britannica writes that quote, a strong
Speaker 1: autobiographical element runs through his sadder tales. Throughout his life,
Speaker 1: he perceived himself as an outsider, and despite the international
Speaker 1: recognition he achieved, he never felt completely accepted. He never married,
Speaker 1: but again not for a complete lack of trying. His
Speaker 1: diaries do make it pretty clear that he had sexual
Speaker 1: attraction and urges. He's always right and like and saw
Speaker 1: this person today and could barely contain myself my blood
Speaker 1: is boiling. I'm burst into the seams. I gotta have
Speaker 1: that booty um. And then he would write like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I've never had any booty and I never will. BLUs
Speaker 1: BLUs BLUs BLUs plus BLUs lush blush BLUs so. Historian
Speaker 1: Patrick Fleming cites one of Anderson's diaries in thirty four
Speaker 1: that says, quote, my blood is churning, huge sensuality and
Speaker 1: struggle with myself. If it really is a sin to
Speaker 1: satisfy this powerful urge, then let me fight it. I
Speaker 1: am still innocent, but my blood is burning. And he
Speaker 1: makes that reference a lot that he's still innocent, he's
Speaker 1: still chased, he hasn't been deflowered or whatever words he
Speaker 1: uses at the time. And there is an element of
Speaker 1: religiousness to this, right, Like he does reference the sin
Speaker 1: and things like that. So he was pretty religious. But
Speaker 1: I think maybe that's more of a crutched lean on
Speaker 1: than it is a reason that he never did have
Speaker 1: any sex. But we'll get into that a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Fleming says that a lot of Anderson's diaries had this
Speaker 1: sort of juxtaposition between his you know, his immense horny
Speaker 1: nous and his obsession with suppressing it. But still these
Speaker 1: pages are just peppered with plus signs everywhere. So he
Speaker 1: obviously kept trying to, you know, work his issues out
Speaker 1: on his own. He is the self serve station. He's like,
Speaker 1: I can't go out today, need to polish the Pewter
Speaker 1: plus plus plus. Some biographers are convinced of Anderson's homosexuality,
Speaker 1: but others say it's more complicated than that. But certainly,
Speaker 1: as Fleming says, quote outside the normative expectations of nineteenth
Speaker 1: century Denmark, right, which must have been very narrow. I mean,
Speaker 1: most places in nineteenth century were pretty narrow. Anderson's own
Speaker 1: physician described his sexuality as acetic or practiced with severe
Speaker 1: self discipline and abstention. But Fleming sece by Eve Sedgwick
Speaker 1: called Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl that proposes that
Speaker 1: masturbation was its own form of sexuality. If not literally,
Speaker 1: Fleming rights, then looking at it like a form of
Speaker 1: sexuality is at least a way to reevaluate our typical
Speaker 1: assumptions about sexuality. He says that with this in mind,
Speaker 1: it helps us to see quote that sexual identity exists
Speaker 1: along multiple intersecting acts. Including not just the biological sex
Speaker 1: or gender assignment of one's self and one's partner, but
Speaker 1: the number of partners including zero, whether sexual expression is
Speaker 1: physical or emotional, the cultural and historical communities in which
Speaker 1: one exists, and other factors that no list could exhaust.
Speaker 1: So basically saying sexualities spectrum, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different things that could inform that sexuality I have really
Speaker 1: nothing to do with your internal life and a lot
Speaker 1: to do with external life. Yeah, And we can't just,
Speaker 1: you know, narrowly categorize every person into these broad sort
Speaker 1: of umbrellas, right, Like, maybe there is this sort of
Speaker 1: solo sexuality where you are, you have sexual urges and
Speaker 1: you're willing to masturbate, but you don't want to have
Speaker 1: sex with other people. Um. I believe that's what Cedric
Speaker 1: is sort of talking about. Uh in her article about
Speaker 1: Jane Austin and Flemming picks that up for Anderson and
Speaker 1: again they say, maybe not really specifically solo sexuality as
Speaker 1: a thing, but can we at least consider it and
Speaker 1: open our minds a little bit? Right? Well, and you
Speaker 1: can see it too, because like, like, for example, if
Speaker 1: you talk about a sexuality which we've done a little bit. Um,
Speaker 1: I know that's also got a very wide spectrum of
Speaker 1: what like, some a sexuals are fully a romantic, are
Speaker 1: not interested in any form of anything, right, But there's
Speaker 1: also romantic a sexual that do want some form of
Speaker 1: ro mance and or fine with having sex. It's just
Speaker 1: not a big driver maybe for them. And then some
Speaker 1: are like I like the romance part where we hold
Speaker 1: hands and then we kiss and we cuddle, but there's
Speaker 1: no like sex part. I don't like that part, you know,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. Like there's a huge,
Speaker 1: huge spectrum with a sexuality, So I could I could
Speaker 1: see maybe like a solo like version where you're like,
Speaker 1: I like, I feel attraction, but I don't want the
Speaker 1: physical intimacy part. Yeah, And I can't speak for a sexuals,
Speaker 1: but what's the difference between I'm decidedly solo sexual I
Speaker 1: like to masturbate, but I don't like sex, and someone
Speaker 1: who's like I have trauma curable or treatable or at
Speaker 1: least explorable trauma that makes it very difficult for me
Speaker 1: to have sex with other people but not to masturbate. Um,
Speaker 1: you know what point do you say? No? No, I'm
Speaker 1: just solo sexual and that's okay versus I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm there's there's a world out there that I'm
Speaker 1: not exploring because you know, because it's fear trauma or whatever,
Speaker 1: your anxiety, that kind of thing. Yeah, I wonder, I
Speaker 1: wonder if it's really like, well, what are you happy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: One way, like I do you feel like I've I
Speaker 1: have a limited life because I can't get out there
Speaker 1: and do what I want to do, Then obviously you
Speaker 1: should address that. If you're like, I feel perfectly happy
Speaker 1: with this and I don't want anything different than who
Speaker 1: Who's to say that that's a wrong way to live
Speaker 1: in your life? Right? Right? Sexuality is so uh messy
Speaker 1: in in the best and worst ways now. Hans Krishn
Speaker 1: Anderson's sexuality was not discussed publicly until years after his
Speaker 1: death in eighteen seventy. Expatica dot com tells us that
Speaker 1: a newspaper quote hinted that he may have been a
Speaker 1: homosexual in and none other than a man we've mentioned
Speaker 1: many times on this show and have an episode coming
Speaker 1: up about Magnus. Hirschfeld wrote an article in nineteen o
Speaker 1: one discussing Hans Christian Andersen's likely homosexuality, but Robert Lapage
Speaker 1: writes in The Guardian that there's evidence that Anderson was
Speaker 1: actually bisexual and crushed on both men and women. To
Speaker 1: explore that we're going to actually jump forward in time
Speaker 1: and start with a love that Anderson felt in his
Speaker 1: late thirties with the Swedish opera singer Jenny Lynde. Jenny
Speaker 1: Lynde was touring Denmark with the Royal Swedish Opera in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty three when she met Hans. Now she's one
Speaker 1: of the most successful women artists in her time. Her
Speaker 1: career was nearing its height at this point, and Hans
Speaker 1: was supposedly so taken with her that he wrote his
Speaker 1: fairy tale The Nightingale as a tribute. This is the
Speaker 1: story of a Chinese emperor who caged a nightingale with
Speaker 1: the most beautiful singing voice in the kingdom, and he
Speaker 1: loved it so much that a salesman sent him a
Speaker 1: golden mechanical nightingale covered in jewels that sang for him
Speaker 1: and never got tired. So the emperor set the real
Speaker 1: nightingale loose. She was happy to be free, but was
Speaker 1: sad to be rejected in favor of a mechanical bird. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the Emperor got tired of hearing the same song over
Speaker 1: and over again, and he broke the Golden Nightingale. Then
Speaker 1: he got very ill and wished his real bird would
Speaker 1: come back, and the Nightingale did. She sang to him
Speaker 1: at the window every day and made him healthy again.
Speaker 1: She actually the Emperor asked her to come back and
Speaker 1: live in her cage again, and she was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm good. She just sang at the window and he's like,
Speaker 1: all right, this is cool. I'll just sting for you
Speaker 1: at the window, but I can continue to fly around
Speaker 1: my nastural habitat. Now. This story was published and it
Speaker 1: was a huge hit. I mean, Hans christ Needersen already
Speaker 1: a pretty big name at this time, and this story
Speaker 1: just took off. And this also contributed to Jenny Lynn's
Speaker 1: rising fame across Europe because everyone knew it was basically
Speaker 1: about her. In fact, everybody started calling her the Swedish
Speaker 1: Nightingale as an name, so really kind of just gave
Speaker 1: her the the Anderson bump. A side note about this story,
Speaker 1: Oscar Wilde later wrote a response to this story called
Speaker 1: The Nightingale and the Rose and this was alluded to
Speaker 1: by Emily Dickinson in a letter to the woman that
Speaker 1: she loved Susan Gilbert and we're going to do them
Speaker 1: in an episode later too. So just a lot of
Speaker 1: ridiculous romance crossover going around the Nightingale here. I think
Speaker 1: we even discussed Jenny lynd in our episode about Tom
Speaker 1: Thumbs and the Barn. Jenny lyn hung out with Pt
Speaker 1: Barnam a lot now. Hans Christian Andersen wrote frequent pouting
Speaker 1: letters to Jenny about how infatuated he was with her.
Speaker 1: He wrote in one diary entry quote, no books, no
Speaker 1: men have had a more ennobling influence upon me as
Speaker 1: a poet than Jenny Lynde. And they hung out all
Speaker 1: the time. Whenever she was in Denmark, they would go
Speaker 1: to lunch together. He would just kind of follow around
Speaker 1: like a puppy dog, but in person he was shy
Speaker 1: and awkward and he didn't really know how to talk
Speaker 1: to her. One day in eighty four he met her
Speaker 1: on a train platform and she was about to leave
Speaker 1: for an opera concert, and he slipped her a letter
Speaker 1: that asked her to marry him, and she got on
Speaker 1: the train and was like, I'll open this on my way,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately Hans Christian Anderson Foundation tells us that Jenny's
Speaker 1: answer was not preserved. We don't have that letter, but
Speaker 1: we do have one where she said, quote that God
Speaker 1: bless and protect my brother is the sincerest wish of
Speaker 1: his affectionate sister Jenny. He's really trying to be like,
Speaker 1: oh boy, we are just like siblings, aren't we. Hans,
Speaker 1: I love you, but not like that. A year later
Speaker 1: in she returned to Copenhagen for a concert tour, and
Speaker 1: Hans saw her daily. He admired her more than ever,
Speaker 1: but she did not reciprocate romantically. She held a dinner
Speaker 1: of her friends at the Royal Hotel and in a toast,
Speaker 1: she honored the ballet master Auguste Bournonville and said he
Speaker 1: had been like a father to her and borne and
Speaker 1: Ville replied saying, well, now all Danes are gonna want
Speaker 1: to be my son, so they can consider themselves your brother.
Speaker 1: And to that, Jenny replied, quote, that is too many
Speaker 1: brothers for me. I would rather choose one to represent
Speaker 1: all the rest, And she picked up a second class
Speaker 1: of champagne, walked over to Hans Christian Anderson handed it
Speaker 1: to him and said, quote, will you be my brother?
Speaker 1: And he's like no, no, she clinks glasses with him.
Speaker 1: He knew it was never going to happen between them.
Speaker 1: They call it really bittersweet. I mean, can you imagine
Speaker 1: just just that moment where he's like, she's coming over,
Speaker 1: just coming over, She's going to give me a champagne glass,
Speaker 1: and she's like, will you be my brother? He's like, think,
Speaker 1: I'll just go walk into a river. But he did
Speaker 1: keep that champagne glass in his living room until the
Speaker 1: day he died, and it can be seen today in
Speaker 1: the Hans Christian Anderson House in his hometown of Odense,
Speaker 1: so it really mattered to him. Now. Jenny Lynne, biographer,
Speaker 1: believed that he based the Snow Queen's titular character on
Speaker 1: her with a Heart made of ice mh. But that
Speaker 1: was never explicitly said by Anderson himself, so we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure. So Frozen was originally based on the
Speaker 1: Snow Queen. That was their plan the Disney movie Frozen,
Speaker 1: but they changed the script like thirty times and it
Speaker 1: got way far away from it. But roughly the same
Speaker 1: story of a girl out in the wilderness who thinks
Speaker 1: that she can't love. She's got stone in her heart,
Speaker 1: ice in her heart. And this one biographer says, Hans
Speaker 1: sort of in it, like in cell way wrote this
Speaker 1: about her as an insult, like you know, you're so cold,
Speaker 1: such a nice queen, but you know, I think only
Speaker 1: timing really suggests that we don't know that that's true
Speaker 1: or not. But if so, it was not the first
Speaker 1: time that Hans Christian Andersen wrote his heart break into
Speaker 1: one of his children's stories. Like we said, he also
Speaker 1: had a deep, passionate and confusing love for a few
Speaker 1: men in his life, and one of them would make
Speaker 1: Hans Christian Anderson's heart flounder and drive him to write
Speaker 1: a story about a tiny woman who lived under the sea,
Speaker 1: the Little Mermaid, And we're gonna hear about that story
Speaker 1: right after this Welcome Back everyone. In one of our
Speaker 1: favorite sources, the Marginalien Maria Popova writes about Harriet Hosmer.
Speaker 1: She was the world's first successful female sculptor. She's an American.
Speaker 1: She was awesome. She really shattered the mold. You could say,
Speaker 1: I see what you did there now. After a visit
Speaker 1: from Hans Christian Anderson, Harriet Hosmer wrote that he was
Speaker 1: quote a tall, gaunt figure of the Lincoln type, with long,
Speaker 1: straight black hair shading a face striking because of its
Speaker 1: sweetness and sadness. It was perhaps by reason of the
Speaker 1: very bitterness of his struggles that he loved to dwell
Speaker 1: among the more kindly fairies, in whose world he found
Speaker 1: no touch of hard humanity. I would love to hang
Speaker 1: out with the more kindly fairies too, there weren't I
Speaker 1: am so sick of hard humanity. Seriously, now, when we
Speaker 1: look back at Anderson's life, we can kind of see
Speaker 1: how sad he must have been all the time, and
Speaker 1: why he might have wanted to get away from that
Speaker 1: hard humanity and hang out with fairies. He was an
Speaker 1: awkward boy who wanted to dance around and bring joy
Speaker 1: and song to people who ended up teasing him. Then
Speaker 1: he was a bright and creative student who was discouraged
Speaker 1: from his own passions by his teachers. And then even
Speaker 1: after his first two volumes to children's stories, those fairy
Speaker 1: tales like Thumbelina, critics skewered him. They said it was
Speaker 1: too simplistic, it didn't have enough morals, and children's literature
Speaker 1: was meant to educate, not entertain. That reminds me of
Speaker 1: our episode about Margaret wise Brown, Yes, about how they
Speaker 1: were changing you know that you know, what was considered
Speaker 1: appropriate for kids, and they were like, you know, you
Speaker 1: can only give kids moral fables from tales, you know
Speaker 1: that tell him how to be a person. And she's like,
Speaker 1: what if it's just like a dog in a coat
Speaker 1: And the kids were like, yeah, what about a dog
Speaker 1: in a coat? Sitting a dog in a coat? I
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to read this dog in a coat
Speaker 1: story that you're talking about. Scott was He's got it.
Speaker 1: But also in Hans's life, he was passionate and emotionally intense,
Speaker 1: but he had guilt over his own sexual feelings, and
Speaker 1: he had a habit of falling in love with very
Speaker 1: unattainable people. I should mention that Jenny Lynde he knew
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have a good relationship with because of her
Speaker 1: touring schedule, so he kind of set himself up for
Speaker 1: failure there. She was also away younger than him, she
Speaker 1: was like fifteen or sixteen when he proposed. By the way,
Speaker 1: as tough as his rejection from Jenny Lynde was, it
Speaker 1: was nothing compared to the most intense love he felt
Speaker 1: throughout his life, to a friend he'd known since school
Speaker 1: named Edward Colin. This was the son of Anderson's early benefactor,
Speaker 1: the theater director Jonas Colin, got to Anderson the tuition
Speaker 1: money from the King for grammar school away back when
Speaker 1: the guy pulled all those strings by saying, Hey, I've
Speaker 1: got your illegitimate son here. Don't you want him to
Speaker 1: be something one day now? Anderson lived with the Collins
Speaker 1: for a while, and at first Edward wasn't very impressed
Speaker 1: by this awkward kid who kind of barged into his
Speaker 1: life and home. But his dad had them practicing Latin
Speaker 1: and grammar together, and over time they became closer. Edward
Speaker 1: thought it was so cool to have a friend his
Speaker 1: age hanging around all the time, and Hans Christian Anderson
Speaker 1: thought it was so cool to have a friend his
Speaker 1: age that he was head over heels, completely absolutely destined
Speaker 1: in love with. Gabrielle Bellow writes on lith Hub that
Speaker 1: Edward never really knew quite what to say when Anderson
Speaker 1: got emotional with him, and quote often simply expressed or
Speaker 1: feigned ignorance of Anderson's lust. Probably the best way to
Speaker 1: go about it. I guess, although you kind of want
Speaker 1: to be first, because you're kind of leading him along
Speaker 1: a little bit too. If you're just like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm so in love with you. I think you're so amazing,
Speaker 1: and you're I'm just feel so passionate about you, just
Speaker 1: to be like, okay, cool, great, yeah exactly. One time
Speaker 1: Anderson slipped a rose under Edward's pillow while he slept,
Speaker 1: and later wrote him a very special poem about roses.
Speaker 1: And we found this on Danish translator John Iron's blog.
Speaker 1: So let's go down to poetry Corner and here Hans
Speaker 1: Christian Anderson's poem to Edward Collins. The rosebud, rosebud, ever
Speaker 1: firm and round like a young girl's lips, so sound
Speaker 1: when I kiss you as my bride, lovelier, Still you
Speaker 1: open wide? One more? Kiss your lips inspired, feel my
Speaker 1: heart's fire. I must straightway have confessed. No lips have
Speaker 1: I ever kissed, No girl waits with heart so true rose,
Speaker 1: My kiss must be for you, ah my yearning, ne'er
Speaker 1: will tire feel my heart's fire. That is very passionate.
Speaker 1: And Edward Colin got this palm and was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think she'll like it. Nice, nice right in there, buddy,
Speaker 1: Hans is like, by rosebud, I mean your butth hole.
Speaker 1: I thought he meant lips. I know he didn't. I
Speaker 1: wasn't misreading it. That's the gen Z version. Yeah. Edward
Speaker 1: Collins again just not really knowing what to say when
Speaker 1: he gets things like this. So he's just like, nice,
Speaker 1: good words. You're you're a real writer, buddy. Now in
Speaker 1: their twenties, Anderson continue to write Edward letters, famously saying
Speaker 1: quote I long for you as though you were a
Speaker 1: beautiful Calabrian girl. And you know, once again, we're guessing
Speaker 1: Edward was just like cool, bro, glad, we're buds too.
Speaker 1: Another time, Anderson seemed to switch the proverbial gender roles
Speaker 1: that he had written for them in that one by saying, quote,
Speaker 1: my sentiments for you are those of a woman, the
Speaker 1: femininity of my nature, and our friendship must remain a mystery,
Speaker 1: to which I'm sure Edward probably simply replied L O
Speaker 1: L left him on red. Yeah right, or maybe he
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, mystery, that sounds good. Let's never let's
Speaker 1: look he never forget Strea. Now, the letters kept coming,
Speaker 1: Anderson sent Edward all his stories he was writing, and
Speaker 1: he slipped little sentiments like those into his attached notes.
Speaker 1: In eighteen thirty four, Edward couldn't really take it anymore,
Speaker 1: and he snapped back in a letter, quote, you write
Speaker 1: too much. You have deplorable productivity. Below says this almost
Speaker 1: broke Hans his heart. But quote as in many unhealthy relationships,
Speaker 1: Anderson kept at it. But she writes that this desperation
Speaker 1: was quote perhaps at least partly born out of the
Speaker 1: immense pressure and pain of his day to repress his queerness. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: he doesn't really know what to say. He's just obsessed
Speaker 1: with him and it's confusing him, and it's frustrating him.
Speaker 1: And if he's like pretty religious, you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it made him feel terrible, like very healthy and wrong.
Speaker 1: And again we go back to this unattainability where he's like,
Speaker 1: he knows at this point, he willingly knows that his
Speaker 1: friend has turned him down. Right, has said as much,
Speaker 1: like if it was going to happen, it happened by now.
Speaker 1: But he keeps He's like, well, if I focus on him,
Speaker 1: then I know I never have to worry about crossing
Speaker 1: that line, or I know I have to have to
Speaker 1: find someone who might like me, and then I screw
Speaker 1: it up. So lots of reasons now. When his buddy
Speaker 1: Edward announced his plans to get married to a woman
Speaker 1: named Henriette in Anderson was devastated, but he kept inserting
Speaker 1: himself into their lives, even tried to start a friendship
Speaker 1: with Henriette by sending her letters, which is awkward. Soon, though,
Speaker 1: Bellow writes, Anderson seemed to be actively trying to stop
Speaker 1: their marriage from happening now, in what Bellow calls one
Speaker 1: of his less angered states, Edward once wrote Anderson a
Speaker 1: letter in eighteen thirty six and referred to him in
Speaker 1: it as quote a worthy friend. Well, Hans Christian Anderson
Speaker 1: got a little pio by this little princess and the piote.
Speaker 1: He wrote back, quote, why do you call me your
Speaker 1: worthy friend? I don't want to be worthy. That is
Speaker 1: the most insipid, boring word you could use. Any fool
Speaker 1: can be called worthy. I have hotter blood than you
Speaker 1: and half of Copenhagen Edward. I also long for you
Speaker 1: to shake you, to see your hysterical laughter, to be
Speaker 1: able to walk away insulted and not come back home
Speaker 1: to you. For two whole days, talk like talking to
Speaker 1: him as if he's his wife, right Like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to storm away from you and give you the silent
Speaker 1: treatment for two days. How do you like that? Right?
Speaker 1: You're going to sleep on the couch tonight. You're really
Speaker 1: in the doghouse, now, Edward Worthy, what an insult? Well,
Speaker 1: he's just like, I'm more special than that. I'm not.
Speaker 1: Just like it's like saying, no, you're my good buddy.
Speaker 1: It's not enough, right, Like it's not a special word,
Speaker 1: Like you and I were more than just good pals,
Speaker 1: Like you should acknowledge the very very special relationship we have.
Speaker 1: And Edward is like, how about just special without all
Speaker 1: the variants? Can we can we just be friends? Right? Well?
Speaker 1: Edward and Henriette did get married, and later Edward would
Speaker 1: write in his own memoir quote, I found myself unable
Speaker 1: to respond to this love. And this caused the author
Speaker 1: much suffering. He thought, you know, the human world, it's
Speaker 1: a mess. Life under the city is better than anything
Speaker 1: we got up here. So he put pen to paper
Speaker 1: and he started writing The Little Mermaid, which historian Rick
Speaker 1: Norton says was a direct response to his feelings for
Speaker 1: Edward Colin. He had written to Edward in an eight
Speaker 1: thirty five letter quote, if you look down to the
Speaker 1: bottom of my soul, you would understand the source of
Speaker 1: my longing and pity me. Even the open, transparent lake
Speaker 1: has its unknown depths which no divers no. And in
Speaker 1: the original Little Mermaid, Bellow says Andrew's and describes the
Speaker 1: Mermaid's world in a way that really mirrors this letter
Speaker 1: kind of drew on his own language. Uh. He calls
Speaker 1: it a magical and mysterious place that we surface humans
Speaker 1: can barely imagine. Again, unknown depths no divers could know. Right,
Speaker 1: So let's look at the story at a Little Mermaid.
Speaker 1: You've got a girl who has the most beautiful voice
Speaker 1: in existence? Is this Anderson because he was at the
Speaker 1: time one of Europe's most treasured authors. But much like
Speaker 1: the Disney movie, in his story, when this little Mermaid
Speaker 1: makes a deal with a sea witch so that she
Speaker 1: can get legs and visit the prince that she once
Speaker 1: rescued from drowning, she finally gets to be a part
Speaker 1: of that world that she always wanted to be part of.
Speaker 1: But she can't speak, She's lost her voice, and this
Speaker 1: kind of feels a lot like Anderson's own challenges in
Speaker 1: expressing his true nature. Right, He's like, I always wanted
Speaker 1: to go talk to Jenny Lynde, but when I I
Speaker 1: made the trade to get the ridge to go up
Speaker 1: to her, and once I get there, I have no voice.
Speaker 1: I can't say anything yeah or or. I can't be
Speaker 1: honest with Edwards. I mean, I guess he was kind
Speaker 1: of honest with Roundabout hinty way though, right, true, true,
Speaker 1: I write you a metaphor of a poem rather than
Speaker 1: just say, hey, buddy, I want to make out with you.
Speaker 1: What do you think you can see why, especially if
Speaker 1: he wasn't incursed at always? What do you want to
Speaker 1: lose the friendship too? I don't know. Well. In his
Speaker 1: fairy tale, mermaids live for three hundred years, but they
Speaker 1: have no souls, and upon their death they simply dissolve
Speaker 1: into see foam and cease to exist, but humans get
Speaker 1: to live forever in heaven. So the little Mermaid makes
Speaker 1: the deal, trading her voice for legs. But in the
Speaker 1: original fairy tale, every step she takes on her legs
Speaker 1: feels incredibly painful, like she's walking on sharp knives, and
Speaker 1: the witch says she'll only get a soul if she
Speaker 1: marries the prince. If not, then on the day he
Speaker 1: marries someone else, she will die from a broken heart
Speaker 1: and dissolve into sea foam and suffer all that pain
Speaker 1: for nothing. And the Prince hangs out with the mermaid
Speaker 1: all the time. He loves to dance with her, which
Speaker 1: she does despite the excruciating agony that she feels, but
Speaker 1: he never falls in love with her. Instead, he falls
Speaker 1: in love with the princess, who he believes is the
Speaker 1: woman who rescued him from drowning. Right, So you can
Speaker 1: see how it really mirrors Anderson's sort of melancholy relationship
Speaker 1: with love. Right, Like maybe Hans Chrishn Anderson feels that
Speaker 1: he is sort of soulless or that his soul is corrupt,
Speaker 1: right with these sinful feelings he has, and that maybe
Speaker 1: if he finds true love that will redeem him or
Speaker 1: sort of justify those feelings. Otherwise he's thinking, all I
Speaker 1: might as well just dissolve into the sea. Obviously, we've
Speaker 1: got the mermaid hanging out with the prince, giving him
Speaker 1: and anything he wants, dancing with him, right and entertaining
Speaker 1: him despite the extreme agony that she feels walking around
Speaker 1: on these legs, and that feels a lot like how
Speaker 1: Anderson might have felt growing up being best friends with Edward. Right,
Speaker 1: I love hanging out with you, and it's the most
Speaker 1: painful thing I get. Love. Definitely pain Yeah, absolutely. And
Speaker 1: then you've got in the story, Edward, I mean the
Speaker 1: prince right, who thinks that that stupid princess saved him
Speaker 1: from drowning Henriette right when it was actually cons Christion Anderson,
Speaker 1: I mean the little mermaid who saved him. So Anderson's like, no, Edward,
Speaker 1: I'm the one who helped you grow into the menu
Speaker 1: are today, and yet you're going to go marry this
Speaker 1: this girl you think is so special, who did nothing
Speaker 1: for you. I've been here for you the whole time, Right,
Speaker 1: you can really see the parallels here. I think it's fascinating. Yeah. Absolutely. Now,
Speaker 1: after the Prince marries the Princess and the Little Mermaid
Speaker 1: is about to die, Themaide sisters come to the surface,
Speaker 1: having made a new deal with the Sea Witch. They
Speaker 1: give the sea Witch their hair in exchange for a
Speaker 1: dagger that if the Little Mermaid uses to kill the
Speaker 1: prints and drip blood on her feet she'll turn back
Speaker 1: into a mermaid. But the little mermaid just can't do it.
Speaker 1: She throws herself from the ship and dissolves into c foam,
Speaker 1: But instead of ceasing to exist, she ascends into the
Speaker 1: sky as an air spirit, and because of her selflessness,
Speaker 1: is given the chance to earn a soul by doing
Speaker 1: good deeds for mankind for three hundred years, which let's
Speaker 1: see eighteen thirty thirty seven, so we're still in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she should still be working on working on some good Yes,
Speaker 1: get down here, mermaid. I got some suggestions for it.
Speaker 1: That soul. I think it's lame to be like, you
Speaker 1: were so selfless, so now you get to be selfless
Speaker 1: with three hundred years and then hey, it's that or
Speaker 1: dissolving a c foam a ce film. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of debate about the ending of this story.
Speaker 1: Critics were kind of mixed on it at the time.
Speaker 1: It's a it's the The ending is one of the
Speaker 1: biggest things he changed because he based this on a
Speaker 1: story called Undine or Undine about a mermaid kind of
Speaker 1: a similar setup. Um, but she just died at the end.
Speaker 1: I was just like, no, I want to give it
Speaker 1: a little more of an uplifting thing. And some people
Speaker 1: have said, well, is that him trying to find himself
Speaker 1: a happy ending or he's just unwilling to kill this
Speaker 1: character off. I sort of like it as this idea
Speaker 1: of I have wonder if Hans wasn't like man. I
Speaker 1: wish I could just stab Edward. I hate him so much.
Speaker 1: I'm so mad at him for what he did to me.
Speaker 1: But you know what, instead, No, I'm going to release
Speaker 1: myself and maybe that will redeem me and I'll and
Speaker 1: I'll be given a better chance for a better life
Speaker 1: after this. But you can also see if someone's religious
Speaker 1: that they you know, there there should be a way
Speaker 1: to redeem yourself and I earn a place in paradise
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, right right, I think it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: I haven't read the original story of you, however, I
Speaker 1: haven't actually know. I mean, I guess we we did
Speaker 1: a show years ago, we did the actual fairy Tales,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of the only time that I had
Speaker 1: ever really dove in and saw how much more crazy
Speaker 1: especially Grims of course, yeah, um, the Grim Brothers. The
Speaker 1: Grim Brother's whole point was, let me make you scared.
Speaker 1: And miserable and horrified. Yeah, we're trying to freak. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hans went back and forth between like I really want
Speaker 1: to make you feel good about yourself and entertain you,
Speaker 1: and also like, isn't life miserable? I do feel sorry
Speaker 1: for how anguished he must have been. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you said in cell and I think that's kind of accurate,
Speaker 1: because I don't think he wanted to be necessarily celibate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, no, because I mean he didn't, but
Speaker 1: he must have because I think he also kept himself
Speaker 1: are I think he found reasons to I mean again
Speaker 1: in that sort of insult kind of way, like found
Speaker 1: reasons to blame other people when really he could have
Speaker 1: looked a little more inward and then like, well what
Speaker 1: am I? What am I putting out in the world? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know who am I talking to? And how? Because
Speaker 1: that was the other thing too, is he you know
Speaker 1: what wasn't direct and then but was smothering at the
Speaker 1: same time. Yes, that's very frustrating for anyone. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I guess that's what I meant when I was talking
Speaker 1: about Edward, you know, deflecting and that being kind of
Speaker 1: the best way to do it. I guess that's pretty
Speaker 1: informed by I don't know, being being a woman, because
Speaker 1: you can't. It's very hard to just outright be like no,
Speaker 1: because then you're mean. And if you make a man
Speaker 1: mad about something like that, sometimes it puts you in
Speaker 1: serious danger and he gives a little bit of stock
Speaker 1: or stocker. So even if you're not like this guy
Speaker 1: does really want to stab me for real, he at
Speaker 1: least will make me really uncomfortable and like be invading
Speaker 1: my space and constantly in my ace and saying things
Speaker 1: that make me uncomfortable and stuff like that. So, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes the easiest and like you said, not always effective,
Speaker 1: but sometimes it feels like the safest, easiest route is
Speaker 1: to be like how you you ha ha ha, so
Speaker 1: you're the best, you know, kind of try to like
Speaker 1: get them to realize without actually staying out loud like
Speaker 1: I don't want that, I'm not interested in that way,
Speaker 1: please leave me alone, which can lead to hell hath
Speaker 1: no fury, sort of like a writer's scoring. Like a
Speaker 1: writer's score. Yeah, I mean it's a lot of miscommunication,
Speaker 1: indirect communication, right that that, lad, I mean, you're right
Speaker 1: about the threats and the worry and the concern, but
Speaker 1: it's also just the spiral of no one's just saying
Speaker 1: it right, so you keep kind of circling. Well, he
Speaker 1: didn't outwardly reject me, so I'm gonna kind of keep
Speaker 1: hinting at it. And he's like, well he hasn't so
Speaker 1: he hasn't directly asked me, So I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: hinting rejection, and they're just whirlpooling each other into this
Speaker 1: this misery spiral. Do we know if homosexuality was illegal
Speaker 1: in Denmark at that time? I do know that it
Speaker 1: was decriminalized in nineteen thirty three, so I couldn't find
Speaker 1: anything specific about the eighteen hundreds, but it looks like
Speaker 1: I does suggest that it was a criminal action before
Speaker 1: that before So yeah, well that might be part of
Speaker 1: it where you can't be that open sure with your
Speaker 1: questions or like trying to determine exactly what you're trying
Speaker 1: to get out of this Rosebud poem and stuff like.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately it was it was a question that was on
Speaker 1: par with like are you a pedophile or you missed
Speaker 1: you know, like something could ruin your life and career,
Speaker 1: and people would be like, I'm not inviting you over anymore,
Speaker 1: you can't be around my kids like horrible ship. It's
Speaker 1: not appropriate to put those on par but that's kind
Speaker 1: of how it was, and the self loathing from both
Speaker 1: religious and legal right right, So maybe Edward even had
Speaker 1: a little bit like, well, I don't want to ask
Speaker 1: because then we can't really be friends anymore. And I
Speaker 1: do value your friendship, and I don't want to say
Speaker 1: something that will offend you so much that you'll be like,
Speaker 1: I can't. You know, you got to imagine that if
Speaker 1: he's like, are you homosexual? And Christian Anderson were like, no,
Speaker 1: what would give you that idea? But he wouldn't be like,
Speaker 1: come on, will you give me that idea? Let me
Speaker 1: let me pull out these receipts. My feelings for you
Speaker 1: are as a woman, Yeah, that you've put a rose
Speaker 1: under my pillow while I slept, Sir, I think that
Speaker 1: was a normal brow thing to do. Well, look, Hans
Speaker 1: Christian Andersen's love life is clearly incredibly complicated, especially for
Speaker 1: a man who never even once ever had sex. He
Speaker 1: himself like seemed to be very passionate about love, but
Speaker 1: he also didn't seem quite sure what to do with it, right.
Speaker 1: He didn't really seem to understand his own feelings. He
Speaker 1: might have been afraid to act on the mfs we've said,
Speaker 1: or a shame to discover what was under the surface. So,
Speaker 1: you know, when he felt strongly about one and he
Speaker 1: couldn't contain it anymore, he kind of did overflow in
Speaker 1: the worst way possible and scare these people off, whether
Speaker 1: he knew he was going to or not. So maybe
Speaker 1: his pursuit of unattainable people was deliberate to protect himself from,
Speaker 1: you know, a less predictable rejection, right, like, well, if
Speaker 1: I go after them, I know it's not gonna work,
Speaker 1: but if I go to this person, it might, and
Speaker 1: then it would hurt me more than it doesn't. But
Speaker 1: Jenny and Edward were not the only two people that
Speaker 1: he was obsessed with, who also kind of thought that
Speaker 1: Hans was a little too much. He also spent an
Speaker 1: infamous summer with Mr Christmas himself, Charles Dickens, And we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about all of that in our next episode,
Speaker 1: so definitely stay tuned for that. It's gonna be a
Speaker 1: special Christmas story. Um, just about just about the two
Speaker 1: of them. I love it. Yeah, I'm very excited to
Speaker 1: tell you all that story special Christmas episode. We might
Speaker 1: have a bonus treat in store for that episode two. Um,
Speaker 1: so stay tuned. Yeah, please let us know what you
Speaker 1: thought of Hans Christian Anderson his love love. I wish
Speaker 1: we could have done a whole biography about how his
Speaker 1: all of his stories were written and when and all
Speaker 1: this stuff. Fascinating stuff, but of course, you know, ridiculous romance.
Speaker 1: We got to keep it to the subject. Um, but
Speaker 1: he certainly had some ridiculous romances, sure did. And I'm
Speaker 1: a little sorry for him, Yeah, I am. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: let us know what you think of Hans Christian Anderson's
Speaker 1: masturbation diary or his Reeders Nightingale or his best friends. Um.
Speaker 1: You can reach us through email It's ridic Romance at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. Yeah, or find us on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Instagram on at oh great, it's Eli. I'm at Dynamite
Speaker 1: Boom and the show is at ridic Romance and we
Speaker 1: will catch you all in the next episode we talk
Speaker 1: about Mr Christmas. Thank you all so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Thank you so long. Friends, It's time to go. Thanks
Speaker 1: so listening to our show. Tell your friend's names, Uncle's
Speaker 1: in dance to listen to a show ridiculous role nance