WHAT ONE CAN INVENT [0]
1872
FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
WHAT ONE CAN INVENT
by Hans Christian Andersen
There was once a young man who was studying to be a poet. He
wanted to become one by Easter, and to marry, and to live by poetry.
To write poems, he knew, only consists in being able to invent
something; but he could not invent anything. He had been born too
late- everything had been taken up before he came into the world,
and everything had been written and told about.
"Happy people who were born a thousand years ago!" said he. "It
was an easy matter for them to become immortal. Happy even was he
who was born a hundred years ago, for then there was still something
about which a poem could be written. Now the world is written out, and
what can I write poetry about?"
Then he studied till he became ill and wretched, the wretched man!
No doctor could help him, but perhaps the wise woman could. She
lived in the little house by the wayside, where the gate is that she
opened for those who rode and drove. But she could do more than unlock
the gate. She was wiser than the doctor who drives in his own carriage
and pays tax for his rank.
"I must go to her," said the young man.
The house in which she dwelt was small and neat, but dreary to
behold, for there were no flowers near it- no trees. By the door stood
a bee-hive, which was very useful. There was also a little
potato-field, very useful, and an earth bank, with sloe bushes upon
it, which had done blossoming, and now bore fruit, sloes, that draw
one's mouth together if one tastes them before the frost has touched
them.
"That's a true picture of our poetryless time, that I see before
me now," thought the young man; and that was at least a thought, a
grain of gold that he found by the door of the wise woman.
"Write that down!" said she. "Even crumbs are bread. I know why
you come hither. You cannot invent anything, and yet you want to be
a poet by Easter."
"Everything has been written down," said he. "Our time is not
the old time."
"No," said the woman. "In the old time wise women were burnt,
and poets went about with empty stomachs, and very much out at elbows.
The present time is good, it is the best of times; but you have not
the right way of looking at it. Your ear is not sharpened to hear, and
I fancy you do not say the Lord's Prayer in the evening. There is
plenty here to write poems about, and to tell of, for any one who
knows the way. You can read it in the fruits of the earth, you can
draw it from the flowing and the standing water; but you must
understand how- you must understand how to catch a sunbeam. Now just
you try my spectacles on, and put my ear-trumpet to your ear, and then
pray to God, and leave off thinking of yourself"
The last was a very difficult thing to do- more than a wise
woman ought to ask.
He received the spectacles and the ear-trumpet, and was posted
in the middle of the potato-field. She put a great potato into his
hand. Sounds came from within it; there came a song with words, the
history of the potato, an every-day story in ten parts, an interesting
story. And ten lines were enough to tell it in.
And what did the potato sing?
She sang of herself and of her family, of the arrival of the
potato in Europe, of the misrepresentation to which she had been
exposed before she was acknowledged, as she is now, to be a greater
treasure than a lump of gold.
"We were distributed, by the King's command, from the
council-houses through the various towns, and proclamation was made of
our great value; but no one believed in it, or even understood how
to plant us. One man dug a hole in the earth and threw in his whole
bushel of potatoes; another put one potato here and another there in
the ground, and expected that each was to come up a perfect tree, from
which he might shake
FAIRY TALES OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
WHAT ONE CAN INVENT
by Hans Christian Andersen
There was once a young man who was studying to be a poet. He
wanted to become one by Easter, and to marry, and to live by poetry.
To write poems, he knew, only consists in being able to invent
something; but he could not invent anything. He had been born too
late- everything had been taken up before he came into the world,
and everything had been written and told about.
"Happy people who were born a thousand years ago!" said he. "It
was an easy matter for them to become immortal. Happy even was he
who was born a hundred years ago, for then there was still something
about which a poem could be written. Now the world is written out, and
what can I write poetry about?"
Then he studied till he became ill and wretched, the wretched man!
No doctor could help him, but perhaps the wise woman could. She
lived in the little house by the wayside, where the gate is that she
opened for those who rode and drove. But she could do more than unlock
the gate. She was wiser than the doctor who drives in his own carriage
and pays tax for his rank.
"I must go to her," said the young man.
The house in which she dwelt was small and neat, but dreary to
behold, for there were no flowers near it- no trees. By the door stood
a bee-hive, which was very useful. There was also a little
potato-field, very useful, and an earth bank, with sloe bushes upon
it, which had done blossoming, and now bore fruit, sloes, that draw
one's mouth together if one tastes them before the frost has touched
them.
"That's a true picture of our poetryless time, that I see before
me now," thought the young man; and that was at least a thought, a
grain of gold that he found by the door of the wise woman.
"Write that down!" said she. "Even crumbs are bread. I know why
you come hither. You cannot invent anything, and yet you want to be
a poet by Easter."
"Everything has been written down," said he. "Our time is not
the old time."
"No," said the woman. "In the old time wise women were burnt,
and poets went about with empty stomachs, and very much out at elbows.
The present time is good, it is the best of times; but you have not
the right way of looking at it. Your ear is not sharpened to hear, and
I fancy you do not say the Lord's Prayer in the evening. There is
plenty here to write poems about, and to tell of, for any one who
knows the way. You can read it in the fruits of the earth, you can
draw it from the flowing and the standing water; but you must
understand how- you must understand how to catch a sunbeam. Now just
you try my spectacles on, and put my ear-trumpet to your ear, and then
pray to God, and leave off thinking of yourself"
The last was a very difficult thing to do- more than a wise
woman ought to ask.
He received the spectacles and the ear-trumpet, and was posted
in the middle of the potato-field. She put a great potato into his
hand. Sounds came from within it; there came a song with words, the
history of the potato, an every-day story in ten parts, an interesting
story. And ten lines were enough to tell it in.
And what did the potato sing?
She sang of herself and of her family, of the arrival of the
potato in Europe, of the misrepresentation to which she had been
exposed before she was acknowledged, as she is now, to be a greater
treasure than a lump of gold.
"We were distributed, by the King's command, from the
council-houses through the various towns, and proclamation was made of
our great value; but no one believed in it, or even understood how
to plant us. One man dug a hole in the earth and threw in his whole
bushel of potatoes; another put one potato here and another there in
the ground, and expected that each was to come up a perfect tree, from
which he might shake