Det utroligste
First published in the United States in The Riverside Magazine for Young People, “The Most Astonishing Thing” was considered by Andersen to be one of his best stories. A tale written near the end of his life, it is an unlikely candidate for a children’s magazine, for in it Andersen summed up the essence of art. The clock that serves as “the most astonishing thing” represents both temporality and transcendence. It keeps time, but it is also an objet d’art that resists destruction, coming back to life even after it has been smashed to bits. It houses the biblical and the mythical, the seasons and the senses, the visual and the acoustical, the carnal and the spiritual. Everything that Andersen wanted in art is housed in that extraordinary clock that astonishes everyone.
The art of astonishment was no small matter to Andersen. It is telling that the winner of the contest staged in this story is a man who creates an object that shocks precisely because it provides the semblance of life. The modest craftsman makes a clock that is more than a mechanical thing—it pulses with life and captures the imagination of all who see it. The work he produces mingles the secular with the sacred and the pagan with the Christian: it brings together prophets and wise men, monks and muses. Above all, it becomes a second creation, a work with a life of its own and even a degree of immortality. The clock and the figures in it, like the statue of Psyche in Andersen’s story of that name, defy destruction and live on in a way that humans cannot. Here, as in other tales, beauty transcends decay and destruction.
Whoever could do the most astonishing thing was to earn the king’s daughter and half the kingdom. Young men, and, yes, old ones too, strained every thought, muscle, and sinew to win. Two ate themselves to death1 and one of them ate so much that he exploded. But that was not how it was meant to be.2 Street urchins practiced spitting on their own backs; that’s what they thought would be the most astonishing thing imaginable.
On the appointed day, there was to be a display of the most astonishing things, and everyone was to show his best possible work. Judges had been appointed, ranging from three-year-old children to people in their nineties. There was an exhibition of astonishing things, but everyone agreed without hesitation that the most astonishing thing of all was a huge clock in a case,3 an extraordinary contraption, both inside and out. At the stroke of each hour, lifelike figures appeared to tell the time. There were twelve performances in all, each with moving figures that could sing or speak.
LORENZ FRØLICH
Everyone agreed: “That clock is the most astonishing thing ever seen.”
The clock struck one, and Moses appeared on the mountain, writing the first commandment on the tablets4: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
The clock struck two, and there was the Garden of Eden, the place where Adam and Eve met, both quite happy even though they did not have a clothes closet, nor did they need one.
At the stroke of three, the Three Wise Men appeared. One of them was black as coal, but he couldn’t help it, the sun had baked him.5 The kings brought incense and precious gifts.
At the stroke of four, the seasons advanced in their order. Spring carried the green branch of a beech tree, with a cuckoo perched on it. Summer appeared with a grasshopper on a ripe ear of corn. Autumn had only an empty stork’s nest, and Winter emerged with an old crow that could tell tales in a corner behind the oven, tales of times past.
At the stroke of five, there was a procession of the five senses.6 Sight was a man who made spectacles. Hearing was a coppersmith. Smell was accompanied by violets and sweet woodruff. Taste was a chef. And Feeling was a mourner in black crepe that reached all the way down to the heels.
The clock struck six, and a gambler cast a die, with six on top.
Then came the seven days of the week or the seven deadly sins—no one could agree on that and they could not be told apart easily.
Next came a choir of monks to sing the eight o’clock evening song.
The stroke of nine brought the nine muses. One was an astronomer; one was a historian working in an archive; the others were connected with the theater.
When ten o’clock struck, Moses reappeared with his tablets. All the commandments were written on them, and there were ten in all.
The clock struck again, and boys and girls leaped in the air, playing and singing:
Heigh, Ho, heaven,
The clock has struck eleven.
Then came the stroke of twelve, and out marched a night watchman, wearing a cape and carrying a spiked nightstick called the morning star. He was singing a song you often heard from night watchmen:
’Twas in the midnight hour,
That our Savior was born.
While he was singing, roses began to unfold and turned into the heads of angels with rainbow-colored wings on their backs.
The clock was charming to look at and lovely to hear. It was a thing of beauty superior to any other work of art. It was a most astonishing thing, as everyone agreed.
The artist who had made it was a young man, kindhearted, happy as a child, a faithful friend and also a great help to his parents, who were poor. He really deserved the princess and half the kingdom.
On the day that the winner was to be proclaimed, the entire town had been decked out, and the princess was sitting on her throne, which had been newly stuffed for the occasion but was no more snug or comfortable than it had been before. The judges winked knowingly at the apparent winner, who was beaming happily, for he had, after all, done the most astonishing thing.
“No,” a tall, bony, powerful fellow roared at the last moment. “I’m the one who will do the most astonishing thing,” and, with that, he lifted his ax to strike the work of art.
Bam, crack, crush! The whole thing was lying on the ground. Wheels and springs went flying in every direction. The whole thing had been destroyed.7
“I did that,” the lout said. “My work beat his and amazed everyone here. I have done the most astonishing thing.”
“To destroy a work of art like that!” the judges gasped. “Why, that’s the most astonishing thing imaginable!” And since everyone agreed, he was to have the princess and half the kingdom, because a promise is a promise, even if it is astonishing.
Trumpets sounded from the ramparts and towers in the city. “The wedding is about to begin!” The princess was not particularly happy about the turn of events, but she looked charming nonetheless, dressed in her costly garments.8 The church looked beautiful at night with all the candles glowing in it. The ladies of the court sang as they escorted the bride. The knights also sang and escorted the groom, who strutted and swaggered as if no one could ever get in his way. Then the music stopped. It became so quiet that you could hear a pin drop and then, suddenly, the great church doors flew open with a crash and a bang. Right, left, left, right, everything that had been part of the clockwork came marching down the aisle and slipped between the bride and groom. Dead people can’t get back on their feet—we know that—but a work of art can run again. Its body may have been shattered, but not its spirit. The spirit of art was on the prowl, and that was no joke.
The work of art stood there intact, as if it had never been touched. The hours struck, one after another, up to twelve o’clock, and then all the figures swarmed forth, first Moses, whose forehead had a bright flame on it. He hurled the heavy stone tablets at the bridegroom’s feet and then tied his feet to the floor of the church.
“I can’t lift the tablets back up again,” Moses said, “for you broke my arm. Stay right where you are.”
Then Adam and Eve came forward, as did the Three Wise Men as well as the four seasons. They all told him unpleasant truths. “Shame on you!” But he was not at all ashamed.
All of the figures that appeared at every stroke marched out of the clock, and they began to grow to a surprising size. There was scarcely any room left for real people. And when, at the stroke of twelve, the watchman strode out in his cape and with his nightstick, there was an odd commotion. The watchman went right up to the bridegroom and hit him over the head with his morning-star club.
“Just lie there,” the watchman said. “An eye for an eye. We are getting our revenge and our master’s too. And now we will vanish.”
And the work of art disappeared without a trace, but the candles all around the church turned into flowers of light, and the gilded stars in the dome cast down rays of light. The organ began to play on its own.9 Everyone said that that was the most astonishing thing they had ever seen.
“Should we summon the right man now?” asked the princess. “The one who made that work of art will be my husband and my lord.”
In a flash he was right in the church, accompanied by everyone in town. They were overjoyed and gave him their blessing. Not a soul there felt envy10—and, yes, that was really the most astonishing thing.
1. Two ate themselves to death. Andersen borrows from folklore the motif of excessive eating and drinking as part of a contest to reveal strength. Gluttony also figures as one of the seven deadly sins that march out of the clock.
2. But that was not how it was meant to be. Feats accomplished by the body will not win this particular contest. The narrator alerts us to the fact that real astonishment will be produced by something very different from displays of excess.
3. a huge clock in a case. The most astonishing thing is a work of art with “lifelike” figures. But it is also a mechanism that marks the passage of time on an hourly basis and memorializes ephemerality.
4. writing the first commandment on the tablets. It is deeply ironic that the first figure to emerge is Moses, who, in the Bible, enunciates the commandment forbidding representation. Words about images follow the warning about having no other gods: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exodus 20:3).
5. the sun had baked him. Similar ideas about skin color are presented at the beginning of “The Shadow,” and they become more significant in that text. Andersen’s notions of race remain quite naïve, and he habitually works in terms of the binary black/white, with black representing a “baked” quality (as he puts it). It is a hue associated with Italy rather than Africa, while white is generally the color of innocence and purity, though, when applied as an attribute to skin, it can take on a demonic quality.
6. a procession of the five senses. Synesthesia, the engagement of all the senses, plays an important role in Andersen’s aesthetics. It is therefore no accident that the work of art contains within it a group of allegorical figures representing all five senses.
7. The whole thing had been destroyed. The act of destruction came to have representative importance. “The Most Astonishing Thing” was reprinted in 1942 in a volume of stories edited by a group of scholars who were to become leaders of the Danish Resistance Movement. As Jackie Wullschlager points out: “Radical new illustrations were used to smuggle past the censors a message of hope and resistance to a wide readership. In the final picture, the night watchman who strikes down the destroyer is a Jewish rabbi with hat and beard, standing in condemnation of a brawny, semi-naked Aryan pinned to the floor by the tablets of Moses inscribed in Hebrew letters, watched by a crowd of ‘ordinary’ Danes in contemporary 1940s dress. . . . ‘Andersen would have been pleased to know that some of his works became a useful tool against the oppressors at a time when Denmark was not master in her own house’ ” (Nunnally and Wullschlager, 437).
8. dressed in her costly garments. Like many of the royal female personages in Andersen’s tales (most notably the princess in “The Swineherd”), this young woman focuses on material wealth and remains perfectly happy as long as she has a comfortable throne and fine dresses to wear.
9. The organ began to play on its own. The work of art is miraculously reconstituted. In the sacred setting of the church, miracles continue to happen, first when the figures come to life, then when the organ produces sounds on its own.
10. Not a soul there felt envy. Once the villain is vanquished, the envy that initially invaded the town during the contest disappears, and the story ends on a utopian note.
