Nissen hos spækhøkeren
Despite the fact that both goblin and grocer appear in the title, the goblin is the real hero of the tale. Oddly, Andersen has a cast of three but does not include the student/poet in the title. The goblin, a creature of fantasy, bridges the student’s world of poetic visions and the grocer’s world of commerce and commodities. He lives out the dream of receiving material sustenance from the grocer (housing and a bowl of porridge) and spiritual nourishment from the poet (the visions that emerge from the pages of books).
“The Goblin and the Grocer” was included in Andrew Lang’s famous fairy-tale series of books for children published at the end of the nineteenth century and still in print today. And yet it has not attained the canonical status of other tales by Andersen, in part because it is less a fairy tale for children than an allegory of reading for adults. The story, written in 1849, around the time that Andersen’s short stories were becoming increasingly occupied with art, celebrates the power of words on a page to transform themselves into shimmering visions of beauty and also extols the pleasures of witnessing the act of reading. While the student is reading from a “tattered book,” his tiny attic room transforms itself into a luminous paradise, filled with sights, sounds, and aromas. The goblin, solely by observing the student, is able to experience for himself the visionary power of the book. Drawn to the material and to the spiritual, the goblin finds a way to have his porridge and eat it too.
There was once a student who was living in a garret.1 He owned absolutely nothing. There was once also a grocer, who was living on the ground floor of that very house, and he owned the whole place. The household goblin2 was devoted to the grocer, for every Christmas Eve he was given a bowl of porridge with a big pat of butter right in the middle of it. The grocer had the goods, and so the goblin stayed in his shop, and that is all very instructive.
One evening the student came in through the back door to buy some candles and cheese. He had no one to run his errands, and that’s why he was there in person. He found what he was looking for, paid up, and the grocer and his wife nodded “Good evening.” The wife was a woman who could do more than just nod, for she had the gift of gab. The student nodded in return, but he stopped in his tracks when he started reading what was on the piece of paper wrapped around his cheese. It was a page torn out of an old book that ought never to have been torn up, for it was a book of poetry.3
“There’s more of it over here!” the grocer said. “I gave an old woman some coffee beans for it. If you’re willing to pay me a couple of pennies, the rest of it is yours.”
“If I may,” said the student. “I’ll take the book instead of the cheese. I don’t mind eating my bread without any cheese on it. It would be a sin to tear the book completely apart. You’re a splendid fellow, a practical man, but you know about as much about poetry as that tub over there.”
Now that was a rude way to speak, especially with the tub there, but the grocer laughed and the student laughed too. After all, it was all in jest. But the goblin was offended that anyone would dare say such things to the grocer, to a man who not only owned the house but also sold the very best butter around.
That night, after the shop had closed and everyone was in bed but the student, the goblin stole into the grocer’s bedroom and borrowed the tongue of the grocer’s wife, who had no use for it while she was sleeping. Any object on which he placed the tongue suddenly had a voice4 and could pour out its thoughts and feelings as fluently as the grocer’s wife herself. But only one object at a time could use the tongue, and that was a blessing, for otherwise they would have spoken at the same time.
First the goblin placed the tongue on the tub in which old newspapers were kept. “Is it really true,” asked the goblin, “that you know nothing about poetry?”
“Of course I know about poetry,” the tub replied. “It’s the stuff that they put near the bottom of the page in the newspapers, and sometimes it gets cut out! I dare say I have more poetry in me than that student, and I’m a mere tub by comparison to the grocer.”
Next, the goblin put the tongue on the coffee grinder, and did it ever chatter away! He placed it on the butter vat and on the cash box. Everyone agreed with the tub, and you really have to respect the opinion of the majority.
“I’ll give that student a piece of my mind!” and with those words he tiptoed up the stairs to the garret where the student was living. A candle was still burning, and the goblin peeped through the keyhole5 and could see that the student was reading from the tattered book that he had brought upstairs from the shop.
How extraordinarily bright it was in the room! A dazzling ray of light rose up from the book6 and transformed itself into a tree trunk that spread its branches over the student. Each leaf on the tree was a fresh green color, and every flower was the face of a beautiful maiden, some with dark, sparkling eyes, others with marvelous clear blue eyes. Every fruit on the tree was a shining star, and the room was filled with music and song.
ARTHUR RACKHAM
The goblin peers through the keyhole of the door to the student’s garret. The book he is reading illuminates the dark attic space and creates greenery. Down in the cellar the various kitchen utensils are gossiping, and on the ground floor, the grocer, who is considerably more prosperous than the student, blows out the candle, creating darkness instead of light.
The little goblin had never dreamed that such splendor could exist, let alone that he would ever have the chance to see it and listen to it. He stood there on tiptoe, gazing for all he was worth until the light in the garret finally went out. The student must have blown out the candle and gone to bed, but the little goblin stayed right where he was, for the music continued softly and splendidly as a lovely lullaby to put the student to sleep.
“There’s no other place on earth like this one,” the goblin exclaimed. “I would never have dreamed this was possible. That’s it! I’m going to live here with the student.” He stopped to think—for he was a creature of reason—and then he sighed deeply: “Of course the student doesn’t have any porridge at all.” And so he went back down the stairs to the grocer, and it was a good thing too, for the tub had nearly worn out the tongue of the grocer’s wife. It had first turned to the left and blurted out all the things it had been holding in. Then, just as it was about to turn around to do the honors from the right side, the goblin walked in and returned the tongue to the grocer’s wife. From that moment on, the entire shop, from the cash box on right down to the kindling wood, formed all their ideas based on what the tub had to say. Their respect for it was so great and their confidence ran so high that when the grocer read the art and theater reviews in the evening paper, they were all convinced that the opinions in it had come straight from the tub.
But the little goblin was no longer satisfied with the wisdom and knowledge that he had picked up from eavesdropping downstairs. As soon as light shone down from the garret, he felt as if the rays were great anchor ropes drawing him upward and that he had to take a look through the keyhole. He was overwhelmed by the same sense of the sublime we experience when we are on the endlessly churning ocean and God passes over it in the form of a storm. Tears came to his eyes, and, although he did not know why he was crying, he was overcome by strange sensations that warmed his heart. How fabulous it would be to sit with the student beneath that tree of light! He realized that that was impossible, and he was therefore perfectly content to peer through the keyhole. When the autumn wind began to send wintry blasts through the trapdoor leading up to the attic, the goblin was still there every evening on the cold landing. It was dreadfully cold, but the little fellow didn’t notice until the light went out in the garret and the music dissipated in the wind. Ouf! then he began to shiver and would crawl down to his own little cozy corner, where it was pleasant and comfortable. And when Christmas came around, along with the bowl of porridge and big pat of butter in it, why, then the grocer was king.
In the middle of the night, the goblin was awakened by a hullabaloo. People were banging on the windows, and the watchman was blasting away on his horn. A house was on fire,7 and the entire city seemed to be ablaze. Was it the grocer’s house or was it next door? Where could it be? Everybody was terrified! The grocer’s wife was in such a panic that she took off her golden earrings and put them in her pocket so that she could at least rescue something. The grocer ran to get his documents and permits, and the servant ran for the black silk mantilla that she had managed to buy from her savings. Everyone wanted to rescue what they treasured the most, and that was true of the little goblin as well. With a leap and a bound he made it upstairs and landed in the room of the student, who was standing calmly at the open window, watching the fire that was raging in the house across the street. The goblin snatched the book lying on the table, tucked it in his red cap, and clutched it in his arms. The treasure of the house had been saved. And then he raced out, first up to the roof, and then right up onto the chimney. There he sat, lit up by the flames of the house across the street, clutching with both his hands the cap holding the treasure.
Suddenly he realized what he truly desired and to whom his heart belonged. But once the fire had been put out, and the goblin had a chance to think long and hard about it—well!
“I’ll simply have to divide myself between them,” he declared. “That way, each one will have a little something. How can I give up the grocer? He’s the one with the porridge.”
And that was spoken in truly human terms! If we’re really honest about it, then we have to admit that the world is like that. The rest of us would end up at the grocer’s too. We need the porridge.
1. There was once a student who was living in a garret. Impoverished students appear frequently in Andersen’s work, and they are often associated with poetry, as is the case with this story and with “Auntie Toothache.” It is no accident that the “poetic” student lives in aerial regions, while the more materialistic grocer (grocers are always slightly vulgar for Andersen in their preoccupation with sustenance for the body) inhabits the ground floor.
2. household goblin. In Scandinavian countries, the nisse, or household goblin, figures importantly in Christmas traditions. Often sporting a white beard and wearing a red cap, he is a benevolent local spirit who guards the security and prosperity of the family with whom he lives—not at all like the gremlins and imps we associate with goblins in Anglo-American cultures. His annual reward at Christmas is a big bowl of porridge with a pat of butter floating in it.
3. it was a book of poetry. The mingling of the sacred and the profane—a page of poetry used to wrap cheese—introduces the story’s major theme, for the goblin finds himself divided between his allegiances to the grocer, who provides porridge, and the student, who provides beauty and poetry. One sustains the body; the other warms the soul.
4. suddenly had a voice. Speaking objects play an important role in Andersen’s works: a jack-in-the-box uses menacing words with other toys, a tub talks to a pot, and a collar proposes to a pair of scissors. When it was said of Andersen that he could create a story in which a darning needle came to life, Andersen obliged with a talking darning needle that aspires to become a sewing needle. The gift of gab that is said to belong to the grocer’s wife is circulated among the items in the shop. The glib linguistic fluency found downstairs takes the form of emotional outbursts and sentimental effusions. The different voices at one point form “the opinion of the majority,” and they could represent a satirical thrust at the many Danish critics who disparaged Andersen’s works in the popular press. In contrast, the poetry that radiates from the book purchased by the student has a quite different effect.
5. the goblin peeped through the keyhole. The goblin lives a vicarious existence, staying behind the scenes and finding pleasure in witnessing and listening rather than acting. He becomes a charming connoisseur and gourmand.
6. A dazzling ray of light rose up from the book. The visionary tableau in the student’s garret resembles a utopian moment in “The Golden Pot: A Modern Fairy Tale” by E.T.A. Hoffmann. Anselmus, the student-poet in that tale, takes a job working as a scribe, and, when he begins to study the exotic characters he must copy, the room in which he is writing begins to transform itself: “He heard strange music coming from the garden, and he was surrounded by sweet and lovely fragrances. . . . At times it also seemed to him that the emerald leaves of the palm trees were rustling and that the clear crystal tones which Anselmus had heard under the elder tree . . . were dancing and flitting through the room. . . . He discovered that he was looking at a lovely and glorious maiden who was coming towards him from the tree, looking at him with ineffable longing with those dark blue eyes which lived in his heart. The leaves appeared to reach down and to expand” (Kent and Knight, 63). Beauty, in the form of sights, sounds, and aromas, emanates here too from the words on the page.
7. A house was on fire. Here once again, as in “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” is evidence of the phoenix principle at work in Andersen’s stories. The conflagration produces the same light and heat as the book, yet is seen as destructive rather than creative—hence the goblin’s race to rescue the book. And yet, like the phoenix which rises from the ashes, the book that is consumed by fire might turn the student from a reader and consumer of words to a writer and creator of words. As one critic puts it, “Loss of identity as the first step to renewal of identity, failure as success, defeat as necessary condition for a triumphant victory of poetry” (Detering, 56).
