Hjertesorg
This gem of a story encapsulates many of the major themes in Andersen’s works, taking us from death and existential anxiety to suffering and social grief. It can be seen as a poetics in a nutshell. Its origins lie in a diary entry of May 26, 1847, in which Andersen described the incidents of “part one,” then turned to the description of a beggar, an abject figure who arouses both empathy and fear: “There was somebody knocking at the door. A dreadful tramp had managed to find my room. I gave him 24 pennies. ‘Were you not born in the neighborhood of Odense?’ he asked. I got him out but feared he might hide and return in the dead of night to steal” (Thomas Bredsdorff, 7). In contrast to the beggar, the girl in “Heartache” arouses empathy. Seen from above and at a distance, she elicits aesthetic pleasure by combining beauty, youth, poverty, and suffering.
Despite the narrator’s insistence that the prelude is unnecessary, the story in fact needs both parts, with one introducing the narrator as a “heartless” figure who is unable to connect with the widow’s deeper reason for coming to sell her shares and the other presenting the narrator as equally “heartless” in his inability to act to relieve the girl’s “heartache.” The author sees in these encounters nothing more than an opportunity for telling tales, for positioning himself as an agent of art, relentlessly keeping himself spatially above and emotionally beyond the heartaches of the real.
The story we have for you is really in two parts. The first part could be left out,1 but it provides some background information that will be useful!
We were staying at a manor house in the country, and it happened that the owner was away for a day or two. In the meantime, a lady arrived from a neighboring town, bringing her little dog with her. She explained that she had come to sell her shares in the tannery. She had her certificates with her, and we advised her to put them in an envelope and to write on it the address of the proprietor of the estate, “General War Commissary, Knight, etc.”
She listened to us carefully, picked up a pen, hesitated, and then asked us to repeat the address, this time saying it slowly. We did that, and she started writing, but as soon as she got to “General War,” she stopped, took a deep breath, and said: “I’m only a woman!” Her little pug was down on the floor while she was writing, and he was growling, for the dog had come with her for pleasure and for his health, and he shouldn’t have been obliged to stay on the floor. He could be recognized by his snub nose and fleshy back.
“He won’t bite,” the lady said. “He doesn’t have any teeth. He’s really like one of the family, devoted but grumpy, but my grandchildren are to blame for that. They put on weddings and want him to play the bridesmaid, but that’s just too much for the poor old fellow.”
She left the certificates and picked her little dog up. That’s the first part of the story, which I could have left out!
Moppsie died!2 That’s part two.
About a week later we went back to town and stayed at an inn. Our windows looked out into a courtyard,3 which was divided in two by a wooden fence. One section had skins and hides, raw and tanned,4 hung up to dry. You could see all the equipment needed to run a tanning business, and it belonged to the widow.5 Moppsie had died that morning and was supposed to be buried in that part of the yard. The widow’s grandchildren, that is, the tanner’s widow’s—for Moppsie had never married—had filled in the grave, which was so beautiful that it must have been a real pleasure to lie in it.
The grave had a border of broken flowerpots with sand strewn all over it. At its head, someone had put a bottle of beer, with the neck turned upward, and that wasn’t at all symbolic.
The children performed a dance around the grave, and the oldest of the boys, a practical lad of seven, proposed charging admission of one trouser button to give everyone on the street the chance to see Moppsie’s grave. Any boy could afford that, and boys could also pay for girls. The proposal was adopted by acclamation.
All the children living on the street, and even those living on the little lane behind it, came marching in, and each one paid one button. Many of them could be seen that afternoon with just one suspender, but then again they had seen Moppsie’s grave, and the sight of that was worth far more than a button.
Outside near the entrance to the tannery you could see a little girl dressed in rags.6 She was beautiful, with the prettiest curls and with eyes so clear and blue that it was a pleasure to look into them. She didn’t say a word, and she wasn’t crying, but every time the gate opened, she gazed into the yard for as long as she could. She didn’t have a button, as she knew very well, and so she had to stand sorrowfully outside until all the others had seen the grave and everyone was gone. Then she sat down, put her little brown hands up to her eyes and burst into tears. She alone had not seen Moppsie’s grave.7 It was the kind of heartache that usually is experienced only by grown-ups.
We witnessed all this from above—and from above you can always smile8 at this incident as well as at many of our own heartaches and those of others! That’s the story, and whoever doesn’t understand it should go buy a share in the widow’s tannery.9
1. The first part could be left out. The bridge between the two parts seems indeed to be quite slight. The first part of the story offers background on the owner of the tannery and on the dog for whom the funeral is staged by the children in part two. Death is introduced early on in the form of the status of the old lady as widow who is liquidating her assets in a business that traffics in death.
2. Moppsie died! The hinge between the two parts of the story is provided by the death of the dog, whose owner appears in part one and whose grave is prepared by the children in part two. The sentence is italicized and given an exclamation mark to make it more momentous, and it forms an odd contrast to the fact that the tanner’s death is never mentioned and is signaled only by his wife’s status as a widow and in her selling of the shares in the tannery.
3. Our windows looked out into a courtyard. The narrator, whose identity is concealed behind a “we,” is looking down on a scene that involves children. The courtyard, like the story, is divided in two, but half of it remains invisible—only the area with the tannery is described. The narrator’s “other half” also remains concealed, and it is odd to find Andersen the bachelor presenting himself here as part of a couple.
4. skins and hides, raw and tanned. A tannery is the site of death for animals, and there is an important contrast between the pampered dog (who resents being on the floor) and the animals who have been slaughtered and skinned.
5. it belonged to the widow. The widow, and not just her deceased husband, is implicated in the business of death.
6. a little girl dressed in rags. Like the little match girl, this waif is alone, isolated from the others through her poverty and, despite her beauty, unable to elicit sympathy from the other children.
7. She alone had not seen Moppsie’s grave. It is not at all clear that the girl is grieving for Moppsie. She seems instead to be disconsolate because she is excluded from the childhood ritual and from seeing the artful gravesite created by the other children. But this is, of course, the narrator’s reading of her grief.
8. from above you can always smile. The view from above makes the entire incident poignant rather than wrenching. But it also suggests that distance—whether seen in terms of space, class, or generation—promotes empathy even as it produces an ironic gap, allowing the narrator to derive pleasure (“smile”) at the sight of suffering.
9. should go buy a share in the widow’s tannery. In this, one of his most impenetrable stories, Andersen adds a provocative statement directing readers who fail to understand his meaning to turn to commerce rather than poetry. And yet the narrator himself could be accused of lacking “understanding” and of failing to engage with the characters he presents in any meaningful way. He dismisses the widow’s state of mourning, smiles at the girl’s grief, and becomes emphatic only when it comes to the death of the dog. He presents scenes that require his reader to understand more than he does.