Friday, March 13, 2009

Frozen splinters

Somehow it seemed urgent for me to re-read the story that had so moved me when I was young. For my fairy tales unit at school, my mom sent me a German-language collection of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, in which “The Snow Queen” was first. I’ve been puzzling over it for weeks, trying to remember how it went, but lacking the time for 35 pages in German. This week during spring break, on the train to Philadelphia to see my dear friends Anya and Capri, I finally got my chance.

It’s a long and roundabout story, but the gist of it is this. Goblins have created a mirror that distorts everything it reflects, so that good and beauty don’t appear at all, while bad and ugly things are magnified. The most breathtaking landscapes look like “boiled spinach” in it. The mirror falls a great distance, splintering into billions of fragments that are blown all over, lodging in people’s hearts and eyes. Infected eyes see everything through the mirror; infected hearts turn to ice.

Kai and Gerda, a young boy and girl, are devoted playmates and best friends. When mirror fragments get into Kai’s heart and eyes, he instantly becomes cruel and aggressive, losing enjoyment in all their old games. He turns his attention to manmade objects or to mocking others. All that is beautiful to him now are the snowflakes he examines through a magnifying glass. The Snow Queen arrives and easily steals Kai away to her home up north; two of her kisses make him forget his old life and numb him to the cold. Thinking he has died, everyone mourns his loss.

The next spring, Gerda learns that he is still alive, and sets out on a quest to find him. That’s all I could remember before re-reading it: that, and my sense of horror with Gerda at the abrupt change in this dear trusted friend. I needed to find out how Kai was saved. What was Andersen trying to say about the human condition? How could I too be a Gerda, and invite people to abandon the splinters that robbed them of joy and peace?

I never expected that in the ending, I would identify even more with Kai’s nearly-frozen-solid heart than with Gerda’s distressed compassion for him. (Doesn't the Bible mention splinters in our eyes?) Andersen’s classic tale for children mostly left me sober at the realization of how my own eyes dull what is beautiful and good and right, and how I instead crave what is artificial and distorted. It reminded me of a freeing and joyous alternative.

If you haven’t let this story confront you in a while, I’d invite you to examine it. Whimsy and light-hearted touches permeate even poignant moments: Gerda discovers a numb Kai mechanically arranging chunks of ice into shapes and words, since the Snow Queen has promised that a certain impossible word will win him not only the whole world, but also a pair of ice skates. But mixed in with the escapades of these two youngsters is a gripping portrait of sin and redemption.

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