Everything which
his fancy touched it invested with life and beauty. It divined the
secret soul of bird and beast and inanimate things. His hens and ducks
and donkeys speak as hens and ducks and donkeys would speak if they
could speak. Their temperaments and characters are scrupulously
respected. Even shirt-collars, gingerbread men, darning-needles,
flowers, and sunbeams, he endowed with physiognomies and speech, fairly
consistent with their ruling characteristics. This personification,
especially of inanimate objects, may at first appear arbitrary; but it
is part of the beautiful consistency of Andersen's genius that it never
stoops to mere amusing and fantastic trickery. The character of the
darning-needle is the character which a child would naturally attribute
to a darning-needle, and the whole multitude of vivid personifications
which fills his tales is governed by the same consistent but dimly
apprehended instinct. Of course, I do not pretend that he was conscious
of any such consistency; creative processes rarely are conscious.
Pages:
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218