The Hidden Wisdom of Fairy Tales

Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen and the Broken Mirror

John Bauer, Illustration of Walter Stenström’s The boy and the trolls or The Adventure in childrens’ anthology Among pixies and trolls, 1915 (source)

From the beginnings of history, people have told stories. Under Eve’s thoughtful gaze, Adam would recount to their children what he remembered, like a fading dream, about the marvelous Garden of Eden from which they had been expelled after the unfortunate sin. Huddled together by the warmth of the fire, they delighted in hearing the name of the great King, the living God who, although He had punished them, had left them the inspiration of beautiful words meant to comfort their hearts in the fallen world. However, their descendants drifted away from the true faith in a unique, absolute, eternal and imperishable God. Yet, even so, by creating different myths with strange gods “human, all too human” (Friedrich Nietzsche), in which only fragments of the Great Story from the beginning were hidden, they continued to invent narratives that they would tell by the fireside. Removed from the context of the rituals aimed (unsuccessfully) at recovering lost immortality, the myths metamorphosed into histories, some of which have reached us in the form of tales.

Despite their apparent simplicity, the charm of these stories captivated not only those who collected them, such as Giambattista Basile, the Brothers Grimm, or Petre Ispirescu (to name just a few), but also genius creators like Lord Byron, and the romanticist novelists and poets Heinrich Heine, Clemens Brentano, and Mihai Eminescu. While the latter preferred to write fairy tales only in their spare time (so to speak), authors like Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) and Petre Ispirescu (1830–1887) made them the core of their creative work.

A mature artistic creation encapsulates not only cold reason but also well-mastered feelings and passions. Such an experience is offered to us by stories, literature, and poetry. They begin by producing delight, pleasure, and joy in the souls of readers. Otherwise, reading would have no motivation—it would quickly lose its “breath.” After just a few pages, the book would be abandoned. To counter such an ungrateful fate for their creations, authentic writers strive to craft “charm” (or “delight”). They are, as once Tolkien said, masters of that elvish art which generates “enchantment.” Such power also carries incalculable risks, all stemming from the content proposed for the readers’ contemplation. Great writers are fully aware of this. Their responsibility is crystallized in the words of Cervantes, who, in the preface to Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels), says that his writings, “are so decorous, so measured, and so conformable to reason and Christian propriety, that they are incapable of exciting any impure thoughts in him who reads them with or without caution.”

The protagonists of the sacred texts of the Bible present to us the same model in which the syllogism is subordinate to charm. In front of King David, guilty of serious sins, the prophet Nathan tells a story. The inspired authors of the Psalms and the Song of Songs—David himself and his son, Solomon—have left us the most beautiful poems ever known. The King and Savior Christ has spoken countless parables, among which gems like the Parable of the Prodigal Son and that of the rich man and poor Lazarus shine. Without exception, all these are not just texts written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but literary pages of great value. A value that arises both from the charm they produce in the hearts of readers and from the teachings they discreetly convey to their minds. The combined work of intellect and heart can always yield unexpected gifts. That is why it is the pinnacle not only of literary art but also of pedagogical art.

A perfect example of this art is the story The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. Accessible to children of the tenderest ages, it hides meanings that can provide satisfaction even to the most subtle philosophers. The beginning tells us about two little friends, Kay and Gerda. As often happens, their childhood seems like an embodiment of the joys of Paradise. The roses adorning the window sills of the attic apartments where their families live intertwine “almost like a triumphant arch of foliage and flowers.” Attracted by the scents of the flowers and the beauty of the little suspended paradise, “they often obtained permission to get out of the windows to each other, and to sit on their little stools among the roses, where they could play delightfully.”

Even before describing all these charming details, the storyteller reveals to us the dark side of things. The malevolent master of infernal beings, “the most mischievous of all sprites,” had created a magic mirror. The power of this artifact lay in its distorting capabilities:

In this mirror the most beautiful landscapes looked like boiled spinach, and the best persons were turned into frights, or appeared to stand on their heads; their faces were so distorted that they were not to be recognized; and if anyone had a mole, you might be sure that it would be magnified and spread over both nose and mouth.

Everything beautiful was transformed into something ugly, and what was already ugly was distorted into becoming monstrous and abominable. The stakes of such an invention are unexpected: for the spirits of darkness desire to deform heavenly things. Foolishly, chaotically, demonstrating boundless arrogance, their plan will fail:

So then they thought they would fly up to the sky, and have a joke there. The higher they flew with the mirror, the more terribly it grinned: they could hardly hold it fast. Higher and higher still they flew, nearer and nearer to the stars, when suddenly the mirror shook so terribly with grinning, that it flew out of their hands and fell to the earth, where it was dashed in a hundred million and more pieces.

The consequences of the “cosmic” event were among the most devastating. Tiny fragments from the mirror of darkness scattered everywhere. One of the victims was even the little Kay. While playing, a tiny splinter of infernal origin pierced his eye, and another his heart. From that moment on, everything beautiful appeared ugly to him. His heart turned to ice. His friendship for Gerda faded, and the attraction to the world of snow became irresistible. When the Snow Queen visits their town, the little boy is drawn to her friendly smile. A final remnant of all that was warm and loving in Kay was consumed when, frightened by the overwhelming blizzard, “he tried to repeat the Lord’s Prayer; but all he could do, he was only able to remember the multiplication table.” Deprived of Heaven’s help, he will allow himself to be “saved” by the queen of the dark and icy northern lands. We will encounter the same malevolent presence, as cold as she is wicked, in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia.

Kay’s destiny is intertwined with that of his little friend, Gerda. Even across continents, they are inseparable. Tirelessly, the girl goes through countless dangers to find her neighbor. Her tenacity will be rewarded. The ending of the story will be, as Tolkien liked to say, “eucatastrophic.” Readers’ hearts and minds are enchanted from one end to the other of the entire adventure. I listened breathlessly to my mother’s words whenever she read The Snow Queen to me. As I grew up, I reread Kay and Gerda’s story countless times. Now I read it to my younger children and my nieces and nephews, Agatha and Erik. And I always shiver and rejoice, rejoice and shiver when I hear the adventures of Andersen’s heroes. At the same time, however, I have discovered very deep reasons hidden, unnoticed, at the root of his fairy tale’ beautiful words. These are the secret meanings of stories everywhere. Here’s what I’ll try to reveal in the following, illuminating the meanings of the symbols woven into the fabric of the story. So let’s start with the beginning.

The creation of the malevolent mirror puts us in the presence of one of the most powerful symbols in the entire history of religions: the mirror. Which indicates the mind, the intellect of the angels and humans—the favorite creatures of the living God. The act of invention by the malevolent spirit of a mirror indicates the same thing Tolkien suggested in the book “Ainulindalë” from The Silmarillion. Here, we learn about the foolish desire of the fallen angel to create music that did not harmonize with the theme created by God-Ilúvatar. As it were, he wanted to be original. Absolutely original. Original at any cost.

The desire to create beauty from one’s own substance is, simultaneously, illusion and temptation. For only God can do such a thing. Only He is truly the creator, conceiving from nothing (ex nihilo)—in a manner incomprehensible to the limited minds of creatures—something beautiful. No matter how great, as Melkor-Satan was, a created being can only imitate divine beauty, adding secondary harmonies to the main theme of the Demiurge. The creature cannot, under any circumstances, create something from nothing. This is an insurmountable limit. And when it tries to do so, it achieves exactly what the evil spirit in The Snow Queen obtained: a perverted intellect, in which everything that is good and beautiful appears distorted, deformed, ugly. The most terrible part is the consequence of this act called hubris: the evil intellect can influence the minds of other creatures. We know from sacred texts that there were other fallen angels, not just Lucifer, and Adam and Eve also suffered because of his infernal machinations. Here is the proof of malevolent influence!

Caught in the turmoil of the cosmic war of infernal powers against Heaven, man can choose what he contemplates: the distorted and deformative images created by the “mutant” intellect of the demon, or the bright and straight (though mysterious) images of divine Wisdom. The visionary children of Fatima, Francesco, Jacinta, and Lucia, saw everything in the last part of the secret as in a mirror:

And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father.’

The description of the little mystics is extraordinary. The eternal wisdom of God appears here as a mirror that reflects, in enigmata (as Saint Apostle Paul would say), succession of historical events as they are seen from heaven. We can say that divine wisdom is God’s mirror. And the devil’s mirror from the beginning of Andersen’s story is the opposite of the one in which the children of Fatima contemplated the mysteries of history.

Man is always tested: in which mirror does he want to look? In that of the devil (= earthly, demonic wisdom), or in that of God (=heavenly, divine wisdom)? Through the artifice of the broken mirror and the splinters that penetrate into our eyes and hearts, the writer indicates the terrible truth of the influence that hell has on fallen men. Only the divine remedies of the sacraments, especially Baptism and Confession, can free us and “unbind” us from such malevolent chains.

The salvation can only come from Gerda. Symbol of the “heart,” she sets out in search of Kay driven by an unrest that cannot be cured. It is time to remember the unforgettable words of Saint Augustine who tells God that “our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Indeed. The separation of the heart from the intellective principle is accompanied by a restlessness that never allows it to find its inner peace. The human soul, like a precious jewel, was created to adore its Creator in a perpetual happiness that only the contemplation of God can offer. Deprived of Gerda’s warmth, that is, of proper, well-mastered and licit affections, the intellect becomes as cold as the old son left at home in the parable of the prodigal son. That’s why he knows no joy when his brother returns. On the contrary, he reacts adversarially.

Similarly, for Kay, religious matters no longer bring any joy. When, frightened by the blizzard and loneliness, he wants to recite the Pater Noster, he can only remember “the multiplication table.” Andersen here encrypted his own criticism of an educational system that, instead of emphasizing virtues and classical Christian culture wisely based on the notion of “symbol,” emphasizes what lies at the foundation of dehumanizing science and technology: numbers. However, the solution can only come from the heart having a direct connection with its substance, which is love. The wise old woman from Lapland knows all too well that the secret hidden by little Gerda “lies in her heart.” Through such statements, the identity of the heroine with the principle of love, the heart, is clearly and definitively established.

In contrast, Kay, perverted by the ice splinters, finds his false joys in the midst of the cold palace. His features show him to be rather dead than alive:

Little Kay was quite blue, yes nearly black with cold; but he did not observe it, for she (i.e., the Snow Queen) had kissed away all feeling of cold from his body, and his heart was a lump of ice. He was dragging along some pointed flat pieces of ice, which he laid together in all possible ways, for he wanted to make something with them; just as we have little flat pieces of wood to make geometrical figures with, called the Chinese Puzzle. Kay made all sorts of figures, the most complicated, for it was an ice-puzzle for the understanding. In his eyes the figures were extraordinarily beautiful, and of the utmost importance; for the bit of glass which was in his eye caused this.

Playing with the ice pieces in an endless mathematical equation, he believes himself happy. Such is the power of the illusion induced by the fragments of the magic mirror. When, after countless sufferings and terrifying dangers, Gerda reaches him, Kay “sat quite still, benumbed and cold.” Only one thing can save him: the tears of his friend accompanied by the memory of Paradise.

Then little Gerda shed burning tears; and they fell on his bosom, they penetrated to his heart, they thawed the lumps of ice, and consumed the splinters of the looking-glass; he looked at her, and she sang the hymn:

‘The rose in the valley is blooming so sweet,

And angels descend there the children to greet.’

The power of words, of the evoked images, causes Kay himself to burst into tears. Just like in the case of any repentant penitent, they are the sign of thawing and the approaching spring. The wicked splinters are washed away by the rivers of tears flowing from the little boy’s eyes.

Together with his devoted friend, he can finally understand the profound significance of their song’s words:

The rose in the valley is blooming so sweet,

And angels descend there the children to greet.

It is like a verse from those hymns called by Saint Ephrem the Syrian “the songs of Paradise.” The reality they describe is that of a mind in full harmony with the heart. United within the human soul, its profound energies can sing a hymn to the Creator, a hymn that sounds like Gregorian music inside a Gothic cathedral, which is itself a symbol of Paradise. The last words of the story—“and it was summer-time; summer, glorious summer!”—are echoes of the mystical description that Saint Apostle John, the eagle from Patmos, offers us in the last chapter of the Apocalypse:

And they shall see his face: and his name shall be on their foreheads.  And night shall be no more: and they shall not need the light of the lamp, nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall enlighten them, and they shall reign for ever and ever (Apocalypse 22:4-5).

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My attempt to interpret Andersen’s fairy tale in a speculative key does not aim to turn story readers into philosophers. On the contrary, it is rather an invitation for philosophers to become fairy tales readers. If Aristotle teaches us that the beginning of philosophy is wonder, is not this precisely the main effect produced by the enchantment of stories, novels, and poems? Moreover, besides the fact that such beautiful creations can always represent a good start for the journey of thought, they can also be the harbor to which souls engaged in the path of rational speculation can always return, to rediscover the warmth of first love. Kay and Gerda are always there, waiting for them to come back home, where angels descend “the children to greet.”