The Origins of the Copenhagen Mermaid: A Tragic Tale of Unrequited Love Part 2

Edvard & Henrietta Collins

story continued from...http://meridianmer-gyver.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-origins-of-copenhagen-mermaid.html

Edvard Collins, born into a family of privilege was educated well dressed and well mannered. Edvard was the son of Jonas Collins, the man who paid for Hans’ schooling.  The Collins family had taken in Hans, given him a proper education, a home and family and a place in society, but they never let him forget his humble upbringing. Hans would gain success, money, and even a little fame, but when he returned to the Collins home, he was always reminded that he did not truly belong in their “class”. 

Edvard and Hans were close friends, but once again Edvard would not let Hans forget his meager up brings.  Hans wrote to his friend…” If you will forget the circumstances of my birth and always be to me what I am to you, you will find in me the most honest and sympathetic friend."  This plea for acceptance apparently did no good; Edvard would never really see Hans as an equal.

Hans & Edvard? I'd like to think so!

Between 1835 and 1836 Edvard Collins announces his upcoming marriage to a young woman named Henrietta and Hans begins to write the world’s most famous fairy tale from a broken heart.  It is highly suspected that the entire story of The Little Mermaid is a love letter to Edvard written after he rejected Hans. Once Hans heard the news of Edvard’s engagement, he wrote to Edvard…”I languish for you as for a pretty Calabrian wench... my sentiments for you are those of a woman. The femininity of my nature and our friendship must remain a mystery." 

Calabrain (a region of Greece) Women .

Edvard, not knowing how to respond simply wrote…"I found myself unable to respond to this love, and this caused the author much suffering." Could those few words have sparked the fire inside of Hans to write "The Story of the Little Mermaid"? Many scholars believe Hans wrote the story to symbolize his inability to have Edvard as a lover, just as the mermaid cannot be with her human lover.  Most believe the mermaid to symbolize Hans; she could not speak for she did not have a voice. He could not speak out in the world he lived in; his homosexuality would never to accepted.  He would have to write and create worlds and characters where his emotions and feelings could live freely without shame or ridicule.

 In the original ending of the Little Mermaid (and frankly, the only ending I was familiar with), the poor love forsaken mermaid dies of a broken heart and dissolves into sea foam for three hundred years. Now, I have come to understand that Hans later added the parts about the Daughters of Air (angels) and the moral of children who behave badly versus children who are kind. Some Scholars feel the happy ending to be an “unnatural addition”.  Was this added to disguise the fact that the story is really a love letter? 

36 years after the birth of the Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen dies.  At this point in time he was a national treasure and loved by many people. Hans’ personal love life was tragic at best, but he had many friends and companions who loved and cared for him. His life was not all doom and gloom, but it would take a lot of sadness to accomplish his most beloved works.

 On August 4^th 1875 Hans Christian Andersen passed quietly into his next life.  He was found with a small pouch containing a letter from Riborg Voigt, a woman he loved in youth and was never fulfilled.  Earlier that spring while staying with a close friend and his family, Hans fell out of bed severely hurting himself. This was the beginning of his end, his wounds never really healed and he began to show signs of liver cancer. Shortly before Hans died he requested that a composer write the music for his funeral saying… "Most of the people who will walk after me will be children, so make the beat keep time with little steps."

Hans Christian Andersen is buried at Assistens Kirkegård in the Nørrebro area of Copenhagen.  In the same city where his beloved little mermaid statue still sits, watching and waiting for her prince…  Like the mermaid Hans never married, is he too still siting, still watching and still waiting for his prince?

                 

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In 2012, the world is a different place and life times have come and gone, but one love is finally fulfilled. Two artists, London and Berlin-based art duo Elmgreen & Dragset, installed a new commissioned  piece for the Harbor in the city of Elsingore, Denmark.

Han

This is Han, it means ‘He’ in Danish and it is a nod to Hans Christian Andersen. Han sits looking out into the Harbor past boats and waves in the direction of his love, the Copenhagen Mermaid. Han is a companion piece, meant to be the contemporary counterpart to the bronze and granite mermaid. The statue is of a young man posing on a rock, sited in the same way as the Copenhagen mermaid. 

       

The stone on which he sits on is in the exact shape of the stone used in Copenhagen. What makes Han so striking is he was created and cast in stainless steel, highly polished to reflect the harbor scenery.  Even more striking, a hydraulic mechanism was installed inside the sculpture’s head, allowing Han to shut his eyes for a few seconds every 30 minutes. His eyes closed to the world at large, Han can take a quiet moment to reflect.

In the end a man named Edvard was the cause of The Story of the Little Mermaid, a man named Edvard, years later, created the Copenhagen mermaid. A man named Hans fell in love and fell hard and now Han is the final piece in this broken tale of love unrequited. Han is now a companion to the Copenhagen Mermaid, he is a reminder of Edvard, and he is forever a statement that love will always concur all.

...And that is the perfect fairy tale ending.