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安徒生介绍及其作品对世人的影响:
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Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) is a Danish author and poet, wrote many poems, plays, stories and travel essays, but is best known for his fairy tales.
Two centuries after his birth, he still fails to be universally acknowledged as the world-class author he no doubt was. In blunt terms, Andersen's fame stifles his wider appreciation. His name puts smiles on peoples' faces around the world from China to the United States, but the smile is one of childhood nostalgia and memories of bedside storytelling.
Certainly, Andersen himself hoped for more. Having also written novels and plays, he disliked being tagged as a "children's poet." Indeed, while the fantastic quality of his fairy tales appealed to children, their darker elements were often aimed at adults. He wanted to be "a poet of all age groups" and, significantly, when a statue to him was erected on his 70th birthday, four months before his death, he insisted that it show him reading to unseen listeners.
Even at that stage, he saw himself as the outsider he had been all his life. Andersen was born to a cobbler and washerwoman in Odense on April 2, 1805; his childhood love of singing and theater led him to move to Copenhagen at 14. There he hoped to find work as a singer and dancer, but failure prompted him to try his hand at writing. Then, thanks to a chance meeting, he won a scholarship to school and university paid for by King Christian.
When he finally graduated, still poor but ever ambitious, he resumed his writing. But it was not until he was 30 that he wrote his first fairy tales. "The Little Mermaid," published in Denmark in 1836 and across Europe within a decade, made his name. Other collections followed, and soon he was being lionized in Copenhagen and beyond. He began traveling widely and also published essays about his wanderings.
Yet he remained an outsider, and it was probably this that enabled him to empathize with many of the losers who appear in his stories. Biographers invariably argue that he identified with "The Ugly Duckling," who was abused for his odd appearance until it was recognized he was actually a swan, and that he remembered his mother's difficult early years when he wrote "The Little Match-Seller," who ends up freezing to death.
参考资料:http://book.moonlightchest.com