The Ice Virgin

In these two novellas and three short stories for adult readers, Hans Christian Andersen displays the imagination and descriptive brilliance familiar from his fairy tales, but turns his eye to subtler social themes: class mobility in a changing Europe; the unfairness with which talents and opportunities are meted out in this world; the struggle between nature’s claims on humanity and civilization’s.

The title novella, The Ice Virgin, unites all these ideas in a piece of beautifully structured storytelling considered by some to be Andersen’s masterpiece. Rudy is orphaned young, rescued as an infant from a glacial crevasse where his mother fell and died. He lives, but the stunning yet unforgiving mountain landscape of Switzerland may yet claim him. His love for the rich miller’s daughter Babette brings out all his bravery and ingenuity — but also his stubbornness and resistance to change. In a masterfully ambivalent climax Andersen makes us wonder what happiness and fulfilment truly mean.

Elsewhere in the collection Andersen turns his gaze to the hostile shores and wooded heights of Denmark’s Jutland, where in his time submissive poverty was giving way to feverish social transformation. We meet a shipwrecked youngster struggling to fit into his adopted community, a couple whose wise humility echoes down the wealthy generations that follow with comically unexpected effects, and a steadfast friend whose saintly patience is ill rewarded by the object of her loyalty. Full of irony, enchanting imagery and bravura prose, these stories showcase Andersen’s perceptiveness, empathy, and deep engagement with the world around him.

Endorsements

At once sparkling and frighteningly deep, like the glaciers that cut through the mountain passes of Switzerland in the 1850s . . . The Ice Virgin marshals both surface and subterranean effects; we feel huge things moving beneath the crust of events. Andersen’s writing is a joy. Several times I had to put the book down to recover from his exquisite descriptions — Wall Street Journal

Striking the perfect balance between fairy tale atmosphere and eerie narrative for the adult reader, Paul Binding’s new translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Ice Virgin vividly depicts the eternal struggle between the forces of nature and the forces within ourselves. — Linda Schenck, translator of Selma Lagerlöf and Kerstin Ekman