''Shadow'' ( da, Skyggen) is a literary

fairy tale A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic (paranormal), magic, incantation, enchantments, and mythical ...

by Danish poet and author

Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales. Andersen's fairy tales, consisti ...

. The tale was first published in 1847.

Plot summary

A learned man's shadow becomes self-aware and takes on a life of its own. The shadow gains insight into the dark side of human behaviour, then returns to the man and enslaves him. Fearful of being discovered, the shadow has the man killed.Jacqueline Banerjee, The Impact of Hans Christian Andersen on Victorian Fiction
The Victorian Web, 12 December 2008.

Analysis

Jacqueline Banerjee suggested that Andersen wrote the story as a form of indirect revenge against Edvard Collin, the son of Anderson's patron, who had rejected him. Literary critic

Jack Zipes Jack David Zipes (born June 7, 1937) is a professor emeritus of German, comparative literature, and cultural studies, who has published and lectured on German literature, critical theory, German Jewish culture, children's literature, and folklore. ...

took the story to represent the Hegelian dynamic of master and slave.

Publication

"The Shadow" was first published 6 April 1847 as a part of ''New Fairy Tales. Second Volume. First Collection. 1847.'' (''Nye Eventyr. Andet Bind. Første Samling. 1847.''). The work was re-published December 1847 as a part of ''A Christmas Greeting to my English Friends'', again 18 December 1849 as a part of ''Fairy Tales. 1850.'' (''Eventyr. 1850.''), and 30 March 1863 as a part of ''Fairy Tales and Stories. Second Volume. 1863.'' (''Eventyr og Historier. Andet Bind. 1863.'').

Precedent

In 1814, three decades before the publication of "The Shadow", Adelbert von Chamisso had published " Peter Schlemihl's Miraculous Story", a story about a man who sells his shadow to the devil in exchange for a bottomless wallet. Andersen's story was prompted by Chamisso's, and he refers to it in "The Shadow":

He was very annoyed, not so much because the shadow had disappeared, but because he knew there was a story; well-known to everybody at home in the cold countries, about a man without a shadow; and if he went back now and told them his own story, they would be sure to say that he was just an imitator, and that was the last thing he wanted.

Andersen's story in turn appears to have influenced

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...

's " The Fisherman and His Soul".

Adaptations

''The Shadow'' became the first text of some considerable length to be published in

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

. It was contained in the 1888 ''

Dua Libro ''Dua Libro de l' Lingvo Internacia'' (''Second Book of the International Language''), usually referred to simply as ''Dua Libro'', is an 1888 book by L. L. Zamenhof. It is the second book in which Zamenhof wrote about the constructed language E ...

'' (''Second Book'') by the creator of that language,

L. L. Zamenhof L. L. Zamenhof (15 December 185914 April 1917) was an ophthalmologist who lived for most of his life in Warsaw. He is best known as the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language. Zamenhof first dev ...

(the first book had contained only single bible verses, short poems and the like).

Evgeny Shvarts Evgeny Lvovich Schwartz (russian: Евге́ний Льво́вич Шва́рц; , Kazan, Russian Empire – January 15, 1958, Leningrad, Soviet Union) was a Soviet writer and playwright, whose works include twenty-five plays, and screenplay ...

has explicitly based his ''Tyen'' (''The Shadow'') play on Andersen's tale, introducing additional characters and plot lines and a different ending. This play was the subject of two film adaptations, in 1971 and in 1991. In 1945 the story was adapted as an episode of the syndicated radio program '' The Weird Circle''. In 1994 Frederik Magle,

Thomas Eje Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the Ap ...

, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and others released the album ''The Song Is a Fairytale'' with songs based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales. "The Shadow" is one of the songs. ''Skuggaleikur'' (''Shadow Play'') is an opera by Icelandic composer Karólína Eiríksdóttir with libretto by Sjón. Premiered in November 2006. In 2003, the Carolina Ballet premiered a ballet version of ''The Shadow'' with choreography by artistic director Robert Weiss, set to the music of Khachaturian, Kabalevsky, Gyorgy Ligeti, Fauré and Rachmaninoff. The ballet features a sequence in which the poet contemplates his shadow in the mirror. The image, which at first copies his movements in complete synchrony, seamlessly emerges from the mirror frame (through changes in lighting) as another dancer in a gray full body stocking.

References

External links

"The Shadow"
Jean Hersholt's English translation
''Skyggen''
Original Danish text
English translation (full text) from "Andersen's Fairy Tales"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shadow, The 1847 short stories Short stories by Hans Christian Andersen Danish fairy tales