"The Little Mermaid" (Danish: Den lille havfrue) is a fairy tale written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen about a young mermaid who is willing to give up her life in the sea and her identity as a mermaid to gain a human soul.
The tale was first published in 1837 and has been adapted to various media, including musical theatre, anime and a Disney animated film.
Video The Little Mermaid
Plot summary
The Little Mermaid lives in an underwater kingdom with her widowed father (the sea king or Mer-King), her dowager grandmother, and her five older sisters, each of whom had been born one year apart. When a mermaid turns fifteen, she is permitted to swim to the surface for the first time to glimpse the world above, and when the sisters become old enough, each of them visits the upper world one at a time every year. As each returns, the Little Mermaid listens longingly to their various descriptions of the world inhabited by human beings.
When the Little Mermaid's turn comes, she rises up to the surface, watches a birthday celebration being held on a ship in honor of a handsome prince, and falls in love with him from a safe distance. A violent storm hits, sinking the ship, and the Little Mermaid saves the prince from drowning. She delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple. Here, she waits until a young woman from the temple and her ladies in waiting find him. To her dismay, the prince never sees the Little Mermaid or even realizes that it was she who had originally saved his life.
The Little Mermaid becomes melancholic and asks her grandmother if humans can live forever. The grandmother explains that humans have a much shorter lifespan than a mermaid's 300 years, but that when mermaids die, they turn to sea foam and cease to exist, while humans have an eternal soul that lives on in heaven. The Little Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul, visits the Sea Witch in a dangerous part of the ocean. The witch willingly helps her by selling her a potion that gives her legs in exchange for her tongue and beautiful voice, as the Little Mermaid has the most enchanting voice in the world. The witch warns the Little Mermaid that once she becomes a human, she will never be able to return to the sea. Consuming the potion will make her feel as if a sword is being passed through her body, yet when she recovers, she will have two human legs and will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before. However, she will constantly feel as if she is walking on sharp knives, and her feet will bleed terribly. In addition, she will obtain a soul only if she wins the love of the prince and marries him, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries someone else, the Little Mermaid will die with a broken heart and dissolve into sea foam upon the waves.
After she agrees to the arrangement, the Little Mermaid swims to the surface near the prince's palace and drinks the potion. She is found by the prince, who is mesmerized by her beauty and grace, even though she is mute. Most of all, he likes to see her dance, and she dances for him despite suffering excruciating pain with every step. Soon, the Little Mermaid becomes the prince's favorite companion and accompanies him on many of his outings. When the prince's parents encourage their son to marry the neighboring princess in an arranged marriage, the prince tells the Little Mermaid he will not because he does not love the princess. He goes on to say he can only love the young woman from the temple, who he believes rescued him. It turns out that the princess from the neighboring kingdom is the temple girl, as she was sent to the temple for her education. The prince declares his love for her, and the royal wedding is announced at once.
The prince and princess celebrate their new marriage on a wedding ship, and the Little Mermaid's heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has sacrificed and of all the pain she has endured for the prince. She despairs, thinking of the death that awaits her, but before dawn, her sisters rise out of the water and bring her a knife that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their long, beautiful hair. If the Little Mermaid kills the prince and lets his blood drip on her feet, she will become a mermaid once more, all of her suffering will end, and she will live out her full life in the ocean with her family.
However, the Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his new bride, and she throws the knife and herself off the ship into the water just as dawn breaks. Her body dissolves into foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she feels the warm sun and discovers that she has turned into a luminous and ethereal earthbound spirit, a daughter of the air. As the Little Mermaid ascends into the atmosphere, she is greeted by other daughters who tell her she has become like them because she strove with all her heart to obtain an immortal soul. Because of her selflessness, she is given the chance to earn her own soul by doing good deeds to mankind for 300 years and will one day rise up into the Kingdom of God.
Maps The Little Mermaid
Publication
"The Little Mermaid" was written in 1836 and first published by C.A. Reitzel in Copenhagen on 7 April 1837 in Fairy Tales Told for Children. First Collection. Third Booklet. 1837 (Eventyr, fortalte for Børn. Første Samling. Tredie Hefte. 1837). The story was republished on 18 December 1849 as a part of Fairy Tales. 1850 (Eventyr. 1850) and again on 15 December 1862 as a part of Fairy Tales and Stories. First Volume. 1862 (Eventyr og Historier. Første Bind. 1862).
Debate over ending
Some scholars consider the last sequence with its happy ending to be an unnatural addition. Jacob Bøggild and Pernille Heegaard point out that:
One of the crucial aspects which any interpretation must confront is the final sequence of the tale, in which the little mermaid, against all odds, is redeemed from immediate damnation and accepted into the spiritual sphere, where the "daughters of the air" reside. In this, she is apparently promised the "immortal soul", which it has been her main motivation to obtain -- along with the prince, of course. This ending has baffled critics because the narrative that precedes it points rather to a tragic conclusion than to a happy one.
The working title of the story was "Daughters of the Air", spirits who as Andersen conceived them can earn souls by doing three hundred years' worth of good deeds. One of Andersen's "daughters of the air" explains to the mermaid that
"A mermaid has not an immortal soul, nor can she obtain one unless she wins the love of a human being. On the power of another hangs her eternal destiny. But the daughters of the air, although they do not possess an immortal soul, can, by their good deeds, procure one for themselves. We fly to warm countries, and cool the sultry air that destroys mankind with the pestilence. We carry the perfume of the flowers to spread health and restoration. After we have striven for three hundred years to all the good in our power, we receive an immortal soul and take part in the happiness of mankind. You, poor little mermaid, have tried with your whole heart to do as we are doing; you have suffered and endured and raised yourself to the spirit-world by your good deeds; and now, by striving for three hundred years in the same way, you may obtain an immortal soul."
This conclusion came under criticism from some scholars and reviewers. P. L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins and noted folklore commentator, wrote, "This final message is more frightening than any other presented in the tale. The story descends into the Victorian moral tales written for children to scare them into good behavior.... a year taken off when a child behaves and a tear shed and a day added whenever a child is naughty? Andersen, this is blackmail. And the children know it and say nothing. There's magnanimity for you." Andersen, however, felt that his revised conclusion in which the mermaid is empowered to attain an immortal soul through her own agency was a decided improvement over the original ending, which climaxed in the mermaid's dissolution. In 1837, Andersen wrote to a friend that "I have not, like de la Motte Fouqué in Undine, allowed the mermaid's acquiring of an immortal soul to depend upon an alien creature, upon the love of a human being. I'm sure that's wrong! It would depend rather much on chance, wouldn't it? I won't accept that sort of thing in this world. I have permitted my mermaid to follow a more natural, more divine path."
Potential homosexual subtext
LGBT historian and writer Rictor Norton and others have described The Little Mermaid as an allegory for Andersen's life, based on his love letters to another man. Andersen also sent the original story to his love.
Adaptations
- Classics Illustrated Junior (1950s), an American comic book series, published a print version in issue #525.
- Angel's Hill (Angel no Oka, 1960), a manga by Osamu Tezuka.
- My Love, My Love: Or The Peasant Girl (1985), a novel by Rosa Guy, is based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale and inspired the musical Once on This Island, set in the French Antilles.
- Princess Mermaid (2002), a print adaptation by Japanese artist Junko Mizuno as the third and final part of her "fractured fairy tales".
- The Mermaid's Madness (2010), a book adaptation by Jim C. Hines, in which the mermaid, Lirea, is on a quest of revenge on the human prince who denied her advances, having been driven insane due to a side effect of her transformation.
- The Little Android (2014), a short story adaptation by Marissa Meyer as part of The Lunar Chronicles series, Mech6.0 portraying the main character.
- The Little mermaid (April 11, 2017), a graphic novel adaptation by Metaphrog.
Film
- Hans Christian Andersen (1952) features a ballet segment adaptation within the film.
- Fantasia 3 (1966), a Spanish anthology film, opens with the adaptation segment "Coralina: La Doncella del Mar" starring Dyanik Zurakowska.
- The Daydreamer (1966), a Rankin/Bass film that combines live-action and stop-motion, features a stop-motion segment adaptation in the film.
- The Little Mermaid (Russian: ?????????) (1968), a 29-minute Soviet Union animated film by film studio Soyuzmultfilm and directed by Ivan Aksenchuk.
- Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid (Anderusen Dowa Ningyo Hime) (1975), an anime feature film directed by Tomoharu Katsumata.
- Rusalochka (?????????) (1976), a live-action film that was a joint production by the USSR and Bulgaria; directed by Vladimir Bychkov and starring Vyctoriya Novikova as the mermaid.
- Malá mo?ská víla (1976), a live-action Czech film directed by Karel Kachy?a and starring Miroslava ?afránková as the Mermaid, Radovan Lukavský as the King of the Ocean, Petr Svojtka as the prince, Milena Dvorská as the Sea Witch and Miroslava's sister, Libu?e ?afránková, as the princess. It featured a score by Zdenek Liska, eschewed the traditional visual of mermaids having fish tails and presented them more as water spirits.
- The Little Mermaid (1989), an animated film by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film launched a franchise that was continued with a TV series of the same name (1992-1994), a sequel: The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000), and a prequel: The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning (2008).
- The Little Mermaid (1992), an animated film by Golden Films that was distributed by GoodTimes Entertainment.
- The Little Mermaid (1998), a 50-minute animated adaptation by Burbank Films Australia.
- Rusalka (2007), a Russian film by Anna Melikyan, set in modern-day Russia.
- Ponyo (2008), an animated Hayao Miyazaki film based loosely on the story.
- Little From the Fish Shop (2014), a modern-day stop-motion film adaptation by Czech artist Jan Balej.
- The Silver Moonlight (2015), an experimental film by Russian-born filmmaker Evgueni Mlodik, retelling the story of The Little Mermaid in the style of a 1930s German melodrama made under the Nazis.
- The Lure (2015), a Polish film based on the Hans Christian Andersen story.
- Little Mermaid (2017), an indie film set in the modern day with Rosie Mac as the titular character.
- The Little Mermaid (2018), an indie film based on the original Andersen fairytale set in Mississippi with Poppy Drayton as the titular character.
- It was announced in 2014 that Sofia Coppola planned to direct a live-action version for Universal Pictures and Working Title Films. This later developed into Coppola releasing herself from this project due to "artistic differences", and later announced that the script was to be handed over to Richard Curtis and the title role to be given to the 19-year-old actress Chloë Grace Moretz. Moretz dropped out of the project in September 2016 and as of 2017 no one else has been cast.
Television
- Shirley Temple's Storybook (1961), a television anthology that broadcast a one-hour adaptation as an episode.
- Mah? no Mako-chan (1970), an anime television series based on the story, ran for 48 episodes.
- Reader's Digest (1974), 30-minute animated version narrated by Richard Chamberlain.
- My Favorite Fairy Tales (Sekai D?wa Anime Zensh?) (1986), an anime television anthology, has a 30-minute adaptation.
- Faerie Tale Theatre (1987), a television anthology produced by Shelley Duvall, has a one-hour live-action adaptation starring Pam Dawber as the mermaid, Treat Williams as the prince, Karen Black as the sea witch and Helen Mirren as the other princess.
- Adventures of the Little Mermaid (1991), an NHK anime television series adaptation that ran for 26 episodes.
- Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child (1997), an animated television anthology series, has an East Asian-influenced retelling featuring the voices of Tia Carrere and Robert Guillaume.
- Pokémon: Indigo League (1998), an anime television series, broadcast episode 61, "The Misty Mermaid", that was inspired by the story.
- The Fairytaler (alternately titled as Tales from H.C. Andersen, 1998), a Danish animated television anthology, has a one-hour adaptation.
- Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch (2002), an anime television series, was inspired by the story.
- Fairy Tale Police Department (2002), an Australian animated television series, has one episode that is based on the story.
- SimsalaGrimm (2010), an animated German television anthology, broadcast a half-hour adaptation.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011), an anime series, has hints of "The Little Mermaid" in Sayaka Miki's story arc, which involves losing her unrequited crush to another girl and "losing her soul" in a sense, becoming a creature with a mermaid-like design.
- Once Upon a Time (2013), an ABC television series, uses characters and elements of the 1989 animated Disney film.
- Die kleine Meerjungfrau (2013), a live-action made-for-TV German adaptation directed by Irina Popow and starring Zoe Moore.
- The Idle Mermaid (2014), a South Korean television serial modern retelling that ran for 10 episodes.
- Betoolot (2014), an Israeli TV series that follows the story of a modern family in which all the females have the characteristics of being a mermaid. The series has 28 episodes in 3 seasons.
Theatre
- Rusalka (1901), an opera with music composed by Dvo?ák, was first performed in Prague. It incorporates plot elements from the Anderson story and from de la Motte Fouqué's Undine
- The Garden of Paradise (1914), a play written by Edward Sheldon.
- La Petite Sirène (1957), a three-act opera version by French composer Germaine Tailleferre, with a libretto adapted by Philippe Soupault.
- Once on This Island (1990) a musical based around the Anderson story.
- De Kleine Zeemeermin (2004), a stage musical adaptation by Studio 100 directed by Gert Verhulst, with music by Johan Vanden Eede. The show premiered in Belgium in 2004 starring Free Souffriau as the mermaid, and then transferred to the Netherlands where Kim-Lian and Kathleen Aerts portrayed the mermaid.
- The Little Mermaid (2005), a modern-rendition ballet by the Royal Danish Ballet, composed by Russian-American composer Lera Auerbach and choreographed by John Neumeier, premiered on 15 April 2005.
- The Little Mermaid (2008), a Broadway stage musical based on the 1989 Disney film, with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Howard Ashman and Glenn Slater. The show premiered on 10 January 2008 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
- John Neumeier's The Little Mermaid (2010), a production of the San Francisco Ballet, premiered on 20 March 2010.
- Below (2013), a stage adaptation by Adapt Theatre Productions, a small fringe-theatre production company in Chicago, Illinois. The story is written in blank verse by actor/playwright Lane Flores and is from the perspective of the little mermaid's sisters, who have kidnapped the story's prince to judge his compassion for their deceased sister.
- The Little Mermaid (2013), a theatrical adaptation by Blind Tiger, a London-based Actor Musician theatre company, focuses on Hans Christian Andersen's influences when creating the fairytale. The show opened in December 2013 at Riverside Studios.
- The Little Mermaid (2017) a ballet with choreography by David Nixon and a score by Sally Beamish was staged by Northern Ballet in Leeds, Sheffield and other venues in the north of England in the winter of 2017 and 2018.
Audio
- Die Seejungfrau (The Mermaid, 1905), a 40-minute-long symphonic poem by Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky.
- "Little Mermaid" (1982), a song by Japanese jazz-fusion band The Square (now known as T-Square), released on the album Magic.
- The Little Mermaid (Die kleine Meerjungfrau, 2007), an orchestral piece by Lior Navok for an actress, two pianos and a chamber ensemble/orchestra, premiered on 28 July 2007.
- "???/Ningyo Hime" ("The Little Mermaid") and "????/Rito Mame" ("Little Mermaid", 2009), a pair of songs produced using the Vocaloid software, based on the story.
- "Ningyo No Namida" ("Tears of the Mermaid", 2009), a song by Japanese visual kei band LM.C, is loosely based on the story.
The Little Mermaid statue
A statue of The Little Mermaid sits on a rock in the Copenhagen harbor in Langelinie. This small and unimposing statue is a Copenhagen icon and a major tourist attraction.
The statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of Carlsberg, after he had been fascinated by a ballet based on the fairy tale. The sculptor Edward Eriksen created the statue, which was unveiled on 23 August 1913. His wife, Eline Eriksen, was the model. It has been severely vandalized several times.
In May 2010, it was moved from its Copenhagen harbor emplacement for the first time ever, for transport to Expo 2010 in Shanghai, where it remained until 20 November 2010.
References
External links
- The Little Mermaid Gallery
- See photos of The Little Mermaid
- "The Little Mermaid", Jean Hersholt's English translation
- Den lille Havfrue, original Danish text from the Danish Royal Library
- Den lille havfrue, original manuscript (Odense City Museum)
- Surlalune: Annotated "The Little Mermaid", Paull's translation, with annotations, scans from six illustrated editions, and bibliography
- The Little Mermaid public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Source of article : Wikipedia
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