Discover

'''The Little Mermaid''' (''Den lille havfrue'') is a fairy tale written in 1836 by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. The story is about a young mermaid who is willing to give up everything to gain an immortal soul and the love of a prince. It was first translated into English by H. P. Paull in 1872.

Contents

Story overview

Adaptations of ''The Little Mermaid''

The Little Mermaid statue

Vandalism of the statue

External links

Story overview

The Little Mermaid lives at the sea bottom with her father the Sea King, her grandmother, and her five older sisters, born one year apart. When a mermaid turns 15, she is allowed to swim to the surface to watch the world above, and as the sisters become old enough one of them visits the surface every year. As each of them returns the Little Mermaid listens longingly to their descriptions of the surface and human beings.
When the Little Mermaid turns 15 she ventures to the surface. She sees a ship with a handsome prince, and falls in love with him from a distance. There comes a great storm, and the prince almost drowns, but the Little Mermaid saves him and she delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple. Here she waits until he is found by a young girl from the temple. The prince never sees the Little Mermaid.
The Little Mermaid asks her grandmother whether humans can live forever if they do not drown. She is told that no, humans have an even shorter lifespan than mermaids. Mermaids live for 300 years, but when they die they turn to sea foam and cease to exist. Humans, on the other hand, have a short lifespan on earth, but they have an eternal soul that lives on in heaven even after they die. The Little Mermaid spends her days longing for the prince and for an eternal soul. At last she goes to the Sea Witch who sells her a potion that gives her legs, in exchange for her tongue; the Little Mermaid has the most intoxicating voice in the world. But drinking the potion will make her feel like a sword is being passed through her, and walking on her feet will feel like walking on knives. And she will only get a soul if the prince loves her and marries her, for then a part of his soul will flow into her. Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries another woman, the Little Mermaid will die broken-hearted and turn to sea foam like other merfolk.
The Little Mermaid drinks the potion and meets the prince, who is attracted to her beauty and grace even though she is mute. Most of all he likes to see her dance and she dances for him even though it feels like dancing on knives. The prince loves her like one loves a child.
The time comes when the king decides that the prince is to marry the neighboring king's daughter. The prince tells the Little Mermaid that he will not marry the princess because he does not love her. He can only love the young girl who once saved his life, the girl who unfortunately belongs to the temple. He also tells the Little Mermaid that she is beginning to take the temple girl's place in his heart. However, it turns out that the princess is the temple girl; she had only been sent to the temple to be educated. The prince loves her and the wedding is announced.
The prince and princess are married and the Little Mermaid's heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has given up in order to be with the prince and to gain an eternal soul - her beautiful voice, her wonderful home, her loving family, her life - and of all the pain that she has suffered; all without the prince ever having a thought thereof. She despairs, but before dawn her sisters come to her and give her a knife that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their hair. If the Little Mermaid slays the prince with the knife she will become a mermaid again and be able to live out her full life under the sea.
But the Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his bride and, as dawn breaks, throws herself into the sea. Here her body dissolves into sea foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she feels the warmth of the sun; she has turned into a spirit, a daughter of the air. The other daughters of the air tell her that she has become like them because she strove with all her heart to gain an eternal soul. As a mermaid her gaining of a soul was dependent on another: the prince; but as a daughter of the air she will earn her own soul by doing good deeds. When 300 years have passed she will have earned her soul and will rise into the kingdom of God. This time can be shortened; with each good child she finds she subtracts a year, while she adds a day for each tear she must shed over a wicked child.

Adaptations of ''The Little Mermaid''

In 1957, the French composer Germaine Tailleferre (of Les Six) wrote a three-act opera version of ''The Little Mermaid'' (called ''La Petite Sirène'' in French) on a libretto adapted by Philippe Soupault. It was broadcast on French National Radio in 1959. One of the earliest animated films, based on the fairytale, was the Soviet one, entitled ''Rusalochka'' (''The Little Mermaid''), which was released in 1968. In 1976 a live action film, entitled ''Rusalochka'', a joint production by the USSR and Bulgaria, was released.
Tomoharu Katsumata directed the 1975 feature-length film ''アンデルセン童話 にんぎょ姫(Anderusen Dowa Ningyo Hime)'' (''Andersen's Story: The Mermaid Princess'') for Toei Animation, which depicted the mermaid as a blonde named Marina. The film followed the plot of the original story more faithfully than Disney's version, including the sad ending, although Toei, like Disney, added a comic-relief sidekick (in this case, Fritz the dolphin). Dubbed into English, it was released on video in the United States in 1979.
In 1987, Shelley Duvall produced a version of the story for her highly acclaimed Showtime series ''Faerie Tale Theatre''. This version featured Pam Dawber as the title character, Treat Williams as the handsome prince, Helen Mirren as the prince's fiance, Brian Dennehy as Neptune, the Mermaid's father, and Karen Black as the sea-witch.

In 1989 the fairytale was made into an animated film by the Walt Disney Company; see ''The Little Mermaid (1989 film)''. The adaptation has a happy ending in which the mermaid (named 'Ariel') survives her ordeals and marries the handsome Prince Eric. Ariel has become one of the most popular Disney heroines so far, due to her tomboyish and impulsive personality, and has been featured in the Disney Princess series. Disney has now made their adaptation into a broadway musical which premiered at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts in Denver, Colorado on July 26, 2007. The production moves to New York on November 3, 2007 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Brodaway.
In 1991, the 26-episode TV series ''Saban's Adventures of the Little Mermaid'', an English dub of the Japanese/South Korean co-production ''Ningyo Hime Marina no Boken'' (''The Adventures of Mermaid Princess Marina''), briefly ran in North American syndication after having aired originally on Japan's NHK.
Golden Films adapted the story in 1992 and the film was distributed into video and years later into DVD by GoodTimes Entertainment. This version stays between the original tale and the Disney version, for GoodTimes' ''The Little Mermaid'' featured an only semi-happy ending.
In the late 1990s, HBO's fairy tales series, '', did an episode based on ''The Little Mermaid'', with an Asian twist. The mermaid was portrayed as a black-haired girl named Mija with dark skin and a yellow tail. She is most likely one of the few mermaids to be fully dressed when not in human form, since as a mermaid she is wearing a yellow dress.
Japanese artist Junko Mizuno adapted ''The Little Mermaid'' as ''Mermaid Princess'', the third and final part of her ''fractured fairy tales''.
Originally published in 2000, Caitlín R. Kiernan's short story, "Tears Seven Times Salt" (''Tales of Pain and Wonder'') is a modern day retelling of ''The Little Mermaid'', set in New York City in the early 1990s. A young girl named Jenny Haniver believes that a race of mermaids inhabits the sewers and longs to join them. This dark fantasy story draws heavily on Andersen's original version of the fairy tale. The title is taken from Shakespeare's play ''Hamlet''. The character Jenny Haniver also appears in Kiernan's story "Glass Coffin," an urban fantasy retelling of both ''Snow White'' and ''Sleeping Beauty''.
In 2004, the animated TV series ''Hans Christian Andersen The Fairytaler'' had an episode telling the story of ''The Little Mermaid''. This version stayed true to the original story, without changing the sad ending. ''The Fairytaler'' at IMDB.com
The Royal Danish Ballet commissioned Russian-American composer Lera Auerbach to create a modern rendition of this fairy tale. It was choreographed by John Neumeier and premiered on April 15, 2005.

The Little Mermaid statue

A statue of the Little Mermaid sits on a rock in the Copenhagen harbour (at ) in Churchill Park. 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 about the fairytale. The sculptor Edward Eriksen created the statue, which was unveiled on 23 August, 1913. He used his wife Eline Eriksen as the model.
The relatively small size of the statue typically surprises tourists visiting for the first time. The Little Mermaid statue is only 1.25 meter high and weighs about 175 kg.
There are similarities between the Little Mermaid statue and the Pania of the Reef statue on the beachfront at Napier in New Zealand, and some similarities in the Little Mermaid and Pania tales. The statue of a (titled "Girl in a Wetsuit" by Elek Imredy) in Vancouver, Canada was placed there when, unable to obtain permission to reproduce the Copenhagen statue, Vancouver authorities selected a modern version.

Vandalism of the statue

This statue has been damaged and defaced many times since the mid-1950s for various reasons, but has each time been restored.

★ 24 April, 1964- the statue's head was sawn off and stolen by politically oriented artists of the Situationist movement, amongst them Jørgen Nash. The head was never recovered and a new head was produced and placed on the statue.

★ 22 July, 1984- her right arm was sawn off. The arm was returned 2 days later by two embarrassed young vandals.

★ 1990- another attempt was made to cut her head off, which resulted in an 18 cm deep cut in the neck.

★ 6 January, 1998- she lost her head for the second time, the culprits were never found, but the head was returned anonymously to a nearby TV station, and on 4 February the head was back on.

★ Red paint has been thrown on her several times, including one episode in 1961 where her hair was painted red and a bra was painted on her.

★ 11 September, 2003- the statue was blasted off its rock, possibly with dynamite.

★ The Little Mermaid was also draped in a burka as a statement about Turkey joining the European Union.

★ March 8, 2006- a dildo was attached to the statue's hand, green paint was dumped over it, and the words ''March 8'' were written on it. It is suspected that this vandalism has something to with International Women's Day (which is on March 8) and that it was committed by anti-feminists. [1]

★ March 3, 2007- the statue was again covered with pink paint. Recently, Copenhagen officials have announced that the statue may be moved further out in the harbour, as to avoid vandalism and tourists climbing onto it.

★ May 2007- the statue was covered with paint by vandals.[2]

★ May 20, 2007- it was found draped in a Muslim dress and head scarf.[3]
An undamaged copy of the statue is located in Solvang, California.

External links

★ ''Den lille Havfrue'' Original text in Danish from the Danish Royal Library wesite.

★ The Little Mermaid at the Internet Movie Database

★ The Little Mermaid The Official Disney Website

★ The Little Mermaid. Photo gallery from Denmark. Hans Christian Andersen Information

★ ''The Little Mermaid'' Full text of H. P. Paull's translation (1836)

★ ''The Annotated Little Mermaid'' by Heidi Anne Heiner, Paull's translation, with scholarly annotations, scans from six illustrated editions, bibliography.

★ Little Mermaid Statue thumbnail photo gallery, from Mermaids on the Web

★ The Little Mermaid 360 degree Quicktime VR panorama from Copenhagen