This immense work must be read with the admiring eyes of a child.

One of the 160 stories collected in these two essential volumes, which collect all of the short works of Hans Christian Andersen —an author who also practiced other genres, but who became famous for his stories—, is titled Pen and inkwell. Says the inkwell, boasting of its potential for creativity: "It's strange, all that can come from me! Yes, it's almost unbelievable! And I myself, truly, don't know what will happen next time, when that person begins to pour the ink on me." An inkwell, indeed, contains all the laws of literary possibilities, and all that is needed is for the writer to put the pen to it and develop his genius on the sheet of paper.

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) took all the stories that were part of Scandinavian folklore and gave them an enduring form. And he invented many more. Stories that are part of the rich baggage of international popular memory, such as The Little Mermaid, The Emperor's New Clothes, Thumbelina, The Snow Queen either The Matchstick Girl are his work. That this happens with these stories I cite and with some others, but isn't it the highest aspiration that a writer should have? What he has written or recorded on paper has become the heritage of the people, of the world, as if it had existed since the dawn of time, anonymously. And the fact is that all these literary compositions have enjoyed, for many generations, the unanimous favor of readers (and listeners, because they have often been transmitted orally, in families, from parents to children), who have blessed them.

Jordi Nopca, in his magnificent epilogue, refers to the adulteration that many of the stories collected in this magnificent edition have suffered (the sweetening carried out by the Disney factory, for example, for the benefit of the market), often to adapt them to a perverse political correctness. And he also rightly points out the difference between the eventyr ('fairy tales') and the historian ('stories'). The Snow Queen, for example, is part of the first group: fantasy comes to the fore, and the reader (or listener) must accept the pact of suspended disbelief. There is a passage in which Gerda, the child protagonist, mistakes two wooden soldiers for real boys: "She shouted to them, thinking they were real, but naturally they made no reply." This fact, however, does not prevent Gerda from having long conversations with the flowers in the woman's garden after arriving at the house of a good witch. A fairy tale, then, through and through. On the other hand, the story I mentioned just now, the one about the inkwell and the quill, would be part of the second group.

Plain, didactic, and philosophical tales

In this story, there is a compositional constant: the dichotomy of characters. The reader will notice it in several narratives: the one that pits the wax candle against the silk candle, or the rosebush and the snail, or the farmyard rooster against the weathervane rooster... Also the inkwell and the quill pen, of course. Or, in another sense, the one that pits a grandfather against his grandson, which ends with a happy resolution: the old man finally applauds the advances of modern times that he is not capable of understanding, unlike the young man.

Some of these stories, in their simple, didactic formulation, do not hide a philosophical dimension. The gastropod protagonist ofThe snail and the rosebush "He had so much inside him: he had himself." The rosebush, on the other hand, expands and celebrates the world, offering it its beautiful flowers (a product, this one of the rose, self-sufficient like the Silesian rose: it needs nothing more). These are stories that unfold in icy landscapes ("All the trees and bushes were covered with frost, it was like a whole forest of white coral, as if every branch were filled with radiant white flowers"), and which have, without exception, a sanity will soon have to sing," we read in a moving story dedicated to the poet Friedrich von Schiller, The old church bell, in which the copper from a bell will be melted down to refine the poet's statue. Surely, if he knew it, Martin Heidegger, so fond of bells as bearers of the voice of the local genius, must have been a devotee.

In one of these stories, the peremptory need for narrative continuity is evident (that of the King of Turkey): the young protagonist must link one story to the other not to save his skin, but to be able to marry the princess. Another, exquisite one, shows us that happiness can be found in a simple piece of wood. I would say that it is necessary to read this immense work with the admiring eyes of a child. And also with his discreet wisdom, because we must remember that only the child revealed the imposture of the adults, when he was able to recognize that the emperor was quite a rabbit. Pure narrative substance!