Ole the Tower-Keeper

"Ole the Tower-Keeper" is a philosophical and poignant journey penned by Hans Christian Andersen. It paints a vivid portrait of Ole, a tower keeper, who spends his nights ruminating on deep existential concepts such as life, death, faith, hope, and the human condition. Set against the backdrop of fairy tales, the narrative is a collection of anecdotes, each representing a night of the week. Clergymen, artists, and genies participate in dialogues with Ole, each providing their unique take on existence and the cosmos.

• Children

								
"In the world it's always going up and down; and now I can't go up
any higher!" So said Ole the tower-keeper. "Most people have to try
both the ups and the downs; and, rightly considered, we all get to
be watchmen at last, and look down upon life from a height."

Such was the speech of Ole, my friend, the old tower-keeper, a
strange, talkative old fellow, who seemed to speak out everything that
came into his head, and who for all that had many a serious thought
deep in his heart. Yes, he was the child of respectable people, and
there were even some who said that he was the son of a privy
councillor, or that he might have been. He had studied, too, and had
been assistant teacher and deputy clerk; but of what service was all
that to him? In those days he lived in the clerk's house, and was to
have everything in the house--to be at free quarters, as the saying
is; but he was still, so to speak, a fine young gentleman. He wanted
to have his boots cleaned with patent blacking, and the clerk could
only afford ordinary grease; and upon that point they split. One spoke
of stinginess, the other of vanity, and the blacking became the
black cause of enmity between them, and at last they parted.

This is what he demanded of the world in general, namely, patent
blacking, and he got nothing but grease. Accordingly, he at last
drew back from all men, and became a hermit; but the church tower is
the only place in a great city where hermitage, office and bread can
be found together. So he betook himself up thither, and smoked his
pipe as he made his solitary rounds. He looked upward and downward,
and had his own thoughts, and told in his own way of what he read in
books and in himself. I often lent him books--good books; and you
may know by the company he keeps. He loved neither the English
governess novels nor the French ones, which he called a mixture of
empty wind and raisin-stalks: he wanted biographies, and
descriptions of the wonders of, the world. I visited him at least once
a year, generally directly after New Year's day, and then he always
spoke of this and that which the change of the year had put into his
head.

I will tell the story of three of these visits, and will reproduce
his own words whenever I can remember them.


FIRST VISIT

Among the books which I had lately lent Ole, was one which had
greatly rejoiced and occupied him. It was a geological book,
containing an account of the boulders.

"Yes, they're rare old fellows, those boulders!" he said; "and
to think that we should pass them without noticing them! And over
the street pavement, the paving stones, those fragments of the
oldest remains of antiquity, one walks without ever thinking about
them. I have done the very thing myself. But now I look respectfully
at every paving-stone. Many thanks for the book! It has filled me with
thought, and has made me long to read more on the subject. The romance
of the earth is, after all, the most wonderful of all romances. It's a
pity one can't read the first volume of it, because it is written in a
language that we don't understand. One must read in the different
strata, in the pebble-stones, for each separate period. Yes, it is a
romance, a very wonderful romance, and we all have our place in it. We
grope and ferret about, and yet remain where we are; but the ball
keeps turning, without emptying the ocean over us; the clod on which
we move about, holds, and does not let us through. And then it's a
story that has been acting for thousands upon thousands of years and
is still going on. My best thanks for the book about the boulders.
Those are fellows indeed! They could tell us something worth
hearing, if they only knew how to talk. It's really a pleasure now and
then to become a mere nothing, especially when a man is as highly
placed as I am. And then to think that we all, even with patent
lacquer, are nothing more than insects of a moment on that ant-hill
the earth, though we may be insects with stars and garters, places and
offices! One feels quite a novice beside these venerable
million-year-old boulders. On last New Year's eve I was reading the
book, and had lost myself in it so completely, that I forgot my
usual New Year's diversion, namely, the wild hunt to Amack. Ah, you
don't know what that is!

"The journey of the witches on broomsticks is well enough known--that
journey is taken on St. John's eve, to the Brocken; but we have a
wild journey, also which is national and modern, and that is the
journey to Amack on the night of the New Year. All indifferent poets
and poetesses, musicians, newspaper writers, and artistic
notabilities,--I mean those who are no good,--ride in the New Year's
night through the air to Amack. They sit backwards on their painting
brushes or quill pens, for steel pens won't bear them--they're too
stiff. As I told you, I see that every New Year's night, and could
mention the majority of the riders by name, but I should not like to
draw their enmity upon myself, for they don't like people to talk
about their ride to Amack on quill pens. I've a kind of niece, who
is a fishwife, and who, as she tells me, supplies three respectable
newspapers with the terms of abuse and vituperation they use, and
she has herself been at Amack as an invited guest; but she was carried
out thither, for she does not own a quill pen, nor can she ride. She
has told me all about it. Half of what she said is not true, but the
other half gives us information enough. When she was out there, the
festivities began with a song; each of the guests had written his
own song, and each one sang his own song, for he thought that the
best, and it was all one, all the same melody. Then those came
marching up, in little bands, who are only busy with their mouths.
There were ringing bells that rang alternately; and then came the
little drummers that beat their tattoo in the family circle; and
acquaintance was made with those who write without putting their
names, which here means as much as using grease instead of patent
blacking; and then there was the beadle with his boy, and the boy
was worst off, for in general he gets no notice taken of him; then,
too, there was the good street sweeper with his cart, who turns over
the dust-bin, and calls it 'good, very good, remarkably good.' And
in the midst of the pleasure that was afforded by the mere meeting
of these folks, there shot up out of the great dirt-heap at Amack a
stem, a tree, an immense flower, a great mushroom, a perfect roof,
which formed a sort of warehouse for the worthy company, for in it
hung everything they had given to the world during the Old Year. Out
of the tree poured sparks like flames of fire; these were the ideas
and thoughts, borrowed from others, which they had used, and which now
got free and rushed away like so many fireworks. They played at 'the
stick burns,' and the young poets played at 'heart-burns,' and the
witlings played off their jests, and the jests rolled away with a
thundering sound, as if empty pots were being shattered against doors.

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