The Dryad Page #6

"The Dryad" is an intricate tale by Danish fairy tale legend, Hans Christian Andersen. The storyline follows a Dryad - a mythological tree spirit - who impatiently longs to explore beyond her solitary existence in a grand ancient tree. Lured by the festive glamour of the Paris exhibition, she abandons her roots only to find the bustling, industrialized city overwhelming and herself feeling lost and homesick. In this narrative, Andersen explores themes of nature, industrialization, alienation, and longing.

• Children

								

that now sank down dying.

The moon shone bright, gas-lamps spread light around, through
the halls, over the all-world's buildings scattered about, over the
rose-hills and the rocks produced by human ingenuity, from which
waterfalls, driven by the power of "Master Bloodless," fell down.
The caverns of the sea, the depths of the lakes, the kingdom of the
fishes were opened here. Men walked as in the depths of the deep pond,
and held converse with the sea, in the diving-bell of glass. The water
pressed against the strong glass walls above and on every side. The
polypi, eel-like living creatures, had fastened themselves to the
bottom, and stretched out arms, fathoms long, for prey. A big turbot
was making himself broad in front, quietly enough, but not without
casting some suspicious glances aside. A crab clambered over him,
looking like a gigantic spider, while the shrimps wandered about in
restless haste, like the butterflies and moths of the sea.

In the fresh water grew water-lilies, nymphaea, and reeds; the
gold-fishes stood up below in rank and file, all turning their heads
one way, that the streaming water might flow into their mouths. Fat
carps stared at the glass wall with stupid eyes. They knew that they
were here to be exhibited, and that they had made the somewhat
toilsome journey hither in tubs filled with water; and they thought
with dismay of the land-sickness from which they had suffered so
cruelly on the railway.

They had come to see the Exhibition, and now contemplated it
from their fresh or salt-water position. They looked attentively at
the crowds of people who passed by them early and late. All the
nations in the world, they thought, had made an exhibition of their
inhabitants, for the edification of the soles and haddocks, pike and
carp, that they might give their opinions upon the different kinds.

"Those are scaly animals" said a little slimy Whiting. "They put
on different scales two or three times a day, and they emit sounds
which they call speaking. We don't put on scales, and we make
ourselves understood in an easier way, simply by twitching the corners
of our mouths and staring with our eyes. We have a great many
advantages over mankind."

"But they have learned swimming of us," remarked a well-educated
Codling. "You must know I come from the great sea outside. In the
hot time of the year the people yonder go into the water; first they
take off their scales, and then they swim. They have learnt from the
frogs to kick out with their hind legs, and row with their fore
paws. But they cannot hold out long. They want to be like us, but they
cannot come up to us. Poor people!"

And the fishes stared. They thought that the whole swarm of people
whom they had seen in the bright daylight were still moving around
them; they were certain they still saw the same forms that had first
caught their attention.

A pretty Barbel, with spotted skin, and an enviably round back,
declared that the "human fry" were still there.

"I can see a well set-up human figure quite well," said the
Barbel. "She was called 'contumacious lady,' or something of that
kind. She had a mouth and staring eyes, like ours, and a great balloon
at the back of her head, and something like a shut-up umbrella in
front; there were a lot of dangling bits of seaweed hanging about her.
She ought to take all the rubbish off, and go as we do; then she would
look something like a respectable barbel, so far as it is possible for
a person to look like one!"

"What's become of that one whom they drew away with the hook? He
sat on a wheel-chair, and had paper, and pen, and ink, and wrote
down everything. They called him a 'writer.'"

"They're going about with him still," said a hoary old maid of a
Carp, who carried her misfortune about with her, so that she was quite
hoarse. In her youth she had once swallowed a hook, and still swam
patiently about with it in her gullet. "A writer? That means, as we
fishes describe it, a kind of cuttle or ink-fish among men."

Thus the fishes gossipped in their own way; but in the
artificial water-grotto the laborers were busy; who were obliged to
take advantage of the hours of night to get their work done by
daybreak. They accompanied with blows of their hammers and with
songs the parting words of the vanishing Dryad.

"So, at any rate, I have seen you, you pretty gold-fishes," she
said. "Yes, I know you;" and she waved her hand to them. "I have known
about you a long time in my home; the swallow told me about you. How
beautiful you are! how delicate and shining! I should like to kiss
every one of you. You others, also. I know you all; but you do not
know me."

The fishes stared out into the twilight. They did not understand a
word of it.

The Dryad was there no longer. She had been a long time in the
open air, where the different countries--the country of black bread,
the codfish coast, the kingdom of Russia leather, and the banks of
eau-de-Cologne, and the gardens of rose oil--exhaled their perfumes
from the world-wonder flower.

When, after a night at a ball, we drive home half asleep and
half awake, the melodies still sound plainly in our ears; we hear
them, and could sing them all from memory. When the eye of the
murdered man closes, the picture of what it saw last clings to it
for a time like a photographic picture.

So it was likewise here. The bustling life of day had not yet
disappeared in the quiet night. The Dryad had seen it; she knew,
thus it will be repeated tomorrow.

The Dryad stood among the fragrant roses, and thought she knew
them, and had seen them in her own home. She also saw red
pomegranate flowers, like those that little Mary had worn in her
dark hair.

Remembrances from the home of her childhood flashed through her
thoughts; her eyes eagerly drank in the prospect around, and
feverish restlessness chased her through the wonder-filled halls.

A weariness that increased continually, took possession of her.
She felt a longing to rest on the soft Oriental carpets within, or
to lean against the weeping willow without by the clear water. But for
the ephemeral fly there was no rest. In a few moments the day had
completed its circle.

Her thoughts trembled, her limbs trembled, she sank down on the
grass by the bubbling water.

"Thou wilt ever spring living from the earth," she said
mournfully. "Moisten my tongue--bring me a refreshing draught."

"I am no living water," was the answer. "I only spring upward when
the machine wills it."

"Give me something of thy freshness, thou green grass," implored
the Dryad; "give me one of thy fragrant flowers."

"We must die if we are torn from our stalks," replied the
Flowers and the Grass.

"Give me a kiss, thou fresh stream of air--only a single
life-kiss."

"Soon the sun will kiss the clouds red," answered the Wind;
"then thou wilt be among the dead--blown away, as all the splendor
here will be blown away before the year shall have ended. Then I can
play again with the light loose sand on the place here, and whirl
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