What the Moon Saw Page #7

"What the Moon Saw" by Hans Christian Andersen is a collection of 24 tales, framed as what the moon has watched each night and shared with a lonely artist. Each tale showcases Anderson’s poetic approach, stunning imagination, and in-depth understanding of human nature. Stories vary from experiences of personal growth, reflections on loneliness and poverty, to observations of natural beauty and urban life. The moon's tales serve not just as bedtime stories, but also as profound allegories that draw readers into deep contemplation.

• Children

								


"I looked down upon a great theatre," said the Moon. "The house
was crowded, for a new actor was to make his first appearance that
night. My rays glided over a little window in the wall, and I saw a
painted face with the forehead pressed against the panes. It was the
hero of the evening. The knighly beard curled crisply about the
chin; but there were tears in the man's eyes, for he had been hissed
off, and indeed with reason. The poor Incapable! But Incapables cannot
be admitted into the empire of Art. He had deep feeling, and loved his
art enthusiastically, but the art loved not him. The prompter's bell
sounded; 'the hero enters with a determined air,' so ran the stage
direction in his part, and he had to appear before an audience who
turned him into ridicule. When the piece was over, I saw a form
wrapped in a mantle, creeping down the steps: it was the vanquished
knight of the evening. The scene-shifters whispered to one another,
and I followed the poor fellow home to his room. To hang one's self is
to die a mean death, and poison is not always at hand, I know; but
he thought of both. I saw how he looked at his pale face in the glass,
with eyes half closed, to see if he should look well as a corpse. A
man may be very unhappy, and yet exceedingly affected. He thought of
death, of suicide; I believe he pitied himself, for he wept
bitterly, and when a man has had his cry out he doesn't kill himself.

"Since that time a year had rolled by. Again a play was to be
acted, but in a little theatre, and by a poor strolling company. Again
I saw the well-remembered face, with the painted cheeks and the
crisp beard. He looked up at me and smiled; and yet he had been hissed
off only a minute before--hissed off from a wretched theatre, by a
miserable audience. And tonight a shabby hearse rolled out of the
town-gate. It was a suicide--our painted, despised hero. The driver of
the hearse was the only person present, for no one followed except
my beams. In a corner of the churchyard the corpse of the suicide
was shovelled into the earth, and nettles will soon be growing
rankly over his grave, and the sexton will throw thorns and weeds from
the other graves upon it."


NINETEENTH EVENING

"I come from Rome," said the Moon. "In the midst of the city, upon
one of the seven hills, lie the ruins of the imperial palace. The wild
fig tree grows in the clefts of the wall, and covers the nakedness
thereof with its broad grey-green leaves; trampling among heaps of
rubbish, the ass treads upon green laurels, and rejoices over the rank
thistles. From this spot, whence the eagles of Rome once flew
abroad, whence they 'came, saw, and conquered,' our door leads into
a little mean house, built of clay between two pillars; the wild
vine hangs like a mourning garland over the crooked window. An old
woman and her little granddaughter live there: they rule now in the
palace of the Caesars, and show to strangers the remains of its past
glories. Of the splendid throne-hall only a naked wall yet stands, and
a black cypress throws its dark shadow on the spot where the throne
once stood. The dust lies several feet deep on the broken pavement;
and the little maiden, now the daughter of the imperial palace,
often sits there on her stool when the evening bells ring. The keyhole
of the door close by she calls her turret window; through this she can
see half Rome, as far as the mighty cupola of St. Peter's.

"On this evening, as usual, stillness reigned around; and in the
full beam of my light came the little granddaughter. On her head she
carried an earthen pitcher of antique shape filled with water. Her
feet were bare, her short frock and her white sleeves were torn. I
kissed her pretty round shoulders, her dark eyes, and black shining
hair. She mounted the stairs; they were steep, having been made up
of rough blocks of broken marble and the capital of a fallen pillar.
The coloured lizards slipped away, startled, from before her feet, but
she was not frightened at them. Already she lifted her hand to pull
the door-bell--a hare's foot fastened to a string formed the
bell-handle of the imperial palace. She paused for a moment--of what
might she be thinking? Perhaps of the beautiful Christ-child,
dressed in gold and silver, which was down below in the chapel,
where the silver candlesticks gleamed so bright, and where her
little friends sung the hymns in which she also could join? I know
not. Presently she moved again--she stumbled: the earthen vessel
fell from her head, and broke on the marble steps. She burst into
tears. The beautiful daughter of the imperial palace wept over the
worthless broken pitcher; with her bare feet she stood there
weeping; and dared not pull the string, the bell-rope of the
imperial palace!"


TWENTIETH EVENING

It was more than a fortnight since the Moon had shone. Now he
stood once more, round and bright, above the clouds, moving slowly
onward. Hear what the Moon told me.

"From a town in Fezzan I followed a caravan. On the margin of
the sandy desert, in a salt plain, that shone like a frozen lake,
and was only covered in spots with light drifting sand, a halt was
made. The eldest of the company--the water gourd hung at his girdle,
and on his head was a little bag of unleavened bread--drew a square in
the sand with his staff, and wrote in it a few words out of the Koran,
and then the whole caravan passed over the consecrated spot. A young
merchant, a child of the East, as I could tell by his eye and his
figure, rode pensively forward on his white snorting steed. Was he
thinking, perchance, of his fair young wife? It was only two days
ago that the camel, adorned with furs and with costly shawls, had
carried her, the beauteous bride, round the walls of the city, while
drums and cymbals had sounded, the women sang, and festive shots, of
which the bridegroom fired the greatest number, resounded round the
camel; and now he was journeying with the caravan across the desert.

"For many nights I followed the train. I saw them rest by the
wellside among the stunted palms; they thrust the knife into the
breast of the camel that had fallen, and roasted its flesh by the
fire. My beams cooled the glowing sands, and showed them the black
rocks, dead islands in the immense ocean of sand. No hostile tribes
met them in their pathless route, no storms arose, no columns of
sand whirled destruction over the journeying caravan. At home the
beautiful wife prayed for her husband and her father. 'Are they dead?'
she asked of my golden crescent; 'Are they dead?' she cried to my full
disc. Now the desert lies behind them. This evening they sit beneath
the lofty palm trees, where the crane flutters round them with its
long wings, and the pelican watches them from the branches of the
mimosa. The luxuriant herbage is trampled down, crushed by the feet of
elephants. A troop of negroes are returning from a market in the
interior of the land: the women, with copper buttons in their black
hair, and decked out in clothes dyed with indigo, drive the
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