Thank you Pia for
this nice card from Denmark with The Little Mermaid which is a statue of a mermaid in Langelinie,
Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. Based on the fairy tale of the same name by
Hans Christian Andersen, the small and unimposing statue (with a height of 1.25
metres (4 ft) is a Copenhagen icon and a major tourist attraction. The
statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of
Carlsberg, who had been fascinated by a ballet about the fairytale in
Copenhagen's Royal Theatre and asked the prima ballerina, Ellen Price, to model
for the statue. The sculptor Edvard Eriksen created the bronze statue, which
was unveiled on 23 August 1913. The statue's head was modelled after Price, but
as the ballerina did not agree to model in the nude, the sculptor's wife, Eline
Eriksen, was used for the body.
The Copenhagen City Council decided to move the statue
to Shanghai at the Danish Pavilion for the duration of the Expo 2010 (from May
to October), the first time it had been moved from its perch since it was
installed almost a century earlier.
Vandalism of the
statue. This statue
has been damaged and defaced many times since the mid-1960s for various
reasons, but has each time been restored. In 2006, Copenhagen officials
announced that the statue may be moved farther out in the harbour, as to avoid
further vandalism and to prevent tourists from climbing onto it. On April 24,
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. On July 22,
1984, the right arm was sawn off and returned two days later by two young men.
In 1990, an attempt to sever the statue's head left a cut in the neck 18
centimeters (7 in) deep. In 2004, she was draped in a burqa as a
statement against Turkey joining the European Union. In May 2007, the statue
was again found draped in a Muslim dress and head scarf.
The statue displayed in Copenhagen
harbour has always been a copy; the sculptor's heirs keep the original at an
undisclosed location. Undamaged copies of the statue are located in Solvang,
California; Kimballton, Iowa; Piatra Neamţ, Romania and a half-sized copy in Calgary,
Canada. The grave of Danish-American entertainer Victor Borge, includes a copy
as well. A copy of the statue forms the Danish contribution to the
International Peace Gardens in Salt Lake City. The half-size replica was stolen
on 26 February 2010, but was recovered on 7 April, evidently abandoned in the
park after the thief became nervous about being caught with it.
The Little Mermaid
ReplyDeleteThe Little Mermaid lives in an underwater kingdom with her father the sea king; her grandmother; and her five elder sisters, each 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 various descriptions of the surface and of human beings.
When the Little Mermaid's turn comes, she ventures to the surface, sees a ship with a handsome prince, and falls in love with him from a distance. A great storm hits, and the Little Mermaid saves the prince from a near-drowning. She delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple. Here she waits until a young girl from the temple finds him. The prince never sees the Little Mermaid.
The Little Mermaid asks her grandmother whether humans can live forever if they do not drown. The grandmother explains that humans have a much shorter lifespan than merfolks' 300 years, but that when mermaids die they turn to sea foam and cease to exist, while humans have an eternal soul that lives on in Heaven. The Little Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul, eventually visits the Sea Witch, who sells her a potion that gives her legs, in exchange for her tongue (as the Little Mermaid has the most intoxicating voice in the world). The Sea Witch warns, however, that once she becomes a human, she will never be able to return to the sea. Drinking the potion will make her feel as if a sword is being passed through her, yet when she recovers she will have two beautiful legs, and will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before. However, it will constantly feel like she is walking on sharp swords hard enough to make her bleed. In addition, she will only get a soul if she finds true love's kiss and 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 brokenhearted and disintegrate into sea foam.
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 despite her excruciating pain. When the prince's father orders his son to marry the neighboring king's daughter, the prince tells the Little Mermaid he will not, because he does not love the princess. He goes on to say he can only love the young woman from the temple, who he believes rescued him. It turns out that the princess is the temple girl, who had been sent to the temple to be educated. The prince loves her and the wedding is announced.
ReplyDeleteThe prince and princess marry, and the Little Mermaid's heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has given up and of all the pain she has suffered. She despairs, thinking of the death that awaits her, but before dawn, her sisters bring her a knife that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their long hair. If the Little Mermaid slays the prince with the knife and lets his blood drip on her feet, she will become a mermaid again, all her suffering will end and she will live out her full life.
The Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his bride and as dawn breaks she throws herself into the sea. Her body dissolves into 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 she has become like them because she strove with all her heart to gain an eternal soul. She will earn her own soul by doing good deeds for 300 years; for each good child she found, she would obtain one year less while, for each bad child, she would cry, and each tear would mean one month more and she will eventually rise up into the kingdom of God.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Mermaid