I have always loved the stories if Hans Christian Anderson since I first heard them as a child.

This is a fabulous little collection of his trade mark fairy tales - classic yet morally ambiguous at times. ( )

I have always loved the stories if Hans Christian Anderson since I first heard them as a child.

This is a fabulous little collection of his trade mark fairy tales - classic yet morally ambiguous at times. ( )

Reading again some of Andersen’s ‘children tales’ I had to realise again that these dark, moralising stories full with violence and death aren’t appropriate for children at all. ( )

The Tinderbox, illustrated by Vladyslav Yerko

Vladyslav Yerko, the fabulously talented Ukrainian artist and illustrator, whose edition of The Snow Queen ranks as one of my absolute favorite fairy-tale retellings, returns to the work of Hans Christian Andersen in this marvelous picture-book. Here we have the classic story of a poor soldier, returning home from the wars, who encounters an old witch on his journey and finds his fortunes changed. Agreeing to fetch the eponymous tinderbox for the witch, in return for all the money he can carry away from its underground hiding place, he ends up murdering the witch when she won't tell him how the tinderbox will be used, and keeping both it and the money. Becoming a gentleman of leisure with his newfound wealth, the soldier's fortune holds, until the money runs out. It is then that he discover that the tinderbox controls and summons the three magical guard dogs who watched over the witch's underground treasure - the chest with bronze coins, the one with silver, and the one with gold. Fortune restored, the soldier next uses his magical dogs to kidnap the kingdom's beautiful princess from her bed, so he might look on her in her sleep. When this results in his imprisonment and imminent execution, he uses his dogs to destroy the king and queen and their advisors, marrying the princess and becoming king himself...

I was struck during the course of reading The Tinderbox, as I always am with this story, by how amoral of a tale it is. It doesn't have, like Andersen's The Red Shoes, with its narrative of a girl who is punished for her ingratitude and impiety with a terrible bodily disfigurement and violation, a moral outlike with which I would disagree. Rather, it seems entirely lacking in a moral outlook altogether, and the narrative never seems to question the ethics of the soldier's actions, in violating his agreement with the witch, going back on his word to turn over the tinderbox to her, and eventually murdering her. Nor are his actions, in kidnapping the princess, just so he can look at her sleeping form, ever depicted as problematic. Instead, the reader is apparently meant to sympathize with his change of fortune and to applaud his use of the dogs, whilst ignoring the fact tht he is a word-breaker, a murderer, and a pervet of sorts. I've always found this rather odd, and have never been convinced, despite his one good quality, of giving generously to the poor, that the soldier is a hero worth cheering for.

All that said, this presentation of The Tinderbox is, despite my usual distaste at the tale, so phenomenally gorgeous, that I am rating the book at five stars. Vladyslav Yerko's painting are so beautiful, so marvelously detailed and engrossing, that it was a sheer pleasure to peruse them! From decorative endpaper to decorative endpaper, front to back, this is a visually stunning book. No superlative could do it justice! The detailed indoor scenes, as when the soldier fetches the treasure from its underground lair, or when he first encounters one of the dogs in his room at the inn, have a rich, golden glow, and are crammed with so many little objects of interest, that one could pore over the page endlessly:



The outdoor scenes are lighter in tone, but no less rich in detail. The scene showing the city center is particularly lovely:



I have no idea, of course, how Vladyslav Yerko views this story - presumably he enjoys it, or he would not bother illustrating it! - but the scene in which the dog servant flies through the air with the princess on his back, resonates with my feeling that the soldier is a bit of a villain. Here's the princess, still enough of a little girl to be hugging her stuffed rabbit in her sleep, being ogled by a stranger, and a grown man at that!:



However that may be, there is no question that this is one of the most beautiful fairy-tale picture-books I have encountered. A lovely, lovely volume, one I would recommend wholeheartedly to anyone who loves fairy-tales, or who appreciates gorgeously-illustrated books. ( )

A little collection of typycally highly moralistic tales combined with tales of people behaving badly and getting reward for it: In the Tinder Box a soilder kills a witch after she has made him rich, then decides that he must see the princess so he kidnaps her while she is asleep and kisses her (just a minor sexual assult). When her mum and dad find out they track the soilder down and throw him in jail - he escapes, cuts off the heads of the king and queen and marries the princess (It is stated the princess is extremely happy about this(??)) and the the people who are now terrified of his magic powers decide he is now king - My only thought at the end of this story was WTF??
Another story in this book is called The Red Shoes and is far more typically Andersen (totally moralistic without any rationality). In this story a little girl is punished for being proud and vain (her crime was liking and wearing red shoes to church! OMG right?!) by having the shoes cursed and forcing her to dance until she begs the local executioner to cut her feet off. Yes I did type that correctly. She cuts her feet off. But in typical Andersen style all is well at the end of the story as she begs forgiveness from god and is no longer followed around by her (still dancing) feet. Now that is what I like to call fucked up moralism ( )