“(The Little Mermaid) Whirled into dance, gliding like a swallow when it is being pursued. . . .It was as if sharp knives were cutting her delicate feet, but she did not feel it; the pain that pierced her heart was far worse. She knew that this was the last night that she would see the prince — the one for whom she had left her family and her home, given up her beautiful voice, and suffered endless torment every day without his knowing it. It was the last night that she would breathe the same air as he, that she would see the deep ocean and the starry blue sky. Eternal night, without thoughts or dreams, awaited her, she who didn’t have a soul and could not win one. . . .The mermaid laughed and danced, her heart filled with thoughts of death…”
The Little Mermaid - Hans Christian Andersen
Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower, and as clear as crystal, it is very, very deep; so deep, indeed, that no cable could fathom it: many church steeples, piled one upon another, would not reach from the ground beneath to the surface of the water above. There dwell the Sea King and his subjects.
The Little Mermaid
Nothing is as it should be. I had such hopes, such quixotic dreams of a future so scintillating with foreign sensations. The blithe sunlight seemed so unbridled and mercurial, an antithesis to the permanent stasis of aphotic despair in which I lived. What foolish, naïve visions I suffocated in. I have come to learn that the tranquil mists of the surface hide nothing but malignancy and torture. Oh, to have had the knowledge of the present, to have foreseen the despair which would befall my innocent soul, not too long ago, as I set out to open the door to the surface
