Only a Fiddler (Kun en Spillemand) was published by C.A. Reitzel in Copenhagen in 1837, and it is the pessimistic twin of The Improvisatore. Where Antonio rose through talent and patronage to fame and love, Christian — the protagonist of Only a Fiddler — is equally talented but unlucky. He is a poor boy with a gift for music who never receives the patronage, education, or opportunity that would allow his talent to flourish. He becomes a village fiddler — “only a fiddler” — and dies in obscurity.
Andersen’s point is that talent without opportunity is useless: that genius is not enough, that the world destroys gifted people as casually as it rewards them, and that the difference between the successful artist and the failed one is not always ability but luck. The novel is a direct challenge to the Romantic myth of the artist who triumphs through sheer genius regardless of circumstances — a myth that Andersen himself embodied in his public persona but doubted in his private self.
The novel provoked the young Søren Kierkegaard to write his first published work — From the Papers of One Still Living (1838) — a savage review that attacked Andersen for lacking a coherent “life-view” and for indulging in sentimental self-pity. Kierkegaard’s critique stung Andersen deeply, but it also contained a serious philosophical objection: that Andersen’s fatalism (genius can be destroyed by circumstances) denied human freedom and moral responsibility.
Collecting Only a Fiddler
First edition (C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen, 1837): Three volumes, Danish text.
Market values:
- First Danish edition: $300–$800
- First English translation (Mary Howitt, 1845): $80–$200
- Later editions: $10–$25