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Der Improvisator
A semi-autobiographical novel inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s travels in Italy—and one of the author’s best-known works in his native Denmark
Published to great acclaim in 1835, Hans Christian Andersen’s debut novel, The Improvisatore, initially eclipsed his fairy tales, which first appeared in the same year. Andersen, the captivating teller of enchanted tales, is very much in evidence in this classic Bildungsroman inspired by his travels in Italy earlier in the decade. The novel’s hero, Antonio—much like Andersen himself—rises from impoverished beginnings to become a successful artist, at every turn learning charming and often alarming lessons in the ways of the world.
Adopted by a nobleman, smitten with an opera singer, challenged to a duel, captured by bandits, beset by a temptress, Antonio follows a dizzying itinerary on his path to enlightenment and, perhaps, happiness. Along the way he experiences the delights of Italian culture and nature so clearly and deeply absorbed by his peripatetic author—from the inescapable power of some of the world’s most enduring paintings and sculptures to the drama of an erupting Mount Vesuvius and the rampages of wild buffalo on the Roman campagna, all in the shadow of classical mythology and in the company of characters from every level of Italian society: beggar, brigand, priest, and poet.
Published to great acclaim in 1835, Hans Christian Andersen’s debut novel, The Improvisatore, initially eclipsed his fairy tales, which first appeared in the same year. Andersen, the captivating teller of enchanted tales, is very much in evidence in this classic Bildungsroman inspired by his travels in Italy earlier in the decade. The novel’s hero, Antonio—much like Andersen himself—rises from impoverished beginnings to become a successful artist, at every turn learning charming and often alarming lessons in the ways of the world.
Adopted by a nobleman, smitten with an opera singer, challenged to a duel, captured by bandits, beset by a temptress, Antonio follows a dizzying itinerary on his path to enlightenment and, perhaps, happiness. Along the way he experiences the delights of Italian culture and nature so clearly and deeply absorbed by his peripatetic author—from the inescapable power of some of the world’s most enduring paintings and sculptures to the drama of an erupting Mount Vesuvius and the rampages of wild buffalo on the Roman campagna, all in the shadow of classical mythology and in the company of characters from every level of Italian society: beggar, brigand, priest, and poet.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1835
18 people are currently reading
218 people want to read
About the author
Hans Christian Andersen
7,642 books3,511 followersHans Christian Andersen (often referred to in Scandinavia as H.C. Andersen) was a Danish author and poet. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories — called eventyr, or "fairy-tales" — express themes that transcend age and nationality.
Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. Some of his most famous fairy tales include "The Little Mermaid", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Nightingale", "The Emperor's New Clothes" and many more. His stories have inspired plays, ballets, and both live-action and animated films.
Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. Some of his most famous fairy tales include "The Little Mermaid", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Nightingale", "The Emperor's New Clothes" and many more. His stories have inspired plays, ballets, and both live-action and animated films.
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September 22, 2020
Having read Andersen's autobiography, it is very clear that "The improvisatore" is himself: an extremely sensitive poet with several benefactors who do not understand his art and criticize him severely "for his own good", but his sense of gratitude is so high that he cannot stop loving them and submitting to their plans. The book has vivid descriptions of Italy, full of color and wonder as seen by the eyes of a child. I liked the descriptions of the carnival and the Easter illumination of St. Peter in the 1830s, of walking by a lava stream in Vesuvius, and visiting the Grotta Azzurra, which was very recently discovered.
Andersen on reading the Divina Commedia for the first time:
"I saw in that air, ever black, like the sand of the desert which is whirled by the tempest, the race of Adam falling like leaves in autumn, whilst lamenting spirits howled in the torrent of air. Tears filled my eyes at the sight of noble, lofty beings who, unparticipants of Christianity, had here their abode. (...) It was not enough for me that Dante had made everything as comfortable and well as it could be in hell. Existence there was yet a grief without suffering, a hopeless longing; they belonged still to the realm of the damned, were inclosed by the deep marshes of hell, from which the sighs of the damned rose up bubble on bubble of poisonous and pestilent vapor. Wherefore had not Christ, when he was down in hell, and again ascended to the right hand of the Father, taken all with him out of the Valley of Longing? Could Love make a selection among the equally unfortunate?
I forgot entirely that the whole was but a fiction. The deep sigh from the sea of boiling pitch went to my heart. (...) The living descriptions stamped themselves deeply on my soul, and mingled in my ideas by day and my dreams by night."
Andersen on reading the Divina Commedia for the first time:
"I saw in that air, ever black, like the sand of the desert which is whirled by the tempest, the race of Adam falling like leaves in autumn, whilst lamenting spirits howled in the torrent of air. Tears filled my eyes at the sight of noble, lofty beings who, unparticipants of Christianity, had here their abode. (...) It was not enough for me that Dante had made everything as comfortable and well as it could be in hell. Existence there was yet a grief without suffering, a hopeless longing; they belonged still to the realm of the damned, were inclosed by the deep marshes of hell, from which the sighs of the damned rose up bubble on bubble of poisonous and pestilent vapor. Wherefore had not Christ, when he was down in hell, and again ascended to the right hand of the Father, taken all with him out of the Valley of Longing? Could Love make a selection among the equally unfortunate?
I forgot entirely that the whole was but a fiction. The deep sigh from the sea of boiling pitch went to my heart. (...) The living descriptions stamped themselves deeply on my soul, and mingled in my ideas by day and my dreams by night."
September 2, 2017
Mi puntuación es de 3,5 estrellas.
La verdad es que no sé si me gustó o no... Una descripción detalladísima de la Italia del siglo XIX con una historia muy edulcorada.
La verdad es que no sé si me gustó o no... Una descripción detalladísima de la Italia del siglo XIX con una historia muy edulcorada.
June 25, 2019
Three things to be learned from this book:
1) Why we love Jimmy Fallon
2) How much better and yet worse it was to visit Rome in the 19th century
3) How weird fame can be
Ready? Let's start with Jimmy Fallon. We love him because he's great at improv. Because he can riff on things with no apparent preparation. He doesn't [seem to] struggle to be funny/great. He just is. Ditto Ellen Degeneres, Robin Williams, Tina Fey, and any comedian or performer who takes to the stage without notes and makes you laugh or break into spontaneous applause. A better translation of the title of this book, in fact, would be The Improv King. A weird thing that early 19th-century travelers to Italy totally loved (or loved in novels--see also Corinne, or Italy by Madame de Stael) was the ability to do improv on poetic and historical subjects. If you could speak extemporaneously and poetically about Heroism or whatever topic people suggested from the audience, the crowds went wild. Odd, right? I mean, why didn't they just want people to make them laugh? Another offshoot of this 19th-century love of the "Improvisatore" is the British Member of Parliament, who could (can? do they still do this?) stand up and speak persuasively about a social issue. I would argue that we even revere this type of genius in people who do storytelling on paper, idolizing authors who, like JK Rowling, seem to pull long, complicated stories quickly and easily out of a single moment of inspiration, such as a dream.
2) The second point is really just a sigh for Bygone Days before cruise ships and cheap flights to the continent ruined Italy . . . and a reminder that those Bygone Days were full of crime and racism. At the time that Hans Christian Andersen was proto-backpacking through Italy and gathering material for this book, which features a protagonist who grows up poor in the vicinity of Rome, you could wander into the Coliseum at midnight and have a full moon picnic or stroll through every day at twilight and ponder the ruins at your leisure, and you could go to Easter mass in St. Peter's and stare up at the Sistine Chapel while a choir sang the Miserere.
If you have been to Rome lately and stood in line for a ticket at a ticket booth and shuffled through the Coliseum or St. Peter's with a horde of people taking selfies, you might think Andersen was having a better time than us, and he was, but he was a white Danish Christian. Jews in Rome were ritually humiliated:
"Then came in a crowd of the most aged Jews, who kneeled down, bare-headed, before the senator. I knew one of them; it was old Hanoch, whose daughter had so greatly interested Bernardo. The old man was the speaker, made a sort of oration, in which he prayed, according to old usage, for permission for himself and his people to live yet a year longer in the Rome, in the quarter which was appointed to them; promised to go once during that time into a Catholic church; and prayed furthermore that, according to old custom, they might themselves run through the Corso before the people of Rome . . . "
Another downside of the Grand Tour in those days was the cruelty to horses:
"At the end of the street, by the Piazza del Popolo, the horses were led up to the barrier. They all seemed half wild. Burning sponges were fastened to their backs, little rockets behind their ears, and iron points hanging loose, which in the race spurred them till the blood came, were secured to their sides."
And there was the robbing and murdering, which led to a truly grotesque variation on those little memorials people erect at the sites of traffic fatalities:
"We passed a crucifix; which had been raised as a sign that some one had been murdered there, and near to it hung a portion of the murderer's body, an arm and a foot."
So traveling through Italy was better back in the day, but it was also a lot worse, like most things.
And we come (at last) to my third and final point: this book, which is pretty much unreadable today not only because of the anti-Semitism but also because it's poorly organized and lumbering and, frankly, boring a lot of the time, made Hans Christian Andersen famous. Those tales for which we know and love him today--for which I personally revere and adore him--were not selling well. So the thing that you think was good, that everyone said was good, well, maybe it's not. The thing that critics panned and the general public ignored? That may turn out to be your best Thing, your real achievement, your gift to the next eight or so generations. Fame is weird and fleeting and, sadly, misguided a lot of the time.
Whenever you watch one of those cruise ships glide like Godzilla into the Venice harbor and you wish (as I do) we could see these ancient places purely and perfectly preserved, remember the past was also like this:
"It is well known that in Rome, the first city of Christendom, the Jews are only permitted to live in
their allotted quarter, the narrow and dirty Ghetto, the gate of which is closed every evening, and soldiers keep watch that none may come in or go out."
1) Why we love Jimmy Fallon
2) How much better and yet worse it was to visit Rome in the 19th century
3) How weird fame can be
Ready? Let's start with Jimmy Fallon. We love him because he's great at improv. Because he can riff on things with no apparent preparation. He doesn't [seem to] struggle to be funny/great. He just is. Ditto Ellen Degeneres, Robin Williams, Tina Fey, and any comedian or performer who takes to the stage without notes and makes you laugh or break into spontaneous applause. A better translation of the title of this book, in fact, would be The Improv King. A weird thing that early 19th-century travelers to Italy totally loved (or loved in novels--see also Corinne, or Italy by Madame de Stael) was the ability to do improv on poetic and historical subjects. If you could speak extemporaneously and poetically about Heroism or whatever topic people suggested from the audience, the crowds went wild. Odd, right? I mean, why didn't they just want people to make them laugh? Another offshoot of this 19th-century love of the "Improvisatore" is the British Member of Parliament, who could (can? do they still do this?) stand up and speak persuasively about a social issue. I would argue that we even revere this type of genius in people who do storytelling on paper, idolizing authors who, like JK Rowling, seem to pull long, complicated stories quickly and easily out of a single moment of inspiration, such as a dream.
2) The second point is really just a sigh for Bygone Days before cruise ships and cheap flights to the continent ruined Italy . . . and a reminder that those Bygone Days were full of crime and racism. At the time that Hans Christian Andersen was proto-backpacking through Italy and gathering material for this book, which features a protagonist who grows up poor in the vicinity of Rome, you could wander into the Coliseum at midnight and have a full moon picnic or stroll through every day at twilight and ponder the ruins at your leisure, and you could go to Easter mass in St. Peter's and stare up at the Sistine Chapel while a choir sang the Miserere.
If you have been to Rome lately and stood in line for a ticket at a ticket booth and shuffled through the Coliseum or St. Peter's with a horde of people taking selfies, you might think Andersen was having a better time than us, and he was, but he was a white Danish Christian. Jews in Rome were ritually humiliated:
"Then came in a crowd of the most aged Jews, who kneeled down, bare-headed, before the senator. I knew one of them; it was old Hanoch, whose daughter had so greatly interested Bernardo. The old man was the speaker, made a sort of oration, in which he prayed, according to old usage, for permission for himself and his people to live yet a year longer in the Rome, in the quarter which was appointed to them; promised to go once during that time into a Catholic church; and prayed furthermore that, according to old custom, they might themselves run through the Corso before the people of Rome . . . "
Another downside of the Grand Tour in those days was the cruelty to horses:
"At the end of the street, by the Piazza del Popolo, the horses were led up to the barrier. They all seemed half wild. Burning sponges were fastened to their backs, little rockets behind their ears, and iron points hanging loose, which in the race spurred them till the blood came, were secured to their sides."
And there was the robbing and murdering, which led to a truly grotesque variation on those little memorials people erect at the sites of traffic fatalities:
"We passed a crucifix; which had been raised as a sign that some one had been murdered there, and near to it hung a portion of the murderer's body, an arm and a foot."
So traveling through Italy was better back in the day, but it was also a lot worse, like most things.
And we come (at last) to my third and final point: this book, which is pretty much unreadable today not only because of the anti-Semitism but also because it's poorly organized and lumbering and, frankly, boring a lot of the time, made Hans Christian Andersen famous. Those tales for which we know and love him today--for which I personally revere and adore him--were not selling well. So the thing that you think was good, that everyone said was good, well, maybe it's not. The thing that critics panned and the general public ignored? That may turn out to be your best Thing, your real achievement, your gift to the next eight or so generations. Fame is weird and fleeting and, sadly, misguided a lot of the time.
Whenever you watch one of those cruise ships glide like Godzilla into the Venice harbor and you wish (as I do) we could see these ancient places purely and perfectly preserved, remember the past was also like this:
"It is well known that in Rome, the first city of Christendom, the Jews are only permitted to live in
their allotted quarter, the narrow and dirty Ghetto, the gate of which is closed every evening, and soldiers keep watch that none may come in or go out."
February 15, 2025
mocne 3,5
to nie była zła książka, wręcz przeciwnie - bardzo ciekawa, poruszyła kwestie losu artysty, tego co dzieje się w jego głowie, dużo było w niej zbiegów okoliczności, które okazywały się wcale nie takie przypadkowe, ogromna ilość emocji i próby wyjaśnienia ich;
po prostu wprawiła mnie w pewnego rodzaju zastój czytelniczy, stąd taka ocena
to nie była zła książka, wręcz przeciwnie - bardzo ciekawa, poruszyła kwestie losu artysty, tego co dzieje się w jego głowie, dużo było w niej zbiegów okoliczności, które okazywały się wcale nie takie przypadkowe, ogromna ilość emocji i próby wyjaśnienia ich;
po prostu wprawiła mnie w pewnego rodzaju zastój czytelniczy, stąd taka ocena
October 1, 2020
Jeg har så mange måder at formulere på hvor inderligt jeg hadede denne læseoplevelse, at jeg simpelthen ikke kan udvælge den bedste.
August 5, 2019
Finally finished!!! A really hard and long read. I didn't enjoy the story, if one can call it that. It's more a series of moments, of life experiences of the protagonist Antonio. There were moments though that felt almost mystical and were quite nice. The discussions of poetry and making art were interesting as well but everything else fell really short for me.
May 14, 2023
This is my favorite novel of all time so far because of a writing style, which is sort of dated, and the story which is romanticism I'd say. I usually disappoint translated-literature since in terms of translation it's frequently bad and I can't stand to carry on to read it. however, this book translated by Ogai Mori is the cream of the crop.
April 19, 2025
As a look into life and travels in 19th century Italy I loved the book, as a narrative less so, all the women were just symbols for various "types" and had no real personality. The double twists at the end were both unsatisfying.
April 23, 2021
The Improvisatore is an early work by Andersen (before he wrote his famous fairy tales) and was very well-received back in the day. The book is based on his extensive travels through Italy, but the fictional story is told through the character of a young boy, Antonio, and takes place in the early 1800’s. Like many books of this time period, there is eloquent description of scenery. Poetic Antonio, lover of art and nature, takes us through many adventures, fantasies, and unfortunate events from his boyhood through young adulthood. I much enjoyed the description of carnival in Italy - colorful and with enchanting details you can only get from a story written from firsthand experience. The characters are romantic and melodramatic — typical of stories of that era. Admittedly, the story was too meandering at times. But I love the 1800s setting and tend to gravitate to literature from this time period.
February 23, 2020
The Japanese translation by Ogai Mori, a classic novelist, is very beautiful but the story is too long and not much interesting and the protagonist is hard to sympathize with. Though, the climax is well worth to read through.
March 8, 2024
[ 3,5 ]
Było w tym coś magnetyzującego. Duchowość, która wznosi nas daleko poza ziemski świat. I oczywiście te chwile zderzenia z szarą rzeczywistością, która nie zna litości ❤️
Przyznam, że nastawiałam się na coś znacznie słabszego, a więc mamy tu całkiem przyjemne zaskoczenie 😀
Było w tym coś magnetyzującego. Duchowość, która wznosi nas daleko poza ziemski świat. I oczywiście te chwile zderzenia z szarą rzeczywistością, która nie zna litości ❤️
Przyznam, że nastawiałam się na coś znacznie słabszego, a więc mamy tu całkiem przyjemne zaskoczenie 😀
September 30, 2020
Plottwiiiiiiist
February 24, 2010
This was again a condensed version of the original. It was a quick read and was ok. It seemed to be kind of draggy and I started wondering when he was going to grow up and be a productive person but then I realized that what he was doing (a travelling poet/musician) was completely fine during this time period. This is the story of Antonio, a poet and singer. He had great talent even as a child. His mother is killed in an accident and he is forced to move to the country to live with a buffalo farmer and his wife. While there he sort of saves the life of a prince who happens to be the man who ran over his mother a few years before. He begans to make regular visits to the palace and soon enters Jesuit school and makes friends with Bernardo. But soon, he and Bernardo fall in love with the same woman and Antonio accidently shoots Bernardo. He runs away thinking that Annunciata loves Bernardo and that he has killed him and falls into the hands of robbers who decide to ransom him. The old lady running the group lets him pay his ransom in song and story and sets him on his way to Venice. He also finds that Bernardo was not dead. In Naples he is taken in by a man and his wife who thinks he is very talented and soon makes romantic advances toward him. He gets away from her and continues traveling. He ends up back at the palace where his childhood friend is about to enter the convent. This distresses him and he becomes ill and very unhappy. Finally in his continued travels, Antonio meets up with a young lady who he had seen many years before when she was a blind beggar outside a temple of Neptune and she heard him sing, although at first he does not realize it is her. He was quite ill after finding out his old love Annunciata has died but his soul is overjoyed when he realizes the young girl Maria who he has fallen in love with is really the beggar girl from years before. Her sight had been restored and she had been adopted by the family he was staying with.
Want to read
November 7, 2022This is a very new translation of H. C. Andersen's "Improvisatore" which was published in the 1830. I finished it in late May 2018. One needs to be careful getting the new translation. There are a lot of copies of the 1840's translation so be careful when looking for the 2018.
I have to say the new is fun to read with a kidnapping, an opera singer, waking up from a shipwreck in the Blue Grotto, and walking on the lava from Vesuvius.. Yes, it does keeps to Andersen's style. More can be said of the novel, but that's for you to discover.
I have to say the new is fun to read with a kidnapping, an opera singer, waking up from a shipwreck in the Blue Grotto, and walking on the lava from Vesuvius.. Yes, it does keeps to Andersen's style. More can be said of the novel, but that's for you to discover.
June 1, 2014
The coming-of-age novel which was Hans Christian Andersen's breakthrough is an initially rather directionles but ultimately rather rousing and (melo)dramatic read. I was especially impressed with a small twist of the narrative towards the end.
April 21, 2015
Selv 180 år senere brænder H.C. Andersens skarpe blik for mennesker, natur og stemninger flot igennem.
July 16, 2025
4.5⭐️
Read
September 27, 2018This was an interesting read from a historic perspective - a semi-autobiographical travel novel written by Hans Christian Andersen early in his career. The bildungsroman formula which is follows is thwarted a bit by Andersen's ambivalent attitude towards the women his protagonist falls in love with -- but his love of Italy, where the novel is set, is sincere and profusely expressed. I'm grateful for the recent translation (the first since 1840) that made it possible to get through the sometimes florid prose of the book without getting bogged down. And I must admit that I didn't even try to read it in the original Danish, unlike the other members of my book club...
Please note that I don't use the star rating system, so this review should not be viewed as a zero.
Please note that I don't use the star rating system, so this review should not be viewed as a zero.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews