The Arrival of the Frost Queen

 

The Snow Queen, by Kay Nielsen 1924

From my Forest Diary:

December 6, 2020

The Frost Queen passed through my window this night and left her breath. Look at it! Pure art.

The Philosophy of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This article is a part of a series on my three literary mentors: Karen Blixen, J.R.R. Tolkien and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

The series could be said to follow Kierkegaard´s three stages on the way to becoming a true self: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Each of these “stages on life’s way” represents competing views on life and as such potentially conflicts with one another. In my interpretation Karen Blixen belongs to the aesthetic stage. Tolkien and Saint-Exupéry belong to the ethical and religious stage, though this doesn´t mean that aesthetics not is a part of their work. It certainly is. After all: their works are of a high literary quality, and the concept of beauty is quite central.