The Most Incredible Thing - Commentaries

Commentaries

For fairy tale and folk lore researcher Maria Tatar, the tale summarizes Andersen’s views on the "essence of art" with the clock representing both temporality and transcendence. It keeps time but it is also a work of art that cannot be destroyed. She notes that the clock houses both "the biblical and the mythical, the seasons and the senses, the visual and the acoustical, the carnal and the spiritual" and thus brings together everything Andersen wanted in art. The wondrous clock "mingles the secular with the sacred and the pagan with the Christian". The beauty of the clock and its figurines defy and transcend destruction and continue to live in a way that humans cannot.