mirrors in the winter

The introduction to Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen reads a bit like this:

Once upon a time there was a troll, the most evil troll of them all; he was called the devil. One day he was particularly pleased with himself, for he had invented a mirror which had the strange power of being able to make anything good or beautiful that it reflected appear horrid, and all that was evil and worthless seem attractive and worth while. The most beautiful landscape looked like spinach, and the kindest and most honorable people looked repulsive or ridiculous. 

"It is a very amusing mirror," said the devil. But the most amusing part of it all was that if a good or a kind thought passed through anyone's mind the most horrible grin would appear on the face in the mirror. It was so entertaining that the devil himself laughed out loud. All the little trolls who went to troll school, where the devil was headmaster, said that a miracle had taken place. Now for the first time one could see what humanity and the world really looked like--at least, they thought. 

They ran all over with the mirror, until there wasn't a country or a person in the whole world that had not been reflected and distorted in it. At last they decided to fly up to heaven to poke fun of the angels and God Himself. All together they carried the mirror, and flew up higher and higher. The nearer they came to heaven, the harder the mirror laughed, so that the trolls could hardly hold onto it; still they flew higher and higher: upward toward God and the angels, then the mirror shook so violently from laughter that they lost their grasp; it fell and broke into hundreds Of millions of billions and some odd pieces. 

It was then that it really caused trouble, much more than it ever had before. Some of the splinters were as tiny as grains of sand and just as light, so that they were spread by the winds all over the world. When a sliver like that entered someone's eye it stayed there; and the person, forever after, would see the world distorted, since even the tiniest fragment contained all the evil qualities of the whole mirror.



You can read more of this here. This has been on my mind since we read it in a class on Wednesday.