2/100 Finding Inspiration in the story of The Ugly Duckling

I read 'The Ugly Duckling'  (the original story by Hans Christian Anderson) to my granddaughter last night.  The following excerpt speaks so powerfully about the unexpressed self.  The ugly duckling seeking shelter in a storm finds himself in an old woman's cottage, and her cat and hen are utterly perplexed by his strangeness and they wonder, unkindly, what use he is.

'And the duckling sat in the corner and was melancholy; then the fresh air and the sunshine streamed in; and it was seized with such a strange longing to swim on the water, that it could not help telling the Hen of it.

          "What are you thinking of ?" cried the Hen.  "You have 

      nothing to do, that's why you have these fancies.  Purr or lay
      eggs, and they will pass over"

      "But it is so charming to swim on the water!" said the Duckling
      "so refreshing to let it close above one's head and to dive down 
      to the bottom."

      "Yes, that must be a mighty pleasure, truly," quoth the Hen. "I
      fancy you must have gone crazy." '

And so after even more ridicule and admonishment, Duckling leaves the cottage to venture, once again alone, into the wide world.

We humans could live our whole life and never find our way to our true self for fear of ridicule and our seeming 'craziness'.  But if there is that 'strange longing' in us, what will our life be if we don't search after it? 

Today, I remembered, because of this story, a very failed  painting I had made a couple of years ago.  It was supposed to be allegorical, but I hadn't properly conceived what the whole allegory was.  Now I have a better idea of it, and I'm going to rework the painting, and see if I can create a much more abstracted figurative piece while retaining the allegory of the swan as a messenger.  And the message?  Well Hans Christian Anderson told it best.

 

,    "I will fly away to them, to the royal birds! and they will kill       me, because I that am so ugly, dare to approach them" ... 'And it   flew out into the water and swam towards the beautiful swans.'