2010 Kjeld Heltoft

I am glad for the great poet now also being acknowledged as a visual artist, as is shown by the statuette with the Hans Christian Andersen paper cut inlaid. Acknowledged means experienced, understood and admired. As Hans Christian Andersen wrote in a letter from Rome, „I have to be praised if I have to prosper“; in Italy he discovered and made a lot of drawings of the treasures of the Italian landscape and Italian art, and these drawings actually were praised by artists and painters he met in Rome. Hans Christian Andersen is absolutely right and has expressed an experience which is common to us all – the experience that acknowledgement invigorates your creativity. Although the award presented to me is a gratifying token of recognition of work already done, for most award winners it surely has a much greater ­value as a incentive to continue their work. Encouraged by this award, you return to ­the rich artistic heritage which Hans ­Christian Andersen has left to us and look upon it with fresh eyes. Among other things, connections that have gone unnoticed might perhaps be elucidated, connections be­tween his works of visual art and ­passages of his texts. With all the new connections you discover, you actually feel that a new and more copious ­edition of Hans Christian Andersen is needed. Helped by the prestige of the award, I might dream of embarking upon the ultimate Hans Christian Andersen edition. The out­lines of such an edition begin to emerge. I imagine it to be an edition with portraits, maps with travelling routes indicated, and supple­mented with contemporary social, cultural and topographical descriptions by contemporary Danish and ­foreign authors.

Kjeld Heltoft