I had an even deeper perception of my initiation when I went back from Hegel to Spinoza and, filled with awe and enthusiasm, read theEthicafor the first time. Here I stood at the source of modern pantheistic Philosophy. Here Philosophy was even more distinctly Religion, since it took Religion's place. Though the method applied was very artificial, purely mathematical, at least Philosophy had here the attraction of a more original type of mind, the effect being much the same as that produced by primitive painting, compared with a more developed stage. His very expression,God or Nature, had a fascinating mysticism about it. The chapter in the book which is devoted to the Natural History of passions, surprised and enriched one by its simple, but profound, explanation of the conditions of the human soul. And although his fight against Superstition's views of life is conducted with a keenness that scouts discussion, whereas in modern Philosophy the contention is merely implied, it seemed as though his thoughts travelled along less stormy paths.
In Hegel, it had been exclusively the comprehensiveness of the thoughts and the mode of the thought's procedure that held my attention. With Spinoza it was different. It was his personality that attracted, the great man in him, one of the greatest that History has known. With him a new type had made its entrance into the world's History; he was the calm thinker, looking down from above on this earthly life, reminding one, by the purity and strength of his character, of Jesus, but a contrast to Jesus, inasmuch as he was a worshipper of Nature and Necessity, and a Pantheist. His teaching was the basis of the faith of the new age. He was a Saint and a Heathen, seditious and pious, at the same time.
Still, while I was in this way making a purely mental endeavour to penetrate into as many intellectual domains as I could, and to become master of one subject after another, I was very far from being at peace with regard to my intellectual acquisitions, or from feeling myself in incontestable possession of them. While I was satisfying my desire for insight or knowledge and, by glimpses, felt my supremest happiness in the delight of comprehension, an ever more violent struggle was going on in my emotions.
As my being grew and developed within me and I slowly emerged from the double state of which I had been conscious, in other words, the more I became one and individual and strove to be honest and true, the less I felt myself to be a mere individual, the more I realised that I was bound up with humanity, one link in the chain, one organ belonging to the Universe. The philosophical Pantheism I was absorbed by, itself worked counter to the idea of individualism inherent in me, taught me and presented to me the union of all beings in Nature the All-Divine. But it was not from Pantheism that the crisis of my spiritual life proceeded; it was from the fountains of emotion which now shot up and filled my soul with their steady flow. A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion.
This gradually absorbed me till I could hardly bear the thought of the suffering, the poor, the oppressed, the victims of Injustice. I always saw them in my mind's eye, and it seemed to be my duty to work for them, and to be disgraceful of me to enjoy the good things of life while so many were being starved and tortured. Often as I walked along the streets at night I brooded over these ideas till I knew nothing of what was passing around me, but only felt how all the forces of my brain drew me towards those who suffered.
There were warm-hearted and benevolent men among my near relatives. The man whom my mother's younger sister had married had his heart in the right place, so much indeed that he no sooner saw or heard of distress than his hand was in his pocket, although he had little from which to give. My father's brother was a genuinely philanthropic man, who founded one beneficent institution or society after the other, had an unusual power of inducing his well-to-do fellow-townsmen to carry his schemes through, and in the elaboration of them showed a perception and practical sense that almost amounted to genius; this was the more surprising since his intelligence was not otherwise remarkable for its keenness and his reasoning methods were confused. But what I felt was quite different. My feelings were not so easily roused as those of the first-mentioned; I was not so good-natured or so quick to act as he. Neither did they resemble those of my other uncle, who merely represented compassion for those unfortunately situated, but was without the least vestige of rebellious feeling against the conditions or the people responsible for the misery; my uncle was always content with life as it was, saw the hand of a loving Providence everywhere and was fully and firmly convinced that he himself was led and helped by this same Providence, which specially watched over the launching of his projects for the welfare of mankind. No, my feeling was of quite another kind. Nothing was farther removed from me than this sometimes quite childish optimism. It was not enough for me to advertise the sufferings of a few individuals and, when possible, alleviate them; I sought the causes of them in brutality and injustice. Neither could I recognise the finger of a Universal Ruler in a confusion of coincidences, conversations, newspaper articles, and advice by prudent men, the outcome of all which was the founding of a society for seamstresses or the erection of a hospital to counteract the misery that the Controlling Power had Itself occasioned. I was a child no longer, and in that sense never had been childish. But my heart bled none the less with sympathy for society's unfortunates. I did not as yet perceive the necessity of that selfishness which is self-assertion, and I felt oppressed and tormented by all that I, in my comparatively advantageous position as a non- proletarian, enjoyed, while many others did not.
Then another mood, with other promptings, asserted itself. I felt an impulse to step forward as a preacher to the world around me, to the thoughtless and the hardhearted. Under the influence of strong emotion I wrote an edifying discourse,The Profitable Fear. I began to regard it as my duty, so soon as I was fitted for it, to go out into the town and preach at every street-corner, regardless of whether a lay preacher, like myself, should encounter indifference or harvest scorn.
This course attracted me because it presented itself to me under the guise of the most difficult thing, and, with the perversity of youth, I thought difficulty the only criterion of duty. I only needed to hit upon something that seemed to me to be the right thing and then say to myself: "You dare not do it!" for all the youthful strength and daring that was in me, all my deeper feelings of honour and of pride, all my love of grappling with the apparently insurmountable to unite, and in face of thisYou dare not, satisfy myself that I did dare. As provisionally, self-abnegation, humility, and asceticism seemed to me to be the most difficult things, for a time my whole spiritual life was concentrated into an endeavour to attain them. Just at this time--I was nineteen--my family was in a rather difficult pecuniary position, and I, quite a poor student, was cast upon my own resources. I had consequently not much of this world's goods to renounce. From a comfortable residence in Crown Prince's Street, my parents had moved to a more modest flat in the exceedingly unaristocratic Salmon Street, where I had an attic of limited dimensions with outlook over roofs by day and a view of the stars by night. Quiet the nights were not, inasmuch as the neighbouring houses re-echoed with screams and shrieks from poor women, whom their late-returning husbands or lovers thrashed in their cups. But never had I felt myself so raised, so exhilarated, so blissfully happy, as in that room. My days slipped by in ecstasy; I felt myself consecrated a combatant in the service of the Highest. I used to test my body, in order to get it wholly under my control, ate as little as possible, slept as little as possible, lay many a night outside my bed on the bare floor, gradually to make myself as hardy as I required to be. I tried to crush the youthful sensuality that was awakening in me, and by degrees acquired complete mastery over myself, so that I could be what I wished to be, a strong and willing instrument in the fight for the victory of Truth. And I plunged afresh into study with a passion and a delight that prevented my perceiving any lack, but month after month carried me along, increasing in knowledge and in mental power, growing from day to day.
This frame of mind, however, was crossed by another. The religious transformation in my mind could not remain clear and unmuddied, placed as I was in a society furrowed through and through by different religious currents, issued as I was from the European races that for thousands of years had been ploughed by religious ideas. All the atavism, all the spectral repetition of the thoughts and ideas of the past that can lie dormant in the mind of the individual, leaped to the reinforcement of the harrowing religious impressions which came to me from without.
It was not the attitude of my friends that impressed me. All my more intimate friends were orthodox Christians, but the attempts which various ones, amongst them Julius Lange, and Jens Paludan-Müller, had made to convert me had glanced off from my much more advanced thought without making any impression. I was made of much harder metal than they, and their attempts to alter my way of thinking did not penetrate beyond my hide. To set my mind in vibration, there was needed a brain that I felt superior to my own; and I did not find it in them. I found it in the philosophical and religious writings of Sören Kierkegaard, in such works, for instance, asSickness unto Death.
The struggle within me began, faintly, as I approached my nineteenth year. My point of departure was this: one thing seemed to me requisite, to live in and forThe Idea, as the expression for the highest at that time was. All that rose up inimical toThe Ideaor Ideal merited to be lashed with scorn or felled with indignation. And one day I penned this outburst: "Heine wept overDon Quixote. Yes, he was right. I could weep tears of blood when I think of the book." But the first thing needed was to acquire a clear conception of what must be understood by the Ideal. Heiberg had regarded the uneducated as those devoid of ideals. But I was quite sure myself that education afforded no criterion. And I could find no other criterion of devotion to the Ideal than a willingness to make sacrifices. If, I said, I prove myself less self-sacrificing than any one of the wretches I am fighting, I shall myself incur well-merited scorn. But if self-sacrifice were the criterion, then Jesus, according to the teachings of tradition, was the Ideal, for who as self-sacrificing as He?
This was an inclined plane leading to the Christian spiritual life, and a year later, when I was nearly twenty, I had proceeded so far on this plane that I felt myself in all essentials in agreement with the Christian mode of feeling, inasmuch as my life was ascetic, and my searching, striving, incessantly working mind, not only found repose, but rapture, in prayer, and was elated and fired at the idea of being protected and helped by "God."
But just as I was about to complete my twentieth year, the storm broke out over again, and during the whole of the ensuing six months raged with unintermittent violence. Was I, at this stage of my development, a Christian or not? And if not, was it my duty to become a Christian?
The first thought that arose was this: It is a great effort, a constant effort, sometimes a minutely recurring effort, to attain moral mastery over one's self, and though this certainly need not bring with it a feeling of self-satisfaction, much lessoughtto do so, it does bring with it a recognition of the value of this self-mastery. How strange, then, that Christianity, which commands its attainment, at the same time declares it to be a matter of indifference to the revealed God whether a man has lived morally or not, since Faith or lack of Faith is the one condition upon which so-called Salvation depends!
The next thought was this: It is only in the writings of Kierkegaard, in his teachings concerning paradox, that Christianity appears so definite that it cannot be confused with any other spiritual trend whatever. But when one has to make one's choice between Pantheism and Christianity, then the question arises, Are Kierkegaard's teachings really historic Christianity, and not rather a rational adaptation? And this question must be answered in the negative, since it is possible to assimilate it without touching upon the question of the revelation of the Holy Ghost in the shape of a dove, to the Voice from the clouds, and the whole string of miracles and dogmas.
The next thought again was this: Pantheism does not place any one unconditional goal in front of man. The unbeliever passes his life interested in the many aims that man, as man, has. The Pantheist will therefore have difficulty in living a perfect ethical life. There are many cases in which, by deviating from the strictly ethic code, you do not harm anyone, you only injure your own soul. The Non-Believer will in this case only hardly, for the sake of impersonal Truth, make up his mind to the step which the God-fearing man will take actuated by his passionate fear of offending God.
Thus was I tossed backwards and forwards in my reflections.
What I dreaded most was that if I reached a recognition of the truth, a lack of courage would prevent me decisively making it my own. Courage was needed, as much to undertake the burdens entailed by being a Christian as to undertake those entailed by being a Pantheist. When thinking of Christianity, I drew a sharp distinction between the cowardice that shrunk from renunciation and the doubt that placed under discussion the very question as to whether renunciation were duty. And it was clear to me that, on the road which led to Christianity, doubt must be overcome before cowardice--not the contrary, as Kierkegaard maintains in hisFor Self-Examination, where he says that none of the martyrs doubted.
But my doubt would not be overcome. Kierkegaard had declared that it was only to the consciousness of sin that Christianity was not horror or madness. For me it was sometimes both. I concluded therefrom that I had no consciousness of sin, and found this idea confirmed when I looked into my own heart. For however violently at this period I reproached myself and condemned my failings, they were always in my eyes weaknesses that ought to be combatted, or defects that could be remedied, never sins that necessitated forgiveness, and for the obtaining of this forgiveness, a Saviour. That God had died for me as my Saviour,--I could not understand what it meant; it was an idea that conveyed nothing to me.
And I wondered whether the inhabitants of another planet would be able to understand how on the Earth that which was contrary to all reason was considered the highest truth.
With Pantheism likewise I was on my guard against its being lack of courage, rather than a conviction of its untruth, which held me back from embracing it. I thought it a true postulate that everything seemed permeated and sustained by a Reason that had not human aims in front of it and did not work by human means, a Divine Reason. Nature could only be understood from its highest forms; the Ideal, which revealed itself to the world of men at their highest development, was present, in possibility and intent, in the first germ, in the mist of primeval creation, before it divided itself into organic and inorganic elements. The whole of Nature was in its essence Divine, and I felt myself at heart a worshipper of Nature.
But this same Nature was indifferent to the weal or woe of humans. It obeyed its own laws regardless of whether men were lost thereby; it seemed cruel in its callousness; it took care that the species should be preserved, but the individual was nothing to it.
Now, like all other European children, I had been brought up in the theory of personal immortality, a theory which, amongst other things, is one way of expressing the immense importance, the eternal importance, which is attributed to each individual. The stronger the feeling of his ownegothat the individual has, the more eagerly he necessarily clings to the belief that he cannot be annihilated. But to none could the belief be more precious than to a youth who felt his life pulsate within, as if he had twenty lives in himself and twenty more to live. It was impossible to me to realise that I could die, and one evening, about a year later, I astonished my master, Professor Bröchner, by confessing as much. "Indeed," said Bröchner, "are you speaking seriously? You cannot realise that you will have to die one day? How young! You are very different from me, who always have death before my eyes."
But although my vitality was so strong that I could not imagine my own death, I knew well enough that my terrestrial life, like all other men's, would come to an end. But I felt all the more strongly that it was impossible everything could be at an end then; death could not be a termination; it could only, as the religions preached and as eighteenth- century Deism taught, be a moment of transition to a new and fuller existence. In reward and punishment after death I could not believe; those were mediaeval conceptions that I had long outgrown. But the dream of immortality I could not let go. And I endeavoured to hold it fast by virtue of the doctrine of the impossibility of anything disappearing. The quantity of matter always remained the same; energy survived every transformation.
Still, I realised that this could not satisfy one, as far as the form which we term individuality was concerned. What satisfaction was it to Alexander that his dust should stop a bung-hole? or to Shakespeare that Romeo and Juliet were acted in Chicago? So I took refuge in parallels and images. Who could tell whether the soul, which on earth had been blind to the nature of the other life, did not, in death, undergo the operation which opened its eyes? Who could tell whether death were not, as Sibbern had suggested, to be compared with a birth? Just as the unborn life in its mother's womb would, if it were conscious, believe that the revolution of birth meant annihilation, whereas it was for the first time awakening to a new and infinitely richer life, so it was perhaps for the soul in the dreaded moment of death....
But when I placed before my master these comparisons and the hopes I built upon them, they were swept away as meaningless; he pointed out simply that nothing went to prove a continuation of personality after death, while on the contrary everything argued against it,--and to this I could not refuse my assent.
Then I understood that in what I called Pantheism, the immortality of the individual had no place. And a slow, internal struggle commenced for renunciation of the importance and value of the individual. I had many a conversation on this point with my teacher, a man tired of life and thoroughly resigned.
He always maintained that the desire of the individual for a continuation of personality was nothing but the outcome of vanity. He would very often put the question in a comical light. He related the following anecdote: In summer evenings he used to go for a walk along the Philosopher's Avenue (now West Rampart Street). Here he had frequently met, sitting on their benches, four or five old gentlemen who took their evening ramble at the same time; by degrees they made each other's acquaintance and got into conversation with one another. It turned out that the old gentlemen were candle-makers who had retired from business and now had considerable difficulty in passing their time away. In reality they were always bored, and they yawned incessantly. These men had one theme only, to which they always recurred with enthusiasm--their hope in personal immortality for all eternity. And it amused Bröchner that they, who in this life did not know how to kill so much as one Sunday evening, should be so passionately anxious to have a whole eternity to fill up. His pupil then caught a glimpse himself of the grotesqueness of wishing to endure for millions of centuries, which time even then was nothing in comparison with eternity.
But in spite of it all, it was a hard saying, that in the pantheistic view of life the absorption of the individual into the great whole took the place of the continued personal existence which was desired by theego. But what frightened me even more was that the divine All was not to be moved or diverted by prayer. But pray I had to. From my earliest childhood I had been accustomed, in anxiety or necessity, to turn my thoughts towards a Higher Power, first forming my needs and wishes into words, and then later, without words, concentrating myself in worship. It was a need inherited from many hundreds of generations of forefathers, this need of invoking help and comfort. Nomads of the plains, Bedouins of the desert, ironclad warriors, pious priests, roving sailors, travelling merchants, the citizen of the town and the peasant in the country, all had prayed for centuries, and from the very dawn of time; the women, the hundreds and hundreds of women from whom I was descended, had centred all their being in prayer. It was terrible, never to be able to pray again.... Never to be able to fold one's hands, never to raise one's eyes above, but to live, shut in overhead, alone in the universe!
If there were no eye in Heaven that watched over the individual, no ear that understood his plaint, no hand that protected him in danger, then he was placed, as it were, on a desolate steppe where the wolves were howling.
And in alarm I tried once more the path towards religious quietude that I had recently deemed impracticable,--until the fight within me calmed again, and in renunciation I forced my emotion to bow to what my reason had acknowledged as the Truth.
Julius Lange--A New Master--Inadaption to the Law--The University Prize Competition--An Interview with the Judges--Meeting of Scandinavian Students--The Paludan-Müllers--Björnstjerne Björnson--Magdalene Thoresen--The Gold Medal--The Death of King Frederik VII--The Political Situation--My Master of Arts Examination--War--Admissus cum laude praecipua--Academical Attention--Lecturing--Music--Nature--A Walking Tour--In Print--Philosophical Life in Denmark--Death of Ludwig David-- Stockholm.
Among my many good comrades, there was one, Julius Lange, with whom comradeship had developed into friendship, and this friendship again assumed a passionate character. We were the two, who, of them all, were most exactly suited to one another, completed one another. Fundamentally different though we were, we could always teach each other something. We grew indispensable to one another; for years there seldom a day went by that we did not meet. The association with his junior cannot possibly have given Julius Lange a delight corresponding to that which his society gave me. Intellectually equal, we were of temperaments diametrically opposed. Having the same love of Art and the same enthusiasm for Art,--save that the one cared more for its pictorial and the other for its literary expression,--we were of mutual assistance to one another in the interchange of thoughts and information. Entirely at variance in our attitude towards religious tradition, in our frequent collisions we were both perpetually being challenged to a critical inspection of our intellectual furniture. But I was the one who did the worshipping.
When Julius Lange, on December 17, 1861, after having twice been to see me and found me out, the third time met with me and informed me: "I have received an invitation to go to Italy on Saturday and be away five months," was, though surprised, exceedingly glad for my friend's sake, but at the same time I felt as if I had received a blow in the face. What would become of me, not only during the interval, but afterwards? Who could say whether Lange would ever come back, or whether he would not come back changed? How should I be able to endure my life! I should have to work tremendously hard, to be able to bear the loss of him. I could hardly understand how I should be able to exist when I could no longer, evening after evening, slip up to my friend's little room to sit there in calm, quiet contentment, seeing pictures and exchanging thoughts! It was as though a nerve had been cut. I only then realised that I had never loved any man so much. I had had four eyes; now I had only two again; I had had two brains; now I had only one; in my heart I had felt the happiness of two human beings; now only the melancholy of one was left behind.
There was not a painting, a drawing, a statue or a bas-relief in the galleries and museums of Copenhagen that we had not studied together and compared our impressions of. We had been to Thorwaldsen's Museum together, we went together to Bissen's studio, where in November, 1861, I met for the first time my subsequent friends, Vilhelm Bissen and Walter Runeberg. The memory of Julius Lange was associated in my mind with every picture of Hobbema, Dubbels or Ruysdael, Rembrandt or Rubens, every reproduction of Italian Renaissance art, every photograph of church or castle. And I myself loved pictures even more ardently than poetry. I was fond of comparing my relations with literature to affection for a being of the same sex; my passion for pictures to the stormy passion of a youth for a woman. It is true that I knew much less about Art than about Poetry, but that made no difference. I worshipped my favourite artists with a more impetuous enthusiasm than any of my favourite authors. And this affection for pictures and statuary was a link between my friend and myself. When we were sitting in my room together, and another visitor happened to be there, I positively suffered over the sacrifice of an hour's enjoyment and when Lange got up to go, I felt as though a window had been slammed to, and the fresh air shut out.
I had for a long time pursued my non-juridic studies as well as I could without the assistance of a teacher. But I had felt the want of one. And when a newly appointed docent at the University, Professor H. Bröchner, offered instruction in the study of Philosophy to any who cared to present themselves at his house at certain hours, I had felt strongly tempted to take advantage of his offer. I hesitated for some time, for I was unwilling to give up the least portion of my precious freedom; I enjoyed my retirement, the mystery of my modest life of study, but on the other hand I could not grapple with Plato and Aristotle without the hints of a competent guide as to the why and wherefore.
I was greatly excited. I had heard Professor Bröchner speak on Psychology, but his diction was handled with such painful care, was so monotonous and sounded so strange, that it could not fail to alarm. It was only the professor's distinguished and handsome face that attracted me, and in particular his large, sorrowful eyes, with their beautiful expression, in which one read a life of deep research--and tears. Now, I determined to venture up to Bröchner. But I had not the courage to mention it to my mother beforehand, for fear speaking of it should frighten me from my resolution, so uneasy did I feel about the step I was taking. When the day which I had fixed upon for the attempt arrived --it was the 2nd of September, 1861,--I walked up and down in front of the house several times before I could make up my mind to go upstairs; I tried to calculate beforehand what the professor would say, and what it would be best for me to reply, interminably.
The tall, handsome man with the appearance of a Spanish knight, opened the door himself and received the young fellow who was soon to become his most intimate pupil, very kindly. To my amazement, as soon as he heard my name, he knew which school I had come from and also that I had recently become a student. He vigorously dissuaded me from going through a course of Plato and Aristotle, saying it would be too great a strain-- said, or implied, that I should be spared the difficult path he had himself traversed, and sketched out a plan of study of more modern Philosophy and Aesthetics. His manner inspired confidence and left behind it the main impression that he wished to save the beginner all useless exertion. All the same, with my youthful energy, I felt, as I went home, a shade disappointed that I was not to begin the History of Philosophy from the beginning.
My visit was soon repeated, and a most affectionate intimacy quickly sprang up between master and pupil, revealed on the side of the elder, in an attitude of fatherly goodwill to which the younger had hitherto been a stranger, the teacher, while instructing his pupil and giving him practical guidance, constantly keeping in view all that could further his well-being and assist his future; my attitude was one of reverence and affection, and of profound gratitude for the care of which I was the object.
I certainly, sometimes, in face of my master's great thoroughness and his skill in wrestling with the most difficult thoughts, felt a painful distrust of my own capacity and of my own intellectual powers, compared with his. I was also not infrequently vexed by a discordant note, as it were, being struck in our intercourse, when Bröchner, despite the doubts and objections I brought forward, always took it for granted that I shared his pantheistic opinions, without perceiving that I was still tossed about by doubts, and fumbling after a firm foothold. But the confidential terms upon which I was with the maturer man had an attraction for me which my intimacy with undecided and youthfully prejudiced comrades necessarily lacked; he had the experience of a lifetime behind him, he looked down from superior heights on the sympathies and antipathies of a young man.
To me, for instance, Ploug'sThe Fatherlandwas at that time Denmark's most intellectual organ, whereas Bille'sDaily Paperdisgusted me, more particularly on account of the superficiality and the tone of finality which distinguished its literary criticisms. Bröchner, who, with not unmixed benevolence, and without making any special distinction between the two, looked down on both these papers of the educated mediocrity, saw in his young pupil's bitterness against the trivial but useful little daily, only an indication of the quality of his mind. Bröchner's mere manner, as he remarked one day with a smile, "You do not readThe Daily Paperon principle," made me perceive in a flash the comicality of my indignation over such articles as it contained. My horizon was still sufficiently circumscribed for me to suppose that the state of affairs in Copenhagen was, in and of itself, of importance. I myself regarded my horizon as wide. One day, when making a mental valuation of myself, I wrote, with the naïveté of nineteen, "My good qualities, those which will constitute my personality, if I ever become of any account, are a mighty and ardent enthusiasm, a thorough authority in the service of Truth,a wide horizonand philosophically trained thinking powers. These must make up for my lack of humour and facility."
It was only several years after the beginning of our acquaintance that I felt myself in essential agreement with Hans Bröchner. I had been enraptured by a study of Ludwig Feuerbach's books, for Feuerbach was the first thinker in whose writings I found the origin of the idea of God in the human mind satisfactorily explained. In Feuerbach, too, I found a presentment of ideas without circumlocution and without the usual heavy formulas of German philosophy, a conquering clarity, which had a very salutary effect on my own way of thinking and gave me a feeling of security. If for many years I had been feeling myself more conservative than my friend and master, there now came a time when in many ways I felt myself to be more liberal than he, with his mysterious life in the eternal realm of mind of which he felt himself to be a link.
I had not been studying Jurisprudence much more than a year before it began to weigh very heavily upon me. The mere sight of the long rows ofSchou's Ordinances, which filled the whole of the back of my writing-table, were a daily source of vexation. I often felt that I should not be happy until the Ordinances were swept from my table. And the lectures were always so dreary that they positively made me think of suicide--and I so thirsty of life!--as a final means of escape from the torment of them. I felt myself so little adapted to the Law that I wasted my time with Hamlet-like cogitations as to how I could give up the study without provoking my parents' displeasure, and without stripping myself of all prospects for the future. And for quite a year these broodings grew, till they became a perfect nightmare to me.
I had taken a great deal of work upon myself; I gave lessons every day, that I might have a little money coming in, took lessons myself in several subjects, and not infrequently plunged into philosophical works of the past, that were too difficult for me, such as the principal works of Kant. Consequently when I was nineteen, I begun to feel my strength going. I felt unwell, grew nervous, had a feeling that I could not draw a deep breath, and when I was twenty my physical condition was a violent protest against overwork. One day, while reading Kant'sKritik der Urteilskraft, I felt so weak that I was obliged to go to the doctor. The latter recommended physical exercises and cold shower-baths.
The baths did me good, and I grew so accustomed to them that I went on taking them and have done so ever since. I did my gymnastic exercises with a Swede named Nycander, who had opened an establishment for Swedish gymnastics in Copenhagen.
There I met, amongst others, the well-known Icelandic poet and diplomatist, Grimur Thomsen, who bore the title of Counsellor of Legation. His compatriots were very proud of him. Icelandic students declared that Grimur possessed twelve dress shirts, three pairs of patent leather boots, and had embraced a marchioness in Paris. At gymnastics, Grimur Thomsen showed himself audacious and not seldom coarse in what he said and hinted. It is true that by reason of my youth I was very susceptible and took offence at things that an older man would have heard without annoyance.
I continued to be physically far from strong. Mentally, I worked indefatigably. The means of deciding the study question that, after long reflection, seemed to me most expedient, was this: I would compete for one of the University prizes, either the aesthetic or the philosophical, and then, if I won the gold medal, my parents and others would see that if I broke with the Law it was not from idleness, but because I really had talents in another direction.
As early as 1860 I had cast longing eyes at the prize questions that had been set, and which hung up in the Entrance Hall of the University. But none of them were suited to me. In 1861 I made up my mind to attempt a reply, even if the questions in themselves should not be attractive.
There was amongst them one on the proper correlation between poetic fiction and history in the historical romances. The theme in itself did not particularly fascinate me; but I was not ignorant of the subject, and it was one that allowed of being looked at in a wide connection, i.e., the claims of the subject as opposed to the imagination of the artist, in general. I was of opinion that just as in sculpture the human figure should not be represented with wings, but the conception of its species be observed, so the essential nature of a past age should be unassailed in historic fiction. Throughout numerous carefully elaborated abstractions, extending over 120 folio pages, and in which I aimed at scientific perspicuity, I endeavoured to give a soundly supported theory of the limits of inventive freedom in Historical Romance. The substructure was so painstaking that it absorbed more than half of the treatise. Quite apart from the other defects of this tyro handiwork, it lauded and extolled an aesthetic direction opposed to that of both the men who were to adjudicate upon it. Hegel was mentioned in it as "The supreme exponent of Aesthetics, a man whose imposing greatness it is good to bow before." I likewise held with his emancipated pupil, Fr. Th. Vischer, and vindicated him. Of Danish thinkers, J.L. Heiberg and S. Kierkegaard were almost the only ones discussed.
Heiberg was certainly incessantly criticised, but was treated with profound reverence and as a man whose slightest utterance was of importance. Sibbern's artistic and philosophical researches, on the other hand, were quite overlooked, indeed sometimes Vischer was praised as being the first originator of psychological developments, which Sibbern had suggested many years before him. I had, for that matter, made a very far from sufficient study of Sibbern's researches, which were, partly, not systematic enough for me, and partly had repelled me by the peculiar language in which they were couched.
Neither was it likely that this worship of Heiberg, which undeniably peeped out through all the proofs of imperfections and self- contradictions in him, would appeal to Hauch.
When I add that the work was youthfully doctrinaire, in language not fresh, and that in its skeleton-like thinness it positively tottered under the weight of its definitions, it is no wonder that it did not win the prize. The verdict passed upon it was to the effect that the treatise was thorough in its way, and that it would have been awarded the prize had the question asked been that of determining the correlation between History and Fiction in general, but that under the circumstances it dwelt too cursorily on Romance and was only deemed deserving of "a very honourable mention."
Favourable as this result was, it was nevertheless a blow to me, who had made my plans for the following years dependent on whether I won the prize or not. Julius Lange, who knocked at my door one evening to tell me the result, was the witness of my disappointment. "I can understand," he said, "that you should exclaim:'Oleum et operam perdidi!', but you must not give up hope for so little. It is a good thing that you prohibited the opening of the paper giving your name in the event of the paper not winning the prize, for no one will trouble their heads about the flattering criticism and an honourable mention would only harm you in People's eyes; it would stamp you with the mark of mediocrity."
The anonymous recipient of the honourable mention nevertheless determined to call upon his judges, make their acquaintance, and let them know who he was.
I went first to Hauch, who resided at that time at Frederiksberg Castle, in light and lofty rooms. Hauch appeared exaggeratedly obliging, the old man of seventy and over paying me, young man as I was, one compliment after the other. The treatise was "extraordinarily good," they had been very sorry not to give me the prize; but I was not to bear them any ill- will for that; they had acted as their consciences dictated. In eighteen months I should be ready to take my Magister examination; the old poet thought he might venture to prophesy that I should do well. He was surprised at his visitor's youth, could hardly understand how at my age I could have read and thought so much, and gave me advice as to the continuation of my studies.
Sibbern was as cordial as Hauch had been polite and cautious. It was very funny that, whereas Hauch remarked that he himself had wished to give me the prize with analthoughin the criticism, but that Sibbern had been against it, Sibbern declared exactly the reverse; in spite of all its faults he had wanted to award the medal, but Hauch had expressed himself adverse. Apparently they had misunderstood one another; but in any case the result was just, so there was nothing to complain of.
Sibbern went into the details of the treatise, and was stricter than Hauch. He regretted that the main section of the argument was deficient; the premises were too prolix. He advised a more historic, less philosophical study of Literature and Art. He was pleased to hear of the intimate terms I was on with Bröchner, whereas Hauch would have preferred my being associated with Rasmus Nielsen, whom he jestingly designated "a regular brown-bread nature." When the treatise was given back to me, I found it full of apt and instructive marginal notes from Sibbern's hand.
Little as I had gained by my unsuccessful attempt to win this prize, and unequivocally as my conversation with the practical Sibbern had proved to me that a post as master in my mother tongue at a Grammar-school was all that the Magister degree in Aesthetics was likely to bring me, whereas from my childhood I had made up my mind that I would never be a master in a school, this conversation nevertheless ripened my determination to give up my law studies, but of course only when by successfully competing for the prize the next year I had satisfactorily proved my still questionable ability.
The Meeting of Scandinavian students at Copenhagen in June, 1862, taught me what it meant to be a Scandinavian. Like all the other undergraduates, I was Scandinavian at heart, and the arrangements of the Meeting were well calculated to stir the emotions of youth. Although, an insignificant Danish student, I did not take part in the expedition to North Zealand specially arranged for our guests, consequently neither was present at the luncheon given by Frederik VII to the students at Fredensborg (which was interrupted by a heavy shower), I was nevertheless deeply impressed by the Meeting.
It was a fine sight to behold the students from the three other Scandinavian Universities come sailing across the Sound from Malmö to Copenhagen. The Norwegians were especially striking, tall and straight, with narrow faces under tasseled caps, like a wood of young fir trees; the national type was so marked that at first I could hardly see any difference between them.
For me, there were three perfect moments during the festivities. The first was at the meeting of all the students in the Square of Our Lady, after the arrival of the visitors, when the scholars of the Metropolitan School, crowding the windows of the building, greeted them with a shout of delight. There was such a freshness, such a childish enthusiasm about it, that some of us had wet eyes. It was as though the still distant future were acclaiming the young ones now advancing to the assault, and promising them sympathy and conquest.
The second was when the four new flags embroidered by Danish ladies for the students were consecrated and handed over. Clausen's speech was full of grandeur, and addressed, not to the recipients, but to the flags as living beings: "Thou wilt cross the Baltic to the sanctuary at Upsala. Thou wilt cross the Cattegat to the land of rocks...." and the address to each of the flags concluded: "Fortune and Honour attend thee!" The evening after the consecration of the flags, there was a special performance at the Royal Theatre for the members of the Meeting, at which Heiberg, radiant as she always was, and saluted with well-merited enthusiasm, playedSophiein the vaudeville "No," with a rosette of the Scandinavian colours at her waist. Then it was that Paludan-Müller's prologue, recited by our idolised actor, Michael Wiehe, caused me the third thrilling moment. Listening to the words of the poet from a bad place in the gallery, I was hardly the only one who felt strangely stirred, as Wiehe, letting his eyes roam round the theatre, said:
Oh! that the young of the North might one day worthily playTheir part! Oh that each one might do his bestFor the party he has chosen! That never there be lackOf industry, fidelity, strength and talents!And may he firm step forth, the mighty genius(Mayhap, known only to the secret power within him,Seated amongst us now), the mighty genius,Who, as Fate hath willed it, is to playThe mighty part and do the mighty things.
Involuntarily we looked round, seeking for the one to whom the poet's summons referred.
The general spirit of this Meeting has been called flat in comparison with that pervading former meetings. It did not strike the younger participants so. A breath of Scandinavianism swept over every heart; one felt borne along on a historic stream. It seemed like a bad dream that the peoples of the North had for so many centuries demolished and laid waste each other, tapped one another for blood and gold, rendered it impossible for the North to assert herself and spread her influence in Europe.
One could feel at the Meeting, though very faintly, that the Swedes and Norwegians took more actual pleasure in each other, and regarded themselves as to a greater extent united than either of them looked upon themselves as united with the Danes, who were outside the political Union. I was perhaps the only Dane present who fancied I detected this, but when I mentioned what I thought I observed to a gifted young Norwegian, so far was he from contradicting me that he merely replied: "Have you noticed that, too?"
Notwithstanding, during the whole of the Meeting, one constantly heard expressed on every hand the conviction that if Germany were shortly to declare war against Denmark--which no one doubted--the Swedes and Norwegians would most decidedly not leave the Danes in the lurch. The promise was given oftener than it was asked. Only, of course, it was childish on the part of those present at the Meeting to regard such promises, given by the leaders of the students, and by the students themselves in festive mood, as binding on the nations and their statesmen.
I did not make any intellectually inspiring acquaintances through the Meeting, although I was host to two Upsala students; neither of them, however, interested me. I got upon a friendly footing through mutual intellectual interests with Carl von Bergen, later so well known as an author, he, like myself, worshipping philosophy and hoping to contribute to intellectual progress. Carl von Bergen was a self-confident, ceremonious Swede, who had read a great many books. At that time he was a new Rationalist, which seemed to promise one point of interest in common; but he was a follower of the Boström philosophy, and as such an ardent Theist. At this point we came into collision, my researches and reflections constantly tending to remove me farther from a belief in any God outside the world, so that after the Meeting Carl von Bergen and I exchanged letters on Theism and Pantheism, which assumed the width and thickness of treatises. For very many years the Swedish essayist and I kept up a friendly, though intermittent intercourse. Meanwhile von Bergen, whose good qualities included neither character nor originality, inclined, as years went on, more and more towards Conservatism, and at forty years old he had attained to a worship of what he had detested, and a detestation of what he had worshipped. His vanity simultaneously assumed extraordinary proportions. In a popular Encyclopaedia, which he took over when the letter B was to be dealt with, and, curiously enough, disposed of shortly afterwards,von Bergenwas treated no less in detail thanBuonaparte. He did battle with some of the best men and women in Sweden, such as Ellen Key and Knut Wicksell, who did not fail to reply to him. When in 1889 his old friend from the Students' Meeting gave some lectures on Goethe in Stockholm, he immediately afterwards directed some poor opposition lectures against him, which neither deserved nor received any reply. It had indeed become a specialty of his to give "opposition lectures." When he died, some few years later, what he had written was promptly forgotten.
There was another young Swedish student whom I caught a glimpse of for the first time at the Students' Meeting, towards whom I felt more and more attracted, and who eventually became my friend. This was the darling of the gods, Carl Snoilsky. At a fête in Rosenborg Park, amongst the songs was one which, with my critical scent, I made a note of. It was by the then quite unknown young Count Snoilsky, and it was far from possessing the rare qualities, both of pith and form, that later distinguished his poetry; but it was a poet's handiwork, a troubadour song to the Danish woman, meltingly sweet, and the writer of it was a youth of aristocratic bearing, regular, handsome features, and smooth brown hair, a regular Adonis. The following year he came again, drawn by strong cords to Christian Winther's home, loving the old poet like a son, as Swinburne loved Victor Hugo, sitting at Mistress Julie Winther's feet in affectionate admiration and semi-adoration, although she was half a century old and treated him as a mother does a favourite child.
It was several years, however, before there was any actual friendship between the Swedish poet and myself. He called upon me one day in my room in Copenhagen, looking exceedingly handsome in a tight-fitting waistcoat of blue quilted silk. In the absence of the Swedo-Norwegian Ambassador, he was Chargé d'Affaires in Copenhagen, after, in his capacity as diplomatic attaché, having been stationed in various parts of the world and, amongst others, for some time in Paris. He could have no warmer admirer of his first songs than myself, and we very frequently spent our evenings together in Bauer's wine room--talking over everything in Scandinavian, English, or French literature which both of us had enthusiastically and critically read. On many points our verdicts were agreed.
There came a pause in Snoilsky's productive activity; he was depressed. It was generally said, although it sounded improbable, that he had had to promise his wife's relations to give up publishing verse, they regarding it as unfitting the dignity of a noble. In any case, he was at that time suffering under a marriage that meant to him the deprivation of the freedom without which it was impossible to write. Still, he never mentioned these strictly personal matters. But one evening that we were together, Snoilsky was so overcome by the thought of his lack of freedom that tears suddenly began to run down his cheeks. He was almost incapable of controlling himself again, and when we went home together late at night, poured out a stream of melancholy, half-despairing remarks.
A good eighteen months later we met again in Stockholm; Snoilsky was dignified and collected. But when, a few years later, so-called public opinion in Sweden began to rave against the poet for the passion for his second wife which so long made him an exile from his country, I often thought of that evening.
As years passed by, his outward bearing became more and more reserved and a trifle stiff, but he was the same at heart, and no one who had known him in the heyday of his youth could cease to love him.
A month after the Students' Meeting, at the invitation of my friend Jens Paludan-Müller, I spent a few weeks at his home at Nykjöbing, in the island of Falster, where his father, Caspar Paludan-Müller, the historian, was at the time head master of the Grammar-school. Those were rich and beautiful weeks, which I always remembered later with gratitude.
The stern old father with his leonine head and huge eyebrows impressed one by his earnestness and perspicacity, somewhat shut off from the world as he was by hereditary deafness. The dignified mistress of the house likewise belonged to a family that had made its name known in Danish literature. She was a Rosenstand-Göiske. Jens was a cordial and attentive host, the daughters were all of them women out of the ordinary, and bore the impress of belonging to a family of the highest culture in the country; the eldest was womanly and refined, the second, with her Roman type of beauty and bronze-coloured head, lovely in a manner peculiarly her own; the youngest, as yet, was merely an amiable young girl. The girls would have liked to get away from the monotony of provincial life, and their release came when their father was appointed to a professorship at Copenhagen University. There was an ease of manner and a tone of mental distinction pervading the whole family. Two young, handsome Counts Reventlow were being brought up in the house, still only half-grown boys at that time, but who were destined later to win honourable renown. One of them, the editor of his ancestress's papers, kept up his acquaintance with the guest he had met in the Paludan-Müller home for over forty years.
There often came to the house a young Dane from Caracas in Venezuela, of unusual, almost feminine beauty, with eyes to haunt one's dreams. He played uncommonly well, was irresistibly gentle and emotional. After a stay of a few years in Denmark he returned to his native place. The previously mentioned Grönbeck, with his pretty sister, and other young people from the town, were frequent guests during the holidays, and the days passed in games, music, wanderings about the garden, and delightful excursions to the woods.
On every side I encountered beauty of some description. I said to Jens one day: "One kind of beauty is the glow which the sun of Youth casts over the figure, and it vanishes as soon as the sun sets. Another is stamped into shape from within; it is Mind's expression, and will remain as long as the mind remains vigorous. But the supremest beauty of all is in the unison of the two harmonies, which are contending for existence. In the bridal night of this supremest beauty, Mind and Nature melt into one."
A few years later the old historian was called upon to publish the little book on Gulland, with its short biography prefixed, as a memorial to his only son, fallen at Sankelmark, and again, a few years later, to edit Frederik Nutzhorn's translation of Apuleius in memory of his son's friend, his elder daughter's fiancé. During the preparation of these two little books, our relations became more intimate, and our friendship continued unbroken until in the month of February, 1872, a remark in one of my defensive articles caused him to take up his pen against me. My remark was to the effect that there were men of the same opinions as myself even among the priests of the established church. Caspar Paludan- Müller declared it my public duty to mention of whom I was thinking at the time, since such a traitor was not to be tolerated in the lap of the Church. As I very naturally did not wish to play the part of informer, I incurred, by my silence, the suspicion of having spoken without foundation. The Danish man whom I had in my thoughts, and who had confided his opinions to me, was still alive at the time. This was the late Dean Ussing, at one time priest at Mariager, a man of an extraordinarily refined and amiable disposition, secretly a convinced adherent of Ernest Renan. A Norwegian priest, who holds the same opinions, is still living.
In August, 1863, on a walking tour through North Sjaelland, Julius Lange introduced me to his other celebrated uncle, Frederik Paludan-Müller, whose Summer residence was at Fredensborg. In appearance he was of a very different type from his brother Caspar. The distinguishing mark of the one was power, of the other, nobility. For Frederik Paludan-Müller as a poet I cherished the profoundest admiration. He belonged to the really great figures of Danish literature, and his works had so fed and formed my inmost nature that I should scarcely be the same had I not read them. It was unalloyed happiness to have access to his house and be allowed to enjoy his company. It was a distinction to be one of the few he vouchsafed to take notice of and one of the fewer still in whose future he interested himself. Do the young men of Denmark to-day, I wonder, admire creative intellects as they were admired by some few of us then? It is in so far hardly possible, since there is not at the present time any Northern artist with such a hall-mark of refined delicacy as Frederik Paludan-Müller possessed.
The young people who came to his house might have wished him a younger, handsomer wife, and thought his choice, Mistress Charite, as, curiously enough, she was called, not quite worthy of the poet. Unjustly so, since he himself was perfectly satisfied with her, and was apparently wholly absorbed by a union which had had its share in isolating him from the world. His wife was even more theologically inclined than himself, and appeared anonymously--without anyone having a suspicion of the fact--as a religious authoress. Still, she was exceedingly kind to anyone, regardless of their private opinions, who had found favour in the poet's eyes.
The dry little old lady was the only one of her sex with whom Paludan- Müller was intimate. He regarded all other women, however young and beautiful, as mere works of art. But his delight in them was charming in him, just because of its freedom from sense. One evening that he was giving a little banquet in honour of a Swedish lady painter, named Ribbing, a woman of rare beauty, he asked her to stand by the side of the bust of the Venus of Milo, that the resemblance, which really existed between them, might be apparent. His innocent, enthusiastic delight in the likeness was most winning.
Two other celebrated personages whom I met for the first time a little later were Björnstjerne Björnson and Magdalene Thoresen.
I became acquainted with Björnstjerne Björnson at the Nutzhorns, their son, Ditlev, being a passionate admirer of his. HisKing Sverreof 1861 had been a disappointment, butSigurd Slembeof the following year was new and great poetry, and fascinated young people's minds. Björnson, socially, as in literature, was a strong figure, self- confident, loud-voiced, outspoken, unique in all that he said, and in the weight which he knew how to impart to all his utterances. His manner jarred a little on the more subdued Copenhagen style; the impression he produced was that of a great, broad-shouldered, and very much spoilt child. In the press, all that he wrote and did was blazoned abroad by the leading critics of the day, who had a peculiar, challenging way of praising Björnson, although his ability was not seriously disputed by anyone. The National Liberal Leaders, Alfred Hage, Carl Ploug, etc., had opened their hearts and houses to him. It is said that at one time Heiberg had held back; the well-bred old man, a little shocked by the somewhat noisy ways of the young genius, is said to have expressed to his friend Krieger some scruples at inviting him to his house. To Krieger's jesting remark: "What does it matter! He is a young man; let him rub off his corners!" Heiberg is credited with having replied: "Very true! Let him! but not in my drawing-room! That is not a place where people may rub anything off." Heiberg's wife, on the other hand, admired him exceedingly, and was undoubtedly very much fascinated by him.
In a circle of younger people, Björnson was a better talker than conversationalist. Sometimes he came out with decidedly rash expressions of opinion, conclusively dismissing a question, for instance, with severe verdicts over Danish music, Heyse's excepted, judgments which were not supported by sufficient knowledge of the subject at issue. But much of what he said revealed the intellectual ruler, whose self- confidence might now and again irritate, but at bottom was justified. He narrated exceptionally well, with picturesque adjectives, long remembered in correct Copenhagen, spoke of theyellowhowl of wolves, and the like. Take it all in all, his attitude was that of a conqueror.
He upheld poetry that was actual and palpable, consequently had little appreciation for poetry, that, like Paludan-Müller's, was the perfection of thought and form, and boldly disapproved of my admiration for it.
It was likewise through Frederik Nutzhorn that I, when a young beginner in the difficult art of life, became acquainted with Madame Magdalene Thoresen. Our first conversation took place in the open air one Summer day, at the Klampenborg bathing establishment. Although Magdalene Thoresen was at that time at least forty-six years old, her warm, brownish complexion could well stand inspection in the strongest light. Her head, with its heavy dark hair, was Southern in its beauty, her mouth as fresh as a young girl's; she had brilliant and very striking eyes. Her figure was inclined to be corpulent, her walk a trifle heavy, her bearing and movements full of youth and life.
She was remarkably communicative, open and warmhearted, with a propensity towards considerable extravagance of speech. Originally incited thereto by Björnson's peasant stories, she had then published her first tales,The Student and Signe's Story, which belonged, half to Norwegian, half to Danish literature, and had been well received. She was the daughter of a fisherman at Fredericia, and after having known both the buffets and the smiles of Fortune, had come to be on terms of friendship with many men and women of importance, now belonging to the recognised personalities of the day. She was also very well received and much appreciated in the Heiberg circle.
In comparison with her, a woman, I might have been called erudite and well-informed. Her own knowledge was very desultory. She was interested in me on account of my youth, and her warm interest attached me to her for the next five years,--as long, that is, as she remained in Denmark. She very soon began to confide in me, and although she scarcely did so unreservedly, still, no woman, at least no mature and gifted woman, had told me so much about herself before. She was a woman who had felt strongly and thought much; she had lived a rich, and eventful life; but all that had befallen her she romanticised. Her poetic tendency was towards the sublime. She was absolutely veracious, and did not really mean to adorn her tales, but partly from pride, partly from whimsicality, she saw everything, from greatest to least, through beautifully coloured magnifying-glasses, so that a translation of her communications into every-day language became a very difficult matter, and when an every-day occurrence was suspected through the narrative, the same could not be reproduced in an every-day light, and according to an every-day standard, without wounding the narrator to the quick. For these reasons I never ventured to include among my Collected Essays a little biographical sketch of her (written just as she herself had idealised its events to me), one of the first articles I had printed.
She saw strong natures, rich and deep natures, in lives that were meagre or unsuccessful. Again, from lack of perspicacity, she sometimes saw nothing but inefficiency in people with wide intellectual gifts; thus, she considered that her son-in-law, Henrik Ibsen, who at that time had not become either known or celebrated, had very imperfect poetic gifts. "What he writes is as flat as a drawing," she would say. Or she would remark: "He ought to be more than a collaborator of Kierkegaard." It was only much later that she discovered his genius. Björnson, on the other hand, she worshipped with an enthusiastic love; it was a trouble to her that just about this time he had become very cool to her.
Vague feelings did not repel her, but all keen and pointed intelligence did. She was wholly and entirely romantic. Gallicism she objected to; the clarity of the French seemed to her superficial; she saw depth in the reserved and taciturn Northern, particularly the Norwegian, nature. She had groped her way forward for a long time without realising what her gifts really were. Her husband, who had done all he could to assist her education, had even for a time imagined, and perhaps persuaded her, that her gifts lay in the direction of Baggesen's. Now, however, she had found her vocation and her path in literature.
On all questions of thought, pure and simple, she was extremely vague. She was a Christian and a Heathen with equal sincerity, a Christian with her overflowing warm-heartedness, with her honest inclination to believe, a Heathen in her averseness to any negation of either life or Nature. She used to say that she loved Christ and Eros equally, or rather, that to her, they both meant the same. To her, Christianity was the new, the modern, in contrast to the rationalism of a past age, so that Christianity and modern views of life in general merged in her eyes into one unity.
Hers was a deeply feminine nature, and a productive nature. Her fertile character was free from all taint of over-estimation of herself. She only revealed a healthy and pleasing self-satisfaction when she imagined that some person wished to set up himself or herself over her and misjudge acts or events in her life with respect to which she considered herself the only person qualified to judge. At such times she would declare in strong terms that by her own unassisted strength she had raised herself from a mean and unprotected position to the level of the best men and women of her day. Herself overflowing with emotion, and of a noble disposition, she craved affection and goodwill, and gave back a hundredfold what she received. If she felt herself the object of cold and piercing observation, she would be silent and unhappy, but if she herself were at ease and encountered no coolness, she was all geniality and enthusiasm, though not to such an extent that her enthusiasm ceased to be critical.
She could over-value and under-value people, but was at the same time a keen, in fact a marvellous psychologist, and sometimes astonished one by the pertinent things she said, surprising one by her accurate estimate of difficult psychological cases. For instance, she understood as few others did the great artist, the clever coquette, and the old maid in Heiberg's wife, the actress.
She had no moral prejudices, and had writtenSigne's Storyas a protest against conventional morality; but she was none the less thoroughly permeated by Christian and humane ideas of morality, and there was no element of rebellion in her disposition.
On the whole, she was more a woman than an authoress. Her nature was tropical in comparison with Mrs. Charite Paludan-Müller's North Pole nature. She lived, not in a world of ideas remote from reality, but in a world of feeling and passion, full of affection and admiration, jealousy and dislike. Being a woman, she was happy at every expression of pleasure over one of her books that she heard or read of, and liked to fancy that the solitary young man who sent her an enthusiastic letter of thanks was only one of hundreds who thought as he did. Like a woman, also, she was hurt by indifference, which, however, her warm heart rarely encountered.
This richly endowed woman made me appear quite new to myself, inasmuch as, in conversations with my almost maternal friend, I began to think I was of a somewhat cold nature, a nature which in comparison with hers seemed rather dry, unproductive and unimaginative, a creature with thoughts ground keen.
Magdalene Thoresen compared me one day to an unlighted glass candelabra, hanging amid several others all lighted up, which had the gleam of the fire on the countless facets of its crystals, but was itself nothing but cold, smooth, polished, prisms.
Thus during my association with Magdalene Thoresen I came to regard myself in a new light, when I saw myself with her eyes, and I was struck more than ever by how different the verdicts over me would be were my various friends and acquaintances each to describe me is I appeared to them. To Magdalene Thoresen I was all mind, to others all passion, to others again all will. At the Nutzhorns' I went by the name of the modest B., elsewhere I was deemed conceitedly ambitious, some people thought me of a mild temper, others saw in me a quarrelsome unbeliever.
All this was a challenge to me to come to a clear understanding about my real nature. The fruits of my work must show me what sort of man I was.
I continued my legal studies with patient persistence, and gradually, after having made myself master of Civil Proceedings, I worked my way through the whole of the juridic system, Roman Law excluded. But the industry devoted to this was purely mechanical. I pursued my other studies, on the contrary, with delight, even tried to produce something myself, and during the last months of 1862 elaborated a very long paper onRomeo and Juliet, chiefly concerning itself with the fundamental problems of the tragedy, as interpreted in the Aesthetics of the day; it has been lost, like so much else that I wrote during those years. I sent it to Professor Bröchner and asked his opinion of it.
Simultaneously I began to work upon a paper on the Idea of Fate in Greek Tragedy, a response to the Prize question of the year 1862-1863, and on December 31, 1862, had finished the Introduction, which was published for the first time about six years later, under the titleThe Idea of Tragic Fate. Appended to this was a laborious piece of work dealing with the conceptions of Fate recorded in all the Greek tragedies that have come down to us. This occupied the greater part of the next six months.
The published Introduction gives a true picture of the stage of my development then, partly because it shows the manner in which I had worked together external influences, the Kierkegaardian thoughts and the Hegelian method, partly because with no little definiteness it reveals a fundamental characteristic of my nature and a fundamental tendency of my mind, since it is, throughout, a protest against the ethical conception of poetry and is a proof of how moral ideas, when they become part of an artistic whole, lose their peculiar stamp and assume another aspect.
In November, 1862, I joined a very large recently started undergraduates' society, which met once a fortnight at Borch's College to hear lectures and afterwards discuss them together. It numbered full fifty members, amongst them most of the men of that generation who afterwards distinguished themselves in Denmark. The later known politician, Octavius Hansen, was Speaker of the Meetings, and even then seemed made for the post. His parliamentary bearing was unrivalled. It was not for nothing he was English on the mother's side. He looked uncommonly handsome on the platform, with his unmoved face, his beautiful eyes, and his brown beard, curled like that of Pericles in the Greek busts. He was good-humoured, just, and well-informed. Of the numerous members, Wilhelm Thomsen the philologist was certainly the most prominent, and the only one whom I later on came to value, that is, for purely personal reasons; in daily association it was only once in a way that Thomsen could contribute anything from his special store of knowledge. One day, when we had been discussing the study of cuneiform inscriptions, the young philologist had said, half in jest, half in earnest: "If a stone were to fall down from the Sun with an inscription in unknown signs, in an unknown language, upon it, we should be able to make it out,"--a remark which I called to mind many years later when Thomsen deciphered the Ancient Turkish inscriptions in the Mountains of Siberia.
A great many political lectures were given. I gave one on Heiberg's Aesthetics.
On January 1, 1863, I received a New Year's letter from Bröchner, in which he wrote that the essay on Romeo and Juliet had so impressed him that, in his opinion, no one could dispute my fitness to fill the Chair of Aesthetics, which in the nature of things would soon be vacant, since Hauch, at his advanced age, could hardly continue to occupy it very long.
Thus it was that my eager patron first introduced what became a wearisome tangle, lasting a whole generation, concerning my claims to a certain post, which gradually became in my life what the French callune scie, an irritating puzzle, in which I myself took no part, but which attached itself to my name.
That letter agitated me very much; not because at so young an age the prospect of an honourable position in society was held out to me by a man who was in a position to judge of my fitness for it, but because this smiling prospect of an official post was in my eyes a snare which might hold me so firmly that I should not be able to pursue the path of renunciation that alone seemed to me to lead to my life's goal. I felt myself an apostle, but an apostle and a professor were, very far apart. I certainly remembered that the Apostle Paul had been a tent-maker. But I feared that, once appointed, I should lose my ideal standard of life and sink down into insipid mediocrity. If I once deviated from my path, I might not so easily find it again. It was more difficult to resign a professorship than never to accept it. And, once a professor, a man soon got married and settled down as a citizen of the state, not in a position to dare anything. To dispose of my life at Bröchner's request would be like selling my soul to the Devil.
So I replied briefly that I was too much attached to Hauch to be able or willing to speculate on his death. But to this Bröchner very logically replied: "I am not speculating on his death, but on his life, for the longer he lives, the better you will be prepared to be his successor."
By the middle of June, 1863, the prize paper was copied out. In September the verdict was announced; the gold medal was awarded to me with a laudatory criticism. The gold medal was also won by my friend Jens Paludan-Müller for a historic paper, and in October, at the annual Ceremony at the University, we were presented with the thin medal bearing the figure of Athene, which, for my part, being in need of a Winter overcoat, I sold next day. Clausen, the Rector, a little man with regular features, reserved face and smooth white hair, said to us that he hoped this might prove the first fruits of a far-reaching activity in the field of Danish literature. But what gave me much greater pleasure was that I was shaken hands with by Monrad, who was present as Minister for Education. Although Clausen was well known, both as a theologian and an important National Liberal, I cared nothing for him. But I was a little proud of Monrad's hand-pressure, for his political liberality, and especially his tremendous capacity for work, compelled respect, while from his handsome face with its thoughtful, commanding forehead, there shone the evidence of transcendent ability.