Chapter 13

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 call _une 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.

XII.

On the morning of November 15th, 1863, Julius Lange and I went together to offer our congratulations to Frederik Nutzhorn, whose birthday it was. His sisters received me with their usual cheerfulness, but their father, the old doctor, remarked as I entered: "You come with grave thoughts in your mind, too," for the general uneasiness occasioned by Frederik VII's state of health was reflected in my face. There was good reason for anxiety concerning all the future events of which an unfavourable turn of his illness might be the signal.

I went home with Julius Lange, who read a few wild fragments of his "System" to me. This turned upon the contrasting ideas of _Contemplation_ and _Sympathy_, corresponding to the inhaling and exhaling of the breath; the resting-point of the breathing was the moment of actual consciousness, etc.; altogether very young, curious, and confused.

In the afternoon came the news of the King's death. In the evening, at the Students' Union, there was great commotion and much anxiety. There were rumours of a change of Ministry, of a Bluhme-David-Ussing Ministry, and of whether the new King would be willing to sign the Constitution from which people childishly expected the final incorporation of Slesvig into Denmark. That evening I made the acquaintance of the poet Christian Richardt, who told me that he had noticed my face before he knew my name. Julius Lange was exceedingly exasperated and out of spirits. Ploug went down the stairs looking like a man whose hopes had been shattered, and whom the blow had found unprepared. His paper had persistently sown distrust of the Prince of Denmark.

The Proclamation was to take place in front of Christiansborg Castle on December 16th, at 11 o'clock. I was fetched to it by a student of the same age, the present Bishop Frederik Nielsen. The latter had made my acquaintance when a Free-thinker, but fortunately he recognised his errors only a very few years later, and afterwards the valiant theologian wrote articles and pamphlets against the heretic he had originally cultivated for holding the same opinions as himself. There is hardly anyone in Denmark who persists in error; people recognise their mistakes in time, before they have taken harm to their souls; sometimes, indeed, so much betimes that they are not even a hindrance to their worldly career.

The space in front of the Castle was black with people, most of whom were in a state of no little excitement. Hall, who was then Prime Minister, stepped out on the balcony of the castle, grave and upright, and said, first standing with his back to the Castle, then looking to the right and the left, these words: "King Frederik VII is dead. Long live King Christian IX!"

Then the King came forward. There were loud shouts, doubtless some cries of "Long live the King," but still more and louder shouts of: "The Constitution forever!" which were by no means loyally intended. At a distance, from the Castle balcony, the different shouts could, of course, not be distinguished. As the King took them all to be shouts of acclamation, he bowed politely several times, and as the shouts continued kissed his hand to right and left. The effect was not what he had intended. His action was not understood as a simple-hearted expression of pure good-will. People were used to a very different bearing on the part of their King. With all his faults and foibles, Frederik VII was always in manner the Father of his people; always the graceful superior; head up and shoulders well back, patronisingly and affectionately waving his hand: "Thank you, my children, thank you! And now go home and say 'Good-morning' to your wives and children from the King!" One could not imagine Frederik VII bowing to the people, much less kissing his hand to them.

There was a stormy meeting of the Students' Union that evening. Vilhelm Rode made the principal speech and caustically emphasised that it took more than a "Kiss of the hand and a parade bow" to win the hearts of the Danish people. The new dynasty, the head of which had been abused for years by the National Liberal press, especially in _The Fatherland_, who had thrown suspicion of German sympathies on the heir-presumptive, was still so weak that none of the students thought it necessary to take much notice of the change of sovereigns that had taken place. This was partly because since Frederik VII's time people had been accustomed to indiscriminate free speech concerning the King's person--it was the fashion and meant nothing, as he was beloved by the body of the people--partly because what had happened was not regarded as irrevocable. All depended on whether the King signed the Constitution, and even the coolest and most conservative, who considered that his signing it would be a fatal misfortune, thought it possible that Christian IX. would be dethroned if he did not. So it is not difficult to form some idea of how the Hotspurs talked. The whole town was in a fever, and it was said that Prince Oscar was in Scania, ready at the first sign to cross the Sound and allow himself to be proclaimed King on behalf of Charles XV. Men with Scandinavian sympathies hoped for this solution, by means of which the three kingdoms would have been united without a blow being struck.

In the middle of the meeting, there arrived a message from Crone, the Head of Police, which was delivered verbally in this incredibly irregular form--that the Head of Police was as good a Scandinavian as anyone, but he begged the students for their own sakes to refrain from any kind of street disturbance that would oblige him to interfere.

I, who had stood on the open space in front of the Castle, lost in the crowd, and in the evening at the meeting of the students was auditor to the passionate utterances let fall there, felt my mood violently swayed, but was altogether undecided with regard to the political question, the compass of which I could not fully perceive. I felt anxious as to the attitude of foreign powers would be in the event of the signing of the Constitution. Old C.N. David had said in his own home that if the matter should depend on him, which, however, he hoped it would not, he would not permit the signing of the Constitution, were he the only man in Denmark of that way of thinking, since by so doing we should lose our guarantee of existence, and get two enemies instead of one, Russia as well as Germany.

The same evening I wrote down: "It is under such circumstances as these that one realises how difficult it is to lead a really ethical existence. I am not far-sighted enough to perceive what would be the results of that which to me seems desirable, and one cannot conscientiously mix one's self up in what one does not understand. Nevertheless, as I stood in the square in front of the Castle, I was so excited that I even detected in myself an inclination to come forward as a political speaker, greenhorn though I be."

XIII.

On the 18th of November, the fever in the town was at its height. From early in the morning the space in front of the Castle was crowded with people. Orla Lehmann, a Minister at the time, came out of the Castle, made his way through the crowd, and shouted again and again, first to one side, then to the other:

"He has signed! He has signed!"

He did not say: "The King."

The people now endured seven weeks of uninterrupted change and kaleidoscopic alteration of the political situation. Relations with all foreign powers, and even with Sweden and Norway, presented a different aspect to the Danish public every week. Sweden's withdrawal created a very bitter impression; the public had been induced to believe that an alliance was concluded. Then followed the "pressure" in Copenhagen by the emissaries of all the Powers, to induce the Government to recall the November Constitution, then the Czar's letter to the Duke of Augustenborg, finally the occupation of Holstein by German troops, with all the censure and disgrace that the Danish army had to endure, for Holstein was evacuated without a blow being struck, and the Duke, to the accompanyment of scorn and derision heaped on the Danes, was proclaimed in all the towns of Holstein.

On Christmas Eve came tidings of the convocation of the Senate, simultaneously with a change of Ministry which placed Monrad at the head of the country, and in connection with this a rumour that all young men of twenty-one were to be called out at once. This last proved to be incorrect, and the minds of the young men alternated between composure at the prospect of war and an enthusiastic desire for war, and a belief that there would be no war at all. The first few days in January, building on the rumour that the last note from England had promised help in the event of the Eider being passed, people began to hope that the war might be avoided, and pinned their faith to Monrad's dictatorship.

Frederik Nutzhorn, who did not believe there would be a war, started on a visit to Rome; Jens Paludan-Müller, who had been called out, was quartered at Rendsborg until the German troops marched in; Julius Lange, who, as he had just become engaged, did not wish to see his work interrupted and his future prospects delayed by the war, had gone to Islingen, where he had originally made the acquaintance of his fiancée. Under these circumstances, as a twenty-one-year-old student who had completed his university studies, I was anxious to get my examination over as quickly as possible. At the end of 1863 I wrote to my teacher, Professor Bröchner, who had promised me a short philosophical summary as a preparation for the University test: "I shall sit under a conjunction of all the most unfavourable circumstances possible, since for more than a month my head has been so full of the events of the day that I have been able neither to read nor think, while the time of the examination itself promises to be still more disquiet. Still, I dare not draw back, as I should then risk--which may possibly happen in any case--being hindered from my examination by being called out by the conscription and perhaps come to lie in my grave as _Studiosus_ instead of _candidatus magisterii_, which latter looks infinitely more impressive and is more satisfying to a man as greedy of honour as Your respectful and heartily affectionate, etc."

XIV.

Shortly before, I had paid my first visit to Professor Rasmus Nielsen. He was exceedingly agreeable, recognised me, whom perhaps he remembered examining, and accorded me a whole hour's conversation. He was, as always, alert and fiery, not in the least blasé, but with a slight suggestion of charlatanism about him. His conversation was as lively and disconnected as his lectures; there was a charm in the clear glance of his green eyes, a look of genius about his face. He talked for a long time about Herbart, whose Aesthetics, for that matter, he betrayed little knowledge of, then of Hegel, Heiberg, and Kierkegaard. To my intense surprise, he opened up a prospect, conflicting with the opinions he had publicly advocated, that Science, "when analyses had been carried far enough," might come to prove the possibility of miracles. This was an offence against my most sacred convictions.

Nielsen had recently, from the cathedra, announced his renunciation of the Kierkegaard standpoint he had so long maintained, in the phrase: "The Kierkegaard theory is impracticable"; he had, perhaps influenced somewhat by the Queen Dowager, who about that time frequently invited him to meet Grundtvig, drawn nearer to Grundtvigian ways of thinking,--as Bröchner sarcastically remarked about him: "The farther from Kierkegaard, the nearer to the Queen Dowager."

In the midst of my final preparations for the examination, I wrestled, as was my wont, with my attempts to come to a clear understanding over Duty and Life, and was startled by the indescribable irony in the word by which I was accustomed to interpret my ethically religious endeavours,--_Himmelspraet_. [Footnote: Word implying one who attempts to spring up to Heaven, and of course falls miserably to earth again. The word, in ordinary conversation, is applied to anyone tossed in a blanket.]

I handed in, then, my request to be allowed to sit for my Master of Arts examination; the indefatigable Bröchner had already mentioned the matter to the Dean of the University, who understood the examinee's reasons for haste. But the University moved so slowly that it was some weeks before I received the special paper set me, which, to my horror, ran as follows: "Determine the correlation between the pathetic and the symbolic in general, in order by that means to elucidate the contrast between Shakespeare's tragedies and Dante's _Divina Commedia_, together with the possible errors into which one might fall through a one-sided preponderance of either of these two elements."

This paper, which had been set by R. Nielsen, is characteristic of the purely speculative manner, indifferent to all study of history, in which Aesthetics were at that time pursued in Copenhagen. It was, moreover, worded with unpardonable carelessness; it was impossible to tell from it what was to be understood by the correlation on which it was based, and which was assumed to be a given conclusion. Even so speculative a thinker as Frederik Paludan-Müller called the question absolutely meaningless. It looked as though its author had imagined Shakespeare's dramas and Dante's epic were produced by a kind of artistic commingling of pathetic with symbolic elements, and as though he wished to call attention to the danger of reversing the correct proportions, for instance, by the symbolic obtaining the preponderance in tragedy, or pathos in the epopee, or to the danger of exaggerating these proportions, until there was too much tragic pathos, or too much epic symbolism. But a scientific definition of the expressions used was altogether lacking, and I had to devote a whole chapter to the examination of the meaning of the problem proposed to me.

The essay, for the writing of which I was allowed six weeks, was handed in, 188 folio pages long, at the right time. By reason of the sheer foolishness of the question, it was never published.

In a postscript, I wrote: "I beg my honoured examiners to remember the time during which this treatise was written, a time more eventful than any other young men can have been through, and during which I, for my part, have for days at a time been unable to work, and should have been ashamed if I could have done so."

In explanation of this statement, the following jottings, written down at the time on a sheet of paper:

_Sunday, Jan. 17th_. Received letter telling me I may fetch my leading question to-morrow at 5 o'clock.

_Monday, Feb. 1st_. Heard to-day that the Germans have passed the Eider and that the first shots have been exchanged.

_Saturday, Feb. 6th_. Received to-day the terrible, incomprehensible, but only too certain news that the Danevirke has been abandoned without a blow being struck. This is indescribable, overwhelming.

_Thursday, Feb. 28th_. We may, unfortunately, assume it as certain that my dear friend Jens Paludan-Müller fell at Oversö on Feb. 5th.

_Feb. 28th_. Heard definitely to-day.--At half-past one this night finished my essay.

XV.

I thought about this time of nothing but my desire to become a competent soldier of my country. There was nothing I wanted more, but I felt physically very weak. When the first news of the battles of Midsunde and Bustrup arrived, I was very strongly inclined to follow Julius Lange to the Reserve Officers' School. When tidings came of the abandonment of the Danevirke my enthusiasm cooled; it was as though I foresaw how little prospect of success there was. Still, I was less melancholy than Lange at the thought of going to the war. I was single, and delighted at the thought of going straight from the examination-table into a camp life, and from a book-mad student to become a lieutenant. I was influenced most by the prospect of seeing Lange every day at the Officers' School, and on the field. But my comrades explained to me that even if Lange and I came out of the School at the same time, it did not follow that we should be in the same division, and that the thing, moreover, that was wanted in an officer, was entire self-dependence. They also pointed out to me the improbability of my being able to do the least good, or having the slightest likelihood in front of me of doing anything but quickly find myself in hospital. I did not really think myself that I should be able to stand the fatigue, as the pupils of the military academy went over to the army with an equipment that I could scarcely have carried. I could not possibly suppose that the conscription would select me as a private, on account of my fragile build; but like all the rest, I was expecting every day a general ordering out of the fit men of my age.

All this time I worked with might and main at the development of my physical strength and accomplishments. I went every day to fencing practice, likewise to cavalry sword practice; I took lessons in the use of the bayonet, and I took part every afternoon in the shooting practices conducted by the officers--with the old muzzle-loaders which were the army weapons at the time. I was very delighted one day when Mr. Hagemeister, the fencing-master, one of the many splendid old Holstein non-commissioned officers holding the rank of lieutenant, said I was "A smart fencer."

XVI.

Meanwhile, the examination was taking its course. As real curiosities, I here reproduce the questions set me. The three to be replied to in writing were:

1. To what extent can poetry be called the ideal History?

2. In what manner may the philosophical ideas of Spinoza and Fichte lead to a want of appreciation of the idea of beauty?

3. In what relation does the comic stand to its limitations and its various contrasts?

The three questions which were to be replied to in lectures before the University ran as follows:

1. Show, through poems in our literature, to what extent poetry may venture to set itself the task of presenting the Idea in a form coinciding with the philosophical understanding of it?

2. Point out the special contributions to a philosophical definition of the Idea made by Aesthetics in particular.

3. What are the merits and defects of Schiller's tragedies?

These questions, in conjunction with the main question, may well be designated a piece of contemporary history; they depict exactly both the Science of the time and the peculiar philosophical language it adopted. Hardly more than one, or at most two, of them could one imagine set to-day.