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.