Recollections of My Childhood and Youth

by Georg Brandes

There are not many of us in literature who are in earnest; the few who are ought not to be daunted by the accidental separation that opposed opinions can produce, when there is a large field for mutual understanding and co-operation. I sometimes get violently irate for a moment; if this in lesser men, in whom there really is something base, brings about a lifelong separation, it does not greatly afflict me. But I should be very sorry if it should influence the individuals in whom I feel there are both ability and will. And as far as you are concerned, I have such a strong feeling that you must be standing at a parting of the ways, that, by continuing your path further, you will go astray, that I want to talk to you, and consequently am speaking from my heart to you now. If you do not understand, I am sorry; that is all I can say.

In the Summer I am going to Finmark, and involuntarily, as I write this, the thought occurs to me what a journey it would be for you; away from everything petty and artificial to a scenery which in its magnificent loneliness is without parallel in the world, and where the wealth of birds above us and fish beneath us (whales, and shoals of herrings, cod and capelans often so close together that you can take them up in your hands, or they press against the sides of the boat) are marvel upon marvel, in the light of a Sun that does not set, while human beings up there live quiet and cowed by Nature. If you will come with me, and meet me, say, at Trondhjem, I know that you would not regret it. And then I should get conversation again; here there are not many who hit upon just that which I should like them to. Think about it.

A paragraph relating to Magdalene Thoresen followed. But what is here cited is the essential part of the letter. Had its recipient known Björnson better, he would in this have found a foundation to build upon. But as things were, I altogether overlooked the honestly meant friendliness in it and merely seized upon the no small portion of it that could not do other than wound. My reply, icy, sharp and in the deeper sense of the word, worthless, was a refusal. I did not believe in Björnson, saw in the letter nothing but an attempt to use me as a critic, now that he had lost his former advocate in the Press. The prospect of the journey to the North did not tempt me; in Björnson's eyes it would have been Thor's journey with Loki, and I neither was Loki nor wished to be.

But even had I been capable of rising to a more correct and a fuller estimate of Björnson's character, there was too much dividing us at this time for any real friendship to have been established. Björnson was then still an Orthodox Protestant, and in many ways hampered by his youthful impressions; I myself was still too brusque to be able to adapt myself to so difficult and masterful a personality.

Eight years elapsed before the much that separated me from Björnson crumbled away. But then, when of his own accord he expressed his regret on a public occasion at the rupture between us, and spoke of me with unprejudiced comprehension and good-will, I seized with warmth and gratitude the hand stretched out to me. A hearty friendship, bringing with it an active and confidential correspondence, was established between us and remained unshaken for the next ten years, when it broke down, this time through no fault of mine, but through distrust on Björnson's part, just as our intimacy had been hindered the first time through distrust on mine.

The year 1869 passed in steady hard work. Among the many smaller articles I wrote, one with the title of The Infinitely Small and the Infinitely Great in Poetry, starting with a representment of Shakespeare's Harry Percy, contained a criticism of the hitherto recognised tendency of Danish dramatic poetry and pointed out into the future. The paper on H.C. Andersen, which came into being towards midsummer, and was read aloud in a clover field to a solitary listener, was representative of my critical abilities and aims at that date. I had then known Andersen socially for a considerable time. My cordial recognition of his genius drew us more closely together; he often came to see me and was very ready to read his new works aloud to me. It is hardly saying too much to declare that this paper secured me his friendship.

The fundamental principles of the essay were influenced by Taine, the art philosopher I had studied most deeply, and upon whom I had written a book that was to be my doctor's thesis. Lightly and rapidly though my shorter articles came into being, this larger task was very long in hand. Not that I had little heart for my work; on the contrary, no question interested me more than those on which my book hinged; but there were only certain of them with which, as yet, I was equal to dealing.

First and foremost came the question of the nature of the producing mind, the possibility of showing a connection between its faculties and deriving them from one solitary dominating faculty, which would thus necessarily reveal itself in every aspect of the mind. It puzzled me, for example, how I was to find the source whence Pascal's taste, both for mathematics and religious philosophy, sprang. Next came the question of the possibility of a universally applicable scientific method of criticism, regarded as intellectual optics. If one were to define the critic's task as that of understanding, through the discovery and elucidation of the dependent and conditional contingencies that occur in the intellectual world, then there was a danger that he might approve everything, not only every form and tendency of art that had arisen historically, but each separate work within each artistic section. If it were no less the critic's task to distinguish between the genuine and the spurious, he must at any rate possess a technical standard by which to determine greater or lesser value, or he must be so specially and extraordinarily gifted that his instinct and tact estimate infallibly.

Further, there was the question of genius, the point on which Taine's theory roused decisive opposition in me. He regarded genius as a summing up, not as a new starting-point; according to him it was the assemblage of the original aptitudes of a race and of the peculiarities of a period in which these aptitudes were properly able to display themselves. He overlooked the originality of the man of genius, which could not be explained from his surroundings, the new element which, in genius, was combined with the summarising of surrounding particles. Before, when studying Hegel, I had been repelled by the suggestion that what spoke to us through the artist was only the universally valid, the universal mind, which, as it were, burnt out the originality of the individual. In Taine's teaching, nation and period were the new (although more concrete) abstractions in the place of the universally valid; but here, too, the particularity of the individual was immaterial. The kernel of my work was a protest against this theory.

I was even more actively interested in the fundamental question raised by a scientific view of history. For some years I had been eagerly searching Comte and Littré, Buckle, Mill and Taine for their opinions on the philosophy of History. Here, too, though in another form, the question of the importance of the individual versus the masses presented itself. Statistics had proved to what extent conscious actions were subordinated to uniform laws. We could foresee from one year to another how many murders would be committed and how many with each kind of instrument. The differences between men and men neutralised each other, if we took the average of a very large number. But this did not prove that the individual was not of considerable importance. If the victory of Salamis depended on Themistocles, then the entire civilisation of Europe henceforth depended on him.