“But who may the author be?” said Sophie.
“May we never learn!” replied Otto. “Uncertainty gives the book something piquant. In such a small country as ours it is good for the author to be unknown. Here we almost tread upon each other, and look into each other’s garments. Here the personal conditions of the author have much to do with success; and then there are the newspapers, where either friend or enemy has an assistant, whereas the being anonymous gives it the patent of nobility. It is well never to know an author. What does his person matter to us, if his book is only good?
“‘Crush and confound the rabble dissolute That desecrate thy poet’s grave?’” read Otto, and the musical poem was at an end. All were enchanted with it. Otto alone made some small objections: “The Muses ought not to come with ‘trumpets and drums,’ and so many expressions similar to ‘give a blow on the chaps,’ etc., ought not to appear.”
“But if the poet will attack what is coarse,” said Sophie, “he must call things by their proper names. He presents us with a specimen of the prosaic filth, but in a soap-bubble. We may see it, but not seize upon it. I consider that you are wrong!”
“The conception of idea and form,” said Otto, “does not seem to be sufficiently presented to one; both dissolve into one. Even prose is a form.”
“But the form itself is the most important,” said the lady of the house; “with poetry as with sculpture, it is the form which gives the meaning.”
“No, pardon me!” said Otto; “poetry is like the tree which God allows to grow. The inward power expresses itself in the form; both are equally important, but I consider the internal as the most holy. This is here the poet’s thought. The opinion which he expresses affects us as much as the beautiful dress in which he has presented it.”
Now commenced a contest upon form and material, such as was afterward maintained throughout the whole of Copenhagen.
“I shall always admire the ‘Letters of a Wandering Ghost,’” said Sophie,—“always rave about these poems. To-night I shall dream of nothing but this work of art.”
How little men can do that which they desire, did this very moment teach.