Recollections of My Childhood and Youth Part 13

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 pa.s.sed the Eider and that the first shots have been exchanged.

_Sat.u.r.day, 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, a.s.sume it as certain that my dear friend Jens Paludan-Muller fell at Overso 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.

After the final (and best) lecture, on Schiller, which was given at six hours' notice on April 25th, the judges, Hauch, Nielsen and Brochner, deliberated for about ten minutes, then called in the auditors and R.

Nielsen read aloud the following verdict: "The candidate, in his long essay, in the shorter written tests, and in his oral lectures, has manifested such knowledge of his subject, such intellectual maturity, and such originality in the treatment of his themes, that we have on that account unanimously awarded him the mark: _admissus c.u.m laude praecipua_."

XVII.

The unusually favourable result of this examination attracted the attention of academical and other circles towards me. The mark _admissus c.u.m praecipua laude_ had only very rarely been given before. Hauch expressed his satisfaction at home in no measured terms.

His wife stopped my grandfather in the street and informed him that his grandson was the cleverest and best-read young man that her husband had come across during his University experience. When I went to the old poet after the examination to thank him, he said to me (these were his very words): "I am an old man and must die soon; you must be my successor at the University; I shall say so unreservedly; indeed, I will even say it on my death-bed." Strangely enough, he did say it and record it on his death-bed seven years later, exactly as he had promised to do.

In Brochner's house, too, there was a great deal said about my becoming a professor. I myself was despondent about it; I thought only of the war, only wished to be fit for a soldier. Hauch was pleased at my wanting to be a soldier. "It is fine of you, if you can only stand it."

When Hauch heard for certain that I was only 22 years old (he himself was 73), he started up in his chair and said:

"Why, it is incredible that at your age you can have got so far." Rasmus Nielsen was the only one of the professors who did not entertain me with the discussion of my future academic prospects; but he it was who gave me the highest praise:

"According to our unanimous opinions," said he, "you are the foremost of all the young men."

I was only the more determined not to let myself be buried alive in the flower of my youth by accepting professorship before I had been able to live and breathe freely.--I might have spared myself any anxiety.

XVIII.

A few days later, on May both, a month's armistice was proclaimed, which was generally construed as a preliminary to peace, if this could be attained under possible conditions. It was said, and soon confirmed, that at the Conference of London, Denmark had been offered North Slesvig. Most unfortunately, Denmark refused the offer. On June 26th, the war broke out again; two days later Alsen was lost. When the young men were called up to the officers' board for conscription, "being too slight of build," I was deferred till next year. Were the guerilla war which was talked about to break out, I was determined all the same to take my part in it.

But the Bluhme-David Ministry succeeded to Monrad's, and concluded the oppressive peace.

I was very far from regarding this peace as final; for that, I was too inexperienced. I correctly foresaw that before very long the state of affairs in Europe would give rise to other wars, but I incorrectly concluded therefrom that another fight for Slesvig, or in any case, its restoration to Denmark, would result from them.

In the meantime peace, discouraging, disheartening though it was, opened up possibilities of further undisturbed study, fresh absorption in scientific occupations.

When, after the termination of my University studies, I had to think of earning my own living, I not only, as before, gave private lessons, but I gave lectures, first to a circle before whom I lectured on Northern and Greek mythology, then to another, in David's house, to whom I unfolded the inner history of modern literature to interested listeners, amongst them several beautiful young girls. I finally engaged myself to my old Arithmetic master as teacher of Danish in his course for National school-mistresses. I found the work horribly dull, but there was one racy thing about it, namely, that I, the master, was three years younger than the youngest of my pupils; these latter were obliged to be at least 25, and consequently even at their youngest were quite old in my eyes.

But there were many much older women amongst them, one even, a priest or schoolmaster's widow, of over fifty, a poor thing who had to begin--at her age!--from the very beginning, though she was anything but gifted.

It was not quite easy for a master without a single hair on his face to make himself respected. But I succeeded, my pupils being so well- behaved.

It was an exciting moment when these pupils of mine went up for their teacher's examination, I being present as auditor.

I continued to teach this course until the Autumn of 1868. When I left, I was gratified by one of the ladies rising and, in a little speech, thanking me for the good instruction I had given.

XIX.

Meanwhile, I pursued my studies with ardour and enjoyment, read a very great deal of _belles-lettres_, and continued to work at German philosophy, inasmuch as I now, though without special profit, plunged into a study of Trendelenburg. My thoughts were very much more stimulated by Gabriel Sibbern, on account of his consistent scepticism.

It was just about this time that I made his acquaintance. Old before his time, bald at forty, tormented with gout, although he had always lived a most abstemious life, Gabriel Sibbern, with his serene face, clever eyes and independent thoughts, was an emanc.i.p.ating phenomenon. He had divested himself of all Danish prejudices. "There is still a great deal of phlogiston in our philosophy," he used to say sometimes.

I had long been anxious to come to a clear scientific understanding of the musical elements in speech. I had busied myself a great deal with metrical art. Brucke's _Inquiries_ were not yet in existence, but I was fascinated by Apel's attempt to make use of notes (crotchets, quavers, dotted quavers, and semi-quavers) as metrical signs, and by J.L. Heiberg's attempt to apply this system to Danish verse. But the system was too arbitrary for anything to be built up upon it. And I then made up my mind, in order better to understand the nature of verse, to begin at once to familiarise myself with the theory of music, which seemed to promise the opening out of fresh horizons in the interpretation of the harmonies of language.

With the a.s.sistance of a young musician, later the well-known composer and Concert Director, Victor Bendix, I plunged into the mysteries of thorough-ba.s.s, and went so far as to write out the entire theory of harmonics. I learnt to express myself in the barbaric language of music, to speak of minor scales in fifths, to understand what was meant by enharmonic ambiguity. I studied voice modulation, permissible and non- permissible octaves; but I did not find what I hoped. I composed a few short tunes, which I myself thought very pretty, but which my young master made great fun of, and with good reason. One evening, when he was in very high spirits, he parodied one of them at the piano in front of a large party of people. It was a disconcerting moment for the composer of the tune.

A connection between metrical art and thorough-ba.s.s was not discoverable. Neither were there any unbreakable laws governing thorough-ba.s.s. The unversed person believes that in harmonics he will find quite definite rules which must not be transgressed. But again and again he discovers that what is, as a general rule, forbidden, is nevertheless, under certain circ.u.mstances, quite permissible.

Thus he learns that in music there is no rule binding on genius. And perhaps he asks himself whether, in other domains, there are rules which are binding on genius.

XX.

I had lived so little with Nature. The Spring of 1865, the first Spring I had spent in the country--although quite near to Copenhagen--meant to me rich impressions of nature that I never forgot, a long chain of the most exquisite Spring memories. I understood as I had never done before the inborn affection felt by every human being for the virgin, the fresh, the untouched, the not quite full-blown, just as it is about to pa.s.s over into its maturity. It was in the latter half of May. I was looking for anemones and violets, which had not yet gone to seed. The budding beech foliage, the silver poplar with its shining leaves, the maple with its blossoms, stirred me, filled me with Spring rapture. I could lie long in the woods with my gaze fastened on a light-green branch with the sun shining through it, and, as if stirred by the wind, lighted up from different sides, and floating and flashing as if coated with silver. I saw the empty husks fall by the hundred before the wind.