Together with a practical training in the use of the language, the
Danish lessons afforded a presentment of the history of our national
literature, given intelligently and in a very instructive manner by a
master named Driebein, who, though undoubtedly one of the many
Heibergians of the time, did not in any way deviate from what might be
termed the orthodoxy of literary history. Protestantism carried it
against Roman Catholicism, the young Oehlenschläger against Baggesen,
Romanticism against Rationalism; Oehlenschläger as the Northern poet of
human nature against a certain Björnson, who, it was said, claimed to
be more truly Norse than he. In Mr. Driebein's presentment, no
recognised great name was ever attacked. And in his course, as in
Thortsen's History of Literature, literature which might be regarded as
historic stopped with the year 1814.
The order in which in my private reading I became acquainted with
Danish authors was as follows: Ingemann, Oehlenschläger, Grundtvig,
Poul Möller, many books by these authors having been given me at
Christmas and on birthdays. At my grandfather's, I eagerly devoured
Heiberg's vaudevilles as well. As a child, of course, I read
uncritically, merely accepting and enjoying. But when I heard at school
of Baggesen's treatment of Oehlenschläger, thus realising that there
had been various tendencies in literature at that time, and various
opinions as to which was preferable, I read with enthusiasm a volume of
selected poems by Baggesen, which I had had one Christmas, and the
treatment of language in it fascinated me exceedingly, with its
gracefulness and light, conversational tone. Then, when Hertz's
[Footnote: Henrik Hertz, a Danish poet (1797-1870), published "Ghost
Letters" anonymously, and called them thus because in language and
spirit they were a kind of continuation of the long-deceased Baggesen's
rhymed contribution to a literary dispute of his day. Hertz, like the
much greater Baggesen, laid great stress upon precise and elegant
form.--[Translator's note.]] _Ghost Letters_ fell into my hands one
day, and the diction of them appealed to me almost more, I felt myself,
first secretly, afterwards more consciously, drawn towards the school
of form in Danish literature, and rather enjoyed being a heretic on
this point. For to entertain kindly sentiments for the man who had
dared to profane Oehlenschläger was like siding with Loki against Thor.
Poul Möller's Collected Works I had received at my confirmation, and
read again and again with such enthusiasm that I almost wore the pages
out, and did not skip a line, even of the philosophical parts, which I
did not understand at all. But Hertz's Lyrical Poems, which I read in a
borrowed copy, gave me as much pleasure as Poul Möller's Verses had
done. And for a few years, grace and charm, and the perfect control of
language and poetic form, were in my estimation the supreme thing
until, on entering upon my eighteenth year, a violent reaction took
place, and resonance, power and grandeur alone seemed to have value.
From Hertz my sympathies went over to Christian Winther, from Baggesen
to Homer, Aeschylus, the Bible, Shakespeare, Goethe. One of the first
things I did as a student was to read the Bible through in Danish and
the Odyssey in Greek.