I continued to be physically far from strong. Mentally, I worked
indefatigably. The means of deciding the study question that, after
long reflection, seemed to me most expedient, was this: I would compete
for one of the University prizes, either the aesthetic or the
philosophical, and then, if I won the gold medal, my parents and others
would see that if I broke with the Law it was not from idleness, but
because I really had talents in another direction.
As early as 1860 I had cast longing eyes at the prize questions that
had been set, and which hung up in the Entrance Hall of the University.
But none of them were suited to me. In 1861 I made up my mind to
attempt a reply, even if the questions in themselves should not be
attractive.
There was amongst them one on the proper correlation between poetic
fiction and history in the historical romances. The theme in itself did
not particularly fascinate me; but I was not ignorant of the subject,
and it was one that allowed of being looked at in a wide connection,
i.e., the claims of the subject as opposed to the imagination of the
artist, in general. I was of opinion that just as in sculpture the
human figure should not be represented with wings, but the conception
of its species be observed, so the essential nature of a past age
should be unassailed in historic fiction. Throughout numerous carefully
elaborated abstractions, extending over 120 folio pages, and in which I
aimed at scientific perspicuity, I endeavoured to give a soundly
supported theory of the limits of inventive freedom in Historical
Romance. The substructure was so painstaking that it absorbed more than
half of the treatise. Quite apart from the other defects of this tyro
handiwork, it lauded and extolled an aesthetic direction opposed to
that of both the men who were to adjudicate upon it. Hegel was
mentioned in it as "The supreme exponent of Aesthetics, a man whose
imposing greatness it is good to bow before." I likewise held with his
emancipated pupil, Fr. Th. Vischer, and vindicated him. Of Danish
thinkers, J.L. Heiberg and S. Kierkegaard were almost the only ones
discussed.
Heiberg was certainly incessantly criticised, but was treated with
profound reverence and as a man whose slightest utterance was of
importance. Sibbern's artistic and philosophical researches, on the
other hand, were quite overlooked, indeed sometimes Vischer was praised
as being the first originator of psychological developments, which
Sibbern had suggested many years before him. I had, for that matter,
made a very far from sufficient study of Sibbern's researches, which
were, partly, not systematic enough for me, and partly had repelled me
by the peculiar language in which they were couched.
Neither was it likely that this worship of Heiberg, which undeniably
peeped out through all the proofs of imperfections and
self-contradictions in him, would appeal to Hauch.
When I add that the work was youthfully doctrinaire, in language not
fresh, and that in its skeleton-like thinness it positively tottered
under the weight of its definitions, it is no wonder that it did not
win the prize. The verdict passed upon it was to the effect that the
treatise was thorough in its way, and that it would have been awarded
the prize had the question asked been that of determining the
correlation between History and Fiction in general, but that under the
circumstances it dwelt too cursorily on Romance and was only deemed
deserving of "a very honourable mention."
Favourable as this result was, it was nevertheless a blow to me, who
had made my plans for the following years dependent on whether I won
the prize or not. Julius Lange, who knocked at my door one evening to
tell me the result, was the witness of my disappointment. "I can
understand," he said, "that you should exclaim: _'Oleum et operam
perdidi!'_, but you must not give up hope for so little. It is a good
thing that you prohibited the opening of the paper giving your name in
the event of the paper not winning the prize, for no one will trouble
their heads about the flattering criticism and an honourable mention
would only harm you in People's eyes; it would stamp you with the mark
of mediocrity."