In my public capacity about this time, I had many against me and no one
wholly for me, except my old protector Bröchner, who, for one thing,
was very ill, and for another, by reason of his ponderous language, was
unknown to the reading world at large. Among my personal friends there
was not one who shared my fundamental views; if they were fond of me,
it was in spite of my views. That in itself was a sufficient reason why
I could not expect them, in the intellectual feud in which I was still
engaged, to enter the lists on my behalf. I did not need any long
experience to perceive that complete and unmixed sympathy with my
endeavours was a thing I should not find. Such a sympathy I only met
with in reality from one of my comrades, Emil Petersen, a young private
individual with no connection whatever with literature, and without
influence in other directions.
Moreover, I had learnt long ago that, as a literary beginner in a
country on a Liliputian scale, I encountered prompt opposition at every
step, and that ill-will against me was always expressed much more
forcibly than good-will, was quickly, so to say, organised.
I had against me at once every literary or artistic critic who already
held an assured position, from the influential men who wrote in _The
Fatherland_ or the _Berlin Times_ to the small fry who snapped in the
lesser papers, and if they mentioned me at all it was with the utmost
contempt, or in some specially disparaging manner. It was the rival
that they fought against. Thus it has continued to be all my life.
Certain "critics," such as Falkman in Denmark and Wirsen in Sweden,
hardly ever put pen to paper for some forty years without bestowing an
affectionate thought upon me. (Later, in Norway, I became Collin's
_idée fixe_.)
Add to these all who feared and hated a train of thought which in their
opinion was dangerous to good old-fashioned faith and morality.
Definite as were the limits of my articles and longer contributions to
the dispute concerning Faith and Science, and although, strictly
speaking, they only hinged upon an obscure point in Rasmus Nielsen's
philosophy, they alarmed and excited a large section of the
ecclesiastics of the country. I had carefully avoided saying anything
against faith or piety; I knew that Orthodoxy was all-powerful in
Denmark. However, I did not meet with refutations, only with the
indignation of fanaticism. As far back as 1867 Björnson had come
forward in print against me, had reproached the Daily Paper with giving
my contributions a place in their columns, and reported their contents
to the Editor, who was away travelling, on the supposition that they
must have been accepted against his wishes; and although the article
did not bear Björnson's name, this attack was not without weight. The
innocent remark that Sören Kierkegaard was the Tycho Brahe of our
philosophy, as great as Tycho Brahe, but, like him, failing to place
the centre of our solar system in its Sun, gave Björnson an opportunity
for the statement,--a very dangerous one for a young author of foreign
origin to make,--that the man who could write like that "had no views
in common with other Danes, no Danish mind."
The year after I was astonished by inflammatory outbursts on the part
of the clergy. One day in 1868 the much-respected Pastor Hohlenberg
walked into my friend Benny Spang's house, reprimanded her severely for
receiving such an undoubted heretic and heathen under her roof, and
demanded that she should break off all association with me. As she
refused to do so and turned a deaf ear to his arguments, losing all
self-control, he flung his felt hat on the floor, continued to rage and
rail against me, and, no result coming of it, dashed at last, in a
towering passion, out through the door, which he slammed behind him.
There was a farcical ending to the scene, since he was obliged to ring
at the door again for his hat, which, in his exasperation, he had
forgotten. This was a kind of private prologue to the ecclesiastical
drama which from the year 1871 upwards was enacted in most of the
pulpits of the country. Only the parsons instead of flinging their hats
upon the floor, beat their hands against the pulpit.
But what surprised me, a literary beginner, still more, was the gift I
discovered in myself of hypnotising, by my mere existence, an
ever-increasing number of my contemporaries till they became as though
possessed by a hatred which lasted, sometimes a number of years,
sometimes a whole life long, and was the essential determining factor
in their careers and actions. By degrees, in this negative manner, I
succeeded in engaging the attentions of more than a score of persons.
For the time being, I encountered the phenomenon in the person of one
solitary genius-mad individual. For a failure of a poet and
philosopher, with whom I had nothing to do, and who did not interest me
in the least, I became the one enemy it was his business to attack.
Rudolf Schmidt, who was a passionate admirer of Rasmus Nielsen, in
whose examination lectures he coached freshmen, was enraged beyond
measure by the objections, perfectly respectful, for that matter, in
form, which I had raised against one of the main points in Nielsen's
philosophy. In 1866 he published a pamphlet on the subject; in 1867 a
second, which, so possessed was he by his fury against his opponent, he
signed with the latter's own initials, Gb. And from this time forth,
for at least a generation, it became this wretch's task in life to
persecute me under every possible pseudonym, and when his own powers
were not sufficient, to get up conspiracies against me. In particular,
he did all he could against me in Germany.
Meanwhile, he started a magazine in order to bring before the public
himself and the ideas he was more immediately serving, viz.: those of
R. Nielsen; and since this latter had of late drawn very much nearer to
the Grundtvigian way of thinking, partly also those of Grundtvig. The
magazine had three editors, amongst them R. Nielsen himself, and when
one of them, who was the critic of the _Fatherland_, suddenly left the
country, Björnstjerne Björnson took his place. The three names, R.
Nielsen, B. Björnson, and Rudolph Schmidt, formed a trinity whose
supremacy did not augur well for the success of a beginner in the paths
of literature, who had attacked the thinker among them for ideal
reasons, and who had been the object of violent attacks from the two
others. The magazine _Idea and Reality_, was, as might be expected,
sufficiently unfavourable to my cause.
The sudden disappearance of the critic of _The Fatherland_ from the
literary arena was, under the conditions of the time, an event. He had
no little talent, attracted by ideas and fancies that were sometimes
very telling, repelled by mannerisms and a curious, far-fetched style,
laid chief emphasis, in the spirit of the most modern Danish
philosophy, on the will, and always defended ethical standpoints. From
the time of Björnson's first appearance he had attached himself so
enthusiastically and inviolably to him that by the general public he
was almost regarded as Björnson's herald. At every opportunity he
emphatically laid down Björnson's importance and as a set-off fell upon
those who might be supposed to be his rivals. Ibsen, in particular,
received severe handling. His departure was thus a very hard blow for
Björnson, but for that matter, was also felt as a painful loss by those
he opposed.