Not long after this departure, and immediately after the publication of
my long article on Goldschmidt, I received one day, to my surprise, a
letter of eight closely written pages from Björnstjerne Björnson, dated
April 15th, 1869.
What had called it forth was my remark, in that article, that Björnson,
like Goldschmidt, sometimes, when talent failed, pretended to have
attained the highest, pretended that obscurity was the equivalent of
profundity. When writing this, I was thinking of the obscure final
speech about God in Heaven in Björnson's _Mary Stuart_, which I still
regard as quite vague, pretentious though it be as it stands there;
however, it was an exaggeration to generalise the grievance, as I had
done, and Björnson was right to reply. He considered that I had accused
him of insincerity, though in this he was wrong; but for that matter,
with hot-tempered eloquence, he also denied my real contention. His
letter began:
Although I seldom read your writings, so that possibly I risk speaking
of something you have elsewhere developed more clearly, and thus making
a mistake, I nevertheless wish to make a determined protest against its
being called a characteristic of mine, in contrast to Oehlenschläger
(and Hauch!!), to strain my powers to reach what I myself only perceive
unclearly, and then intentionally to state it as though it were clear. I
am quite sure that I resemble Oehlenschläger in one thing, namely, that
the defects of my book are open to all, and are not glossed over with
any sort or kind of lie; anything unclear must for the moment have
seemed clear to me, as in his case. My motto has always been: "Be
faithful in _small_ things, and God shall make you ruler over great
things." And never, no, never, have I snatched after great material in
order to seem great, or played with words in order to seem clever, or
been silent, in order to appear deep. Never. The examples around me have
been appalling to me, and I am sure that they have been so because I
have from the very beginning been on my guard against lies. There are
passages in every work which will not yield immediately what one
impatiently demands of them;--and then I have always waited, never
tried; the thing has had to come itself unforced, and it is possible
that what I have received has been a deception; but I have believed in
it; to me it has been no deception. Before I finally conclude, I always,
it is true, go over again what I have written (as in the case of
_Synnöve_, and _A Happy Boy, Between the Fights_, etc). I wish
to have the advantage of a better perception. Thus far, in what I have
gone through, I have seen weak places which I can no longer correct.
Lies I have never found.
Unfortunately one is often exposed to the danger of being untrue; but it
is in moments of surprise and absolute passion, when something happens
to one's eye or one's tongue, that one feels is half mad, but when the
beast of prey within one, which shrinks at nothing, is the stronger.
Untrue in one's beautiful, poetic calm, one's confessional silence, at
one's work, I think very few are.
This summing up, which does honour to Björnson and is not only a
striking self-verdict, but a valuable contribution to poetic psychology
in general, in its indication of the strength of the creative
imagination and its possibilities of error, was followed by a
co-ordinate attempt at a characterisation and appreciation of
Goldschmidt:
You are likewise unjust to Goldschmidt on this point, that I know with
certainty. Goldschmidt is of a naïve disposition, susceptible of every
noble emotion. It is true that he often stages these in a comic manner,
and what you say about that is true; he does the same in private life,
but you have not recognised the source of this. In the last instance, it
is not a question of what we think, but of what we do. Just as this, on
the whole, is an error that you fall persistently into, it is in
particular an error here, where, for instance, his two brothers, with
the same qualifications and with the same dual nature, have both
developed into characters, the one indeed into a remarkable personality.
But Goldschmidt began as a corsair captain at seventeen; his courage was
the courage behind a pen that he fancied was feared, his happiness that
of the flatterer, his dread that of being vapid; and there were many
other unfavourable circumstances, for that matter.... He is now striving
hard towards what he feels has, during his life, been wasted in his
ability, both moral and intellectual qualities, and for my part, I
respect this endeavour more than his decisive success within narrow
limits.
In this passage the distinction and contrast between contemplative life
and actual existence was quite in the Rasmus Nielsen spirit; the use
that was made of it here was strange. One would suppose that the
example adduced established that similar natural qualifications,
similar family and other conditions, in other words, the actual
essential conditions of life, were of small importance compared with
one's mode of thought, since the brothers could be so different;
Björnson wished to establish, hereby, that the mode of life was more
important than the mode of thought, although the former must depend on
the latter. For the rest, he alluded to Goldschmidt's weak points, even
if in somewhat too superior a manner, and without laying stress upon
his great artistic importance, with leniency and good-will.
But if, in other things he touched upon, he had an eye for essentials,
this failed him sadly when the letter proceeded to a characterisation
of the addressee, in which he mixed up true and false in inextricable
confusion. Amongst other things, he wrote:
Here, I doubtless touch upon a point that is distinctive of your
criticism. It is an absolute beauty worship. With that you can quickly
traverse our little literature and benefit no one greatly; for the poet
is only benefited by the man who approaches him with affection and from
his own standpoint; the other he does not understand, and the public
will, likely enough, pass with you through this unravelling of the
thousand threads, and believe they are growing; but no man or woman who
is sound and good lays down a criticism of this nature without a feeling
of emptiness.
I chanced to read one of your travel descriptions which really became a
pronouncement upon some of the greatest painters. It was their nature in
their works (not their history or their lives so much as their natural
dispositions) that you pointed out,--also the influence of their time
upon them, but this only in passing; and you compared these painters,
one with another. In itself, much of this mode of procedure is correct,
but the result is merely racy. A single one of them, seized largely and
affectionately, shown in such manner that the different paintings and
figures became a description of himself, but were simultaneously the
unfolding of a culture, would have been five times as understandable. A
contrast can be drawn in when opportunity arises, but that is not the
essential task. Yes, this is an illustration of the form of your
criticism. It is an everlasting, and often very painful, juxtaposition
of things appertaining and contrasting, but just as poetry itself is an
absorption in the one thing that it has extracted from the many, so
comprehension of it is dependent on the same conditions. The individual
work or the individual author whom you have treated of, you have in the
same way not brought together, but disintegrated, and the whole has
become merely a piquant piece of effectiveness. Hitherto one might have
said that it was at least good-natured; but of late there have
supervened flippant expressions, paradoxical sentences, crude
definitions, a definite contumacy and disgust, which is now and again
succeeded by an outburst of delight over the thing that is peculiarly
Danish, or peculiarly beautiful. I cannot help thinking of P.L. Möller,
as I knew him in Paris.
There are a thousand things between Heaven and Earth that you understand
better than I. But for that very reason you can listen to me. It seems
to me now as if the one half of your powers were undoing what the other
half accomplishes. I, too, am a man with intellectual interests, but I
feel no cooperation. Might there not be other tasks that you were more
fitted for than that of criticism? I mean, that would be less of a
temptation to you, and would _build_ up on your personality, at the
same time as you yourself were building? It strikes me that even if you
do choose criticism, it should be more strongly in the direction of our
educating responsibilities and less as the arranger of technicalities,
the spyer out of small things, the dragger together of all and
everything which can be brought forward as a witness for or against the
author, which is all frightfully welcome in a contemporary critical
epidemic in Copenhagen, but, God help me, is nothing and accomplishes
nothing.
This part of the letter irritated me intensely, partly by the mentor's
tone assumed in it, partly by a summing up of my critical methods which
was founded simply and solely on the reading of three or four articles,
more especially those on Rubens and Goldschmidt, and which quite missed
the point. I was far from feeling that I had been understood, and for
that reason warned against extremes; on the contrary, I saw myself only
caricatured, without even wit or humour, and could not forget that the
man who had sketched this picture of me had done his utmost to injure
me. And he compared me with P.L. Möller!
The fact that the conclusion of the letter contained much that was
conciliatory and beautiful consequently did not help matters. Björnson
wrote:
When you write about the Jews, although I am not in agreement with you,
_altogether_ in agreement, you yet seem to me to touch upon a
domain where you might have much to offer us, many beautiful prospects
to open to us. In the same way, when you interpret Shakespeare (not when
you make poetry by the side of him), when you tranquilly expound, I seem
to see the beginnings of greater works, in any case of powers which I
could imagine essentially contributing to the introduction into our
culture of greater breadth of view, greater moral responsibility, more
affection.
When I now read these words, I am obliged to transport myself violently
back, into the feelings and to the intellectual standpoint that were
mine at the time, in order to understand how they could to such a pitch
incense me. It was not only that, like all young people of any account,
I was irritable, sensitive and proud, and unwilling to be treated as a
pupil; but more than that, as the way of youth is, I confused what I
knew myself capable of accomplishing with what I had already
accomplished; felt myself rich, exuberantly rich, already, and was
indignant at perceiving myself deemed still so small.
But the last straw was a sentence which followed:
I should often have liked to talk all this over with you, when last I
was in Copenhagen, but I noticed I was so pried after by gossips that I
gave it up.
The last time Björnson was in Copenhagen he had written that article
against me. Besides, I had been told that some few times he had read my
first articles aloud in public in friends' houses, and made fun of
their forced and tyro-like wording. And now he wanted me to believe
that he had at that time been thinking of visiting me, in order to come
to an understanding with me. And worse still, the fear of gossip had
restrained him! This hero of will-power so afraid of a little gossip!
He might go on as he liked now, I had done with him. He did go on, both
cordially and gracefully, but condescendingly, quite incapable of
seeing how wounding the manner of his advances was. He wished to make
advances to me and yet maintain a humiliating attitude of condescension:
There are not many of us in literature who are in earnest; the few who
are ought not to be daunted by the accidental separation that opposed
opinions can produce, when there is a large field for mutual
understanding and co-operation. I sometimes get violently irate for a
moment; if this in lesser men, in whom there really is something base,
brings about a lifelong separation, it does not greatly afflict me. But
I should be very sorry if it should influence the individuals in whom I
feel there are both ability and will. And as far as you are concerned, I
have such a strong feeling that you must be standing at a parting of the
ways, that, by continuing your path further, you will go astray, that I
want to talk to you, and consequently am speaking from my heart to you
now. If you do not understand, I am sorry; that is all I can say.
In the Summer I am going to Finmark, and involuntarily, as I write this,
the thought occurs to me what a journey it would be for you; away from
everything petty and artificial to a scenery which in its magnificent
loneliness is without parallel in the world, and where the wealth of
birds above us and fish beneath us (whales, and shoals of herrings, cod
and capelans often so close together that you can take them up in your
hands, or they press against the sides of the boat) are marvel upon
marvel, in the light of a Sun that does not set, while human beings up
there live quiet and cowed by Nature. If you will come with me, and meet
me, say, at Trondhjem, I know that you would not regret it. And then I
should get conversation again; here there are not many who hit upon just
that which I should like them to. Think about it.
A paragraph relating to Magdalene Thoresen followed. But what is here
cited is the essential part of the letter. Had its recipient known
Björnson better, he would in this have found a foundation to build
upon. But as things were, I altogether overlooked the honestly meant
friendliness in it and merely seized upon the no small portion of it
that could not do other than wound. My reply, icy, sharp and in the
deeper sense of the word, worthless, was a refusal. I did not believe
in Björnson, saw in the letter nothing but an attempt to use me as a
critic, now that he had lost his former advocate in the Press. The
prospect of the journey to the North did not tempt me; in Björnson's
eyes it would have been Thor's journey with Loki, and I neither was
Loki nor wished to be.
But even had I been capable of rising to a more correct and a fuller
estimate of Björnson's character, there was too much dividing us at
this time for any real friendship to have been established. Björnson
was then still an Orthodox Protestant, and in many ways hampered by his
youthful impressions; I myself was still too brusque to be able to
adapt myself to so difficult and masterful a personality.
Eight years elapsed before the much that separated me from Björnson
crumbled away. But then, when of his own accord he expressed his regret
on a public occasion at the rupture between us, and spoke of me with
unprejudiced comprehension and good-will, I seized with warmth and
gratitude the hand stretched out to me. A hearty friendship, bringing
with it an active and confidential correspondence, was established
between us and remained unshaken for the next ten years, when it broke
down, this time through no fault of mine, but through distrust on
Björnson's part, just as our intimacy had been hindered the first time
through distrust on mine.
The year 1869 passed in steady hard work. Among the many smaller
articles I wrote, one with the title of _The Infinitely Small and the
Infinitely Great in Poetry_, starting with a representment of
Shakespeare's Harry Percy, contained a criticism of the hitherto
recognised tendency of Danish dramatic poetry and pointed out into the
future. The paper on H.C. Andersen, which came into being towards
midsummer, and was read aloud in a clover field to a solitary listener,
was representative of my critical abilities and aims at that date. I
had then known Andersen socially for a considerable time. My cordial
recognition of his genius drew us more closely together; he often came
to see me and was very ready to read his new works aloud to me. It is
hardly saying too much to declare that this paper secured me his
friendship.
The fundamental principles of the essay were influenced by Taine, the
art philosopher I had studied most deeply, and upon whom I had written
a book that was to be my doctor's thesis. Lightly and rapidly though my
shorter articles came into being, this larger task was very long in
hand. Not that I had little heart for my work; on the contrary, no
question interested me more than those on which my book hinged; but
there were only certain of them with which, as yet, I was equal to
dealing.
First and foremost came the question of the nature of the producing
mind, the possibility of showing a connection between its faculties and
deriving them from one solitary dominating faculty, which would thus
necessarily reveal itself in every aspect of the mind. It puzzled me,
for example, how I was to find the source whence Pascal's taste, both
for mathematics and religious philosophy, sprang. Next came the
question of the possibility of a universally applicable scientific
method of criticism, regarded as intellectual optics. If one were to
define the critic's task as that of understanding, through the
discovery and elucidation of the dependent and conditional
contingencies that occur in the intellectual world, then there was a
danger that he might approve everything, not only every form and
tendency of art that had arisen historically, but each separate work
within each artistic section. If it were no less the critic's task to
distinguish between the genuine and the spurious, he must at any rate
possess a technical standard by which to determine greater or lesser
value, or he must be so specially and extraordinarily gifted that his
instinct and tact estimate infallibly.
Further, there was the question of genius, the point on which Taine's
theory roused decisive opposition in me. He regarded genius as a
summing up, not as a new starting-point; according to him it was the
assemblage of the original aptitudes of a race and of the peculiarities
of a period in which these aptitudes were properly able to display
themselves. He overlooked the originality of the man of genius, which
could not be explained from his surroundings, the new element which, in
genius, was combined with the summarising of surrounding particles.
Before, when studying Hegel, I had been repelled by the suggestion that
what spoke to us through the artist was only the universally valid, the
universal mind, which, as it were, burnt out the originality of the
individual. In Taine's teaching, nation and period were the new
(although more concrete) abstractions in the place of the universally
valid; but here, too, the particularity of the individual was
immaterial. The kernel of my work was a protest against this theory.
I was even more actively interested in the fundamental question raised
by a scientific view of history. For some years I had been eagerly
searching Comte and Littré, Buckle, Mill and Taine for their opinions
on the philosophy of History. Here, too, though in another form, the
question of the importance of the individual versus the masses
presented itself. Statistics had proved to what extent conscious
actions were subordinated to uniform laws. We could foresee from one
year to another how many murders would be committed and how many with
each kind of instrument. The differences between men and men
neutralised each other, if we took the average of a very large number.
But this did not prove that the individual was not of considerable
importance. If the victory of Salamis depended on Themistocles, then
the entire civilisation of Europe henceforth depended on him.
Another aspect of the question was: Did the consistent determinism of
modern Science, the discovery of an unalterable interdependency in the
intellectual, as in the physical worlds, allow scope for actions
proceeding otherwise than merely illusorily from the free purpose or
determination of the individual? Very difficult the question was, and I
did not feel confident of solving it; but it was some consolation to
reflect that the doubt as to the possibility of demonstrating a full
application of the law in the domain in which chance has sway, and
Ethics its sphere, was comparatively infinitesimal in the case of those
domains in which men make themselves felt by virtue of genius or talent
as producers of literary and artistic works. Here, where natural gifts
and their necessary deployment were of such extraordinary weight, the
probability of a demonstration of natural laws was, of course, much
greater.
The general fundamental question was: Given a literature, a philosophy,
an art, or a branch of art, what is the attitude of mind that produces
it? What are its sufficing and necessary conditions? What, for
instance, causes England in the sixteenth century to acquire a dramatic
poetry of the first rank, or Holland in the seventeenth century a
painting art of the first rank, without any of the other branches of
art simultaneously bearing equally fine fruit in the same country?
My deliberations resulted, for the time being, in the conviction that
all profound historical research was psychical research.
That old piece of work, revised, as it now is, has certainly none but
historic interest; but for a doctor's thesis, it is still a tolerably
readable book and may, at any rate, introduce a beginner to reflection
upon great problems.
After the fundamental scientific questions that engaged my attention, I
was most interested in artistic style. There was, in modern Danish
prose, no author who unreservedly appealed to me; in German Heinrich
Kleist, and in French Mérimée, were the stylists whom I esteemed most.
The latter, in fact, it seemed to me was a stylist who, in unerring
sureness, terseness and plasticism, excelled all others. He had
certainly not much warmth or colour, but he had a sureness of line
equal to that of the greatest draughtsmen of Italian art. His aridity
was certainly not winning, and, in reading him, I frequently felt a
lack of breadth of view and horizon, but the compelling power of his
line-drawing captivated me. When my doctor's thesis was finished,
towards the middle of December, 1869, both it and the collection of
articles bearing the name _Criticisms and Portraits_ were placed in the
printer's hands. In the beginning of 1870 two hitherto unprinted pieces
were added, of which one was a paper written some time before on Kamma
Rahbek, which had been revised, the other, a new one on Mérimée, which
in general shows what at that time I admired in style.
It had long been settled that as soon as I had replied to the critics
of my thesis I should start on prolonged travels, the real educational
travels of a young man's life. I had a little money lying ready, a
small bursary, and a promise of a travelling allowance from the State,
which promise, however, was not kept. This journey had for a long time
been haunting my fancy. I cherished an ardent wish to see France again,
but even more especially to go to Italy and countries still farther
South. My hope of catching a glimpse of Northern Africa was only
fulfilled thirty-five years later; but I got as far as Italy, which was
the actual goal of my desires. I knew enough of the country, its
history from ancient days until then, and was sufficiently acquainted
with its Art from Roman times upwards and during the Renaissance, to be
regarded as passed for intellectual consecration in the South.
When the thesis was done with and the printing of the second book was
nearing completion, not anxiety to travel, but melancholy and
heavy-heartedness at the thought of my departure, gained the upper
hand. It had been decided that I was to remain away at least a year,
and it was less to myself than to others whom I must necessarily leave
behind, that the time seemed immeasurably long. Professor Schiödte
advised me rather to take several short journeys than one long one; but
that was impracticable. I wanted to get quite away from the home
atmosphere. As, however, there were some who thought of my journey with
disquiet and dread, and from whom it was difficult for me to tear
myself, I put off my departure as long as I could. At last the remnant
of work that still bound me to Copenhagen was finished, and then all
the new and enriching prospects my stay in foreign countries was to
bring me shone in a golden light. Full of undaunted hope, I set out on
my travels at the beginning of April, 1870.