I need only close my eyes to see him before me as he appeared in life.
I behold the cheerful smile with which he said "Good day" to a guest. I
hear the roguish playfulness with which in lively conversation, almost
in the style of Shakespeare's Mercutio, he clung to a merry pun. In
the last years of his life a severe illness had broken his strength,
and age had set its mark on his noble form. But I can see him in the
freshness and healthful appearance of his robust years, as he was when
I first became acquainted with him.
One August day, in 1863, I saw and spoke with him for the first
time. On a pedestrian trip with a young relative of his, I came to
Fredensborg, in Zealand, and with beating heart set foot on the
threshold of his summer residence. Every poem he had written was
familiar to me, and I experienced a sense of disquietude, mingled
with rejoicing, at the thought of being so near the man whom I had so
long admired in the distance. We waited a while in the rustic, modest
room; I had just time to cast a glance at the unpretending household
furniture, when the door of the adjoining room opened, and he whom
we sought appeared, bidding us welcome in his singularly refined and
impressive voice. An aristocratic face met my gaze, with features that
might have been chiseled by an idealistic sculptor. The sensitive,
quivering nostrils, and the deep, strong, handsome blue eyes, shaded
by vigorous eyebrows, gave life to the face; a slight deafness, too,
imparted to it a listening, attentive look. On his head Paludan-Müller
wore a high, pointed cap, which was extremely becoming to him, and
caused his noble face to resemble an old Florentine portrait. His
finely shaped, sarcastic mouth was made doubly beautiful by the smile
that hovered about it; his white necktie imparted a certain dignity to
the poise of the head, and he looked equally distinguished and amiable.
After the first interchange of greetings, the conversation fell on
the relation between the beautiful in nature and in art, and, zealous
idealist as he was, he maintained that everything in nature must be
called beautiful, or nothing. It was a sort of echo of the Hegelian
doctrine of beauty as the work of man alone.
During this talk we had strolled out into the Fredensborg castle
garden. Paludan-Müller sat down on the banks of Lake Esrom, and
pointing with his stick to a monstrous toad, he said, "Voltaire
was right when he made his toad exclaim, '_La beau idéal c'est ma
crapaude._'"
He seemed to take a certain naïve pleasure in making use of terse,
sportive sentences of this kind. There might also be detected in his
conversation at times, an interesting antithesis; he would now employ
certain abstract and solemn phrases that have become foreign to the
younger generation; would speak, for instance, of the "worshippers of
beauty," and more to like effect; and again, he would amuse himself by
clothing his thoughts in some extravagantly cynical expression. This
changeful attitude of tone may be recognized in his humoristic poetry.
In his discourse it produced a peculiar effect, much as when a swan
interrupts its calm, royal flight, to thrust its tail upward in the
air. This, however, was only the first impression; it was entirely
effaced by a more intimate acquaintance with him. To those who knew him
well, it was very evident that the ermine-like purity of his nature
and his aversion to the uncleanness and flatness of the daily life of
the period, which had made him a hermit, found their complement in the
witty, sportively polemic tendency of his mind, in his scorn for much
that was excessively admired by others, and in the keen sense of the
comic which had made him the poet of satire.