Nicolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig
Nicolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig
Grundtvig never consciously revealed his true sentiment to Constance Leth. At
the cost of an intense struggle, he managed outwardly to maintain his code of honorable conduct. But he still felt humbled and shaken by his inability to suppress his inner and as he saw it guilty passion. And under this blow to his proud self-sufficiency, he felt, perhaps for the first time in his life, the need for a power greater than his own. “To win in this struggle,” he wrote in his diary, “lies beyond my own power. I must look for help from above or sink as the stone sinks while the lightly floating leaves mock it and wonder why it cannot float as they do.”
The struggle against his passion engendered a need for work. “In order to quiet
the storm within me,” he writes, “I forced my mind to occupy itself with the most difficult labor.” Although he had paid small attention to the suggestion at the time, he now remembered and began to read some of the authors Steffens had recommended in his lectures: Goethe, Schiller, Schelling, Fichte,
Shakespeare and others. He also studied the work of newer Danish writers, such
as Prof. Jens Møller, a writer on Northern mythology, and Adam
Oehlenschlaeger, a young man who, inspired by Steffens, was becoming the foremost dramatic poet of Denmark. He even renewed the study of his long neglected Bible. The motive of his extensive reading was, no doubt, ethical rather than esthetic, a search for that outside power of which the battle within him revealed his urgent need. Thus he wrote:
My spirit opened its eyes,
Saw itself on the brink of the abyss,
Searched with trembling and fear
Everywhere for a power to save,
And found God in all things,
Found Him in the songs of the poets,
Found Him in the work of the sages,
Found Him in the myths of the North,
Found Him in the records of history,
But clearest of all it still
Found Him in the Book of Books.
The fate that appears to crush a man may also exalt him. And so it was with Grundtvig. His suffering crushed the stony shell of cynical indifference in which he had long enclosed his naturally warm and impetuous spirit and released the great latent forces within him. In the midst of his struggle, new ideas germinated springlike in his mind. He read, thought and wrote, especially on the subject that was always near to his heart, the mythology and early traditions of the Northern peoples. And after three years of struggle, he was at last ready to break away from Egelykke. If he had not yet conquered his passion, he had so far mastered it that he could aspire to other things.
Thus ended what a modern Danish writer, Skovgaard-Petersen, calls “the finest
love story in Danish history.” The event had caused Grundtvig much pain, but it
left no festering wounds. His firm refusal to permit his passion to sully himself or degrade the woman he loved had, on the contrary, made it one of the greatest
incitations to good in his whole life.
On his return to Copenhagen Grundtvig almost at once obtained a position as teacher in history at Borch’s Collegium for boys. His new position satisfied him eminently by affording him a chance to work with his favorite subject and to expand his other intellectual interests. He soon made friends with a number of promising young intellectuals who, in turn, introduced him to some of the outstanding intellectual and literary lights of the country, and within a short while the list of his acquaintances read like a Blue Book of the city’s intelligentsia.
Although Grundtvig was still quite unknown except for a few articles in a current magazine, there was something about him, an originality of view, an arresting way of phrasing his thoughts, a quiet sense of humor, that commanded
attention. His young friends willingly acknowledged his leadership, and the older watched him with expectation. Nor were they disappointed. His Northern
Mythology appeared in 1808, and Episodes from the Decay of Northern Heroism only a year later. And these strikingly original and finely written works immediately established his reputation as one of the foremost writers of Denmark. There were even those who in their enthusiasm compared him with the revered Oehlenschlaeger. A satirical poem, “The Masquerade Ball of
Denmark,” inspired by the frivolous indifference with which many people had reacted to the English bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807, showed his power
of burning scorn and biting satire.
In the midst of this success and the preparation of plans for new and more ambitious works, Grundtvig received a request from his old father to come home
and assist him with his parish work. The request was not at all pleasing to him.
His personal attitude toward Christianity was still uncertain, and his removal from the capital would interfere with his literary career. But as the wish of his good parents could not be ignored, he reluctantly applied for ordination and began to prepare his probation sermon.
This now famous sermon was delivered before the proper officials March 17, 1810. Knowing that few besides the censors would be present to hear him and feeling that an ordinary sermon would be out of place before such an audience,
Grundtvig prepared his sermon as an historical survey of the present state of the church rather than as an Evangelical discourse.
His study of history had convinced him of the mighty influence Christianity had
once exerted upon the nations, and he, therefore, posed the question why this influence was now in decline. “Are the glad tidings,” he asked, “which through
seventeen hundred years passed from confessing lips to listening ears still not preached?” And the answer is “no”. Even the very name of Jesus is now without
significance and worth to most people of the younger generation, “for the Word
