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Brandes, Georg Morris Cohen, 1842-1927

"Recollections of My Childhood and Youth"

Oscar Siesbye, offered me gratuitous instruction,
and with his help several of the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides,
various things of Plato's, and comedies by Plautus and Terence were
carefully studied.
Frederik Nutzhorn read the _Edda_ and the _Niebelungenlied_
with me in the originals; with Jens Paludan-Mueller I went through the
New Testament in Greek, and with Julius Lange, Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Pindar, Horace and Ovid, and a little of Aristotle and Theocritus.
Catullus, Martial and Caesar I read for myself.
But I did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until I
approached my nineteenth year. In philosophy I had hitherto mastered
only a few books by Soeren Kierkegaard. But now I began a conscientious
study of Heiberg's philosophical writings and honestly endeavoured to
make myself familiar with his speculative logic. As Heiberg's _Prose
Writings_ came out, in the 1861 edition, they were studied with
extreme care. Heiberg's death in 1860 was a great grief to me; as a
thinker I had loved and revered him. The clearness of form and the
internal obscurity of his adaptation of Hegel's Teachings, gave one a
certain artistic satisfaction, at the same time that it provoked an
effort really to understand.
But in the nature of things, Heiberg's philosophical life-work could not
to a student be other than an admission into Hegel's train of thought,
and an introduction to the master's own works.


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