Or she would
remark: "He ought to be more than a collaborator of Kierkegaard." It was
only much later that she discovered his genius. Bjoernson, on the other
hand, she worshipped with an enthusiastic love; it was a trouble to her
that just about this time he had become very cool to her.
Vague feelings did not repel her, but all keen and pointed intelligence
did. She was wholly and entirely romantic. Gallicism she objected to;
the clarity of the French seemed to her superficial; she saw depth in
the reserved and taciturn Northern, particularly the Norwegian, nature.
She had groped her way forward for a long time without realising what
her gifts really were. Her husband, who had done all he could to assist
her education, had even for a time imagined, and perhaps persuaded her,
that her gifts lay in the direction of Baggesen's. Now, however, she had
found her vocation and her path in literature.
On all questions of thought, pure and simple, she was extremely vague.
She was a Christian and a Heathen with equal sincerity, a Christian with
her overflowing warm-heartedness, with her honest inclination to
believe, a Heathen in her averseness to any negation of either life or
Nature. She used to say that she loved Christ and Eros equally, or
rather, that to her, they both meant the same.
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