Magdalene Thoresen compared me one day to an unlighted glass candelabra,
hanging amid several others all lighted up, which had the gleam of the
fire on the countless facets of its crystals, but was itself nothing but
cold, smooth, polished, prisms.
Thus during my association with Magdalene Thoresen I came to regard
myself in a new light, when I saw myself with her eyes, and I was struck
more than ever by how different the verdicts over me would be were my
various friends and acquaintances each to describe me is I appeared to
them. To Magdalene Thoresen I was all mind, to others all passion, to
others again all will. At the Nutzhorns' I went by the name of the
modest B., elsewhere I was deemed conceitedly ambitious, some people
thought me of a mild temper, others saw in me a quarrelsome unbeliever.
All this was a challenge to me to come to a clear understanding about my
real nature. The fruits of my work must show me what sort of man I was.
XI.
I continued my legal studies with patient persistence, and gradually,
after having made myself master of Civil Proceedings, I worked my way
through the whole of the juridic system, Roman Law excluded. But the
industry devoted to this was purely mechanical. I pursued my other
studies, on the contrary, with delight, even tried to produce something
myself, and during the last months of 1862 elaborated a very long paper
on _Romeo and Juliet_, chiefly concerning itself with the
fundamental problems of the tragedy, as interpreted in the Aesthetics of
the day; it has been lost, like so much else that I wrote during those
years.
Pages:
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214