Nielsen had recently, from the cathedra, announced his renunciation of
the Kierkegaard standpoint he had so long maintained, in the phrase:
"The Kierkegaard theory is impracticable"; he had, perhaps influenced
somewhat by the Queen Dowager, who about that time frequently invited
him to meet Grundtvig, drawn nearer to Grundtvigian ways of thinking,--
as Broechner sarcastically remarked about him: "The farther from
Kierkegaard, the nearer to the Queen Dowager."
In the midst of my final preparations for the examination, I wrestled,
as was my wont, with my attempts to come to a clear understanding over
Duty and Life, and was startled by the indescribable irony in the word
by which I was accustomed to interpret my ethically religious
endeavours,--_Himmelspraet_. [Footnote: Word implying one who
attempts to spring up to Heaven, and of course falls miserably to earth
again. The word, in ordinary conversation, is applied to anyone tossed
in a blanket.]
I handed in, then, my request to be allowed to sit for my Master of Arts
examination; the indefatigable Broechner had already mentioned the matter
to the Dean of the University, who understood the examinee's reasons for
haste. But the University moved so slowly that it was some weeks before
I received the special paper set me, which, to my horror, ran as
follows: "Determine the correlation between the pathetic and the
symbolic in general, in order by that means to elucidate the contrast
between Shakespeare's tragedies and Dante's _Divina Commedia_,
together with the possible errors into which one might fall through a
one-sided preponderance of either of these two elements.
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