The innocent
remark that Soeren Kierkegaard was the Tycho Brahe of our philosophy, as
great as Tycho Brahe, but, like him, failing to place the centre of our
solar system in its Sun, gave Bjoernson an opportunity for the
statement,--a very dangerous one for a young author of foreign origin to
make,--that the man who could write like that "had no views in common
with other Danes, no Danish mind."
The year after I was astonished by inflammatory outbursts on the part of
the clergy. One day in 1868 the much-respected Pastor Hohlenberg walked
into my friend Benny Spang's house, reprimanded her severely for
receiving such an undoubted heretic and heathen under her roof, and
demanded that she should break off all association with me. As she
refused to do so and turned a deaf ear to his arguments, losing all
self-control, he flung his felt hat on the floor, continued to rage and
rail against me, and, no result coming of it, dashed at last, in a
towering passion, out through the door, which he slammed behind him.
There was a farcical ending to the scene, since he was obliged to ring
at the door again for his hat, which, in his exasperation, he had
forgotten. This was a kind of private prologue to the ecclesiastical
drama which from the year 1871 upwards was enacted in most of the
pulpits of the country.
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