Nulla dies sine linea
1838
Nulla dies sine linea
Jan. I. Irony is an abnormal growth; like the abnormally enlarged liver of the Strassburg goose it ends by killing the individual.
If I am a weed in literature—well, then at least I am what is called “Proud Henry.”
April. Once again a long time has gone by in which I have not been able to concentrate upon the slightest thing —I will now try to get started again.
Poul Moller is dead.7
April 1. This morning in the cool fresh air I saw half a dozen wild geese fly away, first of all they rose directly above me, then further and further away till at last they divided into two flocks and formed two arches like eyebrows over my eyes which now looked into the land of poetry.
April 22. If Christ is to come and take up his abode in me, it must happen according to the title of to-day’s Gospel in the Almanac: Christ came in through locked doors.
The politicians accuse me of always contradicting; but therein they are my masters; for they always have one person more whom they contradict—namely, themselves.
The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life, and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.
May 19. Half-past ten in the morning. There is an indescribable joy which enkindles us as inexplicably as the apostle’s outburst comes gratuitously : “Rejoice I say unto you, and again I say unto you rejoice.”—Not a joy over this or that but the soul’s mighty song “with tongue and mouth, from the bottom of the heart :” “I rejoice through my joy, in, at, with, over, by, and with my joy”—a. heavenly refrain, as it were, suddenly breaks off our other song; a joy which cools and refreshes us like a breath of wind, a wave of air, from the trade wind which blows from the plains of Mamre to the everlasting habitations.
July 6. Idées fixes are like cramp in the foot—the best cure is to stamp on it.
July 7. God creates out of nothing, wonderful, you say : yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.
July 9. How I thank you, Father in Heaven, that you have preserved my earthly father here upon earth for a time such as this when I so greatly need him, a father who, as I hope, will with your help have greater joy in being my father a second time than he had the first time in being so.
July 9. I mean to labour to achieve a far more inward relation to Christianity; hitherto I have fought for its truth while in a sense standing outside it. In a purely outward sense I have carried Christ’s cross, like Simon of Cyrene.
Aug. 11. My father died on Wednesday (the 9th) at 2 a.m. I had so very much wished that he might live a few years longer, and I look upon his death as the last sacrifice which he made to his love for me; for he did not die from me but died for me in order that if possible I might still turn into something. Of all that I have inherited from him, the recollection of him, his transfigured portrait, not transfigured by the poetry of my imagination (for it did not require that) but explained by many an individual trait which I can now take account of—Is dearest to me, and I will be careful to preserve it safely hidden from the world; for I feel clearly that at this moment there is only one (E. Boesen) to whom I can in truth talk about him. He was a “faithful friend.”
Dec. 31. The Lord cometh, even though we have to wait for him, he cometh even though we grow as old as Anne, as grey as Simeon (that second Noah), but we must wait for him in his house.