End of Journey
1840
The Journey to Jutland
Kallundborg, July 19. On board the ferry. It is terrible how boring conversations in general are when one has to be with people for long; the same remark was repeated again and again, just as toothless old folk turn their food over and over in their mouths, till in the end one had to spit it out. There were four parsons on board, and although the crossing lasted for eight to nine hours (an eternity to me), the experienced travellers found it unusually short, which gave each of the parsons in turn an opportunity of remarking, first of all that no skipper liked to have a parson on board, because it brought contrary winds and that the truth of the remark was now disproved, and then at the end of the crossing in full chorus, to establish it as a principle that the saying about contrary winds was untrue. It was in vain that I spread every inch of hearing-canvas to catch a breath of wind; there was a dead calm; from the four quarters one only heard that no skipper wanted parsons on board (which goes to show what a doubtful blessing the freedom of the parish is, for although there was absolute freedom of parishes on board the smack, and I could have listened to whichever parson I liked, I was no better off). Since each of the parsons seemed equally interested and justified in appropriating that story, naturally no one of them would grant another a priuilegium exclusivum.—I had hoped to be sea-sick, or at least that all the other passengers would be sea-sick.
I feel so dull and so completely without joy, my soul is so empty and void that I cannot even conceive what could satisfy it—oh, not even the blessedness of heaven.
To thee, 0 God, we turn for peace . . . but grant us too the blessed assurance that nothing shall deprive us of that peace, neither ourselves, nor our foolish, earthly desires, nor my wild longings, nor the anxious cravings of my heart.
The terrible thing about the absolute spiritual incapacity from which I am suffering at the present time is that it is coupled with a consuming desire, with a spiritual passion, —and yet so formless that I do not even know what I long for.
I sit here quite alone (I have often been just as much alone but I have never felt so conscious of it) counting the hours until I see Saeding. I can never remember any change in my father and I shall now see the places where as a poor child he watched the flocks and for which, as a result of his descriptions, I have felt such home-sickness. What if I were to fall ill and be buried in the churchyard of Saeding ! Extraordinary thought. His last wish is fulfilled 9—is that to be the whole meaning of my earthly life? Great heavens! The task cannot be so small when compared to all that I owe him. I learnt from him the meaning of fatherly love and so was given some idea of divine fatherly love, the one unshakable thing in life, the true archimedean point.
To stand outside the door of this little places10 in the late evening light, in the aroma which hay always gives out; the sheep coming home make the foreground; dark skies broken by a few violent patches of light, such as are always seen before a wind—in the background rises the moor—if only I could remember the impression of this evening clearly.
Just as people say: nulla dies sine linea, so I can say of this journey : Nulla dies sine lacryma.
The heaths of Jutland must of all places be suited to develop the spirit powerfully; here everything lies naked and uncovered before God, and there is no room for the many distractions, the many little crevices where consciousness can hide and where seriousness has such difficulty in running down one’s scattered thoughts. Here consciousness must firmly and scrupulously close itself around itself. And on the heaths one may say with truth : “Whither shall I flee from thy presence?”
It seems as though I were to experience contrasts good and proper. After having stayed with my poor aunt for three days, almost like Ulysses’s stable-companion with Circe, the very first place I come to is so stuffed with Counts and Barons as to be frightening. I spent the night in Them and the morning and afternoon with Count Ahlefeldt, who invited me to Langeland. The only friend I found to-day was Rosenørn my old and distinguished friend.
On the way to Aarhuus I saw a very funny sight: two cows harnessed together cantered past us, the one jogging gaily along and swinging its tail with a fine dash, the other was more prosaic and depressed at having to take part in such emotions.—Are not most marriages like that?
End of Journey
It requires moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice.
Nov. 15. There is a world of difference between the proud courage which dares to fear the worst and the humble courage which dares to hope for the best.