Chapter 6

From this day forward, it was as if a more constant sunshine had
entered my heart. I felt within myself more repose, more certainty; it
was clear to me, as I glanced back over my earlier life, that a loving
Providence watched over me, that all was directed for me by a higher
Power; and the firmer becomes such a conviction, the more secure does a
man feel himself. My childhood lay behind me, my youthful life began
properly from this period; hitherto it had been only an arduous
swimming against the stream. The spring of my life commenced; but still
the spring had its dark days, its storms, before it advanced to settled
summer; it has these in order to develop what shall then ripen. That
which one of my dearest friends wrote to me on one of my later travels
abroad, may serve as an introduction to what I have here to relate. He
wrote in his own peculiar style:--"It is your vivid imagination which
creates the idea of your being despised in Denmark; it is utterly
untrue. You and Denmark agree admirably, and you would agree still
better, if there were in Denmark no theatre--_Hinc illae
lacrymae!_ This cursed theatre. Is this, then, Denmark? and are you,
then, nothing but a writer for the theatre?"

Herein lies a solid truth. The theatre has been the cave out of which
most of the evil storms have burst upon me. They are peculiar people,
these people of the theatre,--as different, in fact, from others, as
Bedouins from Germans; from the first pantomimist to the first lover,
everyone places himself systematically in one scale, and puts all the
world in the other. The Danish theatre is a good theatre, it may indeed
be placed on a level with the Burg theatre in Vienna; but the theatre
in Copenhagen plays too great a part in conversation, and possesses in
most circles too much importance. I am not sufficiently acquainted with
the stage and the actors in other great cities, and therefore cannot
compare them with our theatre; but ours has too little military
discipline, and this is absolutely necessary where many people have to
form a whole, even when that whole is an artistical one. The most
distinguished dramatic poets in Denmark--that is to say, in Copenhagen,
for there only is a theatre--have their troubles. Those actors and
actresses who, through talent or the popular favor, take the first
rank, very often place themselves above both the managers and authors.
These must pay court to them, or they may ruin a part, or what is still
worse, may spread abroad an unfavorable opinion of the piece previous
to its being acted; and thus you have a coffee-house criticism before
any one ought properly to know anything of the work. It is moreover
characteristic of the people of Copenhagen, that when a new piece is