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?"
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