The Royal Library abbreviated: RL

Knud Bøgh. Le Cardinal Mazarin et la salle de la bibliothéque de Frederik 111. Un lien architectural.

Le roi de Danemark Frederik 111 (1648-70) entreprit en 1665 la construction d'un édifice, qui devait abriter son cabinet d'objets d'art et sa bibliotheque. Il fit aménager, pour celle-ci, au deuxiéme etage, une salle de 80 m. de longueur sur 11 m. de largeur (fig. 2). Le long des quatre murs était une galerie supportée par 66 colonnes. Dans chaque coin un escalier tournant donnait accés aux rayonnages de la galerie. Ce type d'intérieur était inconnu jusque-lå en Danemark. La présente etude a pour but d'étudier s'il existe un lien entre cette salle et la tradition qui s'était établie en Europe aux XVIe et XVIle siécles pour la construction de bibliothéques. Et en particulier, trouvet-on des rapports entre la salle de Frederik 111 et les grandes bibliothéques européennes, notamment celle de la bibliotheque mazarine å Paris?

Il s'agit de la salle de la premiere bibliotheque de Mazarin, telle que, construite par Pierre Le Muet, et non par Francois Mansard, comme l'a montre M. R. A. Weigert, elle fut terminée en 1647. La bibliotheque du cardinal et son bibliothécaire, Gabriel Naudé, étaient bien connus des savants et des bibliophiles danois de l'époque, entre autres Ole Worm. De méme, beaucoup de voyageurs avaient vu la salle, entre au tres le roi Christian V, qui, alors qu'il était encore prince héritier, la visita en 1663. Le fait est attesté par une notice d'un guide de Paris, de 1685, qui, en parlant de la bibliotheque mazarine, dit que «Sa Majesté Danoise a fait faire la sienne sur le modéle de celle-cy».

Il est possible d'aller plus loin que cette notice. La Bibliotheque royale de Copenhague,en effet, conserve (Ny kgl. Samling 371 c, fol. no 12) les plans d'une salle de bibliotheque, soit deux elevations et un plan horizontal. Le plus grand, qui est le plan horizontal, mesure 93 x 197 cm. (fig. 8), le plus petit 89 X62 cm. (fig. 7). L'échelle est établie en toises; l'ensemble est execute avec précision, et les couleurs sont appliquées avec soin: les voutes sont relevées d'une ombre foncée, les rayons gris cendre, les colonnes blanchåtres, la rampe des galeries, les cadres des armoires et les serrures dorés, tandis que les grillages métalliques qui ferment les armoires sont marqués par un filetage brun. Les armoiries de Mazarin et la conformité avec la description qu'a donnée Sauval montrent que ces plans représentent bien la salle de bibliotheque, dite

salle des colonnes, du cardinal, telle qu'elle existait alors rue Richelieu. Comme les armoires furent couvertes de grillages en 1661 et que la bibliothéque fut transférée au plus tard en 1682 au College des Quatre Nations, les plans ont du étre exécutés entre ces deux dates. S'il est vrai qu'on ne connait la salle des colonnes que par Sauval, des documents d'archives et le mobilier conservé å l'actuelle Bibliothéque Mazarine, les plans retrouvés constitueraient un complément d'infonnation qui offre une descriptiongraphique détaillée de cette salle. Ils permettent d'étudier l'activité de Le Muet comme créateur de eet intérieur, de sorte que la France pourra compter, elle aussi, un grand architecte constructeur de bibliothéques de cette époque ~ comme l'ltalie a Borromini et l'Angleterre Christopher Wien.

Quant å la salle de Frederik 111, on posséde plusieurs esquisses, dont, d'une part, un plan, ou les rayons sont disposés au centre dans la longueur de la salle, d'autre part un plan, dont la disposition est radicalement modifiée (ng. 9). Comme ce dernier plan présente beaucoup de similitudes avec ceux de la salle mazarine, il y a tout lieu de croire que ces plans ont été utilisés entre l'élaboration des deux plans danois et qu'ils sont par conséquent å l'origine de l'aménagement définitif de la nouvelle bibliothéque de Copenhague. En plus, le plan francais utilise non seulement l'échelle en toises, mais porte aussi l'indication, par la méme main, de l'échelle danoise en «aulne de Seelande». Au centre du plan horizontal on lit: «Ce pland est lamoitie de la Bibleauteque mesure par laune de Seelande». Ce n'est done pas par hasard que les trois plans ont échoué å Copenhague. Ils devaient servir d'instruction pour un architecte d'un pays ou l'on se servait de l'aune de Seelande. Ce fait, ainsi que la visite de Christian V å Paris et les ressemblances entre les salles francaise et danoise, nous autorisent å croire qu'il y a un lien architectural direct entre la bibliothéque de Mazarin et la bibliothéque de Frederik 111. Celle-ci, terminée en 1673, devait rester jusqu'en 1906 le cadre de la bibliothéque nationale danoise.

L'auteur du present article tient å exprimer sa vive gratitude å M. R. A. Weigert, conservateur au cabinet des estampes de la Bibliothéque Nationale å Paris, et å M. Jacques Renoult, conservateur en chef de la Bibliothéque Mazarine, pour l'accueil aimable qu'ils lui ont reserve et pour l'aide précieuse qu'ils lui ont apportée.

Erik Dal. Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew. I: The Legend in Danish and German Popular Literature.

A number of Danish poets have dealt with the Ahasuerus legend, especially during the years 1833-54. They may have derived their knowledge of it not only from serious literature including scholarly works, but also from popular poetry. A Danish popular ballad of ab. 1750 is widely known from broadsheets and oral tradition; it has been reprinted here from the earliest edition. A somewhat older ballad is known solely from a manuscript of peasant ballads dating from ab. 1729. They are basedon the Danish chap-book about Ahasuerus, known from a number of editions (the oldest — lost—from 1607). This in its turn is a translation of the German chap-book, issued in 1602, which exerted a far-reaching influence on popular poetry, secondary traditions

and art literature. The article is an abstract of the writer's contribution to Jahrbuch
fur Volksliedforschung IX, Berlin, 1964 (Festschrift zum 75. Geburtstag von Erich
Seemann), pp. 144-70.

R. Edelmann. Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew. II: The Origin and Background of the Legend.

The chap-book about 'Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew' is a tendentious adaptation of the mediaeval legend about Pilatus' door-keeper, the Roman Cartaphilus, who insulted Jesus and for that reason was condemned to live till the Second Coming. The object of the book was to enjoin that in accordance with the alleged judgment of Jesus himself the Jews should not be allowed to settle or to acquire other privileges. The book was immensely influential on art literature as well as on popular literature. The popularity of the Ahasuerus figure in folk literature is due to the faet that it appealed to popular imagination, but not in the mythical form which it had acquired in the book. Popular imagination concretized it about a Jewish type worked out by the Ashkenasic (i. e. the Central and East European) Jewry, viz. the pious, penitent wanderer, the gdlut-wanderei, who left a deep impression on popular imagination, which was unable, however, to account for the meaning and purpose of his appearance. This was the origin of the popular idea of 'The Wandering Jew' which was confused with the figure as it appears in the Ahasuerus-book.

Mogens Brøndsted : The Story of Pontoppidan's '_'Expositiori in Denmark and JVorway.

When confirmation was made obligatory in Denmark-Norway in 1736 the Evangelical Court chaplain Erich Pontoppidan was entrusted with the task of preparing an exposition of Luther's catechism; this became the officially authorized catechism and was published in a great number of editions before 1800 (a further 7 have now been found in addition to the 40 already known). Subsequently it was ousted in Denmark by the rationalistic church movement, apart from a small district in Jutland where editions have appeared up to the present. But in Norway it has for various reasons remained in constant use, both in its complete form and in a widely used abbreviated version, and a search for editions of Pontoppidan in Norwegian libraries disclosed — besides Pontoppidan's private copy with numerous written additions — 165 editions over and above the ca. go recorded in Norwegian bibliographies. Part of these numerous expositions were printed in America (in Norwegian or English) for the use of Norwego-American congregations; one or two come from the Norwegian mission in Madagascar. When we add Pontoppidan's many other devotional books, available even in several Swedish translations, we may safely say that the old Evangelical was the most widely read homilectic writer in Scandinavia.

Niels Martin Jensen. A Problem of the History of Danish Song. Some Old and New Points About "King Christian Stood by the Lofty Mast".

It is still an unsolved problem who was the composer of the melody of the Danish
Royal Anthem. The uncertainty is due to the faet that the melody is found anonymous

and in rather varied forms even immediately after the appearance of the song. Three different hypotheses have been put forward: i) The composer was Johann Hartmann who set music to Johannes Ewald's ballad opera "The Fishermen" from 1778 where the song occurs— but not in the form known to-day. 2) The composer was the musical amateur D. L. Rogert who was a close friend of Ewald's and who was referred to by his son as the originator of the melody. 3) The melody is a so-called 'migratory melody' which circulated anonymously among music enthusiasts like many other popular melodies of the time, and Ewald may have come to know it through Rogert and the two musical brothers Chr. Fr. and P. D. Bast, in whose manuscript music book the oldest record of the melody is to be found. A hitherto unnoticed broadsheet from 1782 or 1783 prints the words of the song in a form exactly fitting the melody as it appears in the music book of the Bast brothers (see page 77). This seems to indicate that the melody originated in the Ewald circle at the same time as the poem and that Rogert was the composer, although the surmise that the melody is a 'migratory melody' remains the hypothesis that comes up against fewest contradictions. The article also mentions the occurrence of the song in a collection issued in London in 181₅ by a Danish man of letters, A.Andersen Feldborg: "Danish and Norwegian Melodies" — a further proof of the popularity enjoyed by the song during the period between its first appearance and the employment of its melody in Friedrich Kuhlau and J. L. Heiberg's national festival play "The Elf-Hill" (1828) where it acquired the status of a musical national symbol.

H. Topsøe-Jensen. H. C. Andersen!s Letters to Frederik and Ludvig Læssøe.

At the important sale in Copenhagen in May 1964 of the well-known H. C. Andersen-collection of Eiler Høeg, M.D., RL acquired 12 of the 14 original letters from the poet forming part of the collection. Dr. Høeg was descended from two families that played an important part in Andersen's life: the Hanck family in Odense and the Læssøe family in Copenhagen. The letters, the most interesting of which date from the 1830's, are written to Dr. Høeg's maternal grandfather Ludvig Læssøe, the numismatist, and to the latter's brother, Lieutenant Frederik Læssøe, later Colonel Læssøe, one of the most brilliant members of the Danish Army, who was killed in 1850 in the Schleswig-Holstein War; moreover there is a short note dating from 1865 to Ludvig Læssøe's second wife. Half the letters have been previously printed, but in most cases with great omissions. The paper gives a summary of the letters and samples of their contents: some valuable contributions towards a self-characterization of the great poet, travel notes from his first journey to Jutland (1830). and merry town gossip from Copenhagen.

Josiah Thompson. Søren Kierkegaard og hans svigerinde Henriette Kierkegaard. Et gaveeksemplar.

Josiah Thompson er en af de udlændinge, som har lært sig dansk for bedre at kunne
læse Søren Kierkegaard. For et par år siden opholdt han sig i Danmark på et stipendiumspecielt

diumspecieltmed Kierkegaard-studiet for øje. Lidt af en samler søgte han også at skaffe sig førsteudgaver af Kierkegaard, og en dag blev han præsenteret for et eksemplaraf „Opbyggelige Taler i forskjellig Aand" (184.7), som boghandleren forsikrede var et af de berømte gaveeksemplarer. Eksemplaret var så velbevaret, virkede så nyt, og prisen var så rimelig, at Thompson skeptisk lod bogen ligge. Men et par måneder efter, i maj 1963, da Det kongelige Bibliotek i anledning af Kierkegaards Isoårsdag holdt udstilling bl. a. af lignende gaveeksemplarer, gik det op for ham, at boghandlerenvist alligevel måtte have haft ret - men nu var bogen vel solgt? - han skyndte sig hen til ham - og kunne samme eftermiddag vandre hjem som ejer af et virkeligt Kierkegaard-klenodie.

Bogen frembød forskellige problemer. Noget almindeligt gaveeksemplar var det ikke; dels manglede der dedikation, dels var bindet ikke det sædvanlige i sort glanspapir, men betydelig mere kostbart. Det var et helbind i sort saffian med gulddekoration på ryg og sider og med hvidt moireret forsatspapir. Bogen var trykt på velin. Forskellige tekniske enkeltheder som forsatspapiret røbede lighed med Kierkegaards personlige eksemplar af „Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift" på Kgl. Bibi. Kunne det være Kierkegaards eget eksemplar af de „Opbyggelige Taler"?

Thompson gik til auktionskataloget over Kierkegaards efterladte bogsamling, som han sammenholdt med protokollen på Landsarkivet, men kom til det noget desorienterende resultat, at bogen - der måtte have gjort sig bemærket både ved særlig beskrivelse i kataloget og ved pris - ikke syntes at have været i Kierkegaards besiddelse ved hans død.

Thompson drog nu den slutning, at Kierkegaard kunne have givet eksemplaret væk og, da der manglede dedikation, kunne have ledsaget gaven med et brev. Han gik derfor på opdagelse i Niels Thulstrups kronologisk ordnede udgave af Kierkegaards breve, om der ikke skulle være et sådant gave-brev fra omkring året 1847, da „Opbyggelige Taler" udkom. Og det var der. Der var et brev fra Kieikegaard til hans svigerinde, Henriette Kierkegaard, gift med Peter Christian Kierkegaard, på det tidspunkt præst i Pedersborg ved Sorø. I brevet fremhæver han netop, at den bog han sender hende er hans personlige eksemplar: „Det er mit eget Exemplar, oprindeligen bestemt for mig selv: det har altsaa et reent personligt Forhold til mig ikke i Egenskab af Forfatter saaledes som de andre Exemplarer, men snarere som havde Forfatteren foræret mig det." Men - der var også et men: Kierkegaard nævner i brevet ikke titlen på bogen.

Nået så langt lader Thompson sig dog ikke standse. Han samler en række argumenter, der hver for sig og tilsammen peger mod hans eksemplar af „Opbyggelige Taler" som den bog, Kierkegaard i 1847 sendte sin svigerinde. Argumenterne er i det væsentlige følgende: Brevet, der ikke er dateret, kan efter sit indhold sættes til omkling juli 1847, hvilket stemmer med, at „Opbyggelige Taler" udkom i marts 1847, og, på den anden side, udelukker, at der kunne være tale om „Kjærlighedens Gjerninger", der først udkom i slutningen af september 1847; endvidere bogens indhold, der efter Thompsons ræsonnement ville passe til den syge svigerindes situation; og som et sidste, rent konkret bevis, anfører Thompson, at frankeringen dækker 500 g - og bogen vejer: 467 gram!

Alt i alt har Josiah Thompson ført et ret overbevisende forsvar for sin bog som værende
det eksemplar af „Opbyggelige Taler", som Søren Kierkegaard i 1847 forærede
sin svigerinde - til opbyggelse.

Som en nærmere forklaring af baggrunden for denne boggave giver Thompson en detaljeret skildring af hele Søren Kierkegaards forhold til Henriette Kierkegaard - lige fra de lærte hinanden at kende i årene omkring 1840 til Kierkegaards død i 1855; Henriette Kierkegaard døde først i 1881, 72 år gammel. Denne skildring har ikke mindst sin værdi ved, at de bevarede breve fra Kierkegaard til hans svigerinde (her gengivet i engelsk oversættelte) dels indsættes i deres specielle sammenhæng, dels gøres til genstand for en indgående analvse. Red.

Red.

H. P. Rohde. Søren Kierkegaard Sends His Regrets.

A short time ago RL acquired a letter from Søren Kierkegaard to his uncle Michael Andersen Kierkegaard (1776-1867), written on the occasion of the funeral of the latter's wife, Øllegaard Kierkegaard, née Baggesen (1772-1855). The letter may be dated 4. May 1855 and was thus written in the midst of K.'s fight against official Christianity and shortly before he began publishing The Moment (Øieblikket). The letter is an excuse and is especially interesting on account of K.'s plea for sending his excuse. He writes: 'For a great number of years I have not attended a funeral, not even that of a near relation . . .', and he adds that perhaps he might offend some of those attending if he were to make an exception now. This excuse and the explanatory statement are in complete agreement with a note in the reminiscences of Hans Brøchner, the philosopher: 'When S.K. began his controversy with the established order, and perhaps even somewhat earlier, he stopped attending divine service although he had formerly been a constant frequenter. The late Dr. Frederik Beck told me once that at the time S.K. used to visit the Athenæum on Sunday mornings during servicetime, a circumstance on which Beck with characteristic delight in sarcasms would put the construction that S.K. wished to call people's attention to the faet that he did not attend divine service'. See Hans Brøchner: Erindringer om Søren Kierkegaard (Memoirs of S.K.), Copenhagen 1953, p. 63.

Bjørn Ochsner. Ernst Ljungh the Silhouettist in the Copenhagen of the 'Eighties.

From 1886 to 1890 Ernst Ljungh (1854-1892), the Swedish sculptor and brilliant silhouettist, worked as an itinerant portrait silhouettist in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Russia, U.S.A., Great Britain and Germany. The present paper treats of his two visits to Copenhagen in 1886 and 1888, when he is known to have cut out more than 4000 Danish portraits. Only a few of them are still known, and of those the main part consists of a collection of 24, amusingly packed by Ernst Bojesen, the well-known publisher, and recently donated to RL by Mi. Peter Willemoés, Copenhagen, a grandson of the original owner, F. A. Lorck, the stockbroker.

Leo Buschardt & Helge Tønnesen. Spurious Illegal Publication During the Qccupation.

During the Nazi occupation of Denmark 1940-45 an underground press was increasingly prevalent with the purpose of reporting such nevvs aboixt the war and from the home front as the occupying power would not allow the legal press to bring. Among the means employed by the Gestapo to counteract the influence of these illegal papers was the dissemination of spurious illegal papers purpoi ting to derive from the Danish resistance movement. The article gives a chronological survey of this peculiar kind of propaganda organs, demonstrating by examples that the intention was on one hånd to provoke the Resistance to give itself away, and on the other hånd to cause uncertainty, discord and suspiciousness among the readers of the genuine underground papers, especially by appealing to the fear of communism. These attempts at misleading people were immediately neutralized by exposures and warnings in the genuine illegal papers that continued appearing, in spite of all the efforts of the Nazis, up to the time of the capitulation.