Om digteren Grundtvig

Resumé

On Grundtvig the Poet

By Finn Stein Larsen

A detailed review of Grundtvig the Poet by the poet and critic Poul Borum (284 pages, Gyldendal, 200 Dkr.). The reviewer is himself a critic on a daily paper and like Borum has “ a passion for Grundtvig and modern poetry” . Stein Larsen praises the treatment of New Year's Morn and of the hymns. Borum is “privy to” Grundtvig’s thoughts and has “a willing ear for what he says” . One particular feature he draws attention to in Grundtvig is a “ continually fresh process of name-giving” . Drawing on the critic Paul de Man he quotes Mallarmé and Stefan George. Grundtvig gives the words a purer meaning and can find his own names for things.

The reviewer stresses that “Grundtvig’s imagery is also and always con138 crete” . Of The Easter Lily (Paaske-Lilien) he writes, “Until the peasant flower stands as a reality in a room, as part of the furniture in his study, we cannot see what is is meant to mean.” And later: “ If Eliot had read Grundtvig’s poetry he would have found an inexhaustible supply of objective correlatives.” Stein Larsen agrees with Borum that “ self-validating and original namegiving” in Grundtvig runs parallel with a complex wealth of meaning, and he regards the demonstration of this as Borum’s most significant merit. “All his interpretations... swing between mythologizing, stylizing, ideologizing emblematics on the one hand, and the recognized gesture and the simple namegiving on the other” . In a poetic pantheon of classic modern writers Borum, instead of making him “merely contemporary” , places Grundtvig in many surprising contexts together with great modern poets: Blake, Coleridge, Yeats, Wallace Stevens, Hölderlin, Mallarmé, Marianne Moore and T. S. Eliot.

In his chapter on the hymns Borum is critical of hymnologists, who are “ sometimes hasty and brief... though only seldom unreasoned” ... “Only Magnus Stevns and Christian Thodberg are allowed through.” But Stein Larsen also sees the chapter on the hymns as “an incursion into the area that calls for further treatment” . On the other hand he does not think “one should ignore Borum’s contribution to Grundtvig’s homiletics” . And in general he considers the accounts “borne up by a long, energetic breath” . But he cannot understand how Borum could write at one point that “Grundtvig is friendless” ; and he also criticizes the portrait of P. G. Lindhardt as inconsistent. Nor does he accept Borum’s series of impressive trinities: Creed, ministry, song of praise; Body, soul, spirit; Father, Son, Holy Spirit. There is a further lack of concern in Borum for “ the key years, 1810, 1824, and 1832” , which Stein Larsen attributes to haste. He regrets that Borum has not achieved a comprehensive view, for “he is the man who could actually do so,” says Stein Larsen.