N.F.S. Grundtvig: »Om Mennesket i Verden«

Abstract

N. F. S. Grundtvig: On Mankind in the World, Published with an introduction and notes by K. B. Gjesing. Herning 1983. 80 pages. 120 Dkr.

Reviewed by Hellmut Toftdahl

A separate edition of “an important written source” , often cited in Grundtvig literature, but not a photographic reproduction, as in the edition of the journal Danevirke, from the second volume of which (1817) it is taken. The publisher sheds light on the article’s relation to Grundtvig’s day and age and comments on it with reference to Grundtvig research, in particular Henning Høirup’s Grundtvig’s View of Faith and Epistemology and Erik Heinemeier’s Grundtvig’s View of Man, but only in a footnote to C. I. Scharling’s Grundtvig and Romanticism, in the light of Grundtvig’s Relationship to Schelling. The publisher’s perspective is more ideological than theological and skates over Grundtvig’s clash with romanticism.

The article is concerned with the early part of the period when Grundtvig was reacting to Schelling, but at the same time it is noted that in his phraseology and conceptual apparatus Grundtvig is dependent on his school. The publisher appears to be unaware that it is through this philosophical journal that Grundtvig channels his reformatory dreams. The reviewer quotes what Grundtvig himself said about this: “Every word I write is a sharp spear; it is just wrapped in cotton.” This “ cotton” was precisely the conceptual apparatus of the age’s intellectuals. It is true that like all others, even today, Grundtvig thought in dualistic terms. But he refused to identify himself with this way of thought, knowing that the distinction between truth and lying was at odds with the distinction between the bodily and the spiritual. Truth should have a body, and therefore romanticism must comply with Christianity and the historical coming to consciousness after faith. The reviewer regrets the lack of reference to the work of Helge Grell, William Michelsen and Flemming Lundgreen-Nielsen. The condition of man as a creature with a tendency to raise himself above the creator falls outside the publisher’s ideological understanding; but it was here that Grundtvig saw the greatest danger in German romanticism, as is clear from his own text.