Om tankebilledet i Grundtvigs sidste digt

Resumé

About the Thought-Image in Grundtvig’s Last Poem

By William Michelsen

The article is a contribution to the on-going debate about the interpretation of a hardly legible line in Grundtvig’s last poem, .Old Enough I Now Have Grown. (Grundtvig Studier, 1994, p. 107).

In last year’s Grundtvig Studier, FI. Lundgreen Nielsen argues in favour of the reading .Soul-Ferry-Prow., understanding the phrase as determined by .a reversed Charon myth, the antique ferryman having been replaced by the Spirit of God, and his barge pole by the compass of God’s word. (Grundtvig Studier, 1994, p. 116).Thus, with some support in Bent Noack’s interpretation (Vartovbogen, 1993), FI. Lundgreen-Nielsen can read the poem as pervaded by maritime images. William Michelsen agrees on this point, but objects to the understanding of Grundtvig’s last poem as a reversed Charon myth. Instead William Michelsen reads the poem as an example of Grundtvig’s use of the symbol world of Nordic mythology in his personal Christian poetry. Grundtvig expresses his thoughts in poetry, and thus a thought image arises. The decisive feature of the thought image in this poem is precisely that it contradicts the Charon image, i.e. the notion that man’s death is a journey to the land of the dead. To Grundtvig, the sea is usually not an image of death, but an image of history, of human life. In Grundtvig’s view, death does not mean that life comes to an end, but death means a dangerous journey, since it takes man either towards the land of the dead or the heavenly harbour. In accordance with the old world picture, the firmament is close to the earth, encircling the horizon. In Nordic mythology, the inhabited land was surrounded by the ocean, separating the earth from the land of the dead, Hel or Valhalla. Thus William Michelsen defines the poem not just as a »song of farewell«, but as a poem expressing a view of life, applicable to every Christian. Instead of »Soul-Ferry-Prow«, Grundtvig’s son Svend Grundtvig reads the difficult line as »Soul-Eye-Prow«, which would make the poem into an exclusively personal poem. William Michelsen does not reject this personal interpretation, but sees the ship as the nave, the »church ship«, the Christian church, where the Spirit of God is the master mariner, and where many people, the whole of Christendom, together with Grundtvig, are on board. Usually Grundtvig sees the church in terms of a house, and not until now, during the composition of this poem, does he see the church as a ship, steered by the Spirit of God to ensure that the church reaches the »Heavenly Harbour« - this being emphasized by the masculine ending of the last stanza but one. The poem is an expression of Grundtvig’s Christian interpretation of the existential situation of man facing death.