Read Online Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard by Isak Dinesen - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Isak Dinesen
Ads: Link
narrow berth and in the merciless hand of seasickness, he was their hard-tried prophet, Jonah in the belly of the whale. But always and everywhere he was the chosen one, the wanderer in his vocation.
Herr Soerensen in his nature had a kind of duplicity which might well confuse and disturb his surroundings and might even be called demoniacal, but with which he himself managed to exist on harmonious terms. He was on the one hand a wide-awake, shrewd and untiring businessman, with eyes at the back of his head, a fine nose for profit, and a completely matter-of-fact and detached outlook on his public and humanity in general. And he was at one and the same time his art’s obedient servant, a humble old priest in the temple, with the words
“Domine, non sum dignus”
graven in his heart.
He did not, in his contracts, let himself be done for as much as a farthing. While laying on his mask in front of a dim, chipped mirror he might suddenly get a bright idea which put him in a position to steal a march on other folk. He played in many coarse farces (which in his time were called
Possen
), giving his audience their hearts’ desire of capering, roaring and fantastic grimacing, and thanking them for their deafening applause with his hand on his heart and the sweetest of smiles on his lips—and all the time he had the evening’s accounts, down to the smallest item, in his head.
But when, later at night, after having enjoyed his modest supper, with a little glass of schnapps thrown in, he ascended to his bedroom, candle in hand, up a staircase as steep and narrow as a hen-coop ladder, in spirit he moved as high as an old angel on Jacob’s ladder. Up there he sat down again to table with Euripides, Lopez de Vega and Molière, with the poets of his own country’s golden age, and with the one who most of all looked like a human being, with William Shakespeare himself. The immortal minds were his brethrenand understood him as he them. In their circle he could let himself go, free and jubilant, or he could shed tears of deepest
weltschmerz
.
Herr Soerensen at times had been characterized by business connections as a shameless speculator. But in his relations to the immortals he was as chaste as a virgin.
Only a few close friends knew of his theory: that much which is unworthy in human life might be avoided if people would only accustom themselves to talking in verse. “It need not exactly rhyme,” he said. “Nay, it really ought not to rhyme. Rhyming verse in the long run is an underhand attack on the true being of poetry. But we should express our feelings, and communicate with one another, in blank verse. For iambics gently sway our nature’s rawness—to noble worth, and zealously divide—chatter and tripe and scandal’s overspill—from gold and silver in the human speech.” In the great moments of his existence Herr Soerensen himself thought in iambics.
Only the Registrar-General of Births and Deaths in Copenhagen—who had shown himself highly reluctant to the idea—knew of a codicil to his will, in accordance with which his old cranium would one day be polished and through the ages to come would figure on the stage as Yorick’s skull.
Now one year it happened that Herr Soerensen in doing his accounts found his last season to have been more profitable than any previous one. The old manager felt that the great powers above had looked to him kindly and that in return he ought to do something for them. He determined to put into operation a life-old dream. He would produce
The Tempest
and himself play the part of Prospero.
No sooner had he taken this decision than he got up from his bed, dressed and went for a long walk in the night. He gazed at the stars above him and reflected that he had beenled along strange ways. “Those wings for which all my life I have been longing and looking,” he said to himself, “have now been granted me—in order that I may fold them together! My thanks to those in whose hands I have
Herr Soerensen in his nature had a kind of duplicity which might well confuse and disturb his surroundings and might even be called demoniacal, but with which he himself managed to exist on harmonious terms. He was on the one hand a wide-awake, shrewd and untiring businessman, with eyes at the back of his head, a fine nose for profit, and a completely matter-of-fact and detached outlook on his public and humanity in general. And he was at one and the same time his art’s obedient servant, a humble old priest in the temple, with the words
“Domine, non sum dignus”
graven in his heart.
He did not, in his contracts, let himself be done for as much as a farthing. While laying on his mask in front of a dim, chipped mirror he might suddenly get a bright idea which put him in a position to steal a march on other folk. He played in many coarse farces (which in his time were called
Possen
), giving his audience their hearts’ desire of capering, roaring and fantastic grimacing, and thanking them for their deafening applause with his hand on his heart and the sweetest of smiles on his lips—and all the time he had the evening’s accounts, down to the smallest item, in his head.
But when, later at night, after having enjoyed his modest supper, with a little glass of schnapps thrown in, he ascended to his bedroom, candle in hand, up a staircase as steep and narrow as a hen-coop ladder, in spirit he moved as high as an old angel on Jacob’s ladder. Up there he sat down again to table with Euripides, Lopez de Vega and Molière, with the poets of his own country’s golden age, and with the one who most of all looked like a human being, with William Shakespeare himself. The immortal minds were his brethrenand understood him as he them. In their circle he could let himself go, free and jubilant, or he could shed tears of deepest
weltschmerz
.
Herr Soerensen at times had been characterized by business connections as a shameless speculator. But in his relations to the immortals he was as chaste as a virgin.
Only a few close friends knew of his theory: that much which is unworthy in human life might be avoided if people would only accustom themselves to talking in verse. “It need not exactly rhyme,” he said. “Nay, it really ought not to rhyme. Rhyming verse in the long run is an underhand attack on the true being of poetry. But we should express our feelings, and communicate with one another, in blank verse. For iambics gently sway our nature’s rawness—to noble worth, and zealously divide—chatter and tripe and scandal’s overspill—from gold and silver in the human speech.” In the great moments of his existence Herr Soerensen himself thought in iambics.
Only the Registrar-General of Births and Deaths in Copenhagen—who had shown himself highly reluctant to the idea—knew of a codicil to his will, in accordance with which his old cranium would one day be polished and through the ages to come would figure on the stage as Yorick’s skull.
Now one year it happened that Herr Soerensen in doing his accounts found his last season to have been more profitable than any previous one. The old manager felt that the great powers above had looked to him kindly and that in return he ought to do something for them. He determined to put into operation a life-old dream. He would produce
The Tempest
and himself play the part of Prospero.
No sooner had he taken this decision than he got up from his bed, dressed and went for a long walk in the night. He gazed at the stars above him and reflected that he had beenled along strange ways. “Those wings for which all my life I have been longing and looking,” he said to himself, “have now been granted me—in order that I may fold them together! My thanks to those in whose hands I have
Similar Books
