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Primitive and undogmatic religion
Unlike his father,
who was an atheist, Andersen was a
deeply religious person, whose religious
beliefs may be summed up by saying that
he believed in the existence of a god,
in the importance of behaving decently,
and in the immortality of the soul.
" t wasn't
fair of the Lord to let me be so unlucky
in Latin"'
Andersen in 1865, photographed by C.
Weller.
This
famous triad of God, Virtue and
Immortality, which is the basis of
theological rationalism, was also the
basis of Andersen's religious belief.
He firmly
believed in some kind of divine
providence and was so convinced that God
had definite plans for him that at times
he would even argue with God; in his
schooldays he once wrote in his diary:
"It wasn't fair of the Lord to let me be
so unlucky in Latin " , and in moments
of joy he felt a desire to "press God to
my heart".
Andersen's religion was a primitive and
undogmatic one, in which he saw Christ
as the great teacher and model to
mankind, and Nature as God's universal
church. He very rarely went to church,
and the contrasting religious
philosophies of Grundtvig and
Kierkegaard, his two great
contemporaries, left him cold. One of
his favourite quotations from the Bible
was, "Except ye become as little
children, ye shall not enter into the
kingdom of heaven"; this, of course, is
the ultimate message of "The Snow
Queen".
Once, when
staying at Holsteinborg Castle, Andersen
read two of his tales to a dying
invalid, and in taking leave of her he
said: "We'll meet again." "Yes," she
replied, "up there." "Perhaps," Andersen
said, "and if you get there before me,
then please remember me to my friends; I
have several of them up there." "You
have indeed," she said.
Occasionally Andersen was taken to task
by people with strong feelings about
religious dogma. With Edvard Collin's
sister, Ingeborg Drewsen, for instance,
he quarrelled about the resurrection of
the body -"she believes in it, I don't".
After Andersen had read Søren
Kierkegaard's The Concept of Fear he
became involved in a theological
discussion with young Jonas Collin,
Edvard's son, who told him categorically
that "God and Christianity are two
different things". Andersen's diary
continues: "I said that God was the
almighty one, he was the sole power.
-'That isn't Christianity: the Jews also
believe in a god, but not in Christ!'
-So here I was told unambiguously of the
expulsion of God from Christianity by
the new god Christ."
Andersen in 1860, photographed by
Franz v. Hanfstaengel, Munich.
"I'm
drifting like a bird in the gale"
At the
manor of Basnæs Andersen had several
arguments with Lady Scavenius and others
about religious matters; thus on July
14, 1870, he recorded in his diary: "1
told them that the teaching came from
God and that it was a blessed thing, but
that conditions of birth and family,
however interesting they might be, were
not essential to me.
Then the storm broke out
and they said that the teaching had no
significance if one did not take into
account his birth and his death. The
last addition was necessary to confirm
his firm conviction of truth, etc. -If I
did not believe in the Father, the Son
and the Holy Ghost, then I wasn't a
Christian. I replied that I believed in
them as concepts, not as persons, not as
bodily creations -they almost gave me
up." One evening in
October 1871 when Andersen happened to
express his views on God and Christ, on
the Virgin Mary, and so forth, a lady,
who was a firm supporter of Grundtvigian
ideas, exclaimed: "Dear me! Then you
must be a Jew! " When Andersen told her
of his love of, gratitude towards, and
admiration for Christ as a human being
who was entitled to ask others to follow
his example, the poor lady burst into
tears and rushed out of the room. "There
was quite a scene," Andersen writes. "1
was unhappy if I had 'offended' someone
who had never so far thought about
matters of faith, and later in the
evening I tried to clear everything up
and pacify her, in which I seemed to
succeed. I said, ' A father gives each
of his two daughters a costly ring; one
of them is firmly convinced that it is
genuine and it would never occur to her
to doubt it, she is happy in her blind
faith; the other wants to know and so
goes to an expert with the ring and by
having it examined learns that it is in
fact genuine. In this latter way I have
become convinced that what Christ
teaches does in fact come from God."' |
