Copenhagen Assisi Rome
Jorgensen : an Autobiography. Translated from the Danish by Ingeborg Lund. (Sheed and Ward. 108. 6d.) JOHANNES JORGENSEN, best known in England for his beauti-- foil life of St. Francis of Assisi, completed in 1916 the first part of a spiritual autobiography tracing his development from boyhood to about his twenty-eighth year, when he was on the verge of submission to the Catholic Church. The book is rather an artistic reconstruction of experience, than autobiography properly so-called ; adding yet another portrait to the gallery of " great converts " whose reaction from the revolutionary- thought of the nineties threw them into the arms of the oldest and most stable of the Christian Churches. Men of letters like Huysmans, Coppee and Claudel, men of action like Foucauld, intellectual women like Elizabeth Leseur and Madeline Semer, have all followed the same path to the'same goal : 'but Jorgensen's case has the Special interest for us of exhibiting the. peculiar attraction exercised by Italian religious . sentiment over the Scandinavian mind. There is a definite type of modern soul for whom in the most literal sense Italy is a " spiritual home," and who can only reach Bethlehem via Assisi. It is easy—indeed too easy— to exhibit the sentimentalism implicit in this attitude. But until we iaiOw' more than we do at present of the strange power inherent in the " spirit of place," both prudence and courtesy should incline us to accept with simplicity the accounts– of those who have found Reality under these particular geographical and historical accidents JOrgensen, the brilliant and imaginative child of an old- fashioned Lutheran home, where religion " consisted in living a decent and honest life, believing in God, going to Church on great feast days and to communion once a year with the Missis," was sent as a poverty-stricken student of eighteen into the seething intellectual life of Copenhagen. He was obliged to accept the charity of the comfortable families who offered a regular place at their dinner tables to poor students ; and, suffering agonies from shabby clothes, awkward manners, and a general sense of economic and. social inferiority, ." had to sit at Conservative dinner tables and listen to attacks on everything I admired and 'poked up. to, everything that was new and fresh and. coifrageous." ItIvaa the moment in which Ibsen, Georg Brandes";. and StrindbergIvere electrifying the intellectual atmosphere, and the philosopher Hoffding was the dominant influence of the University. Under these conditions Jiirgensen's eager and restless mind passed rapidly through the usual phases of youthful revolt. He became in his own belief an " enemy of society," a Nihilist, a Bohemian. His education ended, he began that mixed life of poetry, journalism and revolutionary conversations, which has been the first stage in so many literary careers. About 1890,; Nietzsche was the idol of the young Danish intelligentsia, which regarded convention with horror, religion with' kindly contempt, and desired above all else to be Bohemian and
"• broad-minded." But very soon this highly seasoned diet lost its charm for Jorgensen's spirit. Huysmans and Maeter- linck—authors stigmatized by Brandes as " hostile to life "- came his way, and produced the feeling that " there is a want of the mystic sense of eternity in modern man, and that this want makes the society of the present day so barren and empty to live in."
Domestic and financial misfortune, in which actual destitu- tion was reached, came to strengthen this disillusionment. Finally, in 1894. Jorgensen met the decisive religious influence of his life. The painter Mogefis 'BallM had been converted from symbolism to Catholicism by the chance reading of The Imitation of Christ ; and by reason of his intellectual background was well fitted to bridge the gap between modem thought and old Roman Christianity. Under his influence and that of the devout Dutch artist Verkade, Jorgensen began to examine Catholicism. He found, the Mass ." pleasing as a drama " ; but the words " Our true goal is not here below," heard in his first sermon, " aroused a Goethean protest."' He toyed with pantheism, studied Boehme and Eckhart, on his " way out to the Latin daylight." ByrVerkadesIindnesci he was now able to undertake a journey to Italy—an intoxir eating experience for a young Danish romantic,. starving for beauty, and hovering on the verge of the spiritual life. Virtual conviction was achieved at Lucerne, where he looked into- a church at the moment of Benediction : of all Latin rites, the most full of awe for the half-converted mind. Thenceforth he followed the zigzag course of a ship beating to windward; yet gradually approaching its goal ; by turns attracted by the charm of Catholicism and repelled by its details and demands". " The whole systein of amulets, the nuisance of miracles, the revelation of Jesus to nuns, apparition of the Madonna at Lourdes, at Rapallo, &e., appal me."
The pilgrim reached Assisi just before the great feast of the Pardon of St. Francis. Thereafter the narrative moves through the lovely Umbrian landscape, in a series of scene§ that recall the colour, character and very life of the heart of Italy. The visit to S. Chiim's "shrine at Montefaleo ; the-- nuns of S. Andrea—all " pale faces, kind eyes and luminous smiles " crowding to the grille to gaze at " questa giovane per cui abbiamo pregato tanto " ; the pious :widow Filomena and her cooking ; the contrasting country of mountain and plain—these give us the essence of a life unique in its natural and supernatural attraction. Drop by drop in these favouring surroundings, the peace of surrender was distilled into the young poet's restless heart : till the feaittiat he must lose the loveliness of life in order to find the loveliness of God was finally vanquished by a voice that said within him, " You thought you were giving up poetry, Giovanni I Behold, she is coming towards you, and she is fairer than ever before."
EVELYN UNDERHILL.
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