VI B 21:8 n.d., 1845

From final copy; see 1.36:36-37:

. . . . . [deleted: matchless] hiatically bellowing, less matchless—and more accessible to sound common sense.

To the typesetter: From here go to p. 57 [1.36:38] at the bottom under the rule line.10
Nothing is lacking.

—Pap. VI B 98:12 n.d., 1845      

From draft; see 1.36:37:

As essentially a poet, as an original and melodious* hymn writer, serviceable outside the party if the authorities will cover the expense of having him shaved, as a powerful nature, although so powerful that it seems to need dispute and opposition, as a profound person whose statements are at times confirmed in a remarkable way;** [VI B29 101] as a witnessing person who, powerfully moved in immediate passion, has worked day and night with rare perseverance, as a man with a very great deal of knowledge, even if it is not always exactly under control—Grundtvig will always maintain his significance. [VI B29 102] But this does not concern this inquiry, [deleted: here I am dealing with him as a thinker] which is occupied with only a single Grundtvigian idea. As a thinker, Grundtvig is a genius, but such an immediate genius that with regard to the psychic constitution the brilliant inspiration or the passion of genius under the idea has something in common with what an apoplectic seizure is for the physical constitution. An idea seizes him, he is astonished, moved, he wants to beatify all humankind with his matchless discovery. On the other hand, he lacks the dialectical mobility to inspect with the help of reflection what he has discovered, whether it is something great or something empty. Therefore, although his ideas are numerous, are exceedingly varied and of very different value, they all have a common stamp, a birthmark by which one recognizes them at once: the mark of absoluteness, undialectical or apoplectic absoluteness. Everything Grundtvig says is absolute. The moment he has any opinion whatever, it is the absolute, the matchless, the only saving opinion. At times, because the train of thought is interrupted, the idea does not actually come into existence but becomes a theme for lyrical effusions in which the poetic is unmistakable, whether it is his description of the foul ignorance of the age, or his bright vistas into a matchless future, or naive amazement about himself, that now he has once again made a matchless discovery. Stirred by the idea, he does not become a thinker but becomes poetic in proportion to that apoplectic obscurity in which the stimulation resides. If an [in margin: earlier] idea is revoked, he does not in turn become dialectical in relation to it; by no means, it is revoked absolutely—because now he has the opposite idea absolutely. The idea is promptly asserted [in margin: in the form of the most varied lyrical assurances] with such matchless absoluteness that every category of thought despairs of becoming involved with it. Just as the Muslim does not become involved with Allah but only shouts: Great is Allah!—so Grundtvig’s absolute idea can only be adored. Such a matching of variety, an adoring parish-clerk shout and a bellowing appreciation, which as an interjection-performance linguistically accomplishes everything and, humanly speaking, a bit more than one could wish from rational beings, is also heard occasionally. [VI B 29:103] Yet this meaningless shout, compounded of all interjections, still has its significance if one pays attention to its being shouted in just this way, for one learns to recognize a discovery by looking at the discovery itself, but also by considering* the one to whom the discovery has quite matchlessly given satisfaction, for whom it has caused a matchless light to rise over world history and the future of the human race. The strictly orthodox Grundtvig is not entirely free from a certain superstitious belief in the tremendous category of the absolute, which nevertheless is so illusive. [VI B 29:104] It is similar to opening the mouth wide in order to talk loudly. Obviously if a person wishes to talk he does not keep his mouth shut, but he may also open it so wide that nothing at all is said and the mouth merely gapes wide open. An absoluteness of this sort, which generally is rare, can be his lot, for it is not so rare that a genius has an adherent who caricatures him, but Grundtvig is his own caricature, so absolute is he. His absoluteness changes into parody just as does his style, which requires only a careful reproduction, be it polemical, as formerly by Poul Møller,12 or admiring, as by Siegfried Ley.13 Then it is parody, so that as a consequence friend and foe, by doing the same, produce the same effect. Indeed, even if these innocent and insignificant remarks should move Pastor Grundtvig and prompt him to put on his Asa-strength,14 I am certain that he will slay me so absolutely that I will come out of it completely unscathed, because in order to slay, spiritually understood, what is only a very relative magnitude, spiritually understood, one must pay particular attention to the relativity. Otherwise the one who is alive will easily convince himself that it is not he who has been slain but one or another of the enormous absolutenesses against which Pastor Grundtvig defends himself and his mother tongue and fatherland and the North, an absoluteness just as Grundtvig is absolutely the absolute.

As a remarkable psychological feature, this Grundtvigian absoluteness could lay claim to more detailed exploration; here its treatment can be granted only a very little space, since here only one single idea is essentially being treated, by which Grundtvig again has the dubious merit of absoluteness. Absoluteness is characteristic of Grundtvig even in trifles and is indeed most interesting psychologically to observe in them.