From the Hans Christian Andersen biography "The Life of Hans Christian Andersen. Day By Day", written by DPhil Johan de Mylius:

1833

The Great Journey of Personal Development or "Bildung"

April

Before departing on his journey, HCA gives Edvard Collin the incomplete manuscript to a book of memoirs - it was to be kept in safe-keeping until after his death. Levnedsbogen (The Biography), as it would later be named, serves not only as a personal legitimacy vis-à-vis the circle around Collin, but also as an artist's self-justification.

1833: The Great Journey of Personal Development or "Bildung"


21 April

Before HCA's departure, H.C. Ørsted makes the following entry in his album:

Reason in reason = truth
Reason in will = the good
Reason in imagination = beauty

Such a triad of truth, the good and beauty is the essence of thought and norms of the day (here in Ørsted's particular version, interpreted on the basis of "reason", but stemming from the ideals of the bourgois classes, which developed from approx. 1750 on.

22 April 1833

Departure from Copenhagen (on the same day HCA's tenancy with Charlotte Schrøder in St. Kongensgade 33/10 is terminated) via Lübeck, Hamburg, Celle, Hannover, to Kassel, where HCA visits the composer Ludvig Spohr. He and Spohr amuse themselves with talk of Weyse and Kuhlau, and Spohr writes a three-line pica in his journal. Continues on via Frankfurt am Main to Mainz, from Rhintur to Koblenz, then returns to Mainz. Via Metz and Verdun to Paris.

10th May - 15th August

Staying in Paris.

25 May

Visits the exiled P.A. Heiberg (father of Johan Ludvig Heiberg), who is now almost blind. HCA has heard that he is supposedly rude to Danes who visit him, but in actual fact finds him to be "most kind"(the diary). Heiberg considers his death to be forthcoming and reads his epitaph aloud for HCA.

25 June

Presumably the date of his first meeting with Heinrich Heine, the poet. Heine's Buch der Lieder (Book of Songs) and Harzreise (Journey to The Harz) had been an important source of inspiration for the young HCA, who recognised some of his own "Weltschmerz"(existential pain) in Heine's poetry and learned from his ironic and mocking way of playing with the whole sphere of emotions rooted in romanticism.

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