Reading N F S Grundtvig’s Pedagogical Writings
Bosse Bergstedt
Department of Education and Psychology
Linköping University
SUMMARY
N F S Grundtvig (1783-1872) is one of the most well-known personalities in the whole history of Danish culture. He was a clergyman, a poet, author of numerous hymns, a historian, politician and pedagogue. He conceived the ideas behind the Nordic folkhögskola ("Folk High School", /Residential/ College of Non-formal adult education, with long-term courses as the core of its work, Danish: Høiskole). Today there are great numbers of folkhögskolor in the Nordic countries and in other parts of the world, inspired by Grundtvig’s ideas on education. Likewise, his vision of a Nordic University, the so-called "Gothenburg-idea", has met and still meets with great interest.
Livsupplysning (Education for life, Life enlightenment)
This dissertation focuses on the phenomenon of livsupplysning. Grundtvig advocates a livsupplysning aiming at liberation from cultural oppression. Its objective is to introduce new generations into the cultural universe shared by a nation. This makes it very important to study history and to acquire knowledge about earlier generations. But learning about historical experiences is not sufficient: there is a need for reflection and development.
To be able to create the livsupplysning that may liberate cultural rebirth, we have to discover the spiritual force that bears man. This is an invisible, universal force, revealing itself in human life. A light, capable of enlightening without the help of the intellect. It is the task of livsupplysning to make this light shine. "Enlightenment for life", thus, has to be seen as a very concrete light - "to have so that you may see".
This spiritual force is in constant struggle with death, and it can be experienced only from this point of departure. This is why växelverkan (interaction, interchange, dialogue) is a central concept with Grundtvig. Man was once, through the Fall, secluded from a more universal entity, what led to the separation of soul and body. To make växelverkan between these two possible, there is a need to develop a third something, that to Grundtvig means self-consciousness. Body and soul are man, but only in his self-consciousness he has something, and this something is language.
Self-consciousness is not viewed as an isolated element, but rather as an insight, a knowledge, producing växelverkan between body and soul. This body of knowledge expresses itself through language. And by striving for knowledge based on växelverkan, Grundtvig believes, the collective language will one day be able to develop a collective consciousness wide enough to let humankind rejoin the entity where light and life began. That is how livsupplysning becomes a pathway to wisdom and to human and cultural growth.
To Grundtvig this path to wisdom is best accessed by living human beings, via the spoken, living word. Texts, in contrast, are "dead". Differently from the living person, the text doesn’t have direct contact with the spiritual force. If you want to mould the spiritual force into a text, you will have to do it indirectly, as a negation, expressing what something is not. This won’t prevent you from trying to create figures that are able to point towards the spiritual force. That is the way of establishing växelverkan used by Grundtvig in his texts, when he seeks to express what is meant by livsupplysning.
Reading Grundtvig
Today, the context that once made Grundtvig’s texts full of meanings has to a large extent been lost, through industrialism and through the numerous catastrophes of the 20th century - an epoch that has made us forget what in livsupplysning went beyond trivial reality. That is why we will have to try to develop the capacity to read these texts in such a way as to give them back some of their lost vigour.
To discover how Grundtvig builds a text, intellectual reading is not enough. The reader will have to be open to finding in the text something indicating the spirit and written in an indirect way to tell something about what cannot be expressed in itself. To succeed in this, the reader has to let the unconscious meet the text, instead of forcing a specific interpretation upon it. In this way, the reader may become a link between the unconscious and the conscious.
We are supported in this way of reading by - among others - Poul Borum, a Danish literary critic and historian. He has indicated that it may be fruitful trying a "deconstructive re-reading" of Grundtvig’s texts. One of the post-structuralist who developed this kind of reading is Jacques Derrida, French philosopher of language. He has demonstrated that language is not finite, but rather consists in an open play of differences/distinctions. There is nothing to grant its beginning nor its end; every element of the system will always distinguish itself from another element by some specific characteristic.
Another inspiration was the Swedish literary researcher Horace Engdahl. He has discovered that there is a new state of language in the Romantic text. An image is no more a symbol of something else, it is a symbol of itself. According to Horace Engdahl, the Romantic text is an attempt to evade the option of reporting a concept. In this way, language will live in a kind of state of suspension, working without any pre-defined levels of meaning.
In this dissertation, three reading strategies were applied: the focus, the detail, and the voice. Applying these three, a reading was developed to discover those rhetoric strategies in the text, aiming to describe what is meant by livsupplysning.
Pedagogical texts
Grundtvig’s pedagogical writings are in the focus of this dissertation. My reading follows a biographical line, in the form of a walking-tour, a festival, a voyage, and a visit to a folkhögskola. We start in chapter 2 from the text Om Mennesket i Verden (On Man in the World), a text written by Grundtvig in 1817, at the age of 34. The text deals mainly with psychological and philosophical questions, that will turn out to be important for the development of his later pedagogical ideas concerning both folkhögskola and university.
In chapter 3, the reading concerns the introduction to Nordens Mythologi (Nordic Mythology) from 1832. This time Grundtvig invites us to a festival to celebrate that 25 years elapsed since his first book on Nordic Mythology was published. This is the text, where Grundtvig’s pedagogical thinking begins to become clearer.
In the following chapter, most of Grundtvig’s most important pedagogical texts are read, i.a. Skolen for Livet og Academiet i Sorø (The School for Life and The Soroe Academy), written in 1838. By way of a journey to both Soroe in Denmark and Gothenburg in Sweden, Grundtvig indicates that he is thinking of two different schools that will interact with each other: the folkhögskola and the university.
The text Taler på Marielyst Høiskole 1856-71 (Speeches at Marielyst Høiskole 1856-71) concludes the reading. Here we approach the end of Grundtvig’s life, and finish at his own folkhögskola. In his Marielyst speeches Grundtvig summarises a lot of his pedagogical ideas, which are, for the first time, being anchored in a concrete reality.
In the last chapter of the book, with the heading Living växelverkan, the results from the reading of the selected texts are summarised, discussed, and further developed. The chapter is composed like a collage, where Grundtvig’s texts are related to history and to the present. Among other things, the chapter discusses Romanticism as well as the concepts of bildning (General education, Culture, Erudition - German: Bildung) and Post-modernism.
Reversal and dislocation
In brief, we can describe our reading in terms of two strategies, reversal and dislocation. The first one starts from a fundamental distinction of opposites and is made visible by reversals. This distinction originates, according to Grundtvig, from the Fall, and is described through the three contradicting opposites of life and death, light and darkness, truth and lie. Being contradicting opposites, they cannot interact in a dialogue (differently from other pairs of opposites mentioned below). They are in a state of fighting each other, and Grundtvig takes a clear stand, giving priority to life before death, to light before darkness, and to truth before lie. How this fight will end, we don’t know, but man has to strive for life’s victory over death. It is important that the opposites are present all up to the moment when the final victory is won.
To demonstrate that life has to be given priority over death, and to find a way to strengthen life in this fight, Grundtvig identifies the enemy, and then reverses the opposites to put life’s representatives in the first place. Here are some instances of reversals found in Grundtvig’s pedagogical texts:
- The living word - The written word
- School for life - School for death
- New Danish science - Roman-Italian science
- The people - The civil servants
- Denmark - Germany
- Woman - Man
- Dialogue - Lecture
- Folklore - Pop culture
- Pupil - Teacher
- Freedom - Coercion
- Young people -The elderly
But giving life priority over death is not enough. Life must demonstrate how it differs from death. What arms can life use in its struggle against death? How can this be described? The second step focuses on rhetoric elements in the text, the aim at exposing the possibilities of livsupplysning. Life contains a light that has to be lit. In the text, this cannot be described but by a negation - as something present instead of something else. To accomplish this, the opposites in the text have to be put in motion, what is done by dislocations.
These rhetoric dislocations are characterised by their potential to enact a play and a motion of the opposites in the language. They strive to create an opening in the text. Some instances:
- Address
- Hyphen
- Change of perspectives
- Metatext
- Metaphor
- Proverb
- Exclamation!
- Italics
The Text that Enlightens Life
What I found, by reading Grundtvig’s texts, is a livsupplysning that is not only a new pathway to knowledge but is also formed via a new language. A language, that is in itself a metaphor for that which is sought. Grundtvig very well knows the illusion of the text and describes the written text as a dead one. At the same time he seeks to inscribe indirectly as much life as possible into the dead text.He does not aim to communicate a distinct concept, but he tries to form traces of the Invisible in the Expressible. These traces of the spiritual force in the body of the text, in their turn, try to create a meeting with the reader, where he, in his reading, manages to attain a växelverkan between body and soul. In this way, Grundtvig wants to point to the necessity for a living växelverkan and demonstrates what it looks like in practice.
Texts are based on the aesthetical principles of Romanticism. Ambiguity and multiplicity of symbols and images, mixed with growing associations, switches between different levels of meaning, and a conscious use of mythology and history. The text thus mediates a motion, that upsets the fixed structure. Horace Engdahl speaks of a "literarity", that permeates the fibres of the text - and not only superficial envelopes of mythology or ingenious circumlocations. In this way, a text is built, that is all the time conscious of being an image, an illusion, what causes that the text is not able to communicate livsupplysning, but that it may arouse a feeling of what is meant by livsupplysning.
Language is not an image, an illustration - it exists and works by its own force. But this is a force that cannot be extracted if the text is not read in a specific way. He who liberates light in meeting the text, is the reader. The text by itself cannot express the spiritual force; in meeting the text, the reader may make the light shine.
The spiritual force, according to Grundtvig, is present in each and every reading, but some readers choose not to see it, and try instead to mirror the text and reproduce it as literally as possible. Leaving out the spirit in this way, which depends on the ability of the self-consciousness to repress and forget, makes reading incomplete. The reader does not see the whole text, when part of him is secluded.
In this way we can assert that the text that enlightens life seeks to establish a common interpretation. Hans Hauge treats this theme, when he uses Grundtvig as an exemplification of what is today termed "poetry-seeing eyes". A text doesn’t become poetry until it is being read with a special view ; in itself, the text is dumb and dead. What Grundtvig did to the Bible was quite simply to "de-canonise" it and demonstrate that Christianity cannot be directly deduced from the Bible. The text being dead, we, the readers, give it its meaning. In this way, literature, too, is not only a phenomenon of an isolated text. Man is born in the way he construes the text. What Grundtvig accomplishes is to establish a new common interpretation - being the starting point for his pedagogical ideas.
The Pedagogy of Livsupplysning
When Grundtvig wants to make his pedagogical ideas clear, he uses rhetoric. His strategy includes playing with both the ambiguity of language and with the pairs of opposites present in the pedagogical environment. It is not by chance that he writes a song instead of a programme for his own folkhögskola. The song is rhythm, sound, and motion. These are different means to clarify the meaning of livsupplysning. Rhythm indicates the way to create växelverkan between body and soul in the most effective way.
The situation is similar when we look at an oral dialogue, a conversation. In a conversation, the word wanders between the participants. The word doesn’t stand still, it is not dead, it moves, it bears life. We never know what the other person is going to say - he or she has an invisible domain. When the invisible is mixed with the expressible - what most easily takes place in the spoken word - this is a token for växelverkan between body and soul.
The striving for a living växelverkan returns in several different ways when Grundtvig wants to expose his thoughts about the folkhögskola. It has to be a meeting place for different ages, young and old, and for participants fr9m different geographical areas. Different forms of shared responsibility and co-determination shall create växelverkan between teachers and students.
The pedagogical forms will in this way cause dislocations in the learning environment, bringing the differences into play. To make this plurality possible, we have to see "life" in each and every one. What this life is, must remain part of the enigma without a solution.
Life is natural, it is there, without man’s intervention and ruling. Life is here by itself. But at the same time it is in constant struggle with death. The opposite of life, then, is the dead letter, the pen, the books, the grammar, the vocabularies, the dead languages. All that is petrified and dead.
When giving priority to life before death, freedom is important. The new school has to be free of exams, it shall not lead up to any vocation or profession, the students shall be allowed to begin and to end attending at will, and also in other areas there should be a maximum of freedom. Freedom makes motion easier. Växelverkan between opposites will be more easily realised, and each such växelverkan can contribute to the liberation of livsupplysning. You can’t capture life, the spirit remains invisible, but a stimulating pedagogical environment will help arouse livsupplysning.
Grundtvig advocates the priority of the "speaking and living word" over the book and the printed word. In pedagogical practice, dialogue becomes important. In a dialogue, in a conversation, the word wanders between the partners. The word does not stand still, it is not dead, it moves, it contains life. We will never know what our partner will say, he or she expresses something invisible. When the Invisible is mixed with the Expressible, what is most easily done in the living word, this is a sign of interaction between body and soul. When Grundtvig advocates the lecture as way to communicate the living word, this ought to be seen as a first, introductory stage of the teaching. The main point is starting a dialogue between teacher and participants, so that a "living växelverkan, a true mutual education" may arise.
Science that enlightens life
Grundtvig wanted to establish not only within the folkhögskola, but also between these schools and the university. The People’s college, the folkhögskola, has to include present day life and the living moment in its considerations, thereby reminding the university not to forget the enigma of life. The task of the university, on the other hand, is to use its body of universal and historical knowledge to secure that the people’s college does not deteriorate into something marginal.
Gruntvig envisages a Nordic university, where no less than 300 scholars can live for their scientific work in the form of a living växelverkan characterised by oral discourse rather than by the writing of books." A meeting place and not a degree-producing machine", he puts it. A free, scientific institution, where the older researchers have to try to catch the interest of the younger ones by doing something interesting and attractive. If this endeavour is successful, not only young people will be engaged but also others wanting to use their leisure time for something inspiring.
Grundtvig’s view of science departs from the fact that science cannot say anything about the things in themselves (Das Ding an sich), but only about these phenomena in relation to the self-consciousness. When the phenomena under investigation are being described, this must take place within the self-consciousness, thus within the realm of language. In Grundtvig’s view, body, soul, and self-consciousness correspond to thre models of science: those based on the senses, on intuition, and on language. All the three of them emanate from the self-consciousness, that cannot restrict itself to one of them, but has to deal with them all. Here senses and intuition meet, and this meeting cannot be expressed in any other way but by language.
If the self-consciousness is restricted to knowledge via the senses, the method is termed empirical analysis. If the selfconsciousness works together with other self-consciousnesses, we speak of a hermeneutic, phenomenological, rational or historical method. And, finally, if the self-consciousness seeks to acknowledge a spiritual dimension, we are dealing with a poetic, intuitive, or paradoxical method. Science cannot live without these three, and, thus, has to make them work together.
This may be accomplished within a free university, where the colleges are divided between historical sciences and physical sciences. Even if Grundtvig gives priority to the historical sciences, he also stresses the importance of natural science, and that the differences between these two may promote a living växelverkan.
The text that enlightens life gives a premonition of what is meant by livsupplysning, the development of different pedagogical and scientific methods and models may more or less "inscribe" livsupplysning into the educational process. The pedagogical and scientific symbolism, its language, theories and methods are comparable to literary language. At the core lies creating symbols and signs in a way that shows how to reach livsupplysning
ABSTRACT
Linköping Studies in Education and Psychology Dissertations No. 56
THE TEXT THAT ENLIGHTENS LIFE
Reading N F S Grundtvig’s Pedagogical Writings
Bosse Bergstedt
Akademisk avhandling
som med vederbörligt tillstånd av filosofiska fakulteten vid Linköpings universitet för avläggnade av filosofie doktorsexamen kommer att offentligt försvaras i Eklundska salen på Instititionen för pedagogik och psykologi fredag 30 januari 1998, klockan 10.00.
Abstract
N F S Grundtvig, 1783-1872, was the founder of the "folkhögskola", ("Folk High School", Residential collages of general, liberal education for adolescents and adults), but he also was a pastor, a poet, and a historian. The dissertation presents an overview of Grundtvig´s pedagogical thoughts, including his ideas of both the "folkhögskola" and a Nordic university. The dissertations main purpose is to clarify the meaning of the concept of "livsupplysning" (Life enlightenment).
Grundtvig´s point of departure is his view (his conviction) that life is embedded in the spoken word of dialogues, songs, folk tales, folk songs and proverbs. What, then constitutes a Text of Enlightens Life? What are its characteristics? What is its nature? How is it composed? On the basis of denconstructive reading, some of Grundtvig´s central pedagogical texts that Enlightens Life, and how Grundtvig uses different rhetoric patterns to express what is meant by Life Enlightenment.
The reading brings forward the two strategies of Reversal and Dislocation. The Reversal clarifies the three fundamental opposites Life and Death, Light and Darkness, Truth and Lie. The Dislocation strategy indicates the need to create maximal "växelverkan" (interaction, interchange). The outcome is a text bulit upon ambiguity and pluralism. These are also fundamental in Grundtvig´s pedagogy, striving to engender a deep understanding of the meaning of Life Enlightenment.
Key words: N F S Grundtvig, Life enlightenment, Spiritual force, Interaction, Pedagogical text, Deconstructive reading, Rhetoric, Folk High School, University.
Department of Education and Psychology
Linköpings University, S-581 83 Linköping, Sweden
Linköping 1998
ISRN LiU-STU--56--SE ISBN 91-7203-281-2
