The Royal Physician's Visit

by Per Olov Enquist

  He doesn’t put it into writing, but the meaning is clear. This is how greatness springs from insignificance.

  He considered himself an artist who had given up his art and chosen the realm of politics. That was why he admired and disdained artists.

  His dissertation on Milton’s Paradise Lost, which was published in 1761 during his time as professor at Sorø Academy, is an analysis that repudiates fictional depictions of heaven; fictional in the sense that the poem takes liberties regarding the objective facts that were established in the Bible. Milton, he writes, was a magnificent poet but he must be rebuked for being speculative. He takes liberties. The “so-called sacred poetry” takes liberties. In chapter sixteen he presents pointed arguments to repudiate the “apostles of emancipated thinking” as “fabricators.”They create ambiguity, causing the dikes to burst and the poem’s filth to defile everything.

  The poem should not distort the document. The poem is a defiler of the document. Though in his view a painting is not.

  It was often the case that artists took liberties. These liberties could lead to unrest, chaos, and filth. For this reason the pious poets also had to be rebuked. And yet he admired Milton, albeit reluctantly. He labeled him “magnificent.” He is a magnificent poet who takes liberties.

  Holberg he despised.

  The book about Milton brought him success. It was particularly admired by the pious Dowager Queen who praised its razor-sharp, pious analysis. For that reason she appointed Guldberg as tutor to the Crown Prince, who was King Christian’s half-brother and feeble-minded, or, to use a word that was often employed: moronic.

  In this manner he began his political career: through an analysis of the relationship between facts, as clearly evidenced in the Bible, and fiction, as represented by Milton’s Paradise Lost.

  4.

  So no equestrian statues.

  Guldberg’s paradise was what he conquered along his path from the undertaker in Horsens to the palace of Christiansborg. It made him tenacious, and it taught him to hate filth.

  Guldberg’s paradise was something he conquered on his own. He did not inherit it. He conquered it.

  He was hounded for several years by a nasty rumor. People had maliciously interpreted his unassuming appearance—the same appearance that in the end was corrected and enhanced, with the help of artists, after he seized power in 1772. According to the rumor, when he was four years old and his singing voice filled everyone with amazement and admiration, he was castrated by his loving but impoverished parents who had heard that in Italy there were great opportunities for singers. But to their disappointment and sorrow, he refused to sing after he turned fifteen and instead entered the political arena.

  None of this was true.

  His father was a poor undertaker from Horsens who had never seen an opera and never dreamed of earning money from a castrated child. Guldberg was convinced that this smear had come from the Italian opera divas at the court in Copenhagen, who were all whores. All the blasphemers and men of the Enlightenment, particularly in Altona, which was the vipers’nest of the Enlightenment, made use of the Italian whores. From them came all filth, including the filthy rumor.

  The peculiar premature aging, which, however, manifested itself only outwardly, had set in early, at the age of fifteen, and could not be explained by the doctors. For this reason he despised doctors. Struensee was a doctor.

  Regarding the rumor of his “operation”: he could not get rid of it until he came to power and he no longer appeared insignificant. He knew that the assertion that he had been “cut”filled everyone with a feeling of discomfort. He had learned to live with this.

  And yet he seized hold of the rumor’s inner significance, although untrue. The inner truth was that his pious parents had assigned him the role of undertaker, which he rejected.

  He assigned himself the role of politician.

  The British ambassador’s portrait of the King and Guldberg from the year 1782 is astonishing and yet contains an inner truth.

  The ambassador seems to express surprise at Guldberg’s “love” for the King, whose power he had stolen and whose reputation he had destroyed. But hadn’t Guldberg himself always been astonished by the manifestations of love? How could it possibly be described? He had always asked himself this question. Those handsome, imposing, distinguished people, those who had a knowledge of love and yet were so blind! Politics was a mechanism that could be analyzed and constructed; in that sense it was a machine. But those strong, prominent people who possessed knowledge of love, how naively they allowed the clear political game to be obscured by the hydra of passion!

  That ceaseless confusion of emotion and reason on the part of the intellectual men of the Enlightenment! Guldberg knew that this was the soft vulnerable point in the monster’s belly. And he realized how close he had once come to succumbing to the contagion of this sin. It had come from “the little English whore.” He had been forced to his knees at his bedside.

  He would never forget it.

  It is in this connection that he speaks of the mighty oak forest where the trees were felled and only the insignificant shrub remained as victor. Then he describes what happened in the felled forest and how he, stunted and insignificant, was allowed to grow and prevail from the site where he watched everything happen, among the sprawled trunks in the felled forest.

  And he thought he was the only one to see it.

  5.

  Guldberg must be regarded with respect. He is still nearly invisible. Soon he will make himself visible.

  He saw and understood early on.

  In the autumn of 1769 Guldberg writes in a note that the young Queen is to him “an ever-growing mystery.”

  He calls her “the little English whore.” He was quite familiar with the filth at court. He knew its history. Frederik IV was pious and had countless mistresses. Christian VI was a Pietist but lived a lecherous life. At night Frederik V frequented the Copenhagen whorehouses, passing the time with drinking, gambling, and vulgar, lewd conversations. He drank himself to death. The whores flocked around his bed. It was the same everywhere in Europe. It started in Paris and then spread like a disease to all the courts. Filth everywhere.

  Who would defend purity?

  As a child he had learned to live with corpses. His father, whose profession it was to tend to the bodies, had allowed Guldberg to assist him in his work. How many rigid, ice-cold limbs had he clutched and buried? The dead were pure. They did not roll in filth. They awaited the great purifying fire that would either deliver them or eternally plague them in Eternity.

  He had seen filth. But never as bad as at court.

  After the little English whore arrived and was married to the King, Fru von Plessen was appointed chief lady-in-waiting. Fru von Plessen was pure. It was her nature. She wished to protect the young girl from life’s filth, and for a long time she succeeded.

  An event in June 1767 had particularly disturbed Guldberg. It was important that up until this date, no sexual relations had taken place between the royal couple, despite the fact that they had been married for seven months.

  Lady-in-waiting Fru von Plessen came to complain to Guldberg on the morning of June 3, 1767. Unannounced she entered the room he used for his tutoring, and without mincing words, she began castigating the Queen’s behavior. Guldberg is said to have regarded Fru von Plessen as a thoroughly repulsive creature but, because of her inner purity, of value to the Queen. Fru von Plessen smelled. It was not the odor of a stall, of sweat, or of any other secretion, but rather the odor of old woman, like mildew.

  And yet she was only forty-one years old.

  The Queen, Caroline Mathilde, was fifteen at the time. Fru von Plessen had, as usual, gone to the Queen’s bedchamber to keep her company or to play chess, and by her presence ease the Queen’s loneliness. The Queen was lying on her bed, which was quite large, and staring up at the ceiling. She was fully dressed. Fru von Plessen asked the Queen why she did not speak. The Queen was silent for a
long time, not moving either her fully dressed form or her head, not replying. Finally she said:

  “I’m feeling melancholy.”

  Fru von Plessen then asked the Queen what was weighing so heavily on her heart. The Queen said at last:

  “He doesn’t come. Why doesn’t he come?”

  It was chilly in the room. Fru von Plessen stared at her mistress for a moment and then said:

  “No doubt the King will see fit to come. Until then Your Majesty should enjoy her freedom from the hydra of passion. She ought not to grieve.”

  “What do you mean?” the Queen asked.

  “The King,” Fru von Plessen elucidated with the extraordinary terseness that her voice could summon so well, “the King will undoubtedly overcome his shyness. Until then, the Queen can take pleasure in being free of his passion.”

  “Why take pleasure?”

  “When thus afflicted, it becomes a torment!” Fru von Plessen said with an expression of unexpected fury.

  “Leave me,” was the Queen’s surprising response after a moment of silence.

  The offended Fru von Plessen then left the room.

  Guldberg’s indignation dates, however, from the event that occurred later that same evening.

  He was pretending to read, sitting in the corridor between the Royal Chancellor’s antechamber, on the left, and the library of the King’s secretary. He doesn’t explain why he writes “pretending to.” Then the Queen appeared. He rose to his feet with a bow. She gestured with her hand and they both sat down.

  She was wearing the pale rose gown that left her shoulders bare.

  “Herr Guldberg,” she said in a low voice, “may I ask you a very personal question?”

  He nodded, uncomprehending.

  “I’ve been told,” she whispered,“that in your youth you were freed from … from the torment of passion. Because of that I would like to ask you …”

  She stopped. He remained silent but could feel a tremendous rage welling up inside him. With the utmost resolve, however, he managed to keep his composure.

  “I just wanted to know …”

  He waited. Finally the silence grew unbearable, and Guldberg said:

  “Yes, Your Royal Highness?”

  “I just wanted to know … whether this freedom from passion is … a great relief? Or … a great emptiness?”

  He did not reply.

  “Herr Guldberg,” she whispered, “is it an emptiness? Or a torment?”

  She leaned toward him. The curve of her bosom was very close to him. He felt an indignation “beyond all reason.” He had seen through her at once, and this insight, during the events that later followed, would be of the greatest use to him. Her malice was evident: her naked flesh, the curve of her bosom, the smoothness of her young skin, it was all very close to him.This was not the first time he understood that throughout the court malicious rumors were being spread about the reason for his physical insignificance. How helpless he was to combat them! How impossible it was to point out that castrati resembled fattened cattle, swollen and bloated, and that they completely lacked the gray, sharp, thin, and practically wizened physical clarity that he possessed!

  Gossip was circulating about him, and it had reached the Queen’s ears. The little whore thought him harmless, someone to be confided in. And with all the intelligence of her young malice, she now leaned very close to him, and he could see her breasts in nearly all their fullness. She seemed to be testing him, trying to see whether there was any life left in him, whether her breasts held any enticement that could summon the remnants of what might be human inside him.

  Yes, whether this might entice forth the remnants of a man in him. Of a human being. Or whether he was merely an animal.

  Then she looked at him. Like an animal. She exposed herself to him as if she wanted to say: I know. She knew that he was stunted and despicable, no longer human, no longer within the reach of desire. And she did this now with full consciousness, with malicious intent.

  On this occasion her face was very close to Guldberg’s, and her nearly exposed breasts screamed their insult at him. As he tried to regain his composure he thought: May God punish her, may she suffer the fire of hell for all eternity. May a vengeful stake be driven up into her wanton womb, and may her spiteful intimacy be rewarded with eternal pain and agony.

  His agitation was so great that tears welled up in his eyes. And he feared that the young, wanton creature would notice this.

  Yet he may have misinterpreted her. Because next he describes how she swiftly, almost like a moth, touched her hand to his cheek and whispered:

  “Forgive me. Oh, forgive me, Herr … Guldberg. I didn’t mean to …”

  Guldberg then rose hastily to his feet and left.

  As a child he had an exceedingly beautiful singing voice. That much is completely true. He hated artists. He also hated impurity.

  He remembers the rigid bodies as pure. And they never caused chaos.

  God’s greatness and omnipotence manifested itself in the fact that He chose even those who were small, lowly, stunted, and disdained to be His instruments. That was what was so wondrous. It was God’s inexplicable miracle. The King, the young Christian, seemed small, perhaps mentally deficient. But he was chosen.

  To him had been given all power. This power, this selection, came from God. It had not been given to the beautiful, strong, or distinguished; they were the ones who were the real upstarts. The lowliest were the chosen. That was God’s miracle. Guldberg understood this. In a certain sense the King and Guldberg were part of the same miracle.

  This filled him with satisfaction.

  He saw Struensee for the first time in Altona in 1766, on the day the young Queen arrived there, on her way from London to Copenhagen, just before her marriage. Struensee was standing there, hidden by the crowd, surrounded by his enlightened friends.

  But Guldberg saw him: imposing, handsome, and lecherous.

  Guldberg himself had once emerged from the woodwork.

  The person who was once inconsequential emerged from the woodwork; anyone who does this knows that all woodwork can be an ally. It was purely a matter of organization. Politics involved organization, making the woodwork listen and report.

  He had always believed in justice, and he knew that evil would be crushed by a very small, overlooked person whom no one took seriously. That was his inner driving force. God had chosen him and made him a spidery gray dwarf because God’s ways were inscrutable. But God’s deeds were full of cunning.

  God was the foremost politician.

  Quite early on he had learned to hate impurity and evil. Evil meant the dissolute, those who scorned God, the wastrels, the worldly, the whoremongers, the drunkards. All of them were present at court. The court was evil. That was why he had always adopted a tiny, friendly, almost submissive smile whenever he observed evil. Everyone thought that he watched the orgies with envy. Little Guldberg probably wanted to join in, they thought, but he couldn’t. He lacks … the instrument. Just wants to watch.

  Their little, derisive smiles.

  But they should have taken note of his eyes.

  And someday, he used to think, the time for control will come, when control will conquer all. And then smiles will no longer be necessary. Then the time for cutting will come, the time for purity, then the barren limbs on the tree will be cut away. Then evil will at last be castrated. And then the time for purity will come.

  And the time of the wanton women will be over.

  What he would do with the wanton women he didn’t know. They couldn’t be cut, after all. Perhaps the wanton women should sink down and dissolve into decay, like mushrooms in the fall.

  He was very fond of that image. The wanton women would sink down and dissolve, like mushrooms in the fall.

  His dream was purity.

  The radicals in Altona were impure. They despised those who were cut and small, and they dreamed the same secret dreams of power which they claimed to be fighting. He had seen thr
ough them. They spoke of light. A torch in the dark. But from their torches fell only darkness.

  He had been to Altona. It was significant that this Struensee came from Altona. Paris was the vipers’ nest of the encyclopedists, but Altona was worse. It was as if they were trying to put a lever under the house of the world: and the world was teetering, and anxiety and nausea and fumes drifted up. But the Almighty God had chosen one of His smallest, the most disdained, Guldberg himself to confront Evil, to save the King, and to cut away the filth from the one chosen by God. And as the prophet Isaiah has written:

  Who is this that comes from Edom, in crimsoned garments from Bozrah, he that is glorious in his apparel, marching in the greatness of his strength?

  “It is I, announcing vindication, mighty to save.”

  Why is thy apparel red, and thy garments like his that treads in the wine press?

  “I have trodden the wine press alone, and from the peoples no one was with me; I trod them in my anger and trampled them in my wrath; their lifeblood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my raiment.

  “For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and my year of redemption has come.

  “I looked, but there was no one to help; I was appalled, but there was no one to uphold; so my own arm brought me victory, and my wrath upheld me.

  “I trod down the peoples in my anger, I made them drunk in my wrath, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.”

  And the outcast shall become the rulers, as it says in the Holy Scriptures.

  He was the one who had been called by God. The little Lizard himself. And a great fear would come over the world when the Lowliest and the most Scorned came to hold the reins of vengeance in his hands. And God’s wrath would kill them all.