Essays on Scandinavian Literature

ce seem in need of readjustment and revision. This period, with the spiritual crisis which it involves, is likely to occur between the thirtieth and the fortieth meridian.

necessity to a man when he has exhausted the sources which tradition supplies. It is terrible to wake up one morning and see one's past life in a new and strange illumination, and the dust of ages lying inch-thick upon one's thoughts. It is distres

ything strong, sprung from what is good, obeyed the child's voice." Though in a certain sense that may be true enough, it belongs to the kind of half-truths which by constant repetition grow pernicious and false. The man who at forty assumes the child's attitude of mere wondering acceptance toward the world and its problems, may, indeed, be a very estimable character; but he will never amount to much. It is the honest doubters, the importunate questioners, the indefatigable fighters who have broken humanity

before emerging from this state of idyllic na?veté, I am inclined to quote the following passage fro

while they dozed they had dreams. The cultivated, and especially the half-cultivated, public in Denmark and Norway dreamed that they were the salt of Europe. They dreamed that by their idealism-the ideals of Grundtvig and Kierkegaard-and their strong vigilance, they regenerated the foreign nations. They dreamed that they w

derne Gjennembrud's

own boyhood, which coincides with Bj?rnson's early manhood, I heard on all hands expressions of self-congratulation because the doubt and fermenting restlessness which were undermining the great societies abroad had never ruffled the placid surface of our good, old-fashion

Constitution of 1814; but, as a matter of fact, the former kingdom is by all the world looked upon as a dependency, if not a province, of the latter. The Bernadottes, lacking comprehension of the Norwegian character, had shown themselves purblind as bats in their dealings with Norway. They had mistaken a perfectly legitimate desire for self-government for a demonstration of hostility to Sweden and the royal house; and instead of identifying themselves with the nation

ntries so different in character can never be good yoke-fellows. They can never develop at an even pace, and the fact of kinship scarcely helps matters where the temperaments and the conditions are so widely dissimilar. Brothers who fall out are apt to fight each other the more fiercely on account of the relationship. Bj?rnson certainly does not cherish any hatred of Sweden, nor do I believe that there is any general animosity to the Swedish people to

ministry of Stang from power, and caused the impeachment and condemnation of the Selmer ministry. It would seem when the king, in 1882, charged the liberal leader, Mr. Johan Sverdrup, to form a ministry, that parliamentarism had actually triumphed. But unh

the summer of 1873, and I shall never forget the tremendous impression of the m

t he was in the habit of walking about the country with his pockets full of seeds of grass and trees, of which he scattered a handful here and a handful there; for, he said, you can never tell what will grow up after it. There is to me something quite touching in the patriotism which prompted this act. Bj?rnson, too, is in the same sense "a sower who went forth for to sow." And the golden grain of his thought falls, as in the parable, in all sorts of places; but, unlike some of the seed

cial bureaucracy can scarcely mention his name without an anathema. But the common people, though he has frightened many of them away by his heterodoxy, still love him. It is especially his disrespect to the devil (whom he professes not to believe in) which has been a sore trial to the Bible-reading, hymn-sing

vil is a popular character in the folk-stories and legends, and I have known some excellent people who declare that they have seen him. Creeds are like certain ancient tumuli, which now are but graves, but were once the habitations of living men. The dust, ashes, and bones of def

hful intolerance of strong conviction. He is too good a partisan to admit that there may be another side to the question which might be worth considering. With magnificent ruthlessness he plun

e its treasures with all the world-he started out to proclaim his discoveries. Besides Darwin and Spencer, he had made a study of Stuart Mill, whose noble sense of fair-play had impressed him. He plunged with hot zeal into the writings of Steinthal and Max Müller, whose studies in comparative religion changed to him the whole aspect of the universe. Taine's historical criticism, with its disrespectful derivation of the hero from food, climate, and race, lured him still farther away from his old Norse and romantic landmarks, until there was no longer any hope of his ever returning to them. But when from this promontory of advanced thought he looked back upon his idylli

hat Augier produced in France; and in everything except the mechanics of construction superior to the plays of Sardou and Dumas. The dialogue has the most admirable accent of truth. It is not unnaturally witty or brilliant; but exhibits exactly the traits which Norwegians of the higher com

vein. He has ceased to be a poet. He has lost with his childhood's faith his ideal

pon the boards. It not only conquered a permanent place in the répertoires of the theatres of the Scandinavian capitals, but it spread through Austria, Germany, and Holland, and has finally scored a success at the Théatre Libre in Paris. There is scarc

acts and the entirely unsensational exposition of the dramatic action. There is one scene (and by no means an unnatural one) in which there is a touch of violence, viz., where Tjaelde, while he hopes to avert his bankruptcy, threatens t

t, "Thou shalt not steal," seems at first glance an extremely simple injunction; but in the light of Bj?rnson's searching analysis it becomes a complex and intricate tangle, capable of interesting shades and nuances of meaning. Tjaelde, in the author's opinion, certainly does steal, when, in order to save himself (and thereby the thousands who are involved in his affairs), he speculates with other people's money and presents a rose-colored account of his business, when he knows that he is on the verge of

head by night and by day, and absorbs all his energy. A number of parasites (such as the fortune-hunting lieutenant) attach themselves to him, as long as he is reputed to be rich, and make haste to vanish when his riches take wings. On the other hand, the true friends whom in his prosperity he hectored and contemned are revealed by adversity. There would be nothing remarkable in so common an experience, if the friends themselves, as well as the parasites, were not so delightfully delineated. The lieutenant, with his almost farcical interest in the bay trotter, is amusingly but lightly drawn; but the awkward young clerk, Sannaes, who refuses to abandon his master in

, with scarcely a gleam of light. The satire is savage; and the quiver of wrath is perceptible in many a sledge-hammer phrase. You feel that Bj?rnson himself has suffered from the terrorism which he here describes, and you would surmise too, even if you did not know it, that the editor whom he has here pilloried is no mere

put the publication of "Bankruptcy," as well as that of "The Editor," in 187

estion with the party of the Right so to ridicule and defame him as to ruin his chances. His position as prospective son-in-law of the rich Mr. Evje lends an air of importance and respectability to his candidacy. Mr. Evje must therefore be induced, or, if necessary, compelled, to throw him overboard. With this end in view the editor of the Conservative journal goes to Evje (whose schoolmate and friend he has been) and tries to persuade him to break the alliance with Rein. Evje, who prides himself on his "moderation" and tolerance, and his purpose to keep aloof from partisanship, refuses to be bullied; whereupon the editor t

which, first utterly crushes him, then arouses his wrath, convinces him that "holding aloof" is mere cowardice, and makes him resolve to bear his share in the great political battle. The meanness, the malice of each ingenious thrust, while it stings and burns also awakens a righteous indignation. He goes straight to the lodgings of Harold Rein and determines to attend the Radical meeting. Not finding him at home he goes to the h

victions and is ready to avow the party that upholds them. All are ignorant of Halfdan Rein's death, until the editor arrives, utterly broken in spirit and asks Evje's

betake themselves to the house of the dead leader. Thus the play ends; there is no tableau, n

alism on t

with malice aforethought, and collecting gossip. But the power of the press for good and for ill, and the terrorism which, in evil hands, it exercises, are surely not exaggerated. But its most striking application h

owadays win not by their own greatnes

egards you, it remains to be seen whether you can get all humanity in you completely killed.... But who would at that price be a politician?... That one must be hardened is the watchword of all nowadays. Not only army officers but physicians, merchants, officials are to be hardened or

c. The cry was heard on all sides that he had ceased to be a poet, and had become instead a mere political agitator. I cannot deny myself the

in the wind. Yes, a fine kind of poet is that! No, my boy, I am a poet, not primarily because I can write verse (there are lots of people who can do that) but by virtue of seeing more clearly, and feeling more deeply, and speaking more truly than the majority of men. Al

ttle-axe, and their song rang the more boldly because they knew how to strike up another tune-the fierce song of the sword. In modern times Wergeland and Welhaven have d

at the author is half afraid of his subject (which is an illicit love), and only dares to handle it so gingerly as to leave half the tale untold. The short, abrupt sentences which seemed natural enough when he was dealing with the peasants, with their laconic speech and blunt manners, have a forced and unnatural air when appli

individual; how the artificial regard which hedges him in, interposing countless barriers between the truth and him, makes his relations to his surroundings false and deprives him of the opportunity for

th Clara Ernst, the daughter of a Radical professor, who, on account of a book he has written, has been sentenced for crimen l?s? majestatis, and in an attempt to escape from prison has broken both his legs. Clara, who is supporting her father in his exile by teaching, repels the king's advances with indignation and contempt. He perseveres, however, fascinated by the novelty of such treatment. He manages to convince her of the purity of his motives; and finally succeeds in winning her love. It is not a liaison he contemplates, but a valid and legitimate marriage for which he means to compel recognition. The court, which he has no more use for, he desires to abolish as a costly and degrading luxury; and in its place to establish a home-a model bourgeois home-where affection and virtue shall flourish. Clara, seeing the vast significance of such a step, is aglow with enthusiasm for its realization. It is not vanity, but a lofty faith in her mission to regenerate royalty, b

licy it has been to rejuvenate and revitalize the monarchy, is challenged and shot by his old teacher, the Republican Flink; a

n is governed about as well as it deserves to be-that its political institutions are a reflection of its maturity and capacity for self-government. A certain allowance must, indeed, be made for the vis inerti? of whatever exists, which makes it exert a stubborn and not unwholesome resistance to the reformer's zeal. This conservatism (which may, however, have more laudable motives than mere self-interest) Bj?rnson has happily satirized in the scene before the Noblemen's Club in the third

g the fraud, trickery, if not treason, by which Norway has during the last decade been thwarted in her aspirations and checked in her development. That preface, by the way, dated Paris, October, 1885, is one of the most forceful and luminous of his political pronunciamientos. It rings from beginning to end with conviction and a manly indignation. His chief purpose, he says, in writing this drama was, "to extend the boundaries of free discussion." His polemics against the clergy are not attacks upo

en the cause of her social ostracism, turns out to be her husband, whom she has divorced on account of his dissipated habits, and now keeps, in the hope of saving him, on a sort of probation. She believes that without her he would go straight to perdition, and from a sense of duty she tolerates him, not daring to shirk her responsibility for the old reprobate's soul. Truth to tell, she treats him like a naughty boy, punishing him, when he has been drunk, with a denial of favors; and when he has been good, rewarding him with her company. I suppose there are men who might be saved by such treatment, but I venture to doubt whether they are worth saving. As for Leonarda, she has apparently no cause for encouragement. But she perseveres, heedless of obloquy, as long as her own affections are disengaged. She presently falls in love, however, with a young man named Hagbart Tallhaug, who has insulted her and is now engaged to her niece, Agot. Hagbart is th

l of love. She struggles manfully (or ought I not, in deference to the author's contention, to say "womanfully") against her love for Hagbart, and at last has no choice but to escape from the cruel dilemma by accepting the bishop's demand. Though she

, because of its organic coherence with "Leonarda." They are the obverse and reverse of the same s

more, makes a young girl discuss-the standards of sexual purity as applied to men and women. The sentiments which she utters are, to be sure, elevate

illennial condition of absolute equality between the sexes. According to Herbert Spencer there is a hereditary transmission of qualities which are confined exclusively to the male, and of others which are confined to the female; and these are the results of the primitive environments and conditions which were peculiar to each sex. Even the best of us have a reminiscent sense of proprietorship in our wives, dating from the time when she was obtained by purchase or capture and could be disposed of like any other chattel. Wives, whose prehistoric discipline has disposed them to humility and submission (I am speaking of the European, not the American species, of course), have not yet in the same degree acquired this sense of ownership in their husbands, involving the same strict accountability for affectional aberrations. And for this there is a very good reason, which is no less valid now than i

Riis, the daughter of prosperous and refined parents, becomes e

s her in her efforts to found kindergartens and to ameliorate the lot of the poor. Each glories in the exclusive possession of the other's love, and with the retrospective jealousy o

e of your arm, then I think: That arm has been wound about my neck, and about no one e

of feeling, she hurls her glove in his face and breaks the engagement. This act is, I fancy, intended to be half symbolic. The young girl expresses not only her personal sense of outrage; but she flings a challenge in the face of the whole community, which by its indulgence made his transg

urity-her virginité savante, as Balzac phrases it in "Modeste Mignon," and her inability to give due weight to ameliorating circumstances were unwomanly. I confess I am not without sympathy with this criticism. Svava, though she is right in her vehement protest against masculine immorality, is not charming-that is, according to our present notion of what constitutes womanly charm. It is not unlikely, however, that like Leonarda she is meant to anticipate a new type of womanhood, co-ordinate and coe

deceived in regard to this question from the very cradle. Her father, whom she has believed to be a model husband, proves to have been unworthy of her trust. The elder Christensen has also had a compromising intrigue of the same kind; and it becomes obvious that each male creature is so indulgent in this chapter toward every other male creature, because each knows himself to be equally vulnerable. There is a sort of tacit freemasonry among them, which takes its reveng

ened by Svava's conciliatory attitude, and he enforces his moral by making the sin appear unpardonable. The acting version, which is more dramatically concise, differs in several other respects from the version h

and searching debates concerning a theme of great moment. The same definition applies, though in a lesser degree, to "The New System" (1879), a five-act play of great power and beauty.

th, crafty man, "who can smile ingratiatingly like a woman," rises to the higher heights; while the bold, strong, capable man, who is unversed in the arts of humility and intrigue, struggles hopelessly, and perhaps in the end goes to the dogs, because he is denied the proper field for his energy. Never has Bj?rnson written anything more convincing, penetrating, subtly satirical. He cuts deep; every incision dra

duced, or supposed to have been introduced, by Kampe's and Ravn's brother-in-law, the supervisor-general Riis. The way for Hans to make a career, declares the worldly wise Ravn, is not to oppose the source of promotion and power, but to be silent and marry the supervisor-general's daughter. Ravn has learned this lesson by bitter experience, and hopes that his nephew will profit by it. All talk about duty to the state and society he pretends to regard as pure moonshine, and he professes not to see the connection between the elder Kampe's drunkenness and the artificial bottling up to which he has

quires of his daughter Karen that she shall, out of regard for her family, renounce her lover. He feigns all proper sentiments and emotions, while under the smooth, agreeable mask lurk malice and cunning. When Hans Kampe's book reaches him, it never occurs to him to examine it on its merits; his only thought is to make it harmless by inventing a scandalous motive. The elder Kampe has just resigned from the railway service; the supervisor-general (with infamous shrewdness) dema

, whatever their failings, these men are true and genuine. Simply delicious is the satire in the scene where the ladies discuss the question at issue between Riis and Kampe. But this satire is deprived of much of its force by the subsequent development of the plot. The logical ending would seem to be the triumph of the supervisor-general's defensive tactics and the discomfiture of his critics. That would have given point to the criticism of the small state and invested the victims of progress with an almost tragic dignity. Bj?rnson chooses, however, to let neither the one party nor the other triumph. In a small state, he says, no one is victorious; ever

was hailed. It has never become fairly domesticated on the Scandinavian stages, and probably never will be. In Germany, Fr

upon the War of Liberation. There is an irresistible charm in the freshness, the vividness, the extreme modernness of this little tale. The mingled simplicity an

études cliniques sur l'hystéro-épilepsie ou grande hystérie, par le Dr. Richer. As a man is always in danger of talking nonsense in dealing with a subject concerning which his knowledge is superficial, I shall not undertake to pron

nervous tension and unnatural abstraction from mundane reality and all its concerns. His wife, Clara, who loves him ardently, is gradually worn out by this perpetual strain, which involves a daily overdraft upon her vitality; and finally the break comes, and she is paralyzed. For, like everyone who comes in contact with Sang, she has had to live "beyond her strength." She does not fully share her husband's faith, and though she feels his influence and admires his lofty devotion, there is a

and night. Have you seen it in the night? Do you know that behind the ocean vapors it often looks three or four times as large as usual? And then the color-ef

apture, a tremendous avalanche sweeps down the mountainside, but divides, leaving the church and parsonage unharmed. The rumor of this new wonder spreads like fire in withered grass, and among thousands of others a number of clergymen, with their bishop, on their way to some convention, stop to convince themselves of the authenticity of the miracle, and to determine the attitude which they are to assume toward it. Then fo

, now rises from her bed and goes forth to meet her husband, and falls upon his neck amid the ringing of the church-bells and the hallelujah

cenes of great vivacity and theatrical effect. This time it is himself the author has chosen to satirize. The unconscious tyranny of a man who has a mission, a life-work, is delightfully illustrated in the person of the geographer, Professor Tygesen, to whom Bj?rn Bj?rnson, the actor, when he played the part at the Christiania Theatre, had the boldness to give his father's mask. Professor Tygesen is engaged upon a great geographical opus, and gradually takes possession of the whole house with his maps, globes, and books, driving his wife from the parlor floor and his daughter to boarding-school. So absorbed is he in his work that he can talk and think of nothing else. He neglects the social forms

July,

rld of thought which settles upon, and often impairs, the vitality of the living growth, or even chokes it outright. "When children are taught that the life here is nothing compared to the life to come-that to be visible is nothing compared to being invisible-that t

to what extent an unfavorable heredity may be counteracted by a favorable environment. The family of Kurt, whose history is here traced through five generations, inherits a temperament which would have secured its survival and raised it to distinction in barbaric ages, but which will

. He inherits a shattered constitution and poor nerves; outwardly he is quite a respectable man, but he has a strong physical need of drink, and every night he goes to bed intoxicated. It is the author's purpose to show how the sins of his fathers, by a physiological necessity, predisposed Konrad Kurt to drink. His son, John Kurt, who is the result of a criminal relation, is the complete incarnation of the genius of the family. The fresh blood which he has derived from his English mother has postponed the doom of the race and enabled him to repeat, in a modified form, the excesses of his ancestors. He first distinguishes himself as a virtuoso in swearing. The magnificent redundance and originality of his oaths make him famous in the army, which he chooses as the first field of his exploits. Later he roams aimlessly about the world, merely to satisfy a wild need of adventure. On his return to his native town he signalizes himself by his vices as a genuine Kurt. The little town, however, cannot find it in its heart to condemn a man of so distinguished a race, and society, t

ard an awful crisis. This is brought about by a mere trifle. John Kurt, failing to humble his wife, strikes her. The baleful forces that lurk in the depths of the Kurt temperament rise to the surface; the whole terrible heritage of savagery overwhelms the feeble civilization which the last scion has acquired. If Thomasine had been weak, she would have been killed; but she defends herself with fierce persistency, and though it seems as if she mus

itself in this struggle is most vividly portrayed. She clings to life desperately; she is young and strong, unsentimental, and averse to ascetic enthusiasm. It finally occurs to her that her own race, too, will assert itself in this child; that the pure and vigorous strain which her own blood will infuse may redeem it from the dark destiny of the Kurts. She finally resolves upon a compromise; if the child is dark, like the Kurts, both it and its mother shall die. If it is blue-eyed and light-haired, like the

t utility-the work of education. She wishes to atone to the race for her guilt in having perpetuated the race of the Kurts. The scene in which she makes a bonfire of all the ancestral portraits in the Hall of Knights, and the smell of all the burning Kurts is blown far and wide over city and harbor, wo

he primal cause of the degeneracy of races. He believes that the false modesty which leaves young people in ignorance of one of the most important natural functions is largely responsible for the prevailing immorality, and he advocates, as a remedy, fearless and searching physiological study. His inaugural address as superintendent of the school deals uncompromisingly with this subject, and excites such universal indignation that it comes near wrecking the promising enterprise. A great speech in a small town, Bj?rnson hints, is always more or less risky. But we are also given to understand that though Rendalen obviously speaks out of the author's heart, this very speech is in itself a subtle manifestation of the Kurt heritage. Rendalen is as immoderate in virtue as his ancestors have been in vice. The violent energy which formerly expended itself in lawless acts now expends itself in an excessive, ascetic enthusiasm for self-conquest and lofty humanitarian ideals. As a piece of psychology this is admirable. Prudent, well adapted or adaptable to the civilization in which he lives, the scion of the Kurts is not yet; but as a promise of the redemption of the race he represents the first upward step. It is highly characteris

e environment, sinks deeper and deeper into the mire of vice. The inevitable result is insanity and ultimate extinction. Mrs. Rendalen's visit to the slums

physiological rather than pictorial. The points which he selects for comment are those which would particularly be noted by their medical advisers; and the progress of their histories, as he follows them, is characterized by this same scientific minuteness of observation. Zola's ideal of scientific realism (which Bj?rns

ard Kallem, rescues the eighteen-year old Ragni Kule from the degradation of her marriage to a husband afflicted with a most loathsome disease, and afterward marries her-does he deserve censure or praise? Bj?rnson's answer is unmistakable. It is exactly the situation, depicted five years later, by Madame Sarah Grand in the relation of Edith to the young rake, Sir Moseley Menteith. Only, Bj?rnson rescues the victim, while the author of "The Heavenly Twins" makes her perish. In both instances it is the pious ignorance of clerical parents which precipitates the tragedy. Ragni's deliverance is, however, only an apparent one. Society, which without indignation had witnessed her sale to the corrupt old libertine, is frightfully shocked by her marriage to Dr. Kallem, and manifests its disapproval with an emphasis which takes no account of ameliorating circumstances. The sanguinary ingenuity in the constant slights and stabs to which she is exposed makes her life a martyrdom and finally kills her. "Contempt will pierce the armor of a tortoise,

ad scarcely any choice but to condemn marriage with a divorcée. When, however, after Ragni's death, they discover whom they have slain-how much purer, nobler, and of more delicate nature she was than either of them-they are dissolved in shame and remorse. A tremendous crisis in their spiritual lives is produced by the mortal peril of their only child, whom Kallem saves by a skilful op

otic experiments. An excursion into botany, à propos of Ragni's walk in the woods, is likewise overloaded with details and teems with scientific terms. But the greatest blemish is the outbreak in Kallem (who has the author's fullest sympathy) of a certain barbaric violence which to civilized people is well-nigh incomprehen

described with an unblushing zest which makes the impression of na?veté. It is obvious that in his delight in the exhibition of a healthy, primitive wrath, Bj?rnson half forgets how such barbarism must affect his readers. We hear, to be sure, that the servants were filled with indignation and horror, and that Harold Kaas, having expected laught

for the classical; and even the novelists will be expected to know something about the world in which they live and the sublime and inexorable laws which govern it. At present the majority of them spin irresponsible yarns, and play Providence ad libitum to their characters. Ma

ssessed by a family physician. In "Absalom's Hair" we have no mere agglomeration of half-digested scientific data, but a scientific view of life. The story moves, from beginning to end, with a beautiful epic calm and a grand inevitableness which remind one of Tolstoi, and reaches far toward the high-water mark of modern realism. Take, for instance, the characterization of Kirsten Ravn (pp. 11-15), and I wonder where in contemporary fiction so large and deep a comprehension is shown both of psychic and of physical forces. Emma, the heroine of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" is the only parallel I can recall, as regards the kind and method of portraiture, though there is no resemblance between the characters. In the development of the char

stiania, because it is claimed that the characters are drawn, with scarcel

inful. The second is a bit of pathological psychology à propos of intemperance. Tastes imprisoned, genius cramped and perverted, joy of life (joie de vivre) denied, will avenge themselves. They will break out in drunkenness. The hero of "One Day" is afflicted with the same vice, and apparently

men of Norway we recognize something of the rampant individualism of their Viking forefathers. Ibsen is the modern apostle par excellence of philosophic anarchism; and Bj?rnson, too, has his full share of the national aggressiveness and pugnacity. For all that there is a radical difference between the two. The sense of social obligation which Ibsen lacks, Bj?rnson possesses in a high degree. He fights, not as a daring guerilla, but as the spokesman and leader of thousands. He is

ne Gjennembrud

,' the dominant bourgeoisie. Whatever he attacks is shivered into splinters by his profound and superior criticism. Only the shattered ruins remain, and we are unable to espy the new social institutions beyond them. Bj?rnson is a conciliatory spirit who wages war without bitterness. April sunshine glints a

IOGR

ad and the Churchyard, The Eagle's Nest, and The Father are contained in the volume to which Goldschmidt's The Flying Mail gives the title (Sever, Francis & Co., Boston and Cambridge, 1870). The following volumes are translated by Professor R. B. Anderson, and published in a uniform edition by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. (Boston, 1881): Synn?ve Solbakken, Arne, A Happy Boy, The Fisher Maiden, The Bridal March, Magnhild, Captain Mansana and other Stories. Sigurd Slembe: A Dramatic Trilogy: Translated by William Morton Payne (Boston and

DER KI

tor on this occasion was a tall, handsome, distinguished-looking young man named Alexander Kielland, from the little coast town of Stavanger. There was none of th

e unanimous verdict of those who listened to his clear-cut an

y, and that as a manufacturer of these useful articles he bid fair to become a provincial magnate, as his fathers had been before him. People had almost forgotten that great things had been expected of him, and some fancied perhaps that he had been spoiled by prosperity. Remembering him, as I di

but it revealed a sense of style which made it, nevertheless, notable. No man had ever written the Norwegian language as this man wrote it. There was a lightness of touch, a perspicacity, an epigrammatic sparkle, and occasional flashes of wit which see

manticism in its satirical contrasting of the prematrimonial and the postmatrimonial view of love and marriage. The same persistent tendency to present the wrong side as well as the right side-and not, as literary good manners are supposed to prescribe, ignore the former-is obvious in the charming tale, "At the Fair," where a little spice of wholesome truth spoils the thoughtlessly festive mood; and the squalor, the want, the envy, hate, and greed which prudence and a regard for business compel the performers to disguise to the public, become th

ged with a moral tendency than any of the foregoing. The former is a mere jeu d'esprit, full of good-natured satire on the calf

ielland lightly touched in these "Novelettes" the themes which in his later works he has struck with a fuller volume and power. What he gave in t

thor. I found it difficult to believe that he was in earnest. The book seemed to me to betray the whimsical sans-culottism of a man of pleasure who, when the ball is at an end, sits down with his gloves on, and philosophizes on the artificiality of civilization and the wholesomeness of honest toil. An indigestion makes him a temporary communist; but a b

road, and had accumulated a fund of knowledge of the world, which he had allowed quietly to grow before making literary draughts upon it. The same Gallic perspicacity of style which had charmed in his first book was here in a heightened degree; and there was, besides, the same underlying sympathy with progress and what is called the ideas of the age. What mastery of description, what rich and vigorous colors, Kielland had at his disposal was demonstrated in such scenes as the funeral of Consul Garman and the burning of the ship. There was, moreover, a delightful autobiographical note in the book, particularly in the boyish experiences of Gabriel Garman. Such things no man invents, however clever; such material no imagination supplies, however fertile. Except Fritz Reuter's Stavenhagen, I know no small town i

he heavy, serious bass chords in the composite theme which expresses his complex personality, and allows the lighter treble notes to be momentarily drowned. His theme is th

e outdone his French confrère, as regards insight into the peculiar character and poetry of the pietistic movement. He has dealt with it as a psychological and not primarily as a pathological phenomenon. A comparison with Daudet suggests itself constantly in reading Kielland. Their methods of workmanship and their attitude toward life have many points in common. The charm of style, the delicacy of touch, and felicity of phrase, are in both cases pre-eminent. Daudet has, h

is mother-in-law to convert him, are described not with the merely superficial drollery to which the subject invites, but with a sweet and delicate humor which trembles on the verge of pathos. In the Christmas tale, "Elsie," Kielland has produced a little classic of almost flawless perfection. With what exquisite art he paints the life of a small Norwegian coast-town in all its vivid details! While Bj?rnson, in "The Heritage of the Kurts," primarily emphasizes the responsibility of the individual to society, Kielland chooses to emphasize the responsibility of societ

e abandoned condition of a goodly number of them. However, it turns out that those miserable creatures who need to be redeemed belong to another parish, and accordingly cannot be reached by St. Peter's. St. Peter's parish is aristocratic, exclusive, and keeps its wickedness discreetly v

Professor"), Kielland has published several novels, the more recent being "

of view, Norway is yet wrapped in the wintry winding-sheet of a tyrannical orthodoxy, and all he dares

ut a hopeful mood. It is rather a protest against that optimism which in fiction we call poetic justice. The

scope, stands aghast. Our old idyllic faith in the goodness and wisdom of all mundane arrangements has undoubtedly received a shock. Our attitude toward the universe is changing with the change of its attitude toward us. What the thinking part of humanity is now largely engaged in doing is readjusting itself toward the world and the world toward it. Success is but adapta

AS

he gratitude of many a reader by making him acquainted with this rare, complex, and exceedingly modern spirit. For Jonas Lie is not (like so many of his brethren of the quill) a mere inoffensive gentleman who spins yarns for a living, but he is a forceful personality of bright perceptions and keen sensations, which has chosen to express itself through the medium of the novel. He dwells in a many-windowed house, with a large outlook upon the world and its manifold concerns. In a score of novels of varying degrees of excellence he has given us vividly realized bits of the views which his windows command. But what lends their chief charm to these unco

ronoun

however, by others, who felt themselves to be no less entitled to an opinion, regarded as an "origi

las, abide wi

r strives agai

psy, descent. I remember well this black-eyed, eccentric little lady, with her queer ways, extraordinary costumes, and still more extraordinary conversation. It is from her Jonas Lie has inherited the fantastic strain in his blood, the strange, superstitious terrors, and the luxuriant wealth of color which he lavished upon his poems and his first novel, "The Visionary." From his pater

he went with food in a tin-pail to his father, when he was at work. During this incarnation he must have behaved rather shabbily; for in the next he found himself degraded to a fox-a silver fox-and in this capac

, and, finally, to the city of Tromsoe, in Nordland. It was here, in the extreme north, that Jonas spent th

asts continuously, day and night, for three months-a warm, bright, fragrance-laden summer, with an infinite wealth of color and changing beauty. Distances of seventy to eighty miles across the mirror of the sea approach, as it were, within earshot. The mountains clothe themselves up to the very top with greenish-brown grass, and in the glens and ravines the little birches join hands for play, like

a night of darkness and terr

craving for horrors which is common to boyhood; and he had also the most exceptional facilities for satisfying it. Truth to tell, if it had not been for the Norse Jekyll in his nature the Finnish Hyde might have run away with him altogether. They were mighty queer things which often invaded his brain, taking possession of his thought, paralyzing his will, and refusing to budge, no matter how earnestly he pleaded. There were times when he grew afraid of himself; when his imagination got the upper hand, blowing him hither and thither like a weather-cock. Then the Norse Jekyll came t

well-nigh incorrigible. He accepted with boyish stoicism the castigations which fell pretty regularly to his lot, bore no one any grudge for them, but rarely thought of mending his ways, in order to avoid them. They were somehow part of the established order of things which it wa

p and tottering on the floor, until I got a shower of cold water from the bathing-sponge over my back and became wide awake. Then to jump into our clothes! And now for the lessons! It was a problem how to get a peep at them during the

ety every expression and gesture of the teacher. Was he in good-humor to-day? Would that I might escape reciting! He began at the top.... Tha

ess. Nothing remained, then, but to resume the odious books and prepare to enter the University. But to a boy whose heroes were the two master-thieves, Ola H?iland and Gjest Baardsen, that must have been a terribly arduous necessity. However, he submitted with bad grace, and was enrolled as a pupil at the gymnasium in Bergen. Here his Finnish Hyde promptly got him into trouble. Having by sheer ill luck been cheated of his chances of a heroic career, he began to imagine in detail the potentialities of greatness for the loss of which Fate owed him reparation. And so absorbed did he become in this game of

olmates during his last year of preparation at Heltberg's Gymnasium, in Christiania, were Bj?rnstjerne Bj?rnson and Henrik Ibsen. The former took a grea

e happily found national form-pugnacious to the very point of his pen. I gazed and stared, fascinated, and took this new thing aboard along the whole gunwale. Here, I felt, were definite forms, no mere dusk and fantastic haze-something to fashion into poetry.... From the first hour you knew how to look straight into this strange twilight of mine, and you espied flashes of the aurora there when no one else did, like the true and faithful fr

d even a more serious phase than this. It was about this time that Lie disappeared for a period of three months from his friends, and even his parents, and when again he emerged into the daylight, he could give no account of himself. He had simply sauntered about, moping and dreaming.

ry inn, he was aroused from his sleep and saw indistinctly a white phenomenon fluttering to and fro along the opposite wall. Instantly he grabs a boot and hurls it with ferocious force at the goblin. A roar was heard followed by a salvo of blue profanity.

enses drew him with an irresistible, half-shuddering attraction; and he resented all attempts to explain it by ordinary mundane laws. As his first novel abundantly proves

-born thoughts which fly to the beloved one's breast." His versification is gnarled and twisted, and a perpetual strain upon the ear. As Mr. Nordahl Rolfsen has remarked, one need not be a princess in order to be troubled by the peas in his verse.[13] Browning himself could scarcely have perpetrated more unmelodious lines than Jonas Lie i

lfsen: Norske D

rel. The sailor songs, though rough, are true in tone and have a catching nautical swing; but of far deeper ring and more intensely felt are the poems which deal with the nocturnal sides of nature. These have at times a strange, shivering resonance, like an old violin whose notes ripple down your spine. I refer especially t

rsorily into them, he grew so discouraged that he went to the bookseller and exchanged them for a set of law-books. Not that the law had any peculiar attraction for him; he rather accepted it as a pis aller; for, of course, he had to study something. In due time he was graduated, but with such poor standing that he conc

ing craft, bearing the name Thomasine Lie, appeared upon his horizon, sailed within speaking distance, and presently a great deal nearer. In fact, though they were cousins, it took a remarkably short time for the two young people to discover that they loved each other; and when that discovery was made, they acted upon it with laudable promptitude. They became engaged; and were subsequently marrie

ether beautiful marriage than that of Jonas and Thomasine Lie. The nearest parallel to it

tion he attributes even his authorship to his Thomasine. "Her name ought to stand next to mine on the title-pages of my books," he has repeatedly declared. And ag

back your own thoughts clarified. Mr. Garborg relates most charmingly how she straightens out the tangles in her husband's plots, and unobtrusively draws him back, when, as frequently happens, he has switched himself off on a side-line and is unable to recover his bearings. And this occurs as often in his conversation as in his manuscripts, which he never despatches to the publisher without her revision. She helps him condense. She knows just what to omit. Yet she does not pretend to be in the least literary. Her proper department, in which she is also a shining success, is the care of her children and the superinte

, wrote political leaders in the papers, earned a great deal of money, lived high, and unfolded a restless and widely ramified activity. Then came the great financial crisis of 1867-68, which swept away so many great fortunes in Norway. Lie became involved (chiefly by endorsement of commercial paper) to the extent of several hundred thousand dollars. He gave up everything he had, and moved to Christiania, resolved to pay the enormous debt, for which he had incurred legal responsibility, to the l

help them. The ex-lawyer developed ultra-democratic sympathies, and time and again his Thomasine led the dance at the balls of the Laborers' Union with Mr. Eilert Sundt.[14] A position as teacher of Norwegian in Heltberg's Gymnasium he lost because he

hilanthropist, whose work on

hich this strange book makes at the first reading is difficult. I thought, as I sat rejoicing in its vivid light and color, twenty-four years ago: "This Jonas Lie is a sort of century-plan

captive. With a lavish hand Lie has drawn upon the memories of his boyhood in the arctic North; and it was the newness of the nature which he revealed, no less than the picturesque force of his language, which contributed in no small degree to the success of his book. But, above all, it was the sweetness and pathos of the exquisite love story. Susanna, though as to talents not much above the commonplace, is ravishing. To have breathed the breath of such warm and living life into a character of fiction

g Floods,

lligent) interest in rising artists, musicians, and men of letters, and has endeavored by stipends and salaries to compensate them for the smallness of the public which the country affords. Jonas Lie was now a sufficiently conspicuous man to come into consideration in the distribution of the official panem et circenses. The state awarded him a largess of $400 for one year (twice renewed), in order to enable him to go to Italy and "educate himself for a poet;" and he was also made a

life what art means." But Jonas Lie was thirty-eight years old; and, as far as I can judge from his writings, I should venture to say that the secret of classical art has never been unlocked to him. It lies probably rather remote from the sphere of his sensations. His genius

ionary" Jonas Lie was bound to be judged, whether he liked it or not. That is the penalty of having produced a masterpiece, that one is never permitted to follow the example of bonus Homerus, who, as every one knows, sometimes nods. Jonas Lie was far from nodding in "The Barque Future" (1872). There was an abundance of inter

his ability to see poetry in that which is contemporary. The sawdust in the rivers has never offended him, nor the Briton's black cloud of coal

rborg: Jonas

d it in his heart to award the victory to the Hebrew usurer, can Lie violate the proprieties of fiction by permitting Stuwitz to fatten on his spoil. He could not, like the German novelist, conjure up a noble gentleman of democratic sympathies and practical ability (like von Finck) and make him emerge in the nick of time as the heir of the ancient gentry, justifying the dignities which he enjoys in th

to its interest, it has some bearing upon the woman question. Lie maintains that no true marriage can exist where the wife sacrifices her personality, and submits without a protest to neglect and ill-treatment. Happily we are not particularly in need of that admonition on our side of the ocean. The wife of the pilot, Salve Christensen, had once broken her engagement with him, having become enamored of the handsome naval lieutenant, Beck; but she recovers her senses and marries Christensen, whom she really loves. After h

details with which the book abounds. There is, however, a certain air of effort about i

rably disposed, fell into the habit of referring to him as "the novelist of the sea," "the poet of the ocean," etc. The Norwegian sailor, whom he may be said to have revealed in "The Pilot," came to be considered more and more as his property; and no one can read such tales as "Press On" (Gaa Paa) and "Rutland" without agreeing that the title is well merited. I know of no

venues. In 1875 he published a versified tale, "Faustina Strozzi," dealing with the struggle for Italian liberty. In spite of many excellences it fell rather flat, and was roughly handled by the critics. Even a worse fate befell its successor, "Thomas Ross" (1878), a novel of contemporary life in the Norwegian capital. It is a pale, and rather labored story, in which a young girl, of the Rosamond Vincy type, is held up to scorn, and the atrocity of flirtation is demonstrated by the most tragic consequences. There is likewise an air of triviality about "Adam Schrader" (1879); and Lie became seriously alarme

the thoughtless many. It was not in this way that Jonas Lie's failures conduced to his final success. "Thomas Ross," "Adam Schrader," and "Grabow's Cat" have not grown perceptibly in the estimation either of the critics or of the public since their first

oundings, the quicksands, and the rocks than if I had stayed upon the green shore, took tea and co

terrible conditions which he described. He replied to their arraignments in an angry but very effective letter. But that did not save the book. Truth to tell, "The Life Prisoner" is a dismal tale. It was, in fact, the irruption of modern naturalism into Norwegian literature. It reminds one in its tone more of Dostoyevski's "Crime and Punishment" than of "L'Assommoir." For to my mind Dostoyevski is a greater exponent of naturalism than Zola, whom Lemaitre not inaptly styles "an epic poet." The pleasing and well-bred truths or lies, to the expounding of which belles lettres had hitherto been confined, were here discarded or ignored. The author had taken a plunge into the great dumb deep of the nethermost social strata, which he has explored with admirable conscientiousness and artistic perception. Few men of letters would object to being the father of so creditable a failure. Lie, being convinced that his book was a good one, no matter what the wielders

Samliv), (1887), "Maisa Jons" (1888), "The Commodore's Daughters" and "Evil Powers" (1890), which deal with interesting phases of contempo

e, had burst forth from under a sidewalk in Broadway. It was the suppressed Finn who, for once, was going to have his fling, even though he were doomed henceforth to silence. It was the "queer thoughts" (which had accumulated in the author and which he had scrupulously impriso

s to Norway or the mountains of Bavaria) he has had the advantage of seeing the society which he describes at that distance which, if it does not lend enchantment, at all events unifies the scattered impressions, and furnishes a convenient critical outpost. He does not permit himself, however, like so many foreigners in the French capital, to lapse into that supercilious cosmopolitanism which deprives a man of his own country without giving him any other in exchange. No; Jonas Lie is and remains a Norseman-a fact which he demonstrated (to the

ian. Therefore every Norseman (unless he chooses to be a party to this suppression) is obliged to assert his nationality in season and out of season. But Jonas Lie has, indeed, in a far more effective way borne aloft the banner of his country. His books

STIAN AND

ssay appeared originally

on as the hen who finds a diamond on a dunghill is of mineralogy. It was the poetic phase alone of the fairy-tale which attracted him; and what is more, he saw poetic possibilities where no one before him had ever discovered them. By the alchemy of genius (which seems so perfectly simple until you try it yourself) he transformed the common neglected nonsense of the nursery into rare poetic treasure. Boots, who kills the ogre and marries the princess-the typical lover in fiction from the remotest Aryan antiquity down to the present time-appears in Andersen in a hundred disguises, not with the rudimentary features of the old story, but modernized, individualized, and carrying on his shield an u

or a moment suspected its moral. The hens and the ducks and the geese were all so vividly individualized, and the incidents were so familiar to my own experience, that I demanded nothing more for my entertainment. Likewise in "The Goloshes of Fortune" there is a wealth of amusing adventures, all within the reach of a child's comprehension, which more than suffices to fascinate the reader who fails to penetrate beneath the surface. The delightful satire, which is especially applicable to Danish society, is undoubtedly lost to nine out of ten of the author's foreign readers, but so prodigal is he both of humorous and pathetic meaning, that every one is charmed with what he finds, without sus

o employ them. As Dr. Brandes has said in his charming essay on Andersen, no one has ever attempted, before him, to transfer the vivid mimicry and gesticulation which accompany a nursery tale to the printed page. If you tell a child about a horse, you don't say that it neighed, but you imitate the sound; and the child's laughter or fascinated attention compensates you for your loss of dignity. The more successfully you crow, roar, grunt, and mew, the more vividly you call up the image and d

ritiker og Port

f is a daring experiment, and it cannot, except in brief scenes, be successful. A prolonged strain of compassion soon becomes wearisome, and not the worthiest object in the world can keep one's charity interested through four hundred pages. Antonio, in "The Improvisatore," is a milksop whom the author, with a lavish expenditure of sympathy, parades as a hero. He is positively ludicrous in his pitiful softness, vanity, and humility. That the book nevertheless remains unfailingly popular, and is even yet found in the satchel of eve

Andersen, as we behold him in his startling memoirs, thrilling from top to toe with an excruciating vanity and sc

ed me unpleasantly. After I had by personal intercourse possessed myself of the clew to the man's character, I judged differently. Andersen remained, until the day of his death, a child. His innocence was more than virginal; his unworldliness simply inconceivable. He carried his heart on his sleeve, and invited you to observe what a soft, tender, and sensitive heart it was. He had the harmless vanity of a child who has a new frock on. He was fidgety and unhappy if anybody but himself was the centre of attraction; and guilelessly happy when he could talk and be admired and sympathized with. His conversation was nearly always about himself, or about the kings and princes and lofty personages who had graciously deigned to take notice of him. He was a tuft-hunter of a rare and curious sort; not because he valued the glory reflected upon

e goodness of God and man. Sometimes, for a change, he cried at the wickedness of the latter, and marvelled, with the na?veté of a spoiled child, that there should be such dreadful people in the world, who should persist in misunderstanding and misrepresenting him. Those who were good to him he exalted and lauded to the skies, no matter how they conducted themselves toward the rest of humanity. Some of the most mediocre princes, who had paid him compliments, he embalmed in prose and verse. Frederick VII. of Denmark, whose immorality was notorious, was, according to Andersen, "a good, amiable king," "sent by God to Danish land and folk," than whom "no truer man the Danish language spoke." And this case was by no means exceptional. The same uncritical partiality toward the great and mighty is perceptible in every chapter of "The Fairy-Tale of M

s, may at first appear arbitrary; but it is part of the beautiful consistency of Andersen's genius that it never stoops to mere amusing and fantastic trickery. The character of the darning-needle is the character which a child would naturally attribute to a darning-needle, and the whole multitude of vivid personifications which fills his tales is governed by the same consistent but dimly apprehended instinct. Of course, I do not pretend that he was conscious of any such consistency; creative processes rarely are conscious. But he needed no reflection in order to discover the child's view of its own world. He never ceased to regard the world from the child's point of view, and his personification of an old clothes-press or a darning-needle was therefore as natural as that of a child who beats the chair against which it bumped its head. In the works of more ambitious scope, where this code of conduct would be out of place, Andersen was never wholly at his ease. As lovers, his heroes usually cut a sorry figure; their milk-and-water passion is described, but it is never felt. They make themselves a trifle ridiculous by their innocence, and are amusing when they themselves least suspect i

red him in the thousand ingenious ways known to their species. He had no schooling to speak of; but, for all that, was haunted, like Joseph, by dreams foreshadowing his future greatness. Guided by this premonition he started, at the age of fourteen, for Copenhagen, a tall, ugly, and ungainly lad, but resolved, somehow or other, to conquer fame and honor. He tried himself as a dancer, singer, actor, and failed lamentably in all his débuts. He could not himself estimate the extent of his own ignorance, nor could he dream what a figure he was cutting. Undismayed by all rebuffs, though suffering agony from his wounded vanity, he wrote poems, comedies, and tragedies, in which he plagiarized, more or less unconsciously, the elder Danish poets. Mr. Jonas Collins,

d by turns the blasé mask of the former and the fantastically eccentric one of the latter; both of which ill became his good-natured, plebeian, Danish countenance. For all that, the book was a success in its day; and no less an authority than the ?sthetic Grand Mogul, J. L. Heiberg, hailed it as a work of no mean merit. It strikes us to-day as an exhibition of that mocking smartness of youth which often hides a childish heart. It was because he was so excessively sentimental and feared to betray his real physiognomy that he cut these excruciating capers. His other alternative would have been mawkishness. His vaudeville, "Love on the Nicho

roll over me; and it was the common opinion that I was to be totally washed away. I felt deeply the wo

s, and held God (who apparently supervised each chapter) responsible for the fate of his books. "If the Lord," he writes in solemn earnest to a friend, "will take as good care of the remainder as he has of the first chapters, you will like it."[20] There was to him no difference between his best and his worst. It wa

ret Dansk Litteratur His

from many conversations. An account of My Acquaintance with Hans Ch

d frugality," he says, "I had saved up a little sum of money

t lack of Attic salt in the book. In 1833 he went abroad once more, visited Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy, and sent home the dramatic poem "Agnete and the Merman," the comparative failure of which was a fresh grief to him. After his return from Rome (1835) he published his "Improvisatore," which slowly won its way. It was t

nts, nowhere else recorded itself in literature. We all have a dim recollection of how the world looked from the nursery window; but no book has preserved so vivid and accurate a negative of that marvellous panorama as Andersen's "Wonder Tales for Children," the first collection of which appeared in 1835. All the jumbled, distorted proportions of things (like the reflection of a landscape in a crystal ball) is capitally reproduced. The fantastically personifying fancy of childhood, where doe

hought that the whole world was green. And that was just as it should be. The pod grew

is from "L

he couldn't speak plain, he used to call himself so. It was me

of drollery from Hjalmar'

s. The slate-pencil tugged and jumped at the end of its string, as if it had been a little dog that wanted to help the sum. But he could not. There was a great lamentation in Hjalmar's copy-book, too; it was quite terrible to hear. On each page the large letters stood in a row, one underneath the o

e very glad to do that,' answered Hjalmar's letters, 'but we can't. We are so weakly.' 'Then you must take medicine,' said

zest it was written; how childishly the author himself relished it. The illusion is therefore perfect. The big child who played with his puppet theatre until after he was grown up is quite visible in every

kwheat"), there is an occasional forced note. The story-teller becomes a benevolent, moralizing uncle, who takes the child upon his knee, in order to instruct while entertaining it. But he is no more in the game. A cloying sweetness of tone, such as sentimental people often adopt toward children, spoils more than one of the fables; and when occasionally he v

than their author himself. J. L. Heiberg thought it high time to chastise the half-cultured shoemaker's son for his audacity, and in the third act of "A Soul after Death," held him up to ridicule. Andersen, stabbed again to the heart, hastened away from home, "suffering and disconcerted." But before leaving he published "A Picture-Book without Pictures", (1840), which is attached to the American edition of his "Stories and Tales," and deserves its place. The moon's pathetic and humorous observations on the world she looks down upon every evening of her thirty nights' circuit have already become classic in half-a-dozen languages. The lit

he sculptors," he wrote, "have known me; none of their sketches indicate that they have seen what is characteristic in me. Never could I read aloud when anybody was sitting behind me or close up to me; far less if I

pronounced was the success of the lyrical drama "Little Kirsten" (1846); and the somewhat ambitious epic "Ahasverus" comes very near being a failure. The next ventures of the versatile and indefatigable poet were the novel "The Two Baronesses" (1849), and the fairy comedies "More than Pearls and Gold" (1849), adapted from a German original, "The Sandman"[23] (1850), and "The Elder Tree Mother" (1851). The comedies "He was not Born" (1864), "On Langebro" and "When the Spaniards were Here" (1869), complete the cycle of his dramatic labors. But the most amusing thing he did, showing how incapable he was of taking the measure of his faculties, was to write a

ish, Ole

ret Dansk Litteratur

" to those who were to be strangled, kneeling in rapture, while the Grand Eunuch, crowned his head with laurels. But in spite of obloquy and ridicule, Andersen continued his triumphant progress through all the lands of the civilized world, and even beyond it. In 1875 his tale, "The Story of a Mother," was published simultaneously in fifteen languages, in honor of his seventieth birthday. A few months later (August

If he did not invent a new literary form he at all events enriched and dignified an old one, and revealed in it a world of unsuspected beauty. He was great in little things, and little in great things. He had a heart

RY DANISH

great arena of the world. The literary activity which now and then flared up spasmodically, like flames over a smouldering ash-heap, flickered and half-expired for want of fresh sustenance. A direfully conventional romanticist, H. F. Ewald (1821-1892), wrote voluminous modern and historical novels, the heroines of which were usually models of all the copy-book virtues, and the heroes as bloodless as their brave and loyal prototypes in "Ivanhoe" and "Waverley." Instead of individualizing his dramatis person? this feeble successor of Ingemann and Walter Scott gave them a certificate of character, vouching for their goodness or badness, and trusting the reader to take his word for it in either case. Like many another popular novelist, he varnished them with the particular tint of excellence or depravity that might suit his purpose, stuffed their heads with bran

d in Rome, which occupies a considerable portion of the former work, is delightful, though intermingled with a deal of superfluous mysticism and romantic entanglements which were then held to be absolutely indispensable. "In the Sabine Mountains" (1871), the scene of which is laid in Genazzano during the struggle for Italian independence, is a trifle too prolix; and its

ectedly eloquent and unsophistically entertaining. The historic whisperings which he catches from the names, the ruins, the facial types, and the very trees and grass of Genazzano invest his letters from that picturesque neighborhood with a certain beautiful glow of color and a dusky richness of decay. The autobiographical form imposes, to be sure, an increasing strain on the reader's credulity, as the plot thickens, and we find ourselves, half-unexpectedly, involved in a lurid tale of monks, priests, disguised revolutionists, cruel, mercenary fathers, etc., and the Danish author playing his favorite r?le of deus ex machina. Still more incredible is the part of benevolent Providence which he assigns to himself in "The Bride of R?rvig," where he saves the heroine's

re devoid of that air of laborious contrivance and artificial intrigue which brings the foregoing novels into such unpleasant relationship with Wilkie Collins and his genre. The incidents of the hero's boyhood in the old porcel

English (Boston and Cambridge, 1870) but attracted no particular attention. For all that, Goldschmidt, in spite of occasional prolixity, stands the test of time remarkably well. His Jewish stories, notably Maser, Aron og Esther, and En J?de, contain a higher order of work, though less dramatically effective, than that of Sacher-Masoch, and Emil Franzos, and the later Ghetto romancers. Goldschmidt's double nationality, as a Danish-born Jew, indicates his position and the source from which he drew his weakness and his streng

s than a sensitive conscience, toward the rosy dawn of the unknown. There was a desperate need of such men in Denmark in the seventies, when the little kingdom was sinking deeply and more deeply into a bog of patriotic delusion and spiritual stagnation. An infusion of new blood was needed-a re-establishment of that circulation of thought which keeps the whole civilized world in vital connection and makes it akin. No country can cut itself off from this universal world-life without withering like a diseased limb. The man who undertook to bring Denmark again into rapport with Europe was Dr

himself at once face to face with an interesting and considerable personality. He has that sense of surprise and delighted expectation which only the masters of fiction are apt to evoke. It is a story of a Danish national type-the conversational artist. In no country in the world is there such a conversational fury as in Denmark. A people has, of course, to do something with its surplus energy; and as political opposition is sure to prove futile, there is nothing left to do but to talk-not only politics, but art, poetry, religion, in fact, everything under the sun. At the time, however, when Albrecht, the hero of "Without a Centre," plied his nimble tongue, the country had a more liberal Government, and criticism of the Ministry was not yet high treason. But centuries of repression and the practical exclusion of the bourgeoisie from public life were undoubtedly the fundamental causes of this abnormal conversational activity. There is something soft and emotional in the character of

r of a Danish youth who is meant to be typical, the futility of the vainglorious imaginings with which the little nation has inflated itself to a size out of proportion to its actual historic r?le. In "The Old Pharmacy" the necessity of facing the changed reality of the modern world, instead

Stories," "Novelettes") are of more unequal merit, but are all more or less strongly characterized by the qualities which fascinate in his novels. Of his poems "Samlede Digte," (1882) I have not the space to speak, and can only regret that they are writt

ched words with which he piles up picturesque effects, returning every now and then to put in an extra touch-to tip a feather with light, to brighten the sheen of his satins, to polish the steely lustre of swords and armors. Yet, if one takes the time to linger over these unusual words and combinations of words, one is likely to find that they are strong and appropriate. All conventional shop-work he disdained; the traditional phrases for eyes, lips, brow, and hair were discarded, not necessarily because they were bad, but because by much use they have lost their freshness. They have come to be mere sounds, and no longer call up vivid conceptions. An author who has the skill and the courage to undertake this repolishing and resharpening of the tools of language is, indeed, a public benefactor; but it requires the finest linguistic taste and discrimination to do it with success. Most authors are satisfied if they succeed in giving currency to one happy phrase involving a novel use

s to emphasize its typical character. One is almost tempted to believe that Shakespeare, by a gift of happy divination, made his Prince of Denmark conform to this national type, though in his day it could not have been half as pronounced as it is now. Whether the Dane of the sixteenth century was yet the eloquent mollusk which we are perpetually encountering in modern Danish fiction is a question which, at this distance, it is

time to cool, and in each succeeding volume he has appeared more sedate, conservative, bourgeois.[25] In a later volume of poems this transformation is half symbolically indicated in the title, "Tempered Melodies." Nor is it to be denied that his melodies have gained in beauty by this process of tempering. There is a wider range of feeling, greater charm of expression, and a deeper resonance. Half a dozen volumes of verse which he has published since ("Songs of the Ocean," "Venezia," "Vines and Roses," "Youth in Verse and Song," "Peder Tordenskjold," "Deep Chords") are of very unequal worth, but establish beyond question their author's right to be named among the few genuine poets of the latter half of the nineteenth century; nay, more than that, he belongs in the foremost rank of those who are yet surviving. His prose, on the other hand, seems aimless and chaotic, and is not stamped with any eminent characteristics. A volume of short stories,

undergone a fresh transformation, and is

d him. The legend is invested with an obvious symbolic significance, and seems to have been intended as a poetic declaration of independence-a revolutionary manifesto signali

G BR

t in fable and story-to which the former appeals, is a fundamental trait in human nature; it appears full grown in the child, and has small need of cultivation. But the faculty of generalization to which the critic appeals is indicative of a stage of intellectual development to which only a small minority even of our so-called cultivated public a

about everything under the sun; but an interpreter of a civilization and a representative of a school of thought who sheds new light upon old phenomena-men like Lessin

tion. It is told that the old poet Hauch, who was then Professor of ?sthetics at the University, was so much impressed by the young doctor's ability that he hoped to make him his successor. And toward this end Dr. Brandes began to bend his energies. During the next five or six years he travelled on the Continent, spending the winter of 1865 in Stockholm, that of 1866-67 in Paris, and sojourning, moreover, for longer or shorter periods in the principal cities of Germany. He became a most accomplished linguist, speaking French and German almost

andes was born into the world of thought was made up of the stars Darwin, Comte, Taine, and Mill. These men put their stamp upon his spirit; and to the tendency which they represent he was for many years faithful. Mill's book on "The Subjection of Wo

passage of Scripture often occurs to me when I take up these earlier works of Brandes: "He rejoiceth like a strong man to run a race." He handles language with the zest and vigor of conscious mastery. There is no shade of meaning which is so subtle as to elude h

y these "Impressions" are no less weighty; nay, they are more weighty than anything from the same pen that has preceded them. They show a faculty to enter sympathetically into an alien civilization, to seize upon its characteristic phases, to steal into its confidence, as it were, and coax from it its intimate secrets; and they exhibit, moreover, an acuteness of observation and an appreciation of significant trifles (or what to a superficial observer might appear

trial lectures at the University on modern literature. The lecturer here flies his agnostic colors from beginning to end. He treats "The Romantic School in Germany" as Voltaire treated Rousseau-with sovereign wit, superior intelligence, but

istinguish the French, Dr. Brandes is so largely indebted to French science, philosophy, and art that it would be strange if he did not betray an occasional soup?on of partisanship. His treatment of Chateaubriand, Benjamin Constant, Madame de Sta?l, Oberman, Madame de Krüdener, and all the queer saints and scribbling sinners of that period is as entertaining as it is instructive. It gives one the spiritual complexion of the period in clear lines and vivid colors, which can never be forgotten. Nearl

traditional morality against such assailants as Byron and Shelley, civilization would suffer. The conservative bias of the Philistine (though not so outwardly attractive) is no less valuable as a factor in civilization than the iconoclastic zeal of the reformer. If the centrifugal force had full sway in human society, without being counteracted by a centripetal tendency, anarchy would soon prevail. I cannot (as Dr. Brandes appears to do) discover any startling merit in outraging the moral sense of the community in which one lives; and though I may admit that a man who was capable of doing this was a great poet, I cannot concede that the fact of his being a great poet justified the outrage. Nor am I sure that Dr. Brandes means to imply so much

n Jahrhunderts. Barring the strictures which I have made, I know no work of contemporary criticism which is more luminous in its statements, more striking in its judgments, and more replete with interesting information. It reminds one in its style of Taine's "Lectures on Art"

d Danish periodicals; as also in his more elaborate biographies of Benjamin Disraeli (1878), Esaias Tegnér (1878), S?ren Kierkegaard (1877), Ferdinand Lassalle (1882), and Ludwig Holberg. The first of these was translated into English, and was also published in the United States. A second volume, entitled "Eminent Writers of the Nineteenth Century," was translated some years ago by Professor R. B. Anderson. The greater number of these highly finished essays were selected from the Danish volumes "The Men of the New Transition" (1884) and "Men and Works in Recent European Literature" (1883), and one or two from "Danish Poets" (1877). They

Bj?rnstjerne Bj?rnson. This difference in sound seems symbolic. Ibsen is the solitary man, a scathing critic of society, a delver in the depths of human nature, sceptical of all that men believe in and admire. He has not, like Bj?rnson, any faith in majorities; nay, he believes that the indorsement of the majority is an argument against the wisdom of a cour

of Russia." The motto of this work (which in the Danish edition is printed on the back of the titl

inite expanses, which fill the soul with melancholy and with hope ... the impenetrable, dusk

when speaking of his country, and he used it as the title of his last novel. It seemed to him to explain everything in Russian conditions that to the rest of the world appeared enigmatical. The whole of Dr. Brandes's book is interpenetrated with this consciousness of the vast possibilities hidden in the virgin bosom of the new earth, even though they may be too deeply hidden to sprout up into the daylight for centuries to come. The Russian literature, w

stility to Germany that the intellectual intercourse almost ceased. German ideas became scarcely less obnoxious than German bayonets. Spiritual stagnation was the result. For no nation can with impunity cut itself off from the great life of the world. New connections might, perhaps, have been formed with France or England; but the obstacles in the way of such connections appeared too great to be readily overcome. Racial differences and consequent alienism in habits of thought made a rapprochement seem hopeless. It seemed, for awhile, as if the war had cut down the intellectual territory of the Danes eve

he less did they feel the need of any intellectual stimulus from abroad; and when Dr. Brandes introduced them to modern realism, agnosticism, and positivism they thanked God that none of these dreadful isms were indigenous with them; and were disposed to take Dr. Brandes to task for disturbing their idyllic, orthodox peace by the promulgation of such dangerous heresies. When the time came to fill the professorship for which he was a candidate, he was passed by, and a safer but inferior man was appointed. A formal crusade was opened against him, and he was made the object of savage and bitter attacks. I am not positive, but am disposed to believe, that it was this crusade, not against his opinions only, but against the man himself, which drove Dr. Brandes from Copenhagen, and induced him, in October, 1877, to settle in Berlin. Here he continued his literary activity with unabated zeal, became a valu

revolt is lauded, all conformity derided. The former is noble, daring, Titanic; the latter is pusillanimous and weak. Conjugal irregularities are treated not with tolerance but with obvious approval. Those authors who dared be a law unto themselves are, by

losophical savage who dances a war-dance amid what he conceives to be the ruins of civilization, swings a reckless tomahawk and knocks down everybody and everything that comes in his way. There must lie a long history of disappointment and bitterness behind that endorsement of anarchy pure and simple. And it is the sadder to cont

s philosophic temper and make common cause with a crack-brained visionary. The kind of explosive radicalism which Nietschke betrays in his cynical questions and explanations is no evidence of profundity or sagacity, but is the equivalent of the dynamiter's activity, transferred to the world of thought. His pretended re-investigation

ark the torpedo

re are in every age men who, unable to achieve the fame of Dinocrates, who built the temple of the Ephesian Diana,

Dr. Brandes derides with a satyr-like leer all traditiona

revalent among the so-called "advanced" Hebrews. The idea that obedience to law is degrading; that conformity to traditional morals is soul-crippling and unworthy of a free spirit; that only by giving s

AS T

h. There was, in other words, a certain charming juvenility in his attitude toward existence, which presented to him no riddles that a man with a strong arm and an honest heart might not solve with comparative ease. All problems were to him soluble with the sword; and Alexander, when he cut the Gordian knot, must have appeared to him wiser, as he was surely more admirable, than either Plato or Socrates. This scorn of all metaphysical subtleties, and reliance upon strength and Swedish manhood, are, perhaps (from an advanced European point of view), indicative of a little intellectual immaturity; but t

his exquisite humor; but for all that, he always leaves me with a vague regret at his whimsicality and a certain lack of robustness in his intellectual equipment. In Tegnér, on the other hand, it is primarily the man who is impressive; and the author is interesting as the revelation of the man. He has no literary airs and graces, but speaks with a splendid authority, e p

as equally irresistible to men and women. There was a breezy, out-of-door air about him, and a genial straightforwardness and affability in his manner which took all

d Esaias after his father, first saw the light of day in the parsonage of Kyrkerud, in Wermland, November 13, 1782. When he was nine years old his father died, leaving behind him poverty and sorrow. Happily a friend of the family, the Assessor Branting, took a fancy to the handsome and clever boy and offered him a home in his house. Esaias wrote a very clear, good hand, and soon got a desk and a high three-legged stool in the assessor's office. So far from rebelling against this tedious discipline, he applied himself with zeal to his task, and became, in a short time, an excellent clerk. And a clerk he might have remained if his patron had not had the wit to discover that very unusua

hagrin of his patron, however, the cows made their way unhindered and unnoticed into the forbidden territory, while their watchman was lying on his belly in the grass, deeply absorbed in a book. Wherever he happened to be, his idea of happiness was to hide himself away with a cherished volume. Sometimes he was found sitting on the top rung of a ladder, sometimes on the roof of a turf-thatched cottage, oblivious of the wo

s destiny. Professor C. W. B?ttiger, Tegnér's son-in-law, quotes, in

ading Bastholm's 'Philosophy for Laymen,' and I began to give an account of what I had there learned concerning the movements of the heavenly bodies. This made an impression upon the old man, who, a few days later, informed me that he had determined to give me a scholarly

ssian," which kept ringing in his memory for many years to come. It was during his first enthusiasm for "Ossian" that, in order to rid himself of the line "the spear of Connell is keen," he cut it into his chamber-door, where probably it

attacked this storehouse of delight; and scarcely would he grant himself the needed sleep, because every hour seemed to him lost which had been robbed from his beloved authors. The instruction in Latin and Greek which his brother imparted to the young Myhrmans was to him far too slow. In his eagerness to plunge into Homer's enchanted world, he

a capital hand at inventing new games, and they willingly accepted his leadership and acted upon his suggestions. Particularly his Homeric games were greatly enjoyed. They divided their troop into Greeks and Trojans and captured Troy. Esaias was always Hector, and the other boys became the raging Ajax, the swift

est found so

her could

est from clou

young he deft

ift, there

it Ingebo

n roaring torr

oft arms roun

ing flowers by

strawberrie

autumn's go

er with eager

ago, 1877. I have taken the liberty to substitute "strawberries

familiarly called Achilles, had to share his room, and thus it came to pass that Hector and his deadly foe became bedfellows. In fact the bed in question, being intended for but one, afforded the scantiest possible accomm

ding him in advance of performance. But he came very near forfeiting the fruits of all his fair fame by participating in a hostile demonstration in front of the house of the University's rector, who was justly unpopular. His manly bearing, however, and the friendship of several of the professors saved him from the consilium abeundi cum infamia, with which he was threatened. Instead of that he was appointed docent in ?sthetics, Secretary to the Faculty of Philosophy, and Assistant University Librarian. His summer vacations he spent at R?men with the Myhrmans. His playmate, Miss Anna, was now sixteen years of age, and had undergone that miraculous transformation, which never loses its delightful mystery, from childhood into young womanhood. He went away one da

side and presse

nd pressure, res

s love-dr

he sun's in the m

ays bygone, so g

yet fresh on life

memor

ts roses; its

a greeting from d

en runes and the b

dome-cr

stream o'er a war

ong's tr

tleman, like King Ring, married the young University instructor, Esaias Tegnér; and when her bridal wreath of myrtle failed to arrive from the city, she twi

ed to the strain of this perpetual over-exertion. But after his marriage a happy change came over him. The joyous substratum of his nature (what he himself called his pagan self) broke through its sombre integuments and asserted itself. No sooner had he taken his place among the teachers of the University than his clear and weighty personality commanded admiration and respect. In social intercourse his ready wit and cheerful conviviality made him a general favorite. His talk, without

I don't scruple to make a good joke even though its subject be the bridal bed. All prudery-and

ination. There was a rich, and healthy humanity about him which manifested itself in an impartial, all-embracing delight in the glow and color of mere sensuous existence. There has scarcely ever been a great poet (Dante perhaps excepted) who has not had his share of t

ch perceptibly colored his personality. There was nothing of the scholarly prig or pedant about him. In his lectures he gave himself, his own view of life, and his own interpretation of his authors. And

to the world, the boastful self-assertion which is always ridiculous in every nation but our own-impart a splendid martial resonance to his first notable poem, "War-Song for the Scanian Reserves" (1808). There was a charming, frank ferocity in this patriotic bugle-blast which found an echo in every Swedish heart. The rapid dactylic metres, with the captivating rhymes, alternating with the more contemplative trochees, were admirably adapted for conveying the ebullient indignation and wrath which hurls its gauntlet in

ey? Well, the

ink the red blo

t not the war

llen shall

2

te var

det s

and with the exception of the German, Theodor K?rner, I know none who can bear comparison with Tegnér. English literature can certainly boast no war-poem which would not be drowned in the mighty music of Tegnér's "Svea," "The Scanian Reserves," and that magnificent, dithyrambic declamation, "King Char

al one) into a bishopric is no infrequent occurrence. There was therefore nothing anomalous in Tegnér's appointment (February, 1812) as pastor of St?fvie and Lackal?nge, and his subsequent promotion (February, 1824) to the bishopric of Wexi?. His pastorate he was permitted to combine with his professorship of Greek, to which he was simultaneously transferred from that of ?sthetics, and the office was chiefly valuable to him on account of the addition which it procured him to his income. The nearness of his parish to Lund enabled him to preach in the country on Sundays as regularly as he lectured in the city on week-

ten to twelve miles. He induced three of his brothers-in-law, two of whom were army officers and one a government clerk, to follow his example. Up hill and down hill they trudged, and arrived late in the afternoon, footsore and with blistered hands, in the town, where they reported at the office of a commission merchant, sold their iron and obtained their receipts. That of Tegnér was made out to Esaias Esaiasson, which would have been his name, if his father had never risen from the soil. The four sham

melody. To me, I admit, "Svea" is too rhetorical to make any deep impression. It has a certain stately academic form, which, as it were, impedes its respiration and freedom of movement. When, for all that, I speak of wing-beat and melody, it must be borne in mind that Sweden had produced no really great poet[29] before Tegnér; and that thus, relatively considered, the statement is true. But Tegnér seems himself to have been conscious of the strait-jacket in which the old academic rules confined him, for in the middle of the poem

the brave twin

eligion, gua

her; else they fa

earness ever

pe in every

doubt, by many be called a great poet. But his Bacchanalian strain, though at times exquisite and captivating, lacks the universality of sentiment an

lly: "Guard them both; they

priestly obscurantism and medi?val mysteries worn the episcopal robes. With doctrinal subtleties and ingenious hair-splitting he had no patience; conduct was with him the mai

that this man or that man yet pretends to believe in the somnambulist. But the church has also a civic significance as an integral part of the social order of humanity. If you abandon that to t

e personality and his conception of his duty. His first concern was to purge his dioc

," he says, "to get rid of a k

e could not calmly contemplate abuses which it was his duty to remedy; and no discouragement ever sufficed to dampen his noble zeal. The marked and fanatical pietism which then was much diffused among the Sm?land peasantry he fought with his cheerful gospel of reason and sanity. Just as poetry to him meant the highest bloom of life, and his radiant lyre resounded with noble music like the statue of Memnon, when touched by the rays of the dawn; so religion was, in its essence, perfect sanity of soul, a beautiful equilibrium of mind, and complete self-mastery. His Christ was not pr

nce which was here afforded him to impress his ideals upon the rising generation was not one to be neglected. And, as a matter of fact, Tegnér was indefatigable in his labors as an educator. His ma

f deceased clergymen in his diocese he was a veritable guardian, to their children a father, to his peasantry a friend, adviser, and monitor. He was an expert at detecting errors in ecclesiastical balance-sheets; and woe to the cleric who dared present to him inaccurate accounts of income and expenditures. By sh

rved two young ladies, the daughters of the house, coming across the yard carrying between them a big tub, full of water. When he asked them, in a friendly

ition is very chary of dates, and as Dr. Brandes has truly observed, is arranged with the obvious purpose of falsifying the sequence of Tegnér's poems and confusing the reader. The three periods-previous to 1812, 1812-40, and 1840-46-are entirely arbitrary, and plainly dev

models from which they were in a measure fashioned shimmer through. Just as the Germans, Gottsched and Bodmer, held foreign models to be indispensable, and only disagreed as to which were the best, so the Swedish Academy, which in its predilections was French, had no scruple in recommending this or that literar

estions and sometimes also with metres. Schiller had, in "The Gods of Greece," sung a glorious elegy on the Olympian age which stimulated his Swedish rival to write "The Asa Age," in which he regretted, though in a rather half-hearted way, the disappearance of Odin, Thor, and Freya. The poem, it must be admitted, falls much below Tegnér at his best. Schiller's "Three Words of Faith," in which liberty, virtue, and God are declared to be the only essentials of religion, finds a parallel (which even retains the metre) in Tegnér's "The Eternal," in which truth, justice, and b

healthy eyes will I look about me in the sick world. My golden lyre shall not resound with sorrows

reflections upon his school which this poem contained. He intimates plainly enough that Tegnér's philosophy of li

y circumstances; but it is inherent in the weakness (which at times doubtless surprises even the strongest ...) of desiring to set up its sorrowful view of the world as a theory, and treat it as absolutely true and fundamentally valid for all. Sorrow, as such, is no more a diseased state than is j

he other. It was because of the abhorrence of all the darker phases of existence that Tegnér's bright Hellenic muse never struck those notes which thrill with deepest resonance through the human heart. Tegnér's acquaintance with suffering during the early part of h

Hermann and Dorothea," the form of which was Greek, though the theme was Teutonic; and Tegnér's "Children of the Lord's Suppe

joicing, had come, th

n the morning sheen. On

cock, the friendly fl

ues of fire beheld by

ndees. The tempered realism of Tegnér, which shuns all that is harsh and trite, accords well with the noble classical verse. He employs it, as it were, to dignify his homely tale, as Raphael draped the fishermen of Galilee in the flowing robes of Greek philosophers. The description of the church, the rustic youth, and the patriarchal clergyman has, howeve

mphasized do exist. First, the frequent violations of probability (which, by the way, ought not to have been so offensive to a romanticist) draw tremendous draughts upon the reader's credulity; and secondly, the lavish magnificence of imagery rarely adds to the vividness of the situations, but rather obscures and confuses them. It reminds one of a certain s

rew near, an

ch lay Eveni

like the pri

rsued their

tood in the

as a bride

d in her d

baldaquin

games of da

sted, still

evening shon

rose upon

Cupid, who

s high, awo

oonbeams u

arrow, throug

aim no originality in calling attention to the fact that it must have been a colossal Na?ad who could wear the evening glow like "a gorgeous rose upon her breast." Likewise former

avn, 1862. See also Svensk Litteratur-Tidning as quoted in B. E. Malmstr?

the dissenting voice of criticism was drowned like the shrill note of a single fife in the noisy orchestra of praise. The Swedish matrons and maidens wept over Axel's and Maria's heroic, but tragic love, as those of England, nay, of all Europe, wept over that of Conrad and Medora.

she; with s

with a voic

g, Axel, nay

s nestling

hat hath brou

alone led

st long nigh

re the grave

fe, with all its

om what it s

ove-love f

ith me to th

tly in couplets. In order not to sacrifice anything o

which he had struck in his renowned oration at the festival commemorating the Reformation (1817), came from the depth of his heart, and continued to resound through his speech and song for many years to come. I do not moan to imply, of course, that the Byronic Romanticism was very closely akin to that of Tieck, the Schlegels, and Novalis; or that Tegnér in the least compromised his frank and manly liberalism by composing a variation, as it were, on a Byronic theme. H

eligion is

of man ar

free; the r

he Pope-and

Germany, and t

ing and ince

New Year, with

, lies, a

t make an end

t least sh

poor thing, li

e head-she'll cau

ody dawn of a new and more glorious day; but the excesses of the Reign of Terror frightened them back into the old fastnesses of Conservatism. Tegnér (and to his honor be it said) was one of the few who did not despair of liberty because a people born and bred in despotism failed to exercise the wisdom and self-restraint which only liberty

. It is very tempting to quote the many noble sayings of this master of the commanding phrase, but one or two must suffice. It is a delight to read his published correspondence, because of this power of strong and luminous utterance, which he wields wi

e Cossacks is for the advantage of Sweden, may perhaps be in the right; but his views are very different from mi

f power or rejoice in the victory of wretched mediocrity over power and ge

tion is undeniable; and extremely foolish seems to me the speech of those

sm is the livery of all strong souls, because his spirit was opposed to the s

Tegnér: En Litteraturpsychologisk St

for we can never know what turn Swedish affairs might have taken, if his clarion voice had not been heard. But it could scarcely fail that such a speech as the one at the Festival of the Reformation (1817), delivered in the presence of a large ass

uls which, like certain trees, can only bloom in a storm. His whole great, rich, marvellous life has always seemed to me like an epic with its battles and its final victory. Such a spirit must of necessity make room for itself, and decisively assert itself in history, in whatever direction its activity may be turned, under whatever circumstances and at whatever time it enters upon its career. The time when Luther came was one of those great historical epochs when the world-serpent sheds its skin and reappears in rej

amlade Skrifter, vol.

says, in substance, in all Tegnér's heroes. They are all men of action-bold, strong, adventurous heroes, such as boys delight in. They have a striking family resemblance. With the change of a few attributes Tegnér applies his characterization of Luther to such a widely differing personality as King Gustavus III. of Sweden, a

des: Esaias Teg

could betray such political insight as is shown in his letters to Franzén and Leopold had not really gotten beyond this primitive type of excellence. In a certain sense, perhaps, it was not desirable that he should. For the tremendous popularity which greeted "Frithjof's Saga" was due in no small measure to this half-juvenile robustness of its author's genius. As

him. He waited until some appropriate public occasion occurred, and then spoke out of the fulness of his conviction. And his words spread like undulating waves of light from one end of the land to the other, finding lodgement in thousands of hearts. Th

call upon th

conjurations

res; for her a

rld, in knowle

ight. Bright beam

ure his bright C

st not clearly sa

thought is word

darkly said is

rue is like

petrified of h

t it is, the

ight shines and g

builded unto

a, light as h

ed the sunshine

round; the w

of pillars ga

d we build a T

rous structure

ep and narrow g

he tower was m

we've only

m of thought,

esy is e'er t

ely to our university commencements. It is the c

eption as light without darkness. Darkness, he says, is the condition of all color and form. You distinguish the light and all things in it only by the contrasting effect of shadow-all of which, I fancy, Tegnér would not have denied. More to the point would have been the query whether in poetry darkness and indistinctness are synonymous terms. It is only the most commonplace truths which can be made intelligi

commences with whooping-cough is likely to end in consumption." His frequently repeated maxim, that poetry is nothing but the health of life, "occasioned by an abounding intellectual vigor, a joyous leap over the barriers of everyday life," applied, ho

children to whom he was a most affectionate father. He could romp and play with his curly-headed boys and girls without any loss of dignity; and they loved nothing better than to invade his study. Next to them in his regard was a black-nosed pug, named Atis, who invariably accompanied him to his lectures and remained sitting at his feet listening with intelligent gravity to his expla

accomplished with a completeness of success which was a surprise to himself. No sooner had "Iduna," the organ of the Gothic League, published the first nine cantos (1821), than all Sweden resounded with enthusiastic applause; and even from beyond the boundaries of the fatherland came voices of praise. When the completed poem appeared in book-form, it was translated into all civilized languages, and everywhere, in spite of the translators' shortcomings, it was hailed with delight. Not only England, France, and Germany hastened to appropriate it, but even in Spain, Greece, and Russia tea

time for your

ment for a

s, too full o

, still a thous

rd, of such go

-the Southland

, mild as lambs

s, or as brothers w

omb's tra

irable. In fact, I am not sure but that Bj?rn appeared to me a more sympathetic figure than Frithjof. But a little later it dawned upon me that his utter lack of chivalry was

Ring it shall

ach of a wronge

lace at midnig

raybeard and bea

he spirit of the old heroic age than is Frithjof with his sentimentality and lovesick reveries. This ver

, your complaini

oy on the sea

noweth eff

llows delight

, to the gree

ng, with the gra

k and will figh

my own sorrow

ng Norseman when, untroubled by its anachronism, he glories in Frithjof's melancholy mooning, his praise of Ing

not a coldly impersonal epic, recounting remote heroic events; but there is a deeply personal note in it, which has that nameless moving quality-la note émue, as the French call it-which brings the tear to your eye, and sends a delicious breeze through your nerves. All that, to be sure, or nearly all of it, evaporates in translation; for no more than you can transfer the exquisite dewy intactn

ther an unhappy chapter, which his biographer has vainly striven to suppress. There was among his acquaintance in Lund a certain Mrs. Palm, toward whom he felt drawn with an irresistible half-demonic force. Beyond this fact we know nothing of the lady, except that she was handsome, cultivated, and well-connected. Whatever approaches Tegnér may have made toward her (and it is not known of what nature they were) she appears to have repelled; and the poet, though fighting desperately against his growing infatuation, wore out his splendid

on of his mind, with mutterings of thunder and stray flashes of lightning. But

ensch in seiner

ott zu sagen

im and ruin his usefulness. On the contrary, these were the most active and fruitful years of his life. But it was the deep agitation which possessed him-it was the suppressed

Ingeborg's sentiments is, therefore, according to his idea, wide of the mark. I do not quite agree with his point of view, but will state his argument. For the historical Frithjof, as he is represented in the ancient Norse saga bear

s; and this had either to be entirely eliminated, or at least materially softened. Up to a certain degree it therefore became necessary to modernize; but the difficulty was to find the golden mean. On the on

ty, courage; but at the same time nationalizing them by giving them a distinctly Scandinavian tinge. And this he has done by making

stubborn, and h

setteth of hi

of Fate and criet

l that is of significance in our history; for it rises from the very bottom of the nation's heart. There is a certain joyousness (commonly attributed to the French) which in the last instance is only levity. But the joyousn

sky, and the thou

r are cloudi

of a modern English gentleman and (by implication) a Protestant a thousand years before Protestantism existed. Ingeborg, too, had to be a trifle modified and disembarrassed of a few somewhat too naturalistic traits with which the saga endows her, before she became the lovely type that she is of the faithful, loving, long-suffering, womanhood of the North, with

ides in its main outlines with that of the saga. Frithjof, the son of the free yeoman Thorstein Vikingson, is fostered in the house of the peasant Hildin

, King Bel? in K

tein Vikingson,

nd with almost

ke a rune-stone wi

Helge and Halfdan, and asks her hand in marriage. His suit is scornfully rejected, and he departs in wrath vowing vengeance. The ancient King Ring, of Ringerike, having heard of Ingeborg's beauty,

ord to a stolen rendezvous with his beloved. The canto called "Frithjof's Happiness," which is brimming over with a swelling redundance of sentiment, is so cloyingly sweet that the reader must himself be in l

e lark.' Nay, t

th tell that

on the hill

mate in g

king seals

g breaks in

free as are

aloft the g

breaking!' Na

sendeth for

spend ano

l end the pr

ou sun, thee

ay'st thou l

s sake may'st

r?k, be su

he day its gr

orning br

nd the eas

s Ingeborg

ongsters mou

ess throng!)

s forth, and b

shades and

eloved: till

r eve we

on thy brow

rt-thy lips

d dream of m

comes, and

as I yearn

! Farewell, f

f L. A. Sherman, P

effusiveness, beautiful. No lover, I fancy, ever found them redundant, overstrained, spoiled by the lavish splendor of their imagery. Tegnér has accomplished the re

fused. In order to be rid of him they then send him on an expedition to the Orkneys, to collect a tribute which is due to them from Earl Angantyr. He ent

not s

ue with your

assistance

ay de

he spri

come, but the

hall or de

ly gre

d she

s sake, or ble

n, given by

ano

rture without her. The family feeling, the bond of blood, was exceptionally strong; and submission to the social code which made the male head of the house the arbiter of his sister's fate was br

erilous voyage, was wedded to King Ring. In a white-heat of wrath and sorrow Frithjof starts out to call her perjured brothers to account. He finds them in the temple in Balder's Grove, preparing for the sacrifice. There he flings the bag containing the tribute into King Helge's face, knocking out his front teeth, and observing on his wife's arm the ring with which he had once pledged Ingeborg, he rushes at her to recover it. The woman, who had been warming the wooden image of Balder before the fire, drops, in her fright, the idol into

of cre

orth s

e no

n thy

hence d

ce I

oes sp

rse, fa

false-

nor b

me de

law, s

appe

rth, wi

es, for

, farewe

man's tra

m of the ancient Germanic paganism. In defiance of his friend Bj?rn's advice, Frithjof, weary of this bootless chase for glory and pelf, resolves to see Ingeborg once more before he dies, and, disguised as a salt-boiler, he enters King Ring's hall. There he sees his beloved sitting in the high-seat beside her aged lord; and the

temples the queen'

ht tinges the snow-c

lown lilies on rack

emotion so heaved h

no approach to Ingeborg, with whom he scarcely exchanges a single word. During a sleigh-ride on the ice he saves, by a tremendous feat of st

are twittering, forests

rents downward singi

ek of Freya, peeping

awaken love of lif

eautiful situation in the poem. The old king, feigning weariness, begs Frithjof to tar

wn his mantle, and upon

so trustful, laid on F

the hero sleepeth

s an infant slumbers

ld man who had stolen his bride; but after a brief

ing awakens. 'Sweet has

p in shadow, guarded b

O stranger, lightning'

rom other that shoul

said Frithjof, 'I shal

es of falchions, words o

arthy demons, demons

em is sacred, silver

I slumbered, but to pr

ons never trusts King

e known thee since thou

den from me; from the f

eborg to Frithjof, and makes him the guardian of his son. The people, in Thing assembled, glorying in Frithjof's great renown, desire, however, to make him King's successor; but he lifts the small boy above his head

hich Tegnér himself had frequently delivered chiefly in the substitution of pagan for the Christian deities. As a matter of fact, marriage was a purely civil contract among the ancient Norsemen, and had no association with the temple or the priesthood, which, by the way, was no separate offic

eat fame of his poem came to him as a surprise; and he even undertook to protest against it, declaring with perfect sincerity that he held it to be undeserved. In letters to his friends he never wearied of pointing

to poetry nothing is really past. Poetry is the beautifying life of the moment; she wears the colors of the day; she cannot conceive of anything as dead.... But I am convinced that all poetic treatment of a theme belonging to a past age demands its modernization; and that everything antiquarian is here a mistake. This holds good not only in regard to the northern tone but also in regard to the Greek. Look, for instance, at Goethe's 'Iphigenie.' Who does not admire the beautiful, simple, noble, Hellenic form? And yet who has ever felt his soul warmed by this image of stone?... No living spirit

t the faults of his child whom he loves, so he knew the defects of his work, as measured by his own high standard, and refused to accept any more praise than was his due. Not even the fact that Goethe expressed his admiration of "Frithjof's Saga" could persua

jof"), "I have never regarded myself as a poet in the higher significance of the word

ind which disposed him to give violent and hyperbolical expression to the mood of the moment. The unhappy passion which he could at times smother, but never subdue, went boring away into his hea

s not rise. One dies by degrees and by halves. Therefore only children and youth ought to celebrate their birthdays with joy; we who have passed into the valley of age, which with every step is growing darker and chillier, are right in

has deposited in a man under his left nipple. As I say, I am under obligation to this year, for it has enriched me with what is the real sinking fund of human wisdom and human independence-a mighty, deeply rooted contempt for man.... My inner nature emerges from the crisis like the hibernating bear from his den, emaciated and exhaust

to one, then that is the bitterest experience which life can afford; then it is not strange if a frank and ardent soul turns wi

disease has its seat in the abdomen or in the waist. Mineral waters I can no m

er or earlier, in order to be drowned in its great fountain-head, or to float for some time yet like a bubble,

fought so bravely against his "barbaric, Titanic self with its hairy arms"? His passionate intensity of soul was, indeed, part of his poetic equipment; and he would not have been the poet he was if he had been cool, callous, and self-restrained. The slag in him was so intimately moulded with the precious metal that their separation would have been the extinction of the individuality it

on the alti

waters part

foam in opposi

ht up there, an

un, I saw h

enched his light,

was fair and gr

was good, that

read black imp

bit himself

the earth lay

were straightway

lad erewhile, la

ere, each flower

en sense my str

courage withe

o me reali

t, oppressive,

aled, alas, wi

e heavenly blu

poesy! It

aps-they pall

irage can sa

from the surface

raise thee, oh,

t thou, oh, how t

st natheless, in

e is man, the

onor there's a

est, when men e

aven, the one th

mark upon thy f

legible, writ

l ere now to

ath pervades

's sweet breath an

ave that odor

led and marble g

uption is the

ard and scatt

ell me now the n

never wane

red moon is gl

stars foreve

fast as in th

out the hours

dless is each pu

éd, oh, my bl

y in my bosom

n that holds life

me, thou gree

rn full soon in

les, moulders;

rth, I ween,

undling, here in s

hance, beyond th

ime, but in order to preserve the sense

me benefit in widening his mental horizon. Tegnér's intellectual affinities had always been French; and toward Germany he had assumed a more or less unsympathetic attitude. A slight acquaintance with the philosopher Schleiermacher and the Germanized Norwegian author Henrik Steffens (who was then a professor at the University of Berlin) did not, indeed, reverse his predilections, but it opened his eyes to excellences in the German people to which he had formerly been blind, and removed p

ess, "that my right side, like that of

res nothing, spares nothing, in heaven or on earth. It usually finds vent in misanthropic r

rior to his physical condition, and lure strong music (though sometimes jarred into discords) from the broken lyre. It was in 1829, after his illness had fastened its hold upon hi

beginnest the dist

him in whom I sha

is here, the Norther

poesy's world; for the

knew it, would give h

him, still less for

n poesy's name, the

age (in the infinit

e reigned), and kindr

e us all, and they a

eak in her name-ador

y hand, of the day in

ct of his bitterest objurgation. The venerable mutabile et varium of Virgil is the theme upon which he perpetually rings the changes. No occasion is too inappropriate for a joke at the fickle and faithless sex; and even the school-boys in the Wexi? gymnasium are treated to some ironical advice, à propos of the beautiful jade, which must have sounded surprising in an episcopal oration. Life with its bright pageant was oppressive, like a nightmare to the afflicted poet. All charm, all rationality had departed from existence, which was but a meaningless dance of hideous marionettes. The world was battered and befouled; inexpressibly loathsome. And finally, in 1840, while T

In the middle of my forehead there was the figure of a lyre on the diadem, which had borrowed something of the sun's own living light; it poured with such bright refulgence upon the wreath of stars that I seemed to be gazing straight through the world. As long as the lyre stood still, everything was well with me-but all of a sudden it began to move in a circle. Faster and ever faster it moved, until every nerve in my body was shaken. At last it began to rotate in rings with such speed that it was tran

Esaias Tegné

spent mostly lying upon a sofa in his library, surrounded by great piles of books containing a most miscellaneous assortment of classics, from Homer to Goethe, intersprinkled with controversial pamphlets and recent novels. He was gentle and affectionate in his demeanor; and his beautiful face lighted up with a smile whenever any of his children or grandchildren approached him. Once or twice a day he drove out in his carriage, and he was even able to

lowed by a long procession of the clergy, citizens, and the school-boys of his diocese. Peasa

cism of Tegnér is not the stately, bloodless, Gallic classicism of the Gustavian age, of which Leopold was the last representative. It is much closer to the classicism of Goethe in "Iphigenia" and "Hermann and Dorothea," and of Schiller in "Wal

dle Himme

t des Au

even though the degree of euphemistic magniloquence may differ with the age and latitude. The Swedes have been called the Frenchmen of the North, and there is no doubt that delight in this tog

riber'

o spelled Dostojev

also spel

t?llinger is also s

le changed to

is a typo for Gjennem

n parenthesis

was changed to [The objections to "Frithjof's Saga" w

they appear in the original text,