Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century

Returned to Christiania, he came before the public as a critic, especially as a dramatic critic, wrote with all the vehemence of genial youth, with all the injustice of a rising poet, and gained many enemies. In his reading at this period, he gave the preference to Danish thinkers of the epoch in literature then drawing to a close, – Heiberg, Sibbern, Kierkegaard, – and a little later he became gradually absorbed in the emotional world of Grundtvig. The latter's doctrine of a "cheerful Christianity" attracted Björnson as the antithesis of the gloomy pietism of his native land, the strong faith in the lofty endowments and mission of the Scandinavian North, which he found in Grundtvig, could not but captivate this typically northern youth who was so wholly unacquainted with Europe. Until a very few years ago traces of Grundtvig's influence could be detected in him. Even at the present time it is not wholly obliterated. In those early days he found within the boundaries of Grundtvigianism all that which later, when he had torn himself free from the magic spell of Grundtvig's sphere, he sought and found, outside of these limits, – humanity in its highest freedom and beauty. This was the result of the narrowness of his horizon. The conclusions of modern philosophy and social science had not been introduced in those days into the university of Christiania. Valuable results were accomplished in specialties, but intellectual intercourse with Europe was otherwise cut off here as well as in Denmark. In fact there was no European consciousness at the university. The priest's son from a retired village, the scholar from a small city, was not removed, even in the metropolis, from the circles of variously shaded orthodoxy. Hence the circumscribed, sometimes childish element in Björnson's first works; hence the self-sufficient naïveté, so unique of its kind, which at this period constitutes his strength as a poet.

A few trips into the neighboring countries, – first of all his participation in the expedition of the students to Upsala, in 1856, immediately thereupon a prolonged residence in Copenhagen, – brought his poetic talents to maturity. He had already begun his little drama "De Nygifte" (The Newly Married Couple), but had laid it aside with a keen sense of the inadequacy of his powers, not to resume work on it until ten years later. In brief lyric poems of the genuine folk-song character, he had calmed his creative impulse without satisfying it. He now wrote the firstling of his dramatic muse, "Mellem Slagene" (Between the Battles), an earnest little play in one act, that treats of an episode from the Norwegian civil war of the early Middle Ages, and whose terse, ragged prose style, which formed the sharpest contrast to the sonorous, verbose iambics of the Danish dramas of the Oehlenschläger school, inaugurated a new form of the Northern style. The play was rejected by Heiberg, at that time director of the royal theatre at Copenhagen, was first produced on the stage in Christiania, and was not printed until some time afterward. How far Björnson and the entire later poetic literature have progressed on the path thus broken, can be best observed by witnessing to-day a theatrical performance of this little drama, which on its first appearance repelled, because of the supposed wildness of its materials and the harshness of their treatment, and which now actually seems to us quite idyllic and by far too sentimental.

Meanwhile, his mission to write novels of peasant life became even clearer to Björnson, and after publishing anonymously a few shorter stories, by way of experiment, he gave the public, in 1857, his "Synnöve Solbakken." This literary débût was a victory, and the reception of the little volume in Denmark, whose verdict is usually the decisive one for the poetic creations of Norway, especially tended to make it a decided triumph. The fresh originality, the novelty of the materials, and the manner in which they were handled, does not sufficiently explain this success. It was the result of the remarkable harmony of the book, with all that was desired and demanded of a poetic work by a portion of the reading world of the day. The national liberal party of that time (the party name was first adopted in Germany at a later period) absolutely determined the literary taste; it demanded something of a primeval Northern, vigorously national, ancient Scandinavian character, and at the same time, – an element which seemed curiously at variance with this, – Christian ethics, combined with an innocent idyllic tone, a poetry which banished Titanic defiance and modern passion with equal severity from its sphere. In the eyes of the national liberal party, passion was unpoetic and melancholy was affectation; the party of intelligence, as it is modestly called and still calls itself, deemed everything European suspicious, and believed that the far North alone had preserved that moral purity and freshness which was to regenerate the decaying civilization of Europe, and as for modern ideas, in the strictest sense of the words, they simply had no existence for the blissful ignorance of this party. Björnson's stories of peasant life, without considering their great and true merits, almost seemed like the fulfilment of the party programme. The circumstances of the poet's youth, and his early reading had led him to regard peasant life in the light of the old Norse sagas; while he had gained through his familiarity with the life and thought of the peasants, on the other hand, a comprehension of the ancient sagas. His first long story, as well as many of his very short ones (as "The Father," "The Eagle's Nest," etc.), produced a revival of the old saga style, while the materials, in conformity with the wishes of the people, were popular, without being characterized by sharply pronounced realism. In Germany Teutonists alone are familiar with the Icelandic sagas; in the Scandinavian countries, these in many respects admirable and almost always interesting narratives, have not only been popular since the revival of the national sentiment, but have been surrounded by a certain halo of glory, as venerable monuments of a great past. Beyond all else their style has been held in high esteem. And this style, calm, epic in nature, always presenting a clear picture that in the antique time sprang into existence as the form suitable for the narration of discord, murder, revenge for bloodshed, arson, adventurous voyages and deeds of valor, was preserved by Björnson, or rather it was revived by him, and through its grandeur ennobled and exalted the subject-matter, the love life of young Norwegian peasant lads and lasses. The temperament of the poet was so thoroughly akin to that of the ancient story-teller, and the human race depicted by him was so completely in accord with that represented in ancient saga lore, that in spite of everything a harmonious whole was produced.

Björnson belongs to those fortunate beings who are not compelled to seek a form, because they possess one of their own. His earliest novel is a thoroughly ripe fruit. In his first venture he is classic. He is not one of those poets who throughout a long life are continually increasing the perfection of the artistic form of their works, and are unable to invest the latter with inner equilibrium until after hard struggles with refractory materials have been undergone. His career has not been like that of so many others, a mountain ascent amid clouds of mist, crowned only with a few sunny hours at the top; it has rather been an upward climbing, during which beautiful prospects have been disclosed to the eye at every stage. Indeed, his development has been of such a nature that even at the outset, with his original comparative narrowness or poverty of ideas, he grasped the highest artistic perfection of form, and eventually imparted to his works an ever richer ideal life and an ever increasing knowledge of the human heart. In thus enlarging their scope, however, he has never marred their poetic worth, but he has frequently somewhat sacrificed their plastic and classic equilibrium.

Nevertheless, it must not be thought that Björnson's first works were hailed with the unanimous applause which people now often profess to believe they received. There are many individuals to be found to-day in the Scandinavian countries, to whom it is satisfactory to point out some work of Björnson which they have always praised, in order that they may, with all the greater appearance of impartiality, censure his later creations. His first novels and dramas formed too strong a contrast with all that the public had been accustomed to admire to be received without opposition, and many people of literary culture who had been in hearty sympathy with the previously prevailing poesy, could not but feel their æsthetic creed to be violated by them. In Denmark, indeed, a great and rich school of poetry, whose influence had extended far into Norway, was on the eve of its decline. The sonorous pathos of Oehlenschläger still rang with its musical accents in every ear, his representations of the antiquity and early middle ages of the North seemed to men of the old school, even if outwardly less true, at least inwardly more true than the writings of Björnson; the unsurpassed elegance and grace of Henrik Hertz had enfeebled their taste for primitive simplicity, and finally people missed in the new Norwegian poetry the lofty philosophic culture which Heiberg had accustomed the public to require of the poet and to find in his works. I recollect distinctly how strange and novel "Synnöve Solbakken" and "Arne" seemed to me on their first appearance.

The opposing voices were hushed by the healthy taste for all that was genuine which has almost everywhere been preserved by the great reading-world, but the rapidity of the success was dependent on the circumstance that the ruling Scandinavian party took the new poetry under its protection and proclaimed the poet's fame abroad with a flourish of trumpets. In those days the adherents of the national liberal party of the three Scandinavian countries were favorably inclined to the peasant in literature. People loved the peasant in the abstract; the real, concrete peasant was yet unknown to them. They had granted him the right of suffrage, they had felt convinced that he would continue throughout all time to permit himself to be guided by those "who had conferred on him the gift of freedom," and they lived in hopes that he would never use this "freedom" for any other purpose than to elect and honor his city benefactors. For this reason the peasant at that time was still called by the organs of the great cities the healthy pith of the people; in him was seen the scion of the knights of antiquity; he was celebrated in song and addressed in flattering terms. Works of fiction which glorified his life with extreme delicacy, and at the same time in a new and elevated style, were sure of an enthusiastic reception in Denmark, especially when they originated in one of the sister-countries, which stood almost nearer to the heart of every true Scandinavian than his own fatherland.

The blasé citizen of Copenhagen had, moreover, the same predilection for the peasant novels of Björnson that in the past century had been cherished for pastoral romances and pastoral plays. The world had now become too critical to desire shepherdesses with red crooks, and lambs with red silk ribbons about their necks; but a substitute was found in the Norwegian lads and lasses, whose emotional life was as thoroughly refined and deep as that of a student or a young lady of the higher circles.

The peasant novel was in itself no new variety. The Jutland village and heath pictures of Steen Steensen Blicher began the series; they appeared about twenty years earlier than the first village tales of Berthold Auerbach, who, however, had been unacquainted with them, as no German translation of them had been published until toward the middle of the fourth decade of the century. It was Auerbach, who, after the way had been pointed out by Immermann in his "Oberhof," first in Germany treated the story of peasant life as an independent variety of the novel; for the first time a German poet became absorbed in the events and characters of the quiet villages. But several years before Auerbach's first attempt the great French novelist, George Sand, had achieved success in this field. She who had been born in the country, and who had passed beyond the stormy period of her life, felt an impulse to venture on pastoral poems, and she gave to France in "La mare au diable," "François le champi," etc., a little series of refined, ideally executed rural scenes.

Neither the "Village Tales of the Black Forest," nor the country stories of George Sand were known to Björnson when he made his début. He had learned nothing from Auerbach, nor had he anything in common with him. Two marked peculiarities distinguish the Norwegian peasant novels from the German. Auerbach is an epic poet; he depicts rural life in its entire breadth, he shows us the peasant in his daily occupations in the field and in the stable, enables us to observe his half-lazy, half-dignified sluggishness, his state of bondage in manners and customs, his daily routine. Björnson is neither decidedly an epic poet nor a dramatist proper; his strength lies in producing dramatic effects within epic limits; and this is the reason why everything with him is so brief and so concise. The fact is, exterior matters are related by him solely for the sake of the heart history for which they form a setting. Another distinction is the following: the rural tales of Auerbach are written from a view of life which the poet does not share with the peasant, which he does not hold in common with his hero and heroine. Auerbach did not write from the standpoint of a childlike mind and a childlike faith. He was a man of learning, and a thinker; he possessed the rich and many-sided culture of the German mind of his young days. He had been a pupil of Schelling; he had made his début with a novel about Spinoza, whose works he had translated, and whose views of life he had made his own, to proclaim them abroad as long as he lived. To be sure, he had remodelled Spinozaism to suit his own needs and sympathies, – for it is, indeed, more than doubtful whether Spinoza would have especially warmed to the idea of making a hero of that finite being, that circumscribed intelligence, called the villager, – but he accepted the doctrines of Spinoza as the gospel of nature, the philosopher himself as the apostle of the religion of nature, the worship of nature. Auerbach was partial to the representation of the peasant, because the latter was to him a bit of nature, and it delighted him to seek in the unsophisticated soul the germ of that life philosophy which to him seemed the only true philosophy, the one which was destined to gain a speedy triumph over all others. Let the reader observe in his classic novel "Barfüssele" (Little Barefoot) how the bold young peasant maiden, far from heeding the command to offer her left cheek to any one who might smite her on the right, passes through life with clenched fists, and neither deems herself in the slightest degree to blame, nor suffers on that account the least humiliation. The spirit pervading these books is the political passion of Germany before the March revolution, to elevate the common man to a comprehension of the political and religious ideal of the educated classes. Quite different is the relation of the narrator to his materials in Björnson's peasant tales. In all essentials the poet was grounded in the same views of life as his heroes; his writings are no effusions of a philosophic mind. A poetic and artistic genius, no superior intellect addresses the reader from these pages. Hence the remarkable unity of sentiment and tone.

The excellencies were specifically poetic; the tenderest sentiment was cast in the hardest form; the most refined, versatile observation was united with a lyric ardor which permeated the whole and burst into a freer course in numerous fugitive child, folk, and love songs. A vein of fundamental romance hovered over the narrative. The new order of novel admitted of being preluded without any disharmony by a nursery story, as in "Arne," in which plants conversed and vied with one another in their efforts. Notwithstanding the dry realism of certain of the characters, it was so idyllic that little detached stories, in which woodland sprites played a rôle, became wedded to the universally prevailing tone without causing any breach with the spirit of the general action. Björnson was a good observer and had amassed a store of little traits from which he constructed his tales. When his Arne is asked, "How do you manage when you make songs?" he replies, "I hoard up the thoughts that others are in the habit of letting go." Björnson might have given the same answer himself. And yet sagas, folk-songs, and folk-tales were the currents through whose intermingling his art-form became crystallized. He did not give it isolated grandeur, but kept himself through it in rapport with the popular mind.

"Synnöve Solbakken" was the plastic harmony within the limitation of Norwegian life, and the hero Thorbjörn was the type of the vigorous, stubborn youth, whose nature could only ripen to maturity through calming, soothing influences. "Arne," on the other hand, represented the lyric, yearning tendency of the people, that impulse of the viking blood which has been transformed into desire for travel, and the hero the type of the tender-hearted, dreamy youth who needed to be steeled in order to become a man. Much of the deepest, most elementary propensity of the Norwegian people, much of the peculiar youthful yearning of the poet himself, was committed to Arne's principal song which has become so celebrated. A sigh from the heart of the people may be heard in the following lines: —

"Shall I the journey never takeOver the lofty mountains?Must my poor thoughts on this rock-wall break?Must it a dread, ice-bound prison make,Shutting at last in around me,Till for my tomb it surround me?"Forth will I! forth! Oh, far, far, away,Over the lofty mountains!I will be crushed and consumed if I stay;Courage tow'rs up and seeks the way;Let it its flight now be taking,Not on this rock-wall be breaking!"61

The yearning expressed in this poem is that which drove the sea-kings of old to the West and to the South, that which led Holberg, the great founder of the Norwegian-Danish literature, to roam over half of Europe on foot, and which at the present day is manifested in the emigration of so many Norwegian artists of all kinds.

If the two larger stories "Synnöve" and "Arne" formed such perfect complements of each other, the third story "En glad Gut" (A Happy Boy) was like a refreshing breeze bringing deliverance from the brooding melancholy that oppresses the Norwegian mind, and sweeping it away in the name of a healthy temperament. This production contained the joyous message of unsophisticated vital powers and love of life; it was like a fresh song, bubbling over with laughter and purifying the atmosphere.

III

Then followed dramas and poems. The strong personality of Björnson gradually worked its way out of the swaddling-clothes of the national mind. In "Between the Battles," "Sigurd Slembe" (Sigurd the Bad), and "Amljot Gelline," will be found the same grand type, the hero born to be a chieftain, created to be the benefactor of his people, a being alike powerful and noble, but whose rights are withheld from him, and who is compelled, owing to the injustice under which he suffers, to cause a large amount of evil on his way to the goal, although he desires only good. Whole towns are left in flames behind Sverre, wherever he may fare. He tells of this with the bitterest anguish in "Between the Battles." "I know a chieftain," he exclaims, "who longed to be a blessing to his country, but who became its curse. He shudders with horror at his own wretched fate, and would have fled from all the hideous corpses that stare him in the face from border to border of the land; would have fled as an exile from his own hereditary kingdom, had there not been those who clung to his mantle. So he is led, as by an inexorable fate, from one bloody deed of violence to another, from conflagration to conflagration, over reeking corpses and heaps of ruins, while shrieks and wails of lamentation pursue him, and all hell is let loose about him, and people say the devil walks at his side; in truth, some say he is the devil! I know – ah! I know that while those about him are slaughtering one another like so many cattle, he has not the heart to lay his hand on a single man, lest he should intensify his own misery. And masses are sung before the battle, and masses after the battle; he strives to make atonement and to heal; he brings relief to the suffering and assuages ills; to those who ask it of him he gives peace; but there is one to whom it will be long ere he can bring peace, and that is himself." Sigurd, the hero of the trilogy "Sigurd Slembe," is despised and persecuted because he who desired only justice for himself and happiness for Norway, betrayed into the hands of his enemies by his half-brother, the feeble-minded Harold Gille, becomes the murderer of the latter. He had gone to his brother, after long renunciation and bitter inward struggles, with the best intention in the world, and the most ardent desire to come to a peaceful understanding with him, and he leaves him, having escaped from the guard to whom the murder was entrusted, "a king in the armor of revenge, with the eye of despair and a flaming sword." Amljot, who in the innermost depths of his soul is so good, so humble, becomes an incendiary and a pillager until the day when, as the knight of Olaf, he meets his death at Stiklestad. These characters are deeply rooted in the poet's soul. He had early encountered passionate opposition, had felt himself misunderstood and hated by his opponents. With his indomitable ambition, with the vehemence that was inherent in his nature, and the tenderness that belonged to his temperament, he felt himself wondrously akin to those saga forms, and whenever he was conscious of being misunderstood and unjustly scorned by his people, he laid the burden of his longing to elevate this people, and to harmonize them with himself, and his consciousness that with all his good designs he had estranged his people from him at times, upon the characters of these old chieftains; this Sigurd, for instance, who when excited becomes a changed being, "hard as a steel-spring, bounding without a footfall o'er the floor, with flashing, evil eyes, and voice that seemed to come from a long, dark passage," but who, nevertheless, conceals within his soul a veritable horn of plenty, overflowing with magnificent plans for the public weal. Profoundly, indeed, must Björnson have suffered in his youth to be able to write Sigurd's soliloquy in the winter night, or the one toward the end of the drama, beginning with the words, "The Danes have forsaken me? Lost the battle? Thus far – and never farther?" in which mighty plans, – to assemble an army, to sail far away, to become a merchant, a crusader, – arise with giddy swiftness and are rejected, until the impression of approaching dissolution again obtrudes itself. Then the words "Thus far – and never farther," return no longer as a question, but refrain-like as an answer. Even in the midst of despair love of fatherland, which in this case is love of the enemy, thus finds utterance: "Ah, this beautiful land was not by me to be governed. Great is the wrong I have done it! How, ah! how was this possible? When absent I saw in ev'ry cloud thy mountains; I yearned for home like a child for Christmas; and yet I sought not my home, – and I gave thee wound on wound."

Great personality with Björnson is not encased in Michael-Angelo-like pride; it works its way out of the national spirit only to strive, yearningly, to return to it again. Its most ardent desire is to become united with this spirit, and profound, indeed, is the tragedy where this union is prevented.

In this point Björnson forms the sharpest contrast to the man who is his peer among contemporary Norwegian poets, Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen is solitary by nature. "In distant lands I rest lonely," he cries. These lines, which are the refrain of the well-known poem, "Langt borte" (In Distant Lands), written on the occasion of the trip of the Scandinavian students to Upsala in 1875, form the motto of his life. He penetrates the depths of the earth, like his miner.

"Make way for me, thou heavy hammer,To the heart's most secret chamber."

Ibsen seeks the solitary silence of night. In his poem "Lysræd" (Afraid of Light), he declares that as a child he was afraid of being in the dark; but that everything has become changed, the glare of daylight now bewilders him, the noise of life makes him weak and ready to swoon away. Only hid beneath the shelter of night's veil of terror, his will is armed for deeds of daring. Without the cover of night he is helpless, and he well knows that if ever he accomplishes a great work, it will be a deed of darkness.