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Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century
It is only needful to study a few lines of Björnson's patriotic poems in order to comprehend fully why it was they became national songs. Let me choose by way of example four lines of the most peculiarly Björnsonic national song, which has completely supplanted the older national songs of Norway. The lines read as follows, in the metrical translation: —
"Yes, we love with fond devotionNorway's mountain domes,Rising storm-lashed, o'er the ocean,With their thousand homes."63Literally they read thus: "Yes, we love this country, as it rises furrowed, weather-beaten, from the ocean, with its thousand homes." It would be impossible to reproduce in a more accurate, genial way, the impression which the coast of Norway makes upon the son of the land when he approaches it from the ocean.
Among all the shorter compositions of Björnson the most eminent is the monologue "Bergliot." It is the wail of a chieftain's wife over her assassinated husband, Einar Tambarskelver, and her only son who lies slain at his side. I know of nothing in the modern reproduction of old Norse poetry that has ever made so deep an impression on me as the refrain-like recurrence of the words with which Bergliot addresses the driver of the cart on which she had had the dead body of her husband lifted: —
"Drive slowly; for thus drove Einar ever —Even so will home be reached soon enough."The first line represents with wonderful simplicity the calm and proud dignity of the slain chieftain, the second embraces in the fewest possible words the profound bitterness of the desolated life.
VI
This eminence was early reached by Björnson. When but thirty-one years of age he had written all the best works of his first period, and they were even then viewed by the public as a completed whole. No one could overlook his magnificent endowments; it produced rather a painful effect, however, that no development of them could be detected. His creative power for a long time remained centered in one and the same point; but his views of life did not expand; they remained childish and narrow. Sometimes he could actually be trivial. Now and then he wrote poems that almost had the tone and coloring of Northern songs of the people's school-teacher style. Too strong traces of the influence of Grundtvig could be detected in them. It is to the credit of this great man (1783-1872), the intellectual awakener of the Northern peasant classes, that he gave a vigorous impulse to the education of the people through the establishment of numerous peasants' high schools. For a leader of the people, however, the culture represented by his high schools was not adequate, and for a long time Björnson vainly endeavored to make poetic progress in the wooden shoes of the Grundtvigians. He kept himself, for the most part, at a distressing distance from the life and the ideas of his contemporaries. Or rather, if he did represent the ideas of his contemporaries, it was involuntarily; they were brought forward in the theatrical costumes of the ancient Norsemen or of the Scottish Middle Ages. In "Sigurd Slembe," Helga and Frakark discuss in the year 1127 the relation between the immortality of the individual and that of the race in phrases which remind us too strongly of the year 1862; and the same chieftains, whose minds are filled with almost modern political reflections, who use such expressions as vocation and fundamental law, and speak of establishing order on a foundation without law, etc., have the imprisoned Sigurd, from motives of revenge, broken limb by limb on the wheel; in other words, they are guilty of an action which would presuppose a far more barbarous inner life than they have otherwise displayed. People that express themselves in terms indicative of so much culture do not break their enemies on the wheel; they scourge them with their tongues.
To this lack of unity in passion and thought was added the unhappy necessity of the poet to so group and combine his principal dramatic forms that the mantle of the orthodox church faith should be draped about them at the moment when the curtain falls. In "Maria Stuart" the form of John Knox is not subject to the dramatic irony that governs the other personages. Björnson does not reserve to himself a poetic supremacy over him: for Knox is destined to step forth from the theatrical framework at the conclusion of the play, with the pathos of the poet on his lips, and, as the representative of the people, receive the political inheritance of Maria. The vigorous combats in "Sigurd," as well as the passionate emotions in "Maria Stuart," find their outlet in a hymn. The action in both dramas is brought to so fine a point that in one it flows into the crusader's song of the pious Danish poet Ingemann, in the other into the mystic hymn of the Puritans. Gradually it began to appear as though the once so rich vein of the poet was well nigh drained. His later stories ("The Railroad and the Churchyard" and "A Problem of Life") bore no comparison to his earlier ones, and the drama "Sigurd Jorsalfar" (Sigurd the Crusader) could be compared quite as little to the older Norse dramas of the poet. The last cantos of "Amljot Gelline," which were written several years later than the rest, are decidedly inferior to those composed in the first glow of inspiration. Evidently no new ideas germinated in Björnson's mind. People began to ask if the history of this author was to be that of so many Danish authors who had grown mute in the prime of their manhood because their genius lacked the capacity to shed its chrysalis. Björnson had apparently exhausted his original intellectual capital. The public wondered if he could acquire new wealth, as the others had been unable to do.
These years are indelibly stamped on my memory. The mind of youth experienced somewhat of a pang in comparing the literary condition of the greater part of Europe with that of the North. There was a sense of being shut out from the cultured life of Europe. In Denmark, the elder generation, through its repugnance to everything German, had interrupted the intellectual intercourse with Germany; the canal through which European civilized thought had hitherto been received was obstructed; at the same time, French culture was shunned as frivolous, and English culture was but rarely comprehended, as the English language was excluded from the course of studies in the schools of learning. In Denmark people looked to Norway as the land of literary revival; in Norway all eyes were turned to Denmark as the land of older civilization, and people scarcely noticed the lull in Danish culture. Now while intellectual life faded and drooped, as a plant becomes blighted in a damp place, the cultivated classes of both countries believed themselves to be the salt of Europe. People did not know that the foreign nations they had dreamed of rejuvenating through their idealism, their Grundtvigianism, their faith, had taken a great start in advance of them, especially in literary culture. In the leading social circles of the Scandinavian countries, people spoke of David Strauss and Feuerbach, as the most narrow-minded circles of Germany had spoken of them in the period from 1840 to 1850; Stuart Mill, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer were scarcely known by name, and there was not the slightest conception of the development of English poetry from Shelley to Swinburne. Modern French literature was condemned without any conception of the significance of the fact that the drama and the romance in France had long since forsaken historical and legendary material, and had grasped subjects from the immediate present, the only ones a poet can observe with his own eyes and study. People scarcely dared raise for themselves so much as a corner of the curtain that concealed the contemporary world from their gaze.
VII
Immediately after this, in the years 1871-72, there began in Denmark a modern literary movement out of which arose during the succeeding ten years a new poetic and critical school. The intellectual life thus awakened in Denmark was quickly transplanted to Norway, and soon the poetic creations of Björnson revealed the fact, as he has himself expressed it, that after his fortieth year new and rich streams had welled up in the innermost depths of his being. Suddenly it became apparent that his productiveness had soared upward into a new state of activity. The modern world lay open before his eyes. He had gained, as he once wrote to me, "eyes that saw and ears that heard." The ideas of the century had, unconsciously to himself, worked their way into his receptive spirit and secretly fructified it. During these years he had read, with ravenous eagerness, books in all languages and of every variety, works on the natural sciences, critical, philosophical, and historical works, romances, foreign periodicals, and newspapers by the quantities. A profound impression was made upon him by the calm grandeur and the sublime free thought of Stuart Mill; Darwin's powerful hypotheses widened his intellectual horizon; the philological critique of a Steinthal, or a Max Müller, taught him to view religions, the literary critique of a Taine taught him to view literatures with new eyes. The young Danish school contributed not a little, as he has himself publicly declared, toward tearing him away from old things. The significance of the eighteenth, the problems of the nineteenth century unfolded before him. In a charming private letter once written to me by him concerning the circumstances that had acted as determining influences on his youth, and more especially regarding the great change he had undergone, he expressed himself as follows: —
"With such antecedents I could not but become the prey of Grundtvig. Yet nothing in the world can bribe me, although I can but too easily be led astray. Therefore I was released from these circles the day my eyes were first opened to see. My worst enemy may possess the truth; I am stupid and strong; but the moment I see the truth, if only through an accident, it attracts me irresistibly. Tell me, is not such a nature very easy to understand? Should not you think it would be especially natural for the Norsemen to understand it? I am a Norseman. I am human. Of late I might subscribe myself: man. For it seems to me that this word at present calls up new ideas with us."
VIII
The first extensive work with which Björnson made his appearance before the public, after a silence of several years, was the drama "En Fallit" (The Bankrupt), that met with such unwonted success in Germany as well as at home. It was a leap into modern life. The poetic hand which had wielded the battle-swords of the Sigurds did not esteem itself too good to count the cash of Tjælde or to sum up his debts. Björnson was the first Scandinavian poet who entered with serious earnestness into the tragi-comedy of money, and the victory that crowned his effort was a brilliant one. Simultaneously with "The Bankrupt" he issued the play called "Redaktoren" (The Editor), a scathing satire on the condition of the press in Norway. Then followed in rapid succession the great dramatic poem "Kongen" (The King), the novels "Magnhild" and "Captain Mansana," the dramas "Det ny System" (The New System), and "Leonarda," new poems, republican essays, etc., and a profound and delicately written story, entitled "Stöv" (Dust).
In conservative circles of Norway there has been a strenuous effort to undervalue Björnson's poetic works in this new phase, by calling them tendency poetry. This word "tendency" is the bugbear by means of which attempts have too long been made to banish from the Danish-Norwegian poetry all ideas of the modern world. By so doing the conviction is fostered naïvely enough, that Björnson's older poetic works, which are so highly extolled, are without any tendency, because they have the opposite tendency from the later ones; the fact is, people had become as thoroughly accustomed to that earlier tendency as to the atmosphere of a room they never left. The obligato pagan and especially Viking conversions, so common throughout the Northern literature of this century, have never been regarded in the light of tendency efforts; even the conversion in "Amljot Gelline" was not considered so because the tendency was one that pleased. So what was now frowned upon was not the idea of a tendency in itself, but the new tendency, that is to say, the spirit and the ideas of the nineteenth century. These ideas, however, are to poetry precisely what the circulation of the blood is to the human body. What must be demanded in the true interest of poetry is merely, that the veins which people like to see with a blue glimmer beneath the skin, should not stand out in bold relief, swollen and black, as in the case of a sick person, or one who is excited to anger. Very rarely, indeed, does Björnson's tendency take such a form as, for instance, in the hemorrhage, of which the young politician in "The Editor" dies, solely that the mark of Cain may be stamped upon the brow of the main personage of the drama; or in the vision in the drama, "The King," which terrifies and kills the daughter of the political martyr on the way to her marriage with the young king. No one, however, who looks farther than failures in details can be obtuse enough not to detect the fountain of new and individual poesy which streams through all of Björnson's works of the second period, or second youth, as it might be called. An ardent love of truth has imprinted its seal on these books; a manly firmness of character proclaims itself in them. What a wealth of new thoughts in all provinces of state and society, marriage and home! What an energetic demand for veracity toward one's self and toward others! Finally, what benignity, what sympathy with people of opposite lines of thought, who are dealt with sparingly, even idealized, as the bishop in "Leonarda," or the king in the drama of the same name, while all attacks are aimed at institutions as such. This is perhaps nowhere more sharply felt than in "The King," the leading thought of which is the simple, and in itself by no means new idea, that constitutional monarchy is a mere transitional form leading to the republic, but whose originality consists in viewing the problem from the inner ranks, by taking the person of the king as the starting point of attack on the institution. This the author does by showing how the nature of this institution must harm the king as an individual, how it must blight his soul, at the same time portraying the character with a sympathy, an intense warmth, that makes him the hero of the drama in the proper sense of the word.
The opponents of Björnson's new departure now maintain that, as long as he kept outside of the circle of burning questions and living ideas, he was great and good as a poet, but declare that he has retrograded since he embarked on the sea of modern problems and thought; that, at all events, he no longer produces artistically finished works. Similar judgments have been pronounced all over Europe whenever a poet who, in his youth, had won the public favor by neutral, inoffensive productions, showed his contemporaries that he studied and knew them. There are numberless readers who place Byron's youthful poem "Childe Harold" above the powerful, yet seldom pleasing realistic poetry of "Don Juan." In Russia and elsewhere, there may be found a refined public that prefers the first simple narratives of Turgenief, the "Memoirs of a Sportsman," to the great romances "Fathers and Sons" and "Virgin Soil"; there are in Germany many people who are overwhelmed with regret because Paul Heyse forsook for a time his peculiar form of love story to write his "Children of the World." It is true that Björnson, in his second period has not yet attained the lucidity and harmony of style that characterized his first efforts; but it is neither just nor wise to declare for this reason that he has retrograded. A new, rich, and seething group of ideas finds its form slowly, sometimes fermenting and bubbling over its limits; strong feelings and thoughts have a certain fire, a certain vibration, that renders them less capable of appearing in a pleasing form than the idyl with its poverty of thought.
In spite of all this, how much that is admirable from a technical point of view Björnson has accomplished of late years! The exposé in "The Bankrupt" is one of the best the literature of any land can produce, and the diction in "The Editor," especially in the first act, is the most excellent that Björnson has attained. These two dramas, with which he first entered the career opened by Henrik Ibsen with his drama "De Unges Forbund" (The Young Men's Union), follow close in the footsteps of the latter's vigorously built and witty play. "The Young Men's Union" actually contains the germ of both "The Bankrupt" and "The Editor." There the bankruptcy was that of the light-minded Erik Brattsberg; feeble outlines of "The Editor" may be found in Steensgaard's relation to Aslaksen's newspaper and the article against the chamberlain that was to have been printed first, and so did not get printed at all. The public has usually viewed "The Young Men's Union" and "The Editor" as contrasts, that is, as contradictory presentations of different political situations. This is simply because in the first play a dishonorable representative of the progressive party is derided, and in the second a still bolder, more deceitful representative of the conservative party. Viewed from a purely poetic standpoint, however, these two plays are very nearly akin. Björnson's editor is Steinhoff grown older (as years creep on he becomes highly conservative), a Steensgaard, in whom the softer, more pliant elements, through disappointments, defeats, and wild attacks of contempt of himself and others, have been ossified, and in whom, therefore, coarse recklessness alone remains.
In "The Bankrupt" the demands of truth in the humble walks of life are urged. The poet holds up, within the plain, commonplace life of the people, the ideal of truth as a simple matter of rectitude. His poetic eye, however, sees that rectitude is not so simple as it appears. Nothing is so reprehensible for the merchant as to risk the money of others, and yet, to a certain degree, it is impossible for him to avoid it. The moral problem revolves about the delicate boundary lines between where it is allowable and where not allowable to risk it. "The Editor" demands truth in the higher domains, where it is a bounden duty to keep it in sight, and yet dangerous to carry it into execution. While in the mercantile world there is danger of disappointing and ruining others through self deception, in the journalistic world the temptation is to keep silence concerning the truth, or to deny it. And this, too, cannot be altogether avoided; for it is out of the question for the politician to acknowledge everything he knows. It might be esteemed a defect in Björnson's "Editor" that the representative of journalism does not fully represent the dialectics of his class, the inevitable collisions to which those connected with the daily press are subjected. On the other hand, his opponent and victim, Halvdan, is too passive and long-suffering to prove of thorough interest to the reader. Björnson expressly attacks in this play the ideal of composure which the hard necessities of our day have led us to hold up as a model; he protests, in the name of the child within our souls, against the doctrine that we must harden our hearts, and there is some justice in his protest. But the fact is, we now-a-days only cherish a qualified sympathy with those public personages who can never succumb to persecutions of the press. The Christian ideal of the suffering martyr has, in this case, lost its power over the reading world and theatre-goers; there is a demand for a man from whom all the combined written and spoken attacks of his opponents will glance off, leaving him unharmed, – a man whom no idle words, not even a storm of idle words can shake. It is not for me to decide whether such a mode of contemplation is natural, but it certainly has much to recommend it.
"The Editor" may perhaps be most correctly comprehended as a great allegory. The elder brother, Halvdan, who succumbs in the political and literary strife, is Wergeland, who, after a life passed in enthusiastic struggles for freedom, galled by the agitations caused by his own attacks and the persecution of his opponents, lay so long stretched on a couch of sickness, – a far greater and more poetic form shortly before death than during the long feuds of his life. In the younger brother, Harald, to whom falls the inheritance of Halvdan, I cannot but think that Björnson wished to symbolize his own political endeavors, together with the misunderstandings to which they have been exposed, and the opponents they have found. Hakon, the eldest brother, who became a farmer, and his wife, who plays a rôle without appearing on the stage, represent the Norwegian people. The unusual vigor of the play, however, is dependent on the fact that, in addition to the great breadth of its horizon, it is individual and characteristic to a degree that has never been surpassed by Björnson.
"The King" deals with political questions, as "The Bankrupt" and "The Editor" with social ones. Here the problem is psychological. The poet himself fights with the king of the drama his inner fight, and lets his attempts to reconcile the requirements of his nature with those of his position strand. Is the problem satisfactorily solved? Is not the unhappy result in too high a degree caused by the king's wretched past and his weak character? The worth of the play does not depend on the answer, but on the depths to which it penetrates, on the fresh charm which hovers about its love scenes, and on the rich, sparkling wit of its dialogues. In "Magnhild" and "Leonarda," a new modern problem is dealt with that had germed in the poet's own soul, – the relation between morality as a virtue and as an institution, as a law of the heart, and as a law of society. The doctrine proclaimed in "Magnhild" is imparted in the modest form of a question: Are there not immoral marriages, which it is our highest duty to dissolve?
"Magnhild" is a work that, in its search for reality, denotes a turning-point in Björnson's novel-writing. In its characterizations it displays a delicacy and a power the author had not previously attained. The public had scarcely credited him with the ability to portray figures like the young musician Tande, the beautiful Mrs. Bang and her husband. And Magnhild's relation to this group is quite as exquisitely delineated and as correctly conceived. Nevertheless, it is very apparent that the author is moving in a sphere which is still somewhat an unfamiliar one to him, that of social high life. It is a curious fact, too, that Tande's cowardly denial of the woman he loves, at the moment when she is scorned by the mob, has the poet's sympathy on the ground of morality.
The novel suffers from a double defect. In the first place there is a decided lack of clearness in the characterization of one of the main personages, Skarlie. He is meant to impress the reader as a sort of monster, and yet the reader feels continually obliged to sympathize with him in his relations with his reserved, ideal wife. In the most guarded manner conceivable, it is indicated that Skarlie is a highly depraved person, and yet this monster of sensuality, in his dealings with his own wife, of whom he has gained possession by a not particularly sharp intrigue, displays a moonshine-like ideal of a Platonic relation between husband and wife, in the Ingemann style, and is content with the modest satisfaction of clothing and feeding her. The second deficiency strikes deeper into the philosophy of the novel. There is a good deal of old mysticism in the handling of the doctrine concerning the "destiny" of men and women, about which the story revolves, and (as is always the case with both Björnson and Ibsen) the mysticism is strangely interwoven with rationalism. Björnson seems to wish to have it firmly established as the sum of the story that there is another way to happiness and beneficent activity for woman than a relation to the man whom she loves, but the idea is not clearly expressed.
"Leonarda," although not conspicuous for its dramatic merits, belongs to the most thoroughly and richly poetic of the author's works. Outside of the Scandinavian North, a drama of this kind cannot be fully appreciated; perhaps the powerful, intellectual influence it has exercised can scarcely be comprehended. When placed upon the boards in Christiania it made its marked sensation, because it rang like a word of deliverance into Norwegian affairs. The message of "Leonarda" is that of moral and religious tolerance, from which the author himself, in his early days, was so far removed. In this drama, with wonderful display of intellectual superiority, Björnson brought forward a whole series of generations of Norwegian society, showing the faults and virtues of each generation, and allowing the great-grandmother, who, as the grandmother in George Sand's drama, "L'autre," represents the culture of the eighteenth century, so meanly estimated during the long period of Northern reaction, to utter the solemn amen of the play. Her concluding words read as follows: —
