Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century

"The time of deep emotions has, indeed, come back again."

With "Leonarda," however, not only the time of deep emotions but that of hardy thoughts had returned, although the poet, as already indicated, fought his opponents with a benignity and forbearance, a benevolence above all partisanship, that forms, perhaps, his most marked characteristic.

Henrik Ibsen is a judge, stem as one of the judges of Israel of old; Björnson is a prophet, the delightful herald of a better age. In the depths of his nature, Ibsen is a great revolutionist. In his "Kjærlighedens Komedie" (Love's Comedy), and in "Et Dukkehjem" (A Model Home, known as "Nora" in Germany and England), he applies the scourge to the marriage relation of the day; in "Brand" to the state church; in "Samfundets Stötter" (The Pillars of Society), to the entire civil society of his native land. Whatever he attacks is crushed beneath the weight of his superior and penetrating criticism. Björnson's is a conciliatory mind; he wages warfare without bitterness. His poetry sparkles with the sunshine of April, while that of Ibsen, with its deep earnestness, seems to lurk in dark shadows. Ibsen loves the idea, – that logical, and psychological consistency which drives Brand out of the church, and Nora out of the marriage relation. Ibsen's love of ideas corresponds with Björnson's love of humanity.

IX

When still young, Björnson began to deal with politics, and throughout his whole life he has worked in one direction. He has fought unweariedly to secure the independence of Norway in the (almost purely dynastic) union with its larger neighbor, Sweden. For four hundred years Norway, as is well known, was a Danish and indeed a misgoverned Danish province, until, in the year 1814, it was united with Sweden, as a free kingdom, with a wellnigh republican constitution. Since that time the house of Bernadette has made repeated efforts to limit the independence and curtail the constitutional rights of the sparsely populated rocky land. Beyond all else it has striven to amalgamate the land with Sweden, and externally it has so far succeeded that Norway is viewed throughout Europe, even in Germany, as a province of Sweden, a sort of "seditious Ireland." As early as 1858, when editor of "Bergensposten," Björnson fought against the amalgamation plans, and it was largely due to his efforts that those representatives of Bergen, who had voted for a closer tariff union between Sweden and Norway, were not re-elected to the Storthing. In 1839, as editor of "Aften-bladet," in Christiania, he successfully contested the right of the king to place a Swedish royal governor at the head of Norwegian affairs. In 1866-67, as editor of the "Norsk Folkeblad," Björnson was one of the most valiant opponents of the so-called "union proposition," an attempt of the government to make a closer union between the two realms that were bound together in one dynasty. Since the dispute concerning the king's veto (previously only recognized as suspensive), between King Oscar and the Storthing, Björnson has become one of the most prominent political leaders of Norway. Especially since his visit to the United States, in the year 1880, he has burst forth from the chrysalis as the greatest popular orator of Scandinavia, teeming with marvellously captivating and, at the same time, thoroughly calm eloquence. As soon as his presence at a public assemblage is an established fact, thousands of peasants stream together to hear him. After the great president of the Storthing, Johan Sverdrup, no man in Norway has so powerful an influence as an orator.

The two countries, Norway and Denmark, for so many hundred years politically united and still united through a common language and a common ancient literature, – almost more intimately united, since they became outwardly separated, than before, – have common aspirations and aims in all political questions and in all problems of civilization. The same struggle for freedom and modern enlightenment which Björnson and his comrades in thought carry on in Norway, is fought in Denmark by the younger school of authors. Norwegians and Danes labor each in their own way to till the common soil of language and literature. I believe that the result will be similar to that which Björnson has described in the little legend that is the prelude to "Arne," and virtually to his tales of peasant life in general, where juniper, oak, fir, birch, and heather resolve to clothe the naked mountain lying before them. The effort long failed; it was all plain enough: the mountain did not wish to be clad. Whenever the trees had worked their way forward a little, there appeared a brook that grew and grew, and finally threw them all down.

"Then the day came when the heather could 'peep with one eye over the edge of the mountain. 'Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!' said the heather, and away it went. 'Dear me! what is it the heather sees?' said the juniper, and moved on until it could peer up. 'Oh dear, oh dear!' it shrieked, and was gone. 'What is the matter with the juniper to-day' said the fir, and took long strides onward in the heat of the sun. Soon it could raise itself on its toes and peep up. 'Oh dear!' Branches and needles stood on end in wonderment. It worked its way forward, came up, and was gone. 'What is it all the others see, and not I?' said the birch, and lifting well its skirts, it tripped after. It stretched its whole head up at once. 'Oh! – oh! – is not here a great forest of fir and heather, of juniper and birch, standing upon the table-land waiting for us?' said the birch; and its leaves quivered in the sunshine so that the dew trembled. They meet the work done on the other side. The trees of the mountains find the forest of the table-land. 'Aye, this is what it is to reach the goal!' said the juniper."64

HENRIK IBSEN

1883

I

When Henrik Ibsen, at thirty-six years of age, left Norway to go into that exile from which he has not yet returned, it was with a heavy and embittered heart, after a youth passed on the sunless side of life. He was born March 20, 1828, in the small Norwegian town of Skien, amid circumstances of very precarious prosperity. His parents, on their paternal as well as maternal side, belonged to families of the highest standing in the town. His father was a merchant, engaged in varied and extensive activities, and enjoying the exercise of an almost unlimited hospitality. In 1836, however, the worthy gentleman was compelled to suspend payments, and from the wreck of his fortunes nothing was saved for his family but a country estate a short distance from the town. Thither they removed, and were thus carried beyond the range of the circles to which they had previously belonged. In "Peer Gynt" Ibsen has employed the recollections of his own childhood as a sort of model for his description of life in wealthy Jon Gynt's home. As a lad, Henrik Ibsen became apprentice in a drug-store. He worked his way through countless difficulties before he was able, at the age of twenty-two, to enter on a student's career; even then he had neither inclination nor means for professional study; for a long time he had not so much as the means to secure for himself regular meals. His youth was hard and stem, his daily life a straggle; the paternal roof seems to have offered him no place of refuge.

Although conditions of this kind signify less in so poor and so democratic a country as Norway than elsewhere, and although Ibsen has lacked neither the faculty of youth, nor that of the poet, to rise superior to actual adversity through enthusiasm for ideas and an independent dream-life, still, early poverty always leaves its marks on the character. It may breed humility; it may develop opposition; it may render the nature wavering, or independent, or hard throughout life. To Ibsen's reserved, combative, and satirical temperament, which was far more gifted to occupy the curiosity of the surroundings than to win their hearts, it must have served as a challenge. It has probably imparted to him a certain insecurity regarding his social status, a certain ambition in the direction of those external distinctions that were calculated to place him on an equal footing with the class from which in youth he had been cut off, and a powerful sense of being compelled to depend on himself and his own resources alone.

A nine weeks' activity as publisher of a weekly newspaper without many subscribers was followed, 1851-57, by a period of labor as stage-manager of the small theatre in Bergen, and after the last-named year as director of the Christiania Theatre, which in 1862 went into bankruptcy. Ibsen, who, as years have gone on, has become so staid and sedate, and whose days pass with the regularity of clock-work, is said to have lived a rather irregular life as a young man, and was pursued, therefore, by that evil report which even some trifling aberration, especially when caused by the erratic tendency of genius, will call forth in a small place where all eyes keep watch on each and every one. I can well imagine Ibsen just entering on manhood, tormented by creditors, and daily executed in effigy by the followers of the coffee-party ethics of female gossips. He had written fine poems in no insignificant number, as well as a series of dramas which are now celebrated, and some of which belong to his most admired productions, but which were published in Norway in unsightly editions on wretched paper, had a sale of only a few hundred copies, and yielded the author, even on the part of his friends, but a moderately cool recognition of talent, together with the morally crushing sentence that he "lacked ideal faith and conviction." He became disgusted with Norway. In 1862, fully equipped with the weapons of polemics and satire, he had published "Kjærlighedens Komedie" (Love's Comedy), a drama which unites cutting scorn at the erotic affairs of conventional society, with deep distrust in the power of love to endure through all the vicissitudes of life, and profound doubt of its ability to preserve its ideal and ardent nature unscathed and unchanged in marriage. It could not have been unknown to the poet that society, with all the tenacity of the instinct of self-preservation, has made it a duty to have confidence in the immutability of normal love between man and woman; but he was young enough, and defiant enough, to justify relatively the most trivial conceptions of matrimony, as exemplified in the union of Guldstad and Svanhild, rather than withhold his doubts concerning the existing dogmatics of love. The book raised a howl of exasperation. People were indignant at this attack on the amatory relations of society, betrothals, marriages, etc. Instead of taking home to themselves his fierce thrusts, they began, as is quite customary in such cases, to pry into Ibsen's own private life, to investigate the circumstances of his marriage, and, as Ibsen once remarked to me, "Though the published criticisms of the comedy might have been endured, the verbal and private censure was altogether insufferable." Henrik Ibsen was condemned as a talented mauvais sujet. Even so superb a work as "Kongs-Emneme" (The Pretenders), which followed in 1864, did not suffice to purify and exalt the poet's name. As far as I am aware, this drama was not actually condemned by the critics, but it was by no means estimated according to its merits, and it created no sensation whatever. I do not think twenty copies reached Denmark. At all events, it was "Brand" that first made the poet's name known beyond Norway. An essay, in which the works of Ibsen were reviewed by me in 1867, and which called attention to their rare worth, was the first presentation of his life as an author given to the public.65 To Henrik Ibsen's private reasons for melancholy was added a sense of profound dissatisfaction with Norway's political attitude during the Danish-German war. When Norway and Sweden, in 1864, failed to stand by Denmark against Prussia and Austria, notwithstanding all the promises given at students' meetings, as well as by a press ostensibly devoted to Scandinavian interests, and which were understood by Ibsen to be binding, or at least considered obligatory, home became so odious to him, as the seat of shallowness, laxity, and pusillanimity, that he turned his back upon it.

Since that time he has dwelt alternately in Italy, in Dresden, in Munich, and again in Italy, in each of the German cities five or six years at a time. But a permanent abiding-place he has not had. He has led a quiet, orderly family-life, or more accurately speaking, he has, within the framework of family-life, had his real life in his work. He has had intercourse in public places with the most eminent men of foreign cities; has received into his house a multitude of Scandinavians who happened to be passing through the town where he was staying; but he has lived as in a tent, amidst hired furniture which could be returned to its owners any day his departure was fixed upon; for seventeen years he has not set foot beneath his own table, or reposed in his own bed. He has never settled anywhere in the stricter sense of the term; he has accustomed himself to feel at home in homelessness. When last I visited him he replied to my question, if nothing in the suite of rooms he occupied belonged to him, by pointing to a row of paintings on the walls; that was all he could there call his own. Even now, as a man of means, he feels no desire to own his own house and home, to say nothing of farming lands and buildings, the pride of Björnson. He is separated from his people, without any activity that binds him to an institution, or a party, or even so much as to a magazine, or to a newspaper at home or abroad – a solitary man. And in his isolation he writes: —

"My people, who to me from goblet foamingA wholesome, bitter draught of strength once gave,That roused the poet, ling'ring near his grave,To arm himself and labor through the gloaming —My people, who on me the exile's stave,With sorrow's scrip and sandals swift for roaming,Bestowed, the outfit stern for strife completing —From distant realms I send thee home my greeting!"

Many and important indeed are the greetings he has sent home; but over all his productions, both before and during his exile, there lingers one and the same prevailing mood, that of his temperament, a mood whose main characteristics are freedom from restraint and cheerless despondency. This fundamental tone, so natural to the homeless, permeates everything with which he creates the strongest impression. Recall some of his most characteristic, moreover some of his most diametrically opposed works, as for instance, the poem "Paa Viddeme" (On the Mountain Plains), in which the narrator, from the lofty mountain heights, sees the cottage of his mother surrounded by lurid flames and his mother burned alive, while he himself, wholly deprived of willpower and in a state of utter despair, stands watching the effective illumination, or "Fra Mit Husliv" (From My Household Life), in which the creations of the poet's fancy, his winged offspring, take flight as soon as he sees himself in the glass with his leaden eyes, closely-buttoned vest, and felt shoes; think of the thrilling poetry of that dismal scene where Brand wrests from his wife their dead child's clothing; call to mind the scene where Brand consigns his mother to hell, and that superbly original scene in which Peer Gynt paves the way to heaven for his mother with lies; conjure up "Liget i Lasten" (The Corpse in the Cargo), or the overwhelmingly painful impression aroused by Nora (A Model Home), – that butterfly, which is pricked with a needle through three acts, only to be pierced at last, – and it will be felt that the prevailing atmosphere, corresponding to the landscape background of a painter, in all pathetic parts is fierce, cheerless gloom. It may rise to a pitch of tragical awe, but that is no proof that its author is simply a writer of tragedy. Schiller's tragedies, as well as those of Oehlenschläger, are gloomy only in occasional situations, and even the author of "King Lear" and of "Macbeth" has produced such harmoniously moulded creations as "The Tempest" or, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." With Ibsen, however, this tone is the fundamental one. It could not be otherwise in the case of a born idealist who, from the outset of his career, thirsted for beauty in its highest forms, as purely ideal, spiritual beauty; or, in the case of a born rigorist who, thoroughly Germanic, especially Norse, by character and temperament, influenced, moreover, by circumstances to Christian views, was inclined to esteem the life of the senses repellent or sinful, and not to admire seriously, or even to recognize other than moral beauty. In his innermost soul he was shy; that is to say, but few disappointments were required to make him withdraw into himself, even with distrust of the surrounding world in his heart. How early must he not have been wounded, repulsed, humiliated, as it were, in his original proneness to believe and to admire! His first deep impression as an intellectual being must have been, I think, an impression of the rarity – non-existence, he may have added in moments of bitterness – of moral worth, and disappointed in his quest for beauty, he found a certain relief in unveiling the sorrowful truth that lay concealed behind the glamour of appearances. The atmosphere about him reverberated with words denoting ideals and telling of eternal love, of profound seriousness, of fidelity, of decision of character, of Norse patriotic sentiment (the national sentiment of "det lille, men klippefaste Klippefolk": the little, yet cliff-like, steadfast mountain-folk); he looked about him, he searched eagerly, but found nothing in the world of reality corresponding to these words. Thus there was developed in him, through his very yearning for an ideal, a peculiar faculty for discovering everything to be spurious. It became an instinct with him to apply a crucial test to whatever seemed genuine, and to feel little if any astonishment when he proved it to be false. It became a passion with him to rap with his fingers on all that seemed like solid metal, and it gave him a sense of painful satisfaction to hear the ring of hollowness, which at the same time offended his ear and corroborated his foreboding. Whenever he came into contact with what was supposed to be great, it became both a habit and a necessity with him, to ask as in "Rimbrevet til en Svensk Dame" (Letter in Rhyme to a Swedish Lady): "Is it truly great, this greatness?" He became keenly alive to all the egotism, all the untruthfulness, inherent in imaginative life, to all the wretched bungling the phrases of freedom and progress may conceal, and gradually a stupendous ideal or moral distrust became his muse. It inspired him to ever more and more daring investigations. Nothing overawed, nothing startled him, either what appeared like idyllic happiness in domestic life, or what resembled dogmatic security in social life. The more audacious his investigations, the greater became his dauntless courage in communicating, disseminating, proclaiming the result. It came to be his chief intellectual delight to disturb the equanimity, to arouse the ire of all those whose interest it was to conceal with euphemisms existing evils. Just as it had always seemed to him that too much was said about ideals that were never realized in actual life, so too he felt, with ever increasing certainty and wrathful indignation, that people, as it were by common consent, maintained silence in regard to the deepest, most irretrievable breach with ideals, in regard to the true, unmistakable causes of horror and dismay. In polite society they were avoided as improbable, or unsuitable to be mentioned; in poetry, as appalling and gloomy; for æsthetics had once for all banished from belles-lettres all that was unduly harsh, painful, or irreconcilable. Thus it was, as nearly as can be defined, that Ibsen became the poet of haunting gloom, and thence comes his inherent tendency to justify, in sharp and bitter expressions, his attitude toward the majority.

Henrik Ibsen's personal appearance is suggestive of the qualities manifested in his poetry. In his countenance the reflection of a soul full of tenderness, even though disguised by the stem or sarcastic earnestness of the physiognomy, will occasionally make itself apparent. Ibsen is below the medium height, is heavily built, dresses with a certain style and elegance, and has altogether a very distinguished appearance. His gait is slow, his bearing dignified, his carriage worthy. His head is large, interesting, framed with a wealth of grizzled hair, which he wears pretty long. The forehead, which is the dominating feature of the face, is unusual in form, is high, almost perpendicular, broad, and at the same time well modelled, and bears the impress of greatness and marked intellectual vigor. The mouth, when in repose, is so tightly compressed that there is scarcely any trace of lips; its closeness and firmness betray the fact that Ibsen is a man of few words. In truth, it is his wont, when in the society of a large number of people, to remain as taciturn as though he were the mute, and at times almost crabbed guardian of the sanctuary of his mind. He can talk when in the society of one person alone, or in a very small circle, but even then he is far from communicative. A Frenchman, whom I once took in Rome to see Runeberg's bust of the poet, said, "The expression is more spirituelle than poetic." It is very apparent to the observer that Ibsen is a satiric poet, a brooding thinker, but not a visionary. His most exquisite poems, however, such as "Borte" (Absent) and some others, indicate plainly that at some time in the battle of life a lyric Pegasus has been slain under him.

I am familiar with two expressions in his face. The first is the one in which his smile, – his kind, delicate smile, penetrates and animates the mask of his countenance, in which all that is cordial and heartfelt, all that lies deepest in his soul, rises uppermost. Ibsen has a certain tendency to embarrassment, as is apt to be the case with melancholy, serious natures. He has, however, a most charming smile, and through smile, look, and pressure of the hand, he expresses much which he neither could, nor would, clothe in words. And he has a habit, when engaged in conversation, of smiling playfully, with a twinkle of good-natured raillery, as he tosses off some brief, not-at-all-good-natured remark, in which the lovable side of his character is plainly manifested. The smile softens the sharpness of the outburst.

But I am also familiar with another expression in his countenance, one in which impatience, anger, righteous indignation, cutting scorn, impart to it a look of almost cruel austerity, forcibly reminding the observer of the words in his beautiful old poem Terje Vigen: —

"Yet, sometimes, in stormy weather, a kindOf madness would kindle his eye; —And few there were then who could courage findTo come Terje Vigen nigh."

This is the expression his poetic soul has most frequently assumed before the world.

Ibsen is by nature a polemic, and his first poetic outburst (Catiline) was at the same time his first declaration of war. From the moment he arrived at years of maturity – which, by the way, was not very early – he has never actually doubted that he, the individual, on one scale, and on the other what is called society – in Ibsen's eyes the embodiment of those who shun the truth, and who are ever on the alert to conceal evils with empty phrases – would balance evenly. He is in the habit of asserting, among many whimsical paradoxes, that in every age there is a certain sum of intelligence for distribution; in the event of some individuals being especially well equipped, – as, for instance, Goethe and Schiller in their day in Germany, – their contemporaries will be all the more stupid in proportion. Ibsen, I may safely assert, is inclined to believe that he has received his endowments at a time when there were very few with whom to divide the sum.

He has, therefore, no consciousness of being the child of a people, a part of the whole, the leader of a group, a member of society; he feels himself exclusively a gifted individual, and the sole object in which he believes, and for which he cherishes respect is personality. In this emancipation from all natural relations, in this exaltation of the ego as an intellectual force, there is a lively reminder of that period in Northern history, in which Ibsen received his culture. Above all else, the influence of Kierkegaard66 is apparent. Ibsen's isolation, however, has a totally different stamp, upon whose moulding Björnson's quite opposite personality has had no trifling influence. It is always of vast significance to an individual to be historically so situated that destiny places at its side a contrasting companion-piece. Not infrequently it is a misfortune for a noted man to see his name continually coupled with another, it may be for glorification, it may be for censure, but always by way of comparison. The compulsory twin relation that cannot be shaken off may irritate and harm. In the case of Ibsen, it has, perhaps, aided in forcing the peculiarities of his nature to their utmost extremities; in other words, it has intensified his fervor and reserve. No one who, like Ibsen, believes in the rights and capabilities of the emancipated individual, no one who, as early in life as he, has placed himself on a war footing with his surroundings, holds a very flattering opinion of the masses. There evidently developed within him, on the very threshold of manhood, a contempt for his fellow-creatures. It was not because he had from the first an exaggerated opinion of his own talents, or his own worth. His is a brooding, doubting, questioning nature. He says himself: —