Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century

Henrik Ibsen bears no likeness to any other living poet, and is influenced by none. As minds that bear a somewhat distant relationship to him, may, perhaps with some justice, be mentioned the late German poets, Otto Ludwig and Friedrich Hebbel, both of whom, however, are far less modern in their tendencies than he. In the severity of his satire, too, there may be said to be a reminder of Dumas and Sardou. With Björnson, whose name almost insensibly falls from the pen when it busies itself with Ibsen, he has, notwithstanding all dissimilarities of nature, those things in common which naturally follow in the track of compatriots and contemporaries whose development has proceeded side by side, and who have been roused to emulation in the treatment of the same themes. That Ibsen had written "De Unges Forbund" (The Young Men's Union), gave Björnson an impulse to write dramas on civil conditions. When Björnson had written "En Fallit" (The Bankrupt), Ibsen was impelled to vary the subject in "Samfundets Stötter" (The Pillars of Society). Björnson was obliged, as he has informed me, to strike out a passage in the manuscript of his "Stöv" (Dust), because it appeared almost word for word in Henrik Ibsen's "Gjengangere" (Apparitions), which was issued before the story was printed. The fact is, the two poets have traversed an almost parallel path of development. Henrik Ibsen succeeded rather earlier than Björnson in working his way out of the old historic, legendary, and fantastic materials; for in the freer position he held, tom loose from home and standing amid the breakers of contemporary ideas, he had less to hold him back from following the call of his age, less naïveté, less reverence. But the difference in time between the transition of the two poets from the period when their materials were viewed from the standpoint of romance, to that where the realistic point of view predominated, was confined to a few years, and is lost sight of entirely, when we consider the remarkable uniformity of the stages of their poetic career. Björnson and Ibsen may be compared in this respect, as it seems to me, to the two old Norse kings, Sigurd and Eystein, in the famous dialogue furnished by the saga, and of which Björnson has availed himself in his "Sigurd Jorsalfar" (Sigurd the Crusader). The one has remained at home and there civilized his fatherland; the other has tom himself away from home, has journeyed far and wide, and in his bold, adventurous courses has won honor for his fatherland. Each has his admirers, each his martial suite, who elevates the one at the expense of the other. Still, they are brothers, even though for a season they were hostile brothers, and it is simple justice that the kingdom – as it is done in the drama of Björnson – should peacefully be divided between them.69

1

One's movements, step by step to measure,

2

Gesammelte Werke, iv. 135.

3

Ibid., v. 199.

4

Kinder der Welt, ii. 162.

5

Kinder der Welt, iii. 210, 242, 256.

6

Kinder der Welt, iii. 109.

7

Kinder der Welt, i. III; Gesammelte Werke, vi. 206.

8

Gesammelte Werke, iii. 300.

9

Kinder der Welt, ii. 47.

10

Gesammelte Werke, v. 201. On page 175 the word "vornehm" is used by her.

11

Gesammelte Werke, viii. 44, 246, 321.

12

Kinder der Welt, ii. 355. "That you are the best, deepest, purest, noblest of women" – "Poor, brave, free-born breast – bow well it has preserved its patent of nobility." Kinder der Welt, iii. 309.

13

Im Paradiese, iii. 6.

14

Gesammelte Werke, v. 197.

15

Gesammelte Werke, ix. 73.

16

Gesammelte Werke, viii. 168.

17

Gesammelte Werke, vi. 71: "I have been sold once in my life. How mankind will now blame me if I give myself as a free-will offering in order to suppress the anguish of that disgrace!"

18

Gesammelte Werke, vi. 40.

19

Gesammelte Werke, vi. 5.

20

Heyse und Kurz, Novellenschatz des Auslandes, Bd. VIII.

21

Heyse und Kurz, Deutscher Novellenschatz, Bd. I. s. xix.

22

Kinder der Welt, ii. 265.

23

Did not a critic of this sort take it upon himself to get up a "warning" in the same style, against Goethe's "Faust"? "The purport of this immoral work," he wrote, "is the following: A physician (Dr. Med.), already pretty well advanced in years, is weary of study, and hankers after carnal pleasures. Finally he signs a bond with the devil. The latter leads him through divers low diversions (which, for instance, consist in making half-drunk students still more drunk) to a burgher's daughter, a young maiden, whom Faust (the doctor) at once attempts to seduce. A couple of rendez-vous at the house of an old procuress prepare the way for this. As the seduction, however, cannot be brought about speedily enough, the devil gives Faust a jewel-case to present to the young maiden. Wholly powerless to resist this gift, that is to say, not even seduced, simply purchased, Gretchen yields to Faust; and in order to be all the more undisturbed with her lover she doses her old mother with a narcotic, which kills the old woman. Then after being the cause of her brother's death, she destroys her child, the fruit of her shame. In prison she employs herself in singing obscene songs. That her lover left her in the lurch we cannot wonder when we consider his religious principles. He is, as the scene in which his donna questions him about his faith clearly proves, no Christian; indeed, he does not even seem to believe in a God, although he endeavors to grasp at all sorts of empty subterfuges to conceal his absolute unbelief.

"As this wicked book, notwithstanding all this, finds, as we hear to our astonishment, many readers, indeed, even lady readers, and is in constant demand at the circulating libraries in our city, we beg of all fathers of families to watch over the spiritual welfare of those belonging to them, to whom such profligate reading is all the more dangerous because its immoral teachings are veiled in a polished, insinuating form."

24

The quotations are from Houghton, Mifflin & Co.'s edition of Andersen's works.

25

Compare such passages as the following: "It was just as though some one were sitting there practising a tune which he could not get hold of, always the same tune. 'I will get it, though,' he says, no doubt; but nevertheless, he does not get it, let him play as long as he will." "The great white snails, which the grand people in old times used to have made into fricassees; and when they had eaten them, they would say, 'H'm, how good that is!' for they had the idea that it tasted delicious. These snails lived on burdock-leaves."

26

Uffe the Bashful, according to tradition, is the son of a Danish king. His father had been a powerful warrior in his day, but has become old and feeble. The son causes the father the most profound solicitude. No one has ever heard him speak; he has never been willing to learn the use of weapons, and he moves through life in phlegmatic indifference, taking no interest in anything about him. But when the kings of Saxony refuse to pay the old father the accustomed tribute, mock at him, and challenge him to single combat, and the father wrings his hands in despair and cries, "Would that I had a son!" Uffe, for the first time, finds voice, and summons both kings to a holmgang (duel) with him. Great haste is now made to bring weapons to him, but no harness is large enough for his broad breast. If he did but make the slightest movement, whichever one is tried on him is rent asunder. Finally he is forced to content himself with a harness that bears the marks of many blows. It is the same with every sword that is placed in his hand. They all snap like glass whenever he makes trial of them on a tree. Then the king has the ancient sword Skräpp, once wielded by his father, brought forth from the giant warrior's grave, and bids Uffe lay hold of it, but not to test it before the fight. Thus armed, Uffe presents himself before the two foreign kings, on an island in the Eider. The blind old king sits on the river-bank and with throbbing heart anxiously hearkens to the clashing of the swords. If his son fall, he will plunge into the waves and die. Suddenly Uffe aimed a blow with his sword at one of the Saxon kings, and cut him in two right across the body. "That tone I know," said the king; "that was Skräpp's ring!" And Uffe gave another blow, and cut the other king through lengthwise, so that he fell in two halves to the ground. "That was Skräpp's ring again," cried the blind king. And when the old king died, Uffe ascended the throne and became a powerful and much feared ruler.

27

The fables of the past century (for instance, Lessing's fables) are merely ethic.

28

G. Brandes: S. Kierkegaards. Ein literarisches Charakterlied. Leipsic, 1879.

29

The following composition was recently written in Copenhagen by a little maiden of ten years on the theme, "An Unexpected Joy." "There dwelt in Copenhagen a man and his wife who were very happy. All went well with them, and they were extremely fond of each other; but they felt very sorry because they had no children. They waited a long time, still they got none. At last the husband went away on a long journey and was gone ten years. When the time was at an end, he returned home, entered his house, and was happy indeed to find five little children in the nursery, some playing, some in the cradle. This was an unexpected joy!" This composition, however is an example of the kind of naivete' which Andersen never uses. The point would attract a French story-teller, but, like everything else that alludes to sex, it leaves Andersen perfectly cold.

30

There is not a single Danish poet, who, to such a degree as Andersen, has scorned to produce effect through the romance of the past; even in the nursery story, which from the beginning has been handled by the romantic school of Germany in a manner that can he compared with the style of the Middle Ages, he is always solely and entirely in the present. He, as well as Oersted, dares to sacrifice the interesting element in his enthusiasm for King John and his time, and he heartily joins with Ovid in exclaiming, —

Prisca juvent alios! ego me nunc denique natum Gratulor. Haec aetas moribus apta meis. – ARS. AMAT. III. 121.

31

Her life was used later as the historic foundation for the brilliant romance "Fru Marie Grubbe," by J. P. Jacobsen.

32

Here, as everywhere, the poet has his faithful allies in language, in the play of words, which dance forward under his pen as soon as he places it on paper. We see, for instance, what a swarm there is in "The Old Street Lamp" or "The Snow Man." We see how he avails himself of the sound-language of animals, for instance. "'Quack!' said the little toad, and that means the same as when men say 'Alack!'"

33

Compare, for the sake of antithesis, the method and form of the speech of the glove, the neckerchief, the flask, in Heiberg's "Christmas Pastimes and New Year's Farces" furthermore Alfred de Musset's "Le merle blanc," and Taine's "Vie et opinions philosophiques d'un chat," in his work, "Voyage aux Pyréneés."

34

A strong kind of beer, first brewed by Chr. Mumme, of Brunswick, Germany, in 1492. Pope says: "The clamorous crowd is hushed with mugs of mum." – TR.

35

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 143.

36

Translated by J. S.

37

Longfellow's translation.

38

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 159.

39

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 240.

40

Referring to Sveaborg, Finland, built according to the plans of Field-Marshal Count Augustus Ehrensvärd, whose name is hewn in gigantic characters on the granite rock from which the great ship-basin is constructed.

41

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 171.

42

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 175.

43

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 356-7.

44

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 308.

45

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 196.

46

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 157.

47

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 157.

48

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 237.

49

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 341.

50

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 213.

51

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 213.

52

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, pp. 97, 98.

53

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 82.

54

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 292.

55

"Lovely Rose" is a passionate love-song, whose interest centres in the anguish of a butterfly at being removed from the rose at night, and only being permitted to caress her during the day.

56

R. B. Anderson's Viking Tales, p. 269-271.

57

The titles are: Madame Bovary, Salammbô, L'éducation sentimentale, La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, Le Candidat, Trois Contes, Bouvard et Pécuchet.

58

See Th. de Banville's Odes funambulesque: Vilanelle des pauvres housseurs, and two Triolets.

59

Now the Empress of Russia.

60

Björn signifies bear; Björnstjerne, the constellation The Great Bear.

61

See Arne, pp. 167-169 (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston) and The Norway Music Album, pp. 173-176 (Oliver Ditson & Co., Boston).

62

Since this was written it has been placed on the stage by Björnson's own son Björn Björnson, now manager of the Christiania Theatre. – TR.

63

See Synnöve Solbakken, p. 16 (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston), and Norway Music Album, pp. 131, 132 (Oliver Ditson & Co., Boston).

64

See Arne, pp. 12, 13 (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston). Since this essay was written, Björnson has published three dramas, "En Hanske" (A Gauntlet), 1883; "Over Ævne" (Beyond his Power), 1883; and "Geografi og Kjærlighed" (Geography and Love), 1885; and one novel "Det flager i Byen og paa Havnen" (Flags in City and Harhor), 1884, besides several poems and an enormous number of contributions to the press on politics, religion, and every important topic of the day. – TR.

65

Let me here take the liberty of referring the reader to this essay (Æsthetiske Studier, 234-286), as I consider it in the main correct, and will not here repeat its statements. A few individual sentences, however, I have felt compelled to reproduce.

66

Let me here call the reader's attention to my work, Sören Kierkegaard, Copenhagen; German edition, Leipsic, 1879.

67

In the preface to the second edition of Gildet paa Solhaug, issued in 1883, after the work had been out of print some twenty-seven years, Ibsen offered a protest against this suggestion of the influence of Henrik Hertz.

68

In these words lie the germ of the later production, "En Folkefiende" (An Enemy of the People).

69

To the list of the dramas of Henrik Ibsen furnished in this essay may be added "Vildanden" (The Wild Duck), 1884, and "Den Ensomme" (The Lonely One), 1886.