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Essays on Scandinavian Literature

by Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen · English · Gutenberg #19908 · 420,233 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Essays on Scandinavian Literature

Author: Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen


        
Release date: November 23, 2006 [eBook #19908]

Language: English

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ESSAYS ON SCANDINAVIAN LITERATURE

by

HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN



           *       *       *       *       *



BY THE SAME AUTHOR.


  Goethe and Schiller. Their Lives and Works; with a commentary on "Faust."
  Essays on German Literature.
  Essays on Scandinavian Literature.
  A Commentary on the Writings of Henrik Ibsen.
  Literary and Social Silhouettes.
  The Story of Norway.
  Gunnar.
  Tales from Two Hemispheres.
  A Norseman's Pilgrimage.
  Falconberg. A Novel.
  Queen Titania.
  Ilka on the Hill-top, and Other Tales.
  A Daughter of the Philistines.
  The Light of Her Countenance.
  Vagabond Tales.
  The Mammon of Unrighteousness.
  The Golden Calf.
  Social Strugglers.
  Idyls of Norway, and Other Poems.


THE NORSELAND SERIES (JUVENILE).

  The Modern Vikings: Stories of Life and Sport in the Northland.
  Against Heavy Odds, and A Fearless Trio.
  Boyhood in Norway.
  Norseland Tales.



           *       *       *       *       *



ESSAYS ON SCANDINAVIAN LITERATURE

by

HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN

Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures in
Columbia College







London
David Nutt, 270, Strand
1895.

Copyright, 1895, by Charles Scribner's Sons
for the United States of America
Printed by the Trow Directory, Printing and Bookbinding Company
New York, U. S. A.




PREFACE


Some twenty years ago the ambition seized me to write a History of
Scandinavian Literature. I scarcely realized then what an enormous
amount of reading would be required to equip me for this task. My
studies naturally led me much beyond the scope of my original intention.
There was a fascination in the work which lured me perpetually on, and
made me explore with a constantly increasing zest the great literary
personalities of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Thus my chapter on Henrik
Ibsen grew into a book of three hundred and seventeen pages, which was
published a year ago, and must be regarded as supplementary to the
present volume. The chapter on Björnstjerne Björnson was in danger of
expanding to similar proportions, and only the most heroic condensation
saved it from challenging criticism as an independent work. As regards
Norway and Denmark, I have endeavored to select all the weightiest and
most representative names. The Swedish authors Johan Ludvig Runeberg,
Mrs. Edgren, and August Strindberg, and the Dane Oehlenschlaeger,
necessity has compelled me to reserve for a future volume.

COLUMBIA COLLEGE, NEW YORK,

February, 1895.




CONTENTS


                                 PAGE

  BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON,              3

  ALEXANDER KIELLAND,               107

  JONAS LIE,                        121

  HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN,          155

  CONTEMPORARY DANISH LITERATURE,   181

  GEORG BRANDES,                    199

  ESAIAS TEGNÉR,                    219




BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON


I

Björnstjerne Björnson is the first Norwegian poet who can in any sense
be called national. The national genius, with its limitations as well as
its virtues, has found its living embodiment in him. Whenever he opens
his mouth it is as if the nation itself were speaking. If he writes a
little song, hardly a year elapses before its phrases have passed into
the common speech of the people; composers compete for the honor of
interpreting it in simple, Norse-sounding melodies, which gradually work
their way from the drawing-room to the kitchen, the street, and thence
out over the wide fields and highlands of Norway. His tales, romances,
and dramas express collectively the supreme result of the nation's
experience, so that no one to-day can view Norwegian life or Norwegian
history except through their medium. The bitterest opponent of the poet
(for like every strong personality he has many enemies) is thus no less
his debtor than his warmest admirer. His speech has stamped itself upon
the very language and given it a new ring, a deeper resonance. His
thought fills the air, and has become the unconscious property of all
who have grown to manhood and womanhood since the day when his titanic
form first loomed up on the horizon of the North. It is not only as
their first and greatest poet that the Norsemen love and hate him, but
also as a civilizer in the widest sense. But like Kadmus, in Greek myth,
he has not only brought with him letters, but also the dragon-teeth of
strife, which it is to be hoped will not sprout forth in armed men.

A man's ancestry and environment, no doubt, account in a superficial
manner for his appearance and mental characteristics. Having the man, we
are able to trace the germs of his being in the past of his race and his
country; but, with all our science we have not yet acquired the
ingenuity to predict the man--to deduce him _a priori_ from the tangle
of determining causes which enveloped his birth. It seems beautifully
appropriate in the Elder Edda that the god-descended hero Helge the
Völsung should be born amid gloom and terror in a storm which shakes the
house, while the Norns--the goddesses of fate--proclaim in the tempest
his tempestuous career. Equally satisfactory it appears to have the
modern champion of Norway--the typical modern Norseman--born on the
bleak and wild Dovre Mountain,[1] where there is winter eight months of
the year and cold weather during the remaining four. The parish of
Kvikne, in Oesterdalen, where his father, the Reverend Peder Björnson,
held a living, had a bad reputation on account of the unruly ferocity
and brutal violence of the inhabitants. One of the Reverend Peder
Björnson's recent predecessors never went into his pulpit, unarmed; and
another fled for his life. The peasants were not slow in intimating to
the new pastor that they meant to have him mind his own business and
conform to the manners and customs of the parish; but there they
reckoned without their host. The reverend gentleman made short work of
the opposition. He enforced the new law of compulsory education without
heeding its unpopularity; and when the champion fighter of the valley
came as the peasants' spokesman to take him to task in summary fashion,
he found himself, before he was aware of it, at the bottom of the
stairs, where he picked himself up wonderingly and promptly took to his
heels.

    [1] December 8, 1832.

During the winter the snow reached up to the second-story windows of the
parsonage; and the servants had to tunnel their way to the storehouse
and the stables. The cold was so intense that the little Björnstjerne
thought twice before touching a door knob, as his fingers were liable to
stick to the metal. When he was six years old, however, his father was
transferred to Romsdal, which is, indeed, a wild and grandly picturesque
region; but far less desolate than Dovre. "It lies," says Björnson,
"broad--bosomed between two confluent fjords, with a green mountain
above, cataracts and homesteads on the opposite shore, waving meadows
and activity in the bottom of the valley; and all the way out toward the
ocean, mountains with headland upon headland running out into the fjord
and a large farm upon each."

The feeling of terror, the crushing sense of guilt which Björnson has so
strikingly portrayed in the first chapters of "In God's Way," were
familiar to his own childhood. In every life, as in every race, the God
of fear precedes the God of love. And in Northern Norway, where nature
seems so tremendous and man so insignificant, no boy escapes these
phantoms of dread which clutch him with icy fingers. But as a
counterbalancing force in the young Björnson, we have his confidence in
the strength and good sense of his gigantic father, who could thrash the
strongest champion in the parish. He used to stand in the evening on the
beach "and gaze at the play of the sunshine upon fjord and mountain,
until he wept, as if he had done something wrong. Now he would suddenly
stop in this or that valley, while running on skees, and stand
spell-bound by its beauty and a longing which he could not comprehend,
but which was so great that in the midst of the highest joy he was
keenly conscious of a sense of confinement and sorrow."[2] "We catch a
glimpse in these childish memories," says Mr. Nordahl Rolfsen, "of the
remarkable character, we are about to depict: Being the son of a giant,
he is ever ready to strike out with a heavy hand, when he thinks that
anyone is encroaching upon what he deems the right. But this same
pugnacious man, whom it is so hard to overcome, can be overwhelmed by an
emotion and surrender himself to it with his whole being."

    [2] Nordahl Rolfsen: Norske Digtere, pp. 450, 451.

At the age of twelve Björnson was sent to the Latin school at Molde,
where, however, his progress was not encouraging. He was one of those
thoroughly healthy and headstrong boys who are the despair of ambitious
mothers, and whom fathers (when the futility of educational chastisement
has been finally proved) are apt to regard with a resigned and
half-humorous regret. His dislike of books was instinctive, hearty, and
uncompromising. His strong, half-savage boy-nature could brook no
restraints, and looked longingly homeward to the wide mountain plains,
the foaming rivers where the trout leaped in the summer night, and the
calm fjord where you might drift blissfully along, as it were, suspended
in the midst of the vast, blue, ethereal space. And when the summer
vacation came, with its glorious freedom and irresponsibility, he would
roam at his own sweet will through forest and field, until hunger and
fatigue forced him to return to his father's parsonage.

After several years of steadily unsuccessful study, Björnson at last
passed the so-called _examen artium_, which admitted him to the
University of Christiania. He was now a youth of large, almost athletic
frame, with a handsome, striking face, and a pair of blue eyes which no
one is apt to forget who has ever looked into them. There was a certain
grand simplicity and _naïveté_ in his manner, and an exuberance of
animal spirits which must have made him an object of curious interest
among his town-bred fellow-students. But his University career was of
brief duration. All the dimly fermenting powers of his rich nature were
now beginning to clarify, the consciousness of his calling began to
assert itself, and the demand for expression became imperative. His
literary _début_ was an historic drama entitled "Valborg," which was
accepted for representation by the directors of the Christiania Theatre,
and procured for its author a free ticket to all theatrical
performances; it was, however, never brought on the stage, as Björnson,
having had his eyes opened to its defects, withdrew it of his own
accord.

At this time the Norwegian stage was almost entirely in the hands of the
Danes, and all the more prominent actors were of Danish birth.
Theatrical managers drew freely on the dramatic treasures of Danish
literature, and occasionally, to replenish the exchequer, reproduced a
French comedy or farce, whose epigrammatic pith and vigor were more than
half-spoiled in the translation. The drama was as yet an exotic in
Norway; it had no root in the national soil, and could accordingly in no
respect represent the nation's own struggles and aspirations. The
critics themselves, no doubt, looked upon it merely as a form of
amusement, a thing to be wondered and stared at, and to be dismissed
from the mind as soon as the curtain dropped. Björnson, whose patriotic
soul could not endure the thought of this abject foreign dependence,
ascribed all the existing abuses to the predominance of the Danish
element, and in a series of vehement articles attacked the Danish
actors, managers, and all who were in any way responsible for the
unworthy condition of the national stage. In return he reaped, as might
have been expected, an abundant harvest of abuse, but the discussion he
had provoked furnished food for reflection, and the rapid development of
the Norwegian drama during the next decade is, no doubt, largely
traceable to his influence.

The liberty for which he had yearned so long, Björnson found at the
International Students' Reunion of 1856. Then the students of the
Norwegian and Danish Universities met in Upsala, where they were
received with grand festivities by their Swedish brethren. Here the poet
caught the first glimpse of a greater and freer life than moved within
the narrow horizon of the Norwegian capital. This gay and careless
student-life, this cheerful abandonment of all the artificial shackles
which burden one's feet in their daily walk through a bureaucratic
society, the temporary freedom which allows one without offence to toast
a prince and hug a count to one's bosom--all this had its influence
upon Björnson's sensitive nature; it filled his soul with a happy
intoxication and with confidence in his own strength. And having once
tasted a life like this he could no more return to what he had left
behind him.

The next winter we find him in Copenhagen, laboring with an intensity of
creative ardor which he had never known before. His striking appearance,
the pithy terseness of his speech, and a certain _naïve_ self-assertion
and impatience of social restraints made him a notable figure in the
polite and somewhat effeminate society of the Danish capital. There was
a general expectation at that time that a great poet was to come, and
although Björnson had as yet published nothing to justify the
expectation, he found the public of Copenhagen ready to recognize in him
the man who was to rouse the North from its long intellectual torpor,
and usher in a new era in its literature. It is needless to say that he
did not discourage this belief, for he himself fervently believed that
he would before long justify it. The first proof of his strength he gave
in the tale "Synnöve Solbakken" (Synnöve Sunny-Hill), which he published
in an illustrated weekly, and afterward in book-form. It is a very
unpretending little story, idyllic in tone, but realistic in its
coloring, and redolent of the pine and spruce and birch of the Norwegian
highlands.

It had been the fashion in Norway since the nation regained its
independence to interest one's self in a lofty, condescending way in
the life of the peasantry. A few well-meaning persons, like the poet
Wergeland, had labored zealously for their enlightenment and the
improvement of their economic condition; but, except in the case of such
single individuals, no real and vital sympathy and fellow-feeling had
ever existed between the upper and the lower strata of Norwegian
society. And as long as the fellow-feeling is wanting, this zeal for
enlightenment, however laudable its motive, is not apt to produce
lasting results. The peasants view with distrust and suspicion whatever
comes to them from their social superiors, and the so-called "useful
books," which were scattered broadcast over the land, were of a
tediously didactic character, and, moreover, hardly adapted to the
comprehension of those to whom they were ostensibly addressed. Wergeland
himself, with all his self-sacrificing ardor, had but a vague conception
of the real needs of the people, and, as far as results were concerned,
wasted much of his valuable life in his efforts to improve, edify and
instruct them. It hardly occurred to him that the culture of which he
and his colleagues were the representatives was itself a foreign
importation, and could not by any violent process be ingrafted upon the
national trunk, which drew its strength from centuries of national life,
history, and tradition. That this peasantry, whom the _bourgeoisie_ and
the aristocracy of culture had been wont to regard with half-pitying
condescension, were the real representatives of the Norse nation; that
they had preserved through long years of tyranny and foreign oppression
the historic characteristics of their Norse forefathers, while the upper
classes had gone in search of strange gods, and bowed their necks to the
foreign yoke; that in their veins the old strong saga-life was still
throbbing with vigorous pulse-beats--this was the lesson which Björnson
undertook to teach his countrymen, and a very fruitful lesson it has
proved to be. It has inspired the people with renewed courage, it has
turned the national life into fresh channels, and it has revolutionized
national politics.

To be sure all this was not the result of the idyllic little tale which
marked the beginning of his career. But this little tale, although no
trace of what the Germans call "tendency" is to be found in it, is still
significant as being the poet's first indirect manifesto, and as such
distinctly foreshadowing the path which he has since followed.

First, in its purely literary aspect, "Synnöve Solbakken" was strikingly
novel. The author did not, as his predecessors had done, view the people
from the exalted pedestal of superior culture; not as a subject for
benevolent preaching and charitable condescension, but as a concrete
phenomenon, whose _raison d'étre_ was as absolute and indisputable as
that of the _bourgeoisie_ or the bureaucracy itself. He depicted their
soul-struggles and the incidents of their daily life with a loving
minuteness and a vivid realism hitherto unequalled in the literature of
the North. He did not, like Auerbach, construct his peasant figures
through laborious reflection, nor did he attempt by anxious
psychological analysis to initiate the reader into their processes of
thought and emotion. He simply depicted them as he saw and knew them.
Their feelings and actions have their immediate, self-evident motives in
the characters themselves, and the absence of analysis on the author's
part gives an increased energy and movement to the story.

Mr. Nordahl Rolfsen relates, _à propos_ of the reception which was
accorded Björnson's first book, the following amusing anecdote:

"'Synnöve Solbakken' was printed, and its author was anxious to have his
friends read it. But not one of them could be prevailed upon. At last a
comrade was found who was persuaded to attack it on the promise of a
bottle of punch. He entered Björnson's den, got a long pipe which he
filled with tobacco, undressed himself completely--for it was a hot
day--flung himself on the bed, and began to read. Björnson sat in the
sofa, breathless with expectation. Leaf after leaf was turned; not a
smile, not a single encouraging word! The young poet had good reason to
regard the battle as lost. At last the pipe, the bottle, and the book
were finished. Then the merciless Stoic rose and began to dress, and the
following little exclamation escaped him: 'That is, the devil take me,
the best book I have read in all my life.'"

Björnson's style was no less novel than his theme. It may or it may not
have been consciously modelled after the saga style, to which, however,
it bears an obvious resemblance. In his early childhood, while he lived
among the peasants, he became familiar with their mode of thought and
speech, and it entered into his being, and became his own natural mode
of expression. There is in his daily conversation a certain grim
directness, and a laconic weightiness, which give an air of importance
and authority even to his simplest utterances. This tendency to
compression frequently has the effect of obscurity, not because his
thought is obscure, but rather because energetic brevity of expression
has fallen into disuse, and even a Norse public, long accustomed to the
wordy diffuseness of latter-day bards, have in part lost the faculty to
comprehend the genius of their own language. As a Danish critic wittily
observed: "Björnson's language is but one step removed from pantomime."

In 1858 Björnson assumed the directorship of the theatre in Bergen, and
there published his second tale, "Arne," in which the same admirable
self-restraint, the same implicit confidence in the intelligence
of his reader, the same firm-handed decision and vigor in the
character-drawing, in fact, all the qualities which delighted the public
in "Synnöve Solbakken," were found in an intensified degree.

In the meanwhile, Björnson had also made his _début_ as a dramatist. In
the year 1858 he had published two dramas, "Mellem Slagene" (Between the
Battles) and "Halte-Hulda" (Limping Hulda) both of which deal with
national subjects, taken from the old sagas. As in his tales he had
endeavored to concentrate into a few strongly defined types the modern
folk-life of the North, so in his dramas the same innate love of his
nationality leads him to seek the typical features of his people, as
they are revealed in the historic chieftains of the past.

"Between the Battles" is a dramatic episode rather than a drama. During
the civil war between King Sverre and King Magnus in the twelfth
century, the former visits in disguise a hut upon the mountains where a
young warrior, Halvard Gjaela and Inga, his beloved, are living
together. The long internecine strife has raised the hand of father
against son, and of brother against brother. Halvard sympathizes with
Sverre; Inga, who hates the king because he has burned her father's
farm, is a partisan of Magnus. In the absence of her lover she goes to
the latter's camp and brings back with her a dozen warriors for the
purpose of capturing Halvard, and thereby preventing him from joining
the enemy. Sverre discovers the warriors, whom she has hidden in the
cow-stable, and persuading them that he is a spy for King Magnus sends
two of them to his own army for reinforcements. In the meanwhile he
reconciles the estranged lovers, makes peace between them and Inga's
father, and finally, in the last scene, as his men arrive, is recognized
as the king.

This is, of course, a venerable _coup de théâtre_. Whatever novelty
there is in the play must be sought, not in the situations, but in the
pithy and laconic dialogue, which has a distinct national coloring. This
was not the amiable diffuseness of Oehlenschlaeger, who had hitherto
dominated the Norwegian as well as the Danish stage; and yet it did not
by any means represent so complete a breach with the traditions of the
romantic drama as was claimed by Björnson's admirers. The fresh
naturalness and absence of declamation were a gain, no doubt; but there
are yet several notes remaining which have the well-known romantic
cadence. "Between the Battles," though too slight to be called an
achievement, was accepted as a pledge of achievement in future.

Björnson's next drama "Limping Hulda" ("Halte-Hulda") (1858) was a
partial fulfilment of this pledge. If it is not high tragedy, in the
ancient sense, it is of the stuff that tragedy is made of. Hulda is an
impressive stage figure in her demoniac passion and tiger-like
tenderness. Though I doubt if Björnson has, in this type, caught the
soul of a Norse woman of the saga age, he has come much nearer to
catching it than any of his predecessors. If Gudrun Osvif's Daughter, of
the Laxdoela Saga, was his model, he has modernized her considerably,
and thereby made her more intelligible to modern readers. Like her,
Hulda causes the murder of the man she loves; and there is a fateful
spell about her beauty which brings death to whomsoever looks too long
upon it. Though ostensibly a saga-drama, the harshness and grim ferocity
of that sanguinary period are softened; and a romantic illumination
pervades the whole action. A certain lyrical effusiveness in the love
passages (which is alien to all Björnson's later works) hints at the
influence of the Danish Romanticists, and particularly Oehlenschlaeger.

It would be unfair, perhaps, to take the author to task because this
youthful drama exhibits no remarkable subtlety in its conception of
character. It contains no really great living figure who stands squarely
upon his feet and lingers in the memory. A certain half-rhetorical
impulse carries you along; and the external effectiveness of the
situations keeps the interest on the alert. For all that "Limping
Hulda," like its predecessors and its successors, tended to stimulate
powerfully the national spirit, which was then asserting itself in every
department of intellectual activity. Thus a national theatre had, by the
perseverance and generosity of Ole Bull, been established in his native
city, Bergen; and it was almost a matter of course that an effort should
be made to identify Björnson with an enterprise which accorded so well
with his own aspirations. His connection with the Norwegian Theatre of
Bergen was, however, not of long duration, for though your enthusiasm
may be ever so great it is a thankless task to act as "artistic
director" of a stage in a town which is neither artistic enough nor
large enough to support a playhouse with a higher aim than that of
furnishing ephemeral amusement. From Bergen he was called to the
editorship of _Aftenbladet_ (The Evening Journal), the second political
daily of Christiania, and continued there with hot zeal and eloquence
his battle for "all that is truly Norse."

But a brief experience sufficed to convince him that daily journalism
was not his _forte_. He was and is too indiscreet, precipitate,
credulous, and inconsiderately generous to be a successful editor. If a
paper could be conducted on purely altruistic principles, and without
reference to profits, there would be no man fitter to occupy an
editorial chair. For as an inspiring force, as a radiating focus of
influence, his equal is not to be encountered "in seven kingdoms round."
However, this inspiring force could reach a far larger public through
published books than through the columns of a newspaper. It was
therefore by no means in a regretful frame of mind that he descended
from the editorial tripod, and in the spring of 1860 started for Italy.
Previous to his departure he published, through the famous house of
Gyldendal, in Copenhagen, a volume which, it is no exaggeration to say,
has become a classic of Norwegian literature. It bears the modest title
"Smaa-stykker" (Small Pieces), but it contains, in spite of its
unpretentiousness, some of Björnson's noblest work. I need only mention
the masterly tale "The Father," with its sobriety and serene strength. I
know but one other instance[3] of so great tragedy, told in so few and
simple words. "Arne," "En Glad Gut" (A Happy Boy), and the amusing
dialect story, "Ei Faarleg Friing" (A Dangerous Wooing), also belong to
this delightful collection. These little masterpieces of concise
story-telling have been included in the popular two-volume edition of
"Fortällinger," which contains also "The Fisher-maiden" (1867-68), the
exquisite story, "The Bridal March" (1872), originally written as text
to three of Tidemand's paintings, and a vigorous bit of disguised
autobiography, "Blakken," of which not the author but a horse is the
ostensible hero.

    [3] Austin Dobson's poem, "The Cradle."

The descriptive name for all these tales, except the last, is idyl. It
was, indeed, the period when all Europe (outside the British empire) was
viewing the hardy sons of the soil through poetic spectacles. In Germany
Auerbach had, in his "Black Forest Village Tales" (1843, 1853, 1854),
discarded the healthful but unflattering realism of Jeremias Gotthelf
(1797-1854), and chosen, with a half-didactic purpose, to contrast the
peasant's honest rudeness and straightforwardness with the refined
sophistication and hypocrisy of the higher classes. George Sand, with
her beautiful Utopian genius, poured forth a torrent of rural narrative
of a crystalline limpidity ("Mouny Robin," "La Mare au Diable," "La
Petite Fadette," etc., 1841-1849), which is as far removed from the
turbid stream of Balzac ("Les Paysans") and Zola ("La Terre"), as
Paradise is from the Inferno. There is an echo of Rousseau's gospel of
nature in all these tales, and the same optimistic delusion regarding
"the people" for which the eighteenth century paid so dearly. The
painters likewise caught the tendency, and with the same thorough-going
conscientiousness as their brethren of the quill, disguised coarseness
as strength, bluntness as honesty, churlishness as dignity. What an
idyllic sweetness there is, for instance, in Tidemand's scenes of
Norwegian peasant life! What a _spirituelle_ and movingly sentimental
note in the corresponding German scenes of Knaus and Hübner, and, _longo
intervallo_, Meyerheim and Meyer von Bremen. Not a breath of the broad
humor of Teniers and Van Ostade in these masters; scarcely a hint of the
robust animality and clownish jollity with which the clear-sighted
Dutchmen endowed their rural revellers. Though pictorial art has not,
outside of Russia (where the great and unrivalled Riepin paints the
peasant with the brush as remorselessly as Tolstoï and Dostoyefski with
the pen), kept pace with the realistic movement in literature, yet there
is no lack of evidence that the rose-colored tinge is vanishing even
from the painter's spectacles; and such uncompromising veracity as that
of Millet and Courbet, which the past generation despised, is now hailed
with acclaim in such masters as Bastien-Lepage, Dagnan-Bouveret, and
the Scandinavians, Kristian Krog and Anders Zorn.

Björnson is, however, temperamentally averse to that modern naturalism
which insists upon a minute fidelity to fact without reference to
artistic values. His large and spacious mind has a Southern exposure,
and has all "its windows thrown wide open to the sun." A sturdy
optimism, which is prone to believe good of all men, unless they happen
to be his political antagonists, inclines him to overlook what does not
fit into his own scheme of existence. And yet no one can say that, as
presentations of Norwegian peasant life, "Synnöve," "Arne," "The Bridal
March," etc., are untrue, though, indeed, one could well imagine
pictures in very much sombrer colors which might lay a valider claim to
veracity. Kielland's "Laboring People," and Kristian Elster's "A Walk to
the Cross" and "Kjeld Horge," give the reverse of the medal of which
Björnson exhibits the obverse. These authors were never in any way
identified with "the people," and could not help being struck with many
of the rude and unbeautiful phases of rural existence; while Björnson,
who sprang directly from the peasantry, had the pride and intelligence
of kinship, and was not yet lifted far enough above the life he depicted
to have acquired the cultivated man's sense of condescension and
patronizing benevolence. He was but one generation removed from the
soil; and he looked with a strong natural sympathy and affectionate
predilection upon whatever reminded him of this origin. If he had been a
peasant, however, he could never have become the wonderful chronicler
that he is. It is the elevation, slight though it be, which enables him
to survey the fields in which his fathers toiled and suffered. Or, to
quote Mr. Rolfsen: "Björnson is the son of a clergyman; he has never
himself personally experienced the peasant's daily toil and narrow
parochial vision. He has felt the power of the mountains over his mind,
and been filled with longing, as a grand emotion, but the contractedness
of the spiritual horizon has not tormented him. He has not to take that
into account when he writes. During the tedious school-days, his
beautiful Romsdal valley lay waiting for him, beckoning him home at
every vacation--always alluring and radiant, with an idyllic shimmer."

Hence, no doubt, his sunny poetic vision which unconsciously idealizes.
Just as in daily intercourse he displays a positive genius for drawing
out what is good in a man, and brushes away as of small account what
does not accord with his own conception of him, nay, in a measure,
forces him to be as he believes him to be, so every character in these
early tales seems to bask in the genial glow of his optimism. The farm
Solbakken (Sunny Hill) lies on a high elevation, where the sun shines
from its rise to its setting, and both Synnöve and her parents walk
about in this still and warm illumination. They are all good, estimable
people, and their gentle piety, without any tinge of fanaticism, invests
them with a quiet dignity. The sterner and hardier folk at Granliden
(Pine Glen) have a rugged honesty and straightforwardness which, in
connection with their pithy and laconic speech, makes them less genial,
but no less typically Norse. They have a distinct atmosphere and spinal
columns that keep them erect, organic, and significant. Even
reprehensible characters like Aslak and Nils Tailor (in "Arne") have a
certain claim upon our sympathy, the former as a helpless victim of
circumstance, the latter as a suppressed and perverted genius.

In the spring of 1860 Björnson went abroad and devoted three years to
foreign travel, spending the greater part of his time in Italy. From
Rome he sent home the historical drama "King Sverre" (1861), which is
one of his weakest productions. It is written in blank verse, with
occasional rhymes in the more impressive passages. Of dramatic interest
in the ordinary sense, there is but little. It is a series of more or
less animated scenes, from the period of the great civil war
(1130-1240), connected by the personality of Sverre. Under the mask,
however, of mediæval history, the author preaches a political sermon to
his own contemporaries. Sverre, as the champion of the common people
against the tribal aristocracy, and the wily Bishop Nicholas as the
representative of the latter become, as it were, permanent forces, which
have continued their battle to the present day. There can be no doubt
that Björnson, whose sympathies are strongly democratic, permitted the
debate between the two to become needlessly didactic, and strained
historical verisimilitude by veiled allusions to contemporaneous
conditions. Greatly superior is his next drama, "Sigurd Slembe"[4]
(1862).

    [4] An English version of "Sigurd Slembe" has been published by
    William Morton Payne (Boston, 1888).

The story of the brave and able pretender, Sigurd Slembe, in his
struggle with the vain and mean-spirited king, Harold Gille, is the
theme of the dramatic trilogy. Björnson attempts to give the spiritual
development of Sigurd from the moment he becomes acquainted with his
royal birth until his final destruction. From a frank and generous
youth, who is confident that he is born for something great, he is
driven by the treachery, cruelty, and deceit of his brother, the king,
into the position of a desperate outlaw and guerilla. The very first
scene, in the church of St. Olaf, where the boy confides to the saint,
in a tone of _bonne camaraderie_, his joy at having conquered, in
wrestling, the greatest champion in the land, gives one the key-note to
his character:

    "Now only listen to me, saintly Olaf!
    To-day I whipped young Beintein! Beintein was
    The strongest man in Norway. Now am I!
    Now I can walk from Lindesnäs and on,
    Up to the northern boundary of the snow,
    For no one step aside or lift my hat.
    There where I am, no man hath leave to fight,
    To make a tumult, threaten, or to swear--
    Peace everywhere! And he who wrong hath suffered
    Shall justice find, until the laws shall sing.
    And as before the great have whipped the small,
    So will I help the small to whip the great.
    Now I can offer counsel at the Thing,
    Now to the king's board I can boldly walk
    And sit beside him, saying 'Here am I!'"

The exultation in victory which speaks in every line of this opening
monologue marks the man who, in spite of the obscurity of his origin,
feels his right to be first, and who, in this victory, celebrates the
attainment of his birthright. Equally luminous by way of
characterization is his exclamation to St. Olaf when he hears that he is
King Magnus Barefoot's son:

    "Then we are kinsmen, Olaf, you and I!"

According to Norwegian law at that time, every son of a king was
entitled to his share of the kingdom, and Sigurd's first impulse is to
go straight to Harold Gille and demand his right. His friend Koll
Saebjörnson persuades him, however, to abandon this hopeless adventure,
and gives him a ship with which he sails to the Orient, takes part in
many wars, and gains experience and martial renown.

The second part of the trilogy deals with Sigurd's sojourn at the
Orkneys, where he interferes in the quarrel between the Earls Harold
and Paul. The atmosphere of suspicion, insecurity, and gloom which hangs
like a portentous cloud over these scenes is the very same which blows
toward us from the pages of the sagas. Björnson has gazed deeply into
the heart of Northern paganism, and has here reproduced the heroic
anarchy which was a necessary result of the code permitting the
individual to avenge his own wrongs. The two awful women, Helga and
Frakark, the mother and the aunt of the earls, are types which are
constantly met with in the saga. It is a long-recognized fact that
women, under lawless conditions, develop the wildest extremes of
ambition, avarice, and blood-thirstiness, and taunt the men with their
weak scruples. These two furies of the Orkneys plot murder with an
infernal coolness, which makes Lady Macbeth a kind-hearted woman by
comparison. They recognize in Sigurd a man born for leadership;
determine to use him for the furtherance of their plans, and to get rid
of him, by fair means or foul, when he shall have accomplished his task.
But Sigurd is too experienced a chieftain to walk into this trap. While
appearing to acquiesce, he plays for stakes of his own, but in the end
abandons all in disgust at the death of Earl Harold, who intentionally
puts on the poisoned shirt, prepared for his brother. There is no great
and monumental scene in this part which engraves itself deeply upon the
memory. The love scenes with Audhild, the young cousin of the earls,
are incidental and episodical, and exert no considerable influence
either upon Sigurd's character or upon the development of the intrigue.
Historically they are well and realistically conceived; but dramatically
they are not strong. Another criticism, which has already been made by
the Danish critic, Georg Brandes, refers to an offence against this very
historical sense which is usually so vivid in Björnson. When Frakark,
the Lady Macbeth of the play, remarks, "I am far from feeling sure of
the individual mortality so much preached of; but there is an
immortality of which I am sure; it is that of the race," she makes an
intellectual somersault from the twelfth century into the nineteenth,
and never gets back firmly on her pagan feet again. As Brandes wittily
observes: "People who talk like that do not torture their enemy to
death; they backbite him."

The third part opens with Sigurd's appearance at court, where he reveals
his origin and asks for his share of the kingdom. The king is not
disinclined to grant his request, but is overruled by his councillors,
who profit by his weakness and rule in his name. They fear this man of
many battles, with the mark of kingship on his brow; and they determine
to murder him. But Sigurd escapes from prison, and, holding the king
responsible for the treachery, kills him. From this time forth he is an
outlaw, hunted over field and fell, and roaming with untold sufferings
through the mountains and wildernesses. There he meets a Finnish maiden
who loves him, reveals his fate to him, and implores him to abandon his
ambition and dwell among her people. These scenes amid the eternal
wastes of snow are perhaps the most striking in the trilogy and most
abounding in exquisite poetic thought. Sigurd hastens hence to his doom
at the battle of Holmengra, where he is defeated, and, with fiendish
atrocity, slowly tortured to death. The rather lyrical monologue
preceding his death, in which he bids farewell to life and calmly
adjusts his gaze to eternity, is very beautiful, but, historically, a
trifle out of tune. Barring these occasional lapses from the key, the
trilogy of "Sigurd Slembe" is a noble work.

A respectful, and in part enthusiastic, reception had been accorded to
Björnson's early plays. But his first dramatic triumph he celebrated at
the performance of "Mary Stuart in Scotland." Externally this is the
most effective of his plays. The dialogue is often brilliant, and
bristles with telling points. It is eminently "actable," presenting
striking tableaus and situations. Behind the author we catch a glimpse
of the practical stage-manager who knows how a scene will look on the
boards and how a speech will sound--who can surmise with tolerable
accuracy how they will affect a first-night audience.

"Mary Stuart" is theatrically no less than dramatically conceived.
Theatrically it is far superior to Swinburne's "Chastelard" (not to
speak of his interminable musical verbiage in "Bothwell") but it is
paler, colder, and poetically inferior. The voluptuous warmth and wealth
of color, the exquisite levity, the _débonnaire_ grace of the
Swinburnian drama we seek in vain. Björnson is vigorous, but he is not
subtile. Mere feline amorousness, such as Swinburne so inimitably
portrays, he would disdain to deal with if even he could. Such a bit of
intricate self-characterization as the English poet puts into the
Queen's mouth in the first scene with Chastelard, in the third act, lies
utterly beyond the range of the sturdier Norseman.

    _Queen_: "Nay, dear, I have
    No tears in me; I never shall weep much,
    I think, in all my life: I have wept for wrath
    Sometimes, and for mere pain, but for love's pity
    I cannot weep at all. I would to God
    You loved me less: I give you all I can
    For all this love of yours, and yet I am sure
    I shall live out the sorrow of your death
    And be glad afterwards. You know I am sorry.
    I should weep now; forgive me for your part.
    God made me hard, I think. Alas! you see
    I had fain been other than I am."

Add to this the beautifully illuminating threat, "I shall be deadly to
you," uttered in the midst of amorous cooings and murmurings, and we
catch a glimpse of the demoniac depth of this woman's nature. Björnson's
"Mary Stuart" weeps more than once; nay, she says to Bothwell, when he
has forcibly abducted her to his castle:

    "This is my first prayer to you,
    That I may weep."

Quite in the same key is her exclamation (in the same scene) in response
to Bothwell's reference to her son:

"My son, my lovely boy! Oh, God, now he lies sleeping in his little
white bed, and does not know how his mother is battling for his sake."

Schiller, whose conception of womankind was as honestly single and
respectful as that of Björnson, had set a notable precedent in
representing Mary Stuart as a martyr of a lost cause. The psychological
antitheses of her character, her softness and loving surrender, and her
treachery and cruelty--he left out of account.

Without troubling himself greatly about her guilt, which, though with
many palliating circumstances, he admitted, he undertook to exemplify in
her the beauty and exaltation of noble suffering. His Mary (which has
always been a favorite with tragic actresses) is in my opinion as devoid
of that insinuating, sense-compelling charm which alone can account for
this extraordinary woman's career as is the heroine of Björnson's play.
In fact Björnson's Mary lies half-way between the amorous young tigress
of Swinburne and the statuesque martyr of Schiller. She is less
intricately feminine than the former, and more so than the latter. But
she is yet a long way removed from her historical original, who must
have been a strong and full-blooded character, with just that touch of
mystery which nature always wears to whomsoever gazes deeply upon her.
That subtile intercoiling of antagonistic traits, which in a man could
never coexist, is to be found in many historic women of the
Renaissance--exquisite, dangerous creatures, half-doves, half-serpents,
half-Clytemnestra, half-Venus, whose full-throbbing passion now made
them soft and tender, over-brimming with loveliness, now fierce and
imperious, their outraged pride revelling in vengeance and blood. If
Björnson could have fathomed the depth and complexity of the historical
Mary Stuart to the extent that Swinburne has done, he would, no doubt,
also have devised a more effective conclusion to his play. There is no
dramatic climax, far less a tragic one, in the dethronement of Mary, and
the proclamation by John Knox, which is chiefly an assertion of popular
sovereignty, and the triumph of the Presbyterian Church. The declaration
of the final chorus, that

    "Evil shall be routed
    And weakness must follow,
    The might of truth shall pierce
    To the last retreat of gloom,"

seems to me rather to muddle than to clarify the situation. There is a
wavering and uncertain sound in it which seems inappropriate to a
triumphant strain, when the organist naturally turns on the full force
of his organ. If (as is obvious) the Queen represents the evil, or at
least the weakness, which has been routed, it would appear that she
ought to have been painted in quite different colors.

Björnson's next dramatic venture, which rejoices to this day in an
unabated popularity, was the two-act comedy, "The Newly Married" (_De
Nygifte_). Goethe once made the remark that he was not a good dramatist,
because his nature was too conciliatory. Without intending
disparagement, I am inclined to apply the same judgment to Björnson. His
sunny optimism shrinks from irreconcilable conflicts and insoluble
problems; and in his desire to reconcile and solve, he occasionally is
in danger of wrenching his characters out of drawing and muddling their
motives. Half a dozen critics have already called attention to the
ambiguity of Mathilde's position and intentions in "The Newly Married."
That she loves Axel, the husband, is clear; and the probability is that
she meant to avenge herself upon him for having before his marriage used
her as a decoy, when the real object of his attention was her friend
Laura. But if such was her object, she lacked the strength of mind and
hardness of heart to carry it out, and in the end she becomes a
benevolent providence, who labors for the reconciliation of the
estranged couple. She proves too noble for the ignoble _rôle_ she had
undertaken. Instead of wrecking the marriage, she sacrifices herself
upon the altar of friendship. To that there can, of course, be no
objection; but in that case the process of her mental change ought to
have been clearly shown. In Ibsen's "Rosmersholm," Rebecca West,
occupying a somewhat similar position, is subject to the same ennobling
of motive; but the whole drama hinges upon her moral evolution, and
nothing is left to inference.

The situation in "The Newly Married" is an extremely delicate one, and
required delicate handling. Axel, a young and gifted lawyer, has married
Laura, the daughter of a high and wealthy official, who prides himself
on his family dignity and connections. Laura, being an only child, has
been petted and spoiled since her birth, and is but a grown-up little
girl, with no conception of her matrimonial obligations. She
subordinates her relation to her husband to that to her parents, and
exasperates the former by her bland and obstinate immaturity. At last,
being able to bear it no longer, he compels her to leave the home of her
parents, where they have hitherto been living, and establishes himself
in a distant town. Mathilde, Laura's friend, accompanies them, though it
is difficult to conjecture in what capacity; and publishes an anonymous
novel, in which she enlightens the young wife regarding the probable
results of her conduct. She thrusts a lamp into the dusk of her soul and
frightens her by the things she shows her. She also, by arousing her
jealousy, leads her out of childhood, with its veiled vision and happy
ignorance, into womanhood, with its unflinching recognition of the
realities that were hidden from the child. And thus she paves the way
for the reconciliation which takes place in the presence of the old
people, who pay their daughter a visit _en route_ for Italy. Mathilde,
having accomplished her mission, acknowledges the authorship of the
anonymous novel, and is now content to leave husband and wife in the
confidence that they will work out their own salvation.

A mere skeleton of this simple plot (which barely hints at the real
problem) can, of course, give no conception of the charm, the color, and
the wonderful poetic afflatus of this exquisite little play. It may be
well enough to say that such a situation is far-fetched and not very
typical--that outside of "The Heavenly Twins," _et id omne genus_, wives
who insist upon remaining maidens are not very frequent; but, in spite
of this drawback, the vividness and emotional force of the dialogue and
the beautiful characterization (particularly of the old governor and his
wife) set certain sweet chords in vibration, and carry the play to a
triumphant issue.

As a school-boy I witnessed the first performance of "The Newly
Married," at the Christiania Theatre (1865), (as, indeed, of all the
Björnsonian dramas up to 1869); and I yet remember my surprise when,
instead of mail-clad Norse warriors, carousing in a sooty, log-built
hall, the curtain rose upon a modern interior, in which a fashionably
attired young lady kissed a frock-coated old gentleman. It was a dire
disappointment to me and my comrade, who had come thirsting for gore.
But how completely the poet conquered us! Each phrase seemed to woo our
reluctant ears, and the pulse of life that beat in the characters and
carried along the action awakened in us a delighted recognition. Truth
to tell, we had but the very vaguest idea of what was the _prima causa
malorum_; but for all that, with the rest of the audience, we were
immensely gratified that the upshot of it all was so satisfactory.

During the years 1865-67 Björnson occupied the position of artistic
director of the Christiania Theatre, and edited the illustrated weekly
paper, _Norsk Folkeblad_ ("The Norwegian People's Journal"). As the
champion of Norwegian nationality in literature, and on the stage, he
unfolded an amazing activity. In 1870 he published "Arnljot Gelline," a
lyrical epic, relating, in a series of poems of irregular metres, the
story of the pagan marauder of that name, and his conversion to
Christianity by King Olaf the Saint. Never has he found a more daring
and tremendous expression for the spirit of old Norse paganism than in
this powerful but somewhat chaotic poem. Never has anyone gazed more
deeply into the ferocious heart of the primitive, predatory man, whose
free, wild soul had not yet been tamed by social obligations and the
scourge of the law. In the same year (1870) was published the now
classical collection of "Poems and Songs" (_Digte og Sange_), which, it
is no exaggeration to say, marks a new era in the Norwegian lyric. Among
Björnson's predecessors there are but two lyrists of the first order,
viz., Wergeland and Welhaven. The former was magnificently profuse and
chaotic, abounding in verve and daring imagery, but withal
high-sounding, declamatory, and, at his worst, bombastic. There is a
reminiscence in him of Klopstock's inflated rhetoric; and a certain
dithyrambic ecstasy--a strained, high-keyed aria-style which sometimes
breaks into falsetto. His great rival, Welhaven, was soberer, clearer,
more gravely melodious. He sang in beautiful, tempered strains, along
the middle octaves, never ranging high into the treble or deep into the
base. There is a certain Tennysonian sweetness, artistic self-restraint,
and plastic simplicity in his lyrics; just as there is in Wergeland's
reformatory ardor, his noble rage, and his piling up of worlds, æons,
and eternities a striking kinship to Shelley. But both these poets,
though their patriotism was strong, were intellectually Europeans,
rather than Norwegians. The roots of their culture were in the general
soil of the century, whose ideas they had absorbed. Their personalities
were not sufficiently tinged with the color of nationality to give a
distinctly Norse cadence to their voices. Wergeland seems to me like a
man who was desperately anxious to acquire a national accent; but
somehow never could catch the trick of it. As regards Welhaven, he was
less aware of his deficiency (if deficiency it was); but was content to
sing of Norse themes in a key of grave, universal beauty. Of the new
note that came into the Norwegian lyric with Björnson, I can discover no
hint in his predecessors. Such a poem as, for instance, "Nils Finn,"
with its inimitably droll refrain--how utterly inconceivable it would be
in the mouth of Wergeland or Welhaven! The new quality in it is as
unexplainable as the poem itself is untranslatable. It has that
inexpressible cadence and inflection of the Norse dialect which you feel
(if you have the conditions for recognizing it) in the first word a
Norseman addresses to you. It has that wonderful twang of the Hardanger
fiddle, and the color and sentiment of the ballads sung and the
legendary tales recited around the hearth in a Norwegian homestead
during the long winter nights. With Björnson it was in the blood. It was
his soul's accent, the dialect of his thought, the cadence of his
emotion. And so, also, is the touching minor undertone in the poem, the
tragic strain in the half burlesque, which is again so deeply Norwegian.
Who that has ever been present at a Norse peasant wedding has failed to
be struck with the strangely melancholy strain in the merriest dances?
And in Landstad's collection of "Norwegian Ballads" there is the same
blending of humor and pathos in such genuine folk-songs as _Truls med
bogin, Mindre Alf_, and scores of others. To this day I cannot read
"Nils Finn," humorous though it is, without an almost painful emotion.
All Norway, with a host of precious memories, rises out of the mist of
the past at the very first verse:

    "Og vetli Nils Finn skuldi ut at gå,
    Han fek inki ski 'i tel at hanga på
    --'Dat var ilt' sa'd 'uppundir.'"

Neither Wergeland nor Welhaven nor any other poet has with all his
rapturous description of fjord, valley, and mountain, this power to
conjure up the very soul of the Norseland. The purely juvenile rhymes of
Björnson, such as _Killebukken, Lokkeleg_ and _Haren og Raeven_ ("The
Hare and the Fox"), are significant because of the masterly security
with which they strike the national key and keep it. Not a word is there
that rings false. And with what an exquisite tenderness the elegaic
ballad strain is rendered in _Venevil_ and "Hidden Love" (_Dulgt
Kaerlighed_), and the playful in the deliciously girlish roguery of
_Vidste du bare_ ("If you only knew"), and the bold dash and young
wantonness of "Marit's Song!"

It seems to me that every Norseman's life, whether he is willing to
acknowledge it or not, has been made richer and more beautiful by this
precious volume. It contains a legacy to the Norwegian people which can
never grow old. If Björnson had written nothing else, he would still be
the first poet of Norway. How brazen, hollow, and bombastic sound the
patriotic lyrics of Bjerregaard Johan Storm Munch, S. O. Wolff, etc.,
which are yet sung at festal gatherings, by the side of Björnson's "Yes,
we Love our Native Country," and "I will Guard Thee, my Land!" There is
the brassy blare of challenging trumpets in the former; they defy all
creation, and make a vast deal of impotent and unprofitable noise about
"The roaring northern main," "The ancient Norway's rocky fastness,"
"Liberty's temple in Norroway's valleys," and "Norway's lion, whose axe
doth threaten him who dares break the Northland's peace."

Not a suggestion of this juvenile braggadocio is there to be found in
Björnson. Calm, strong, and nobly aglow with love of country, he has no
need of going into paroxysms in order to prove his sincerity. To those
who regard the declamatory note as indispensable to a national hymn (as
we have it, for instance, in "Hail, Columbia," and "The Star-spangled
Banner") the low key in which Björnson's songs are pitched will no doubt
appear as a blemish. But it is their very homeliness in connection with
the deep, full-throbbing emotion which beats in each forceful phrase--it
is this, I fancy, which has made them the common property of the whole
people, and thus in the truest sense national. I could never tell why my
heart gives a leap at the sound of the simple verse:

    "Yes, we love this land of ours,
    Rising from the foam,
    Rugged, furrowed, weather-beaten,
    With its thousand homes."

Kjerulf's glorious music is, no doubt, in a measure accountable for it;
but even apart from that, there is a strangely moving power in the
words. The poem, as such, is by no means faultless. It is easy to pick
flaws in it. The transition from the fifth and sixth lines of the first
verse: "Love it, love it, and think of our father and mother," to the
seventh and eighth, "And the saga night which makes dreams to descend
upon our earth," is unwarrantably forced and abrupt. And yet who would
wish it changed? It may be admitted that there is no very subtle art in
the rude rhyme:

       "I will guard thee, my land,
       I will build thee, my land,
    I will cherish my land in my prayer, in my child!
       I will foster its weal,
       And its wants I will heal
    From the boundary out to the ocean wild;"

but, for all that, it touches a chord in every Norseman's breast, which
never fails to vibrate responsively.

As regards Björnson's prosody, I am aware that it is sometimes
defective. Measured by the Tennysonian standard it is often needlessly
rugged and eccentric. But a poet whose bark carries so heavy a cargo of
thought may be forgiven if occasionally it scrapes the bottom. Moreover,
the Norwegian tongue has never, as a medium of poetry, been polished and
refined to any such elaborate perfection as the English language
exhibits in the hands of Swinburne and Tennyson.

The saga-drama, "Sigurd the Crusader," which was also published in 1870,
is a work of minor consequence. Its purpose may be stated in the
author's own words:

     "'Sigurd the Crusader' is meant to be what is called a 'folk-play.'
     It is my intention to make several dramatic experiments with grand
     scenes from the sagas, lifting them into a strong but not too heavy
     frame. By a 'folk-play' I mean a play which should appeal to every
     eye and every stage of culture, to each in its own way, and at the
     performance of which all, for the time being, would experience the
     joy of fellow-feeling. The common history of a people is best
     available for this purpose--nay, it ought dramatically never to be
     treated otherwise. The treatment must necessarily be simple and the
     emotions predominant; it should be accompanied with music, and the
     development should progress in clear groups....

     "The old as well as the new historic folk literature will, with its
     corresponding comic element, as I think, be a great gain to the
     stage, and will preserve its connection with the people where this
     has not already been lost--so that it be no longer a mere
     institution for amusement, and that only to a single class. Unless
     we take this view of our stage, it will lose its right to be
     regarded as a national affair, and the best part of its purpose, to
     unite while it lifts and makes us free, will be gradually assumed
     by some other agency. Nor shall we ever get actors fit for anything
     but trifles, unless we abandon our foreign French tendency as a
     _leading_ one and substitute the national needs of our own people
     in its place."

It would be interesting to note how the poet has attempted to solve a
problem so important and so difficult as this. In the first place, we
find in "Sigurd the Crusader" not a trace of a didactic purpose beyond
that of familiarizing the people with its own history, and this, as he
himself admits in the preface just quoted, is merely a secondary
consideration. He wishes to make all, irrespective of age, culture, and
social station, feel strongly the bond of their common nationality; and,
with this in view, he proceeds to unroll to them a panorama of simple
but striking situations, knit together by a plot or story which, without
the faintest tinge of sensationalism, appeals to those broadly human and
national sympathies which form the common mental basis of Norse
ignorance and Norse culture. He seizes the point in the saga where the
long-smouldering hostility between the royal brothers, Sigurd the
Crusader and Eystein, has broken into full blaze, and traces, in a
series of vigorously sketched scenes, the intrigue and counter-intrigue
which hurry the action onward toward its logically prepared climax--a
mutual reconciliation. The dialogue is pithy, simple, and sententious.
Nevertheless the play, as a whole, makes the impression of
incompleteness. It is a dramatic sketch rather than a drama. It marks no
advance on Björnson's previous work in the same line; but perhaps rather
a retrogression.


II

A period is apt to come in the life of every man who is spiritually
alive, when his scholastic culture begins to appear insufficient and the
traditional premises of existence 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. Ibsen
was thirty-four years old (1862) when in "The Comedy of Love" he broke
with the romanticism of his youth, and began to wrestle with the
problems of contemporary life. Goethe was thirty-seven when, in 1786, he
turned his back upon the Storm and Stress, and in Italy sought and
gained a new and saner vision of the world. This renewal of the sources
which water the roots of his spiritual being becomes an imperative
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 distressing to have to pretend that you do
not hear the doubt which whispers early and late in your ear, _Vanitas,
vanitas, vanitas vanitatum_. Few are those of us who have the courage to
face it, to rise up and fight with it, and rout it or be routed by it.

Björnson had up to this time (1870) built solely upon tradition. He had
been orthodox, and had exalted childlike peace and faith above doubt and
struggle. Phrases indicative of a certain spiritual immaturity are
scattered through his early poems. In "The Child in our Soul," he says,
for instance: "The greatest man on earth must cherish the child in his
soul and listen, amid the thunder, to what it whispers low;" and again:
"Everything great that thought has invented sprouted forth in childlike
joy; and everything 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's shackles, and made the world a more
comfortable abiding-place to the present generation than it was to the
past. There is unquestionably a strain of Danish romanticism in
Björnson's persistent harping upon childlike faith and simplicity and a
childlike vision of the world. Grundtvig, with whom this note is
pervasive, had in his early youth a great influence over him. The
glorification of primitive feeling was part of the romantic revolt
against the dry rationalism of the so-called period of enlightenment.

To account for the fact that so mighty a spirit as Björnson could have
reached his thirty-eighth year before emerging from this state of
idyllic _naïveté_, I am inclined to quote the following passage from
Brandes, descriptive of the condition of the Scandinavian countries
during the decade preceding 1870:

"While the intellectual life languished, as a plant droops in a close,
confined place, the people were self-satisfied--though not with a joyous
or noisy self-satisfaction; for there was much sadness in their minds
after the great disasters [the Sleswick-Holstein War].... They rested
on their laurels and fell into a doze. And 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 were the power which could rule the
world, but which, for mysterious and incomprehensible reasons, had for a
long series of years preferred to eat crumbs from the foreigners' table.
They dreamed that they were the free, mighty North, which led the cause
of the peoples to victory--and they woke up unfree, impotent,
ignorant."[5]

    [5] Brandes: Det Moderne Gjennembrud's Maend, pp. 44, 45.

Though there is a good deal of malice, there is no exaggeration in this
unflattering statement. Scandinavia had by its own choice cut itself off
from the cosmopolitan world life; and the great ideas which agitated
Europe found scarcely an echo in the three kingdoms. In my own boyhood,
which coincides with Björnson'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-fashioned, Scandinavian
orthodoxy. How heartily we laughed at the absurdities of Darwin, who, as
we had read in the newspapers, believed that he was descended from an
ape! How deeply, densely, and solidly ignorant we were; and yet how
superior we felt in the midst of our ignorance!

All this must be taken into account, if we are to measure the
significance, as well as the courage, of Björnson's apostasy. For five
years (1870-74) he published nothing of an æsthetical character. But he
plunged with hot zeal into political life, not only because he needed an
outlet for his pent-up energy; but because the question at issue engaged
him, heart and soul. The equal and co-ordinate position of Norway and
Sweden under the union had been guaranteed by the 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 national movement (which they might well have done),
they fought it, first by cautious measures of repression, and later by
vetoes and open defiance. Charles XV., and, later, Oscar II., kept the
minority ministries, Stang and Selmer, in power, with a bland disregard
of popular condemnation, and snapped their fingers at the parliamentary
majorities which, for well-nigh a quarter of a century, fought
persistently, bravely, and not altogether vainly, for their country's
rights.

There is no doubt that Norway is the most democratic country in Europe,
if not in the world. There is a far sturdier sense of personal worth, a
far more fearless assertion of equality, and a far more democratic
feeling permeating society than, for instance, in the United States.
Sweden, on the other hand, is essentially an aristocratic country, with
a landed nobility and many other remnants of feudalism in her political
and social institutions. Two countries 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.
Björnson certainly does not cherish any hatred of Sweden, nor do I
believe that there is any general animosity to the Swedish people to be
found anywhere in Norway. It is most unfortunate that the mistaken
policy of the Bernadottes has placed the two nations in an attitude of
apparent hostility. In spite of the loud denunciation of Norway by the
so-called Grand Swedish party, and the equally vociferous response of
the Norwegian journals (of the Left) there is a strong sympathy between
the democracy of Norway and that of Sweden, and a mutual respect which
no misrepresentation can destroy.

It was Björnson who, in 1873, began the agitation for the actual and
not merely nominal, equality of the two kingdoms;[6] he appealed to the
national sense of honor, and by his kindling eloquence aroused the
tremendous popular indignation that swept the old 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 unhappily a new Stang ministry (the chief of
which is the son of the old premier) has, recently (1893) re-established
the odious minority rule, which sits like a nightmare upon the nation's
breast, checking its respiration, and hindering its natural development.

    [6] I had the pleasure of accompanying Björnson on his first
    political tour in the summer of 1873, and I shall never forget the
    tremendous impression of the man and his mighty eloquence at the
    great folk-meeting at Böe in Guldbrandsdalen.

During this period of national self-assertion Björnson has unfolded a
colossal activity. Though holding no office, and steadily refusing an
election to the Storthing, he has been the life and soul of the liberal
party. The task which he had undertaken grew upon his hands, and assumed
wider and wider dimensions. As his predecessor Wergeland had done, and
in a far deeper sense, he consecrated his life to the spiritual and
intellectual liberation of his people. It is told of the former that 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. Björnson, 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 in the
parable, it all leaves some trace behind. It stimulates reflection, it
awakens life, it arouses the torpid soul, it shakes the drowsy soul, it
shocks the pious soul, it frightens the timid soul, but it lifts them
all, as it were, by main force, out of themselves, and makes healthful
breezes blow, and refreshing showers fall upon what was formerly a
barren waste. This is Björnson's mission; this is, during the second
period of his career, his greatness and his highest significance.

Of course there are many opinions as to the value of the work he has
accomplished in this capacity of political and religious liberator. The
Conservative party of Norway, which runs the errands of the king and
truckles to Sweden, hates him with a bitter and furious hatred; the
clergy denounce him, and the official 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-singing
peasantry. Does not the Bible say that the devil goes about like a
roaring lion seeking whom he may devour? Nevertheless Björnson has the
hardihood to assert that there is no such person. And yet Björnson is a
man who can talk most beautifully, and who knows as much as any parson.
It is extremely puzzling.

The fact was, Björnson's abolition of the devil, and his declaration of
a war against the orthodox miracle faith, were, as far as the Norwegian
people were concerned, somewhat premature. The peasant needs the old
scriptural devil, and is not yet ready to dispense with him. The devil
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 defunct life
which they often contain, nourish in the dark the green grass, the fair
flowers, the blooming trees, that shoot up into the light. You cannot
dig it all up and throw it out without tearing asunder the net-work of
roots which organically connects the living with the dead.

Björnson, though he is an evolutionist, is far removed from the
philosophic temper in his dealings with the obsolete or obsolescent
remnants in political and religious creeds. He has the healthful
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 plunges ahead, and with a
truly old Norse pugnacity he stands in the thick of the fight, rejoicing
in battle. Only combat arouses his Titanic energy and calls all his
splendid faculties into play.

Even apart from his political propaganda the years 1870-74 were a period
of labor and ferment to Björnson. The mightier the man, the mightier the
powers enlisted in his conversion, and the mightier the struggle. A
tremendous wrench was required to change his point of view from that of
a childlike, wondering believer to that of a critical sceptic and
thinker. In a certain sense Björnson never took this step; for when the
struggle was over, and he had readjusted his vision of life to the
theory of evolution, he became as ardent an adherent of it as he had
ever been of the _naïve_ Grundtvigian miracle-faith. And with the deep
need of his nature to pour itself forth--to share 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 idyllic love-stories of peasant lads and lasses,
and his taciturn saga heroes, with their predatory self-assertion, he
saw that he had done with them forever; that they could never more
enlist his former interest. On the other hand, the problems of modern
contemporary life, of which he had now gained quite a new comprehension,
tempted him. The romantic productions of his youth appeared as a more or
less arbitrary play of fancy emancipated from the stern logic of
reality. It was his purpose henceforth to consecrate his powers to the
study of the deeper soul-life of his own age and the exposition of the
forces which in their interdependence and interaction make modern
society.

This is the significance of the four-act drama "Bankruptcy," with which,
in 1874, he astounded and disappointed the Scandinavian public. I have
called it a drama, in accordance with the author's designation on the
title-page; but it is, in the best sense, a comedy of manners, of the
kind that 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 commercial plutocracy are likely to exhibit. All the poetic
touches which charmed us in Björnson's saga dramas were conspicuous by
their absence. Scarcely a trace was there left of that peculiar and
delightful language of his early novels, which can only be described by
the term "Björnsonian."

"Dry, prosaic, trivial," said the reviewers; "Björnson has evidently
worked out his vein. He has ceased to be a poet. He has lost with his
childhood's faith his ideal view of life, and become a mere prosy
chronicler of uninteresting everyday events."

This was, indeed, the general verdict of the public twenty years ago.
Scarcely anyone had a good word to say for the abused play that marked
the poet's fall from the idealism of his early song. But, for all that,
"Bankruptcy" made a strong impression upon 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 _Théâtre Libre_ in
Paris. There is scarcely a theatre of any consequence in Germany which
has not made "Bankruptcy" part of its _répertoire_. At the Royal Theatre
in Munich it was accorded a most triumphant reception, and something
over sixty representations has not yet exhausted its popularity.

The effort to come to close quarters with reality is visible in every
phrase. The denial of the value of all the old romantic stage machinery,
with its artificial climaxes and explosive effects, is perceptible in
the quiet endings of the 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 to shoot Lawyer Berent and
himself; but there is a very human quiver in the threat and in the
passionate outbreak which precedes it. Nowhere is there a breath of that
superheated hot-house atmosphere which usually pervades the modern
drama.

"Bankruptcy" deals, as the title indicates, with the question of
financial honesty. Zola has in _Le Roman Sentimental_ made the
observation that "absolute honesty no more exists than perfect
healthfulness. There is a tinge of the human beast in us all, as there
is a tinge of illness." Tjaelde, the great merchant, exemplifies this
proposition. He is a fairly honest man, who by the modern commercial
methods, which, in self-defence, he has been forced to adopt, gets into
the position of a rogue. The commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," seems
at first glance an extremely simple injunction; but in the light of
Björnson'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 bankruptcy.
But, on the other hand, it is extremely difficult to determine the point
where legitimate speculation ceases and the illegitimate begins. And if
Tjaelde neglected any legitimate means of saving his estate he would be
culpable. A stern code of morals (which the commercial world of to-day
would scarcely exact), the poet enforces in the fourth act, where
Tjaelde refuses to accept any concession from his creditors, but insists
upon devoting the remainder of his life to the liquidation of his debts.

Admirably strong and vital is the exposition of the _rôle_ and functions
of money in the modern world, and the nearer and remoter psychological
effects of the tremendous tyranny of money. A certain external _éclat_
is required to give the great commercial house the proper splendor in
the sight of the world. Thus Tjaelde speculates in hospitality as in
everything else, and when he virtually has nothing, makes the grandest
splurge in order to give a spurious impression of prosperity. Though by
nature an affectionate man, he neglects his family because business
demands all his time. He defrauds himself of the happiness which knocks
at his door, because business fills his 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 the hour of trial, is a deeply typical
Norwegian figure. All the little coast towns have specimens to show of
these aspiring, faithful, sensitively organized souls, who, having had
no social advantages are painfully conscious of their deficiencies, but
whose patient industry and sterling worth in the end will triumph. No
less keenly observed and effectively sketched is the whole gallery of
dastardly little village figures--Holm, Falbe, Knutson with an s,
Knutzon, with a z, etc. Signe and Valborg, the two daughters of Tjaelde,
have, in spite of their diversity, a common tinge of Norwegian
nationality which gives a gentle distinctness and relief to the
world-old types.

Björnson's next play,[7] "The Editor," grapples with an equally modern
and timely subject, viz., the license of the press. With terrible
vividness he shows the misery, ruin, and degradation which result from
the present journalistic practice of misrepresentation, sophistry, and
defamation. It is a very dark picture he draws, 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 Björnson 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 general editorial type, but a well-known person who, until
recently, conducted one of the most influential journals in Norway. The
play is an act of retribution, and a deserved one. But its weaknesses,
which it is vain to disguise, are also explained by the author's
personal bias--the desire to wreak vengeance upon an enemy.

    [7] All the literary histories and other authorities which I have
    consulted put the publication of "Bankruptcy," as well as that of
    "The Editor," in 1875. But my own copy of the latter play bears on
    its title-page the year 1874.

The situation is as follows: Mr. Evje, a rich and generally respected
distiller, has a daughter, Gertrude, who is engaged to Harold Rein, a
political leader of peasant origin. Mr. Rein's brother, Halfdan, from
whom he has, in a measure, inherited the leadership, is dying from the
persecution to which he has been exposed by the Conservative press and
public. In his zeal for the Radical cause it is his consolation that he
leaves it in such strong hands as those of his brother. The election is
impending and a meeting of the electors has been called for the
following day. Harold is the candidate of the Left. It now becomes a
question 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 threatens him with social ostracism and commercial ruin. The
distiller, who is at heart a coward, is completely unnerved by this
threat. Well knowing how a paper can undermine a man's reputation
without making itself liable for libel, he sends his friend the doctor
to the editor, suing for peace. Late in the evening he meets his foe
outside of his house, and after much shuffling and parleying agrees to
do his will. He surprises his daughter and Harold Rein in a loving
_tête-à-tête_, and lacks the courage to carry out his bargain. He vainly
endeavors to persuade them to break the engagement and separate until
after the election.

In the meanwhile, John, a discharged servant of Evje (of whose
drunkenness and political radicalism we have previously been informed),
has overheard the parley with the editor, and in order to get even with
his master countermands in the editor's name his order to the foreman of
the printing-office; and the obnoxious article which was intended to be
omitted appears in the paper. John also takes care to procure Evje an
early copy, 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 house of his brother Halfdan, where he leaves
the copy of the paper. The sick man picks it up, reads an onslaught on
himself which in baseness surpasses the attack on Evje, starts up in
uncontrollable excitement, and dies of a hemorrhage. The maid, who sees
him lying on the floor, cries out into the street for help, and the
editor, who chances to pass by, enters. He finds the Radical leader
dead, with the paper clutched in his hand.

The fourth act opens with a festal arrangement at Evje's in honor of the
great success of Rein's electoral meeting. There is no more "holding
aloof." Everybody has convictions 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 pardon. He wishes to
explain, but no one wishes to listen. When Evje wavers and is on the
point of accepting his proffered hand, his wife and daughter loudly
protest.

The editor declares his purpose to renounce journalism. The festivities
are abandoned, and all betake themselves to the house of the dead
leader. Thus the play ends; there is no tableau, no climax, no dramatic
catastrophe. It is Zola's theory[8] and Maeterlink's practice
anticipated.

    [8] "Naturalism on the Stage."

The journalistic conditions here described are, of course, those of the
Norwegian capital nearly a quarter of a century ago. Few editors, I
fancy, outside of country towns, now go about personally spreading
rumors, 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 has the drama in its exposure of the desperate and
ignominious expedients to which a party will resort in order to defeat,
defame, and utterly destroy a political opponent. The following passages
may be worth quoting:

"Most of the successful politicians nowadays win not by their own
greatness but by the paltriness of the rest."

"Here is a fine specimen of a fossil. It is a piece of a palm-leaf, ...
which was found in a stratum of Siberian rock.... Thus one must become
in order to endure the ice-storms. Then one is not harmed. But your
brother! In him lived yet the whole murmuring, singing palm-forest....
As regards 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 dried up; ... hardened for the battle of life, as
they say. But what does that mean? We are to expel and evaporate the
warmth of the heart, the fancy's yearning, ... before we are fit for
life.... No, I say, it is those very things we are to preserve. That's
what we have got them for."

Björnson's increasing Radicalism and his outspoken Socialistic
sympathies had by this time alienated a large portion of the
Scandinavian public. 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 pleasure of quoting Björnson's reply when at his request
a friend repeated to him the opinion which was entertained of him in
certain quarters:

"Oh, yes," he cried, with a wrathful laugh, "don't I know it? You must
be a poet! You must not mingle in the world's harsh and jarring tumult.
They have a notion that a poet is a longhaired man who sits on the top
of a tower and plays upon a harp while his hair streams 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. All that concerns humanity
concerns me. If by my song or my speech I can contribute ever so little
toward the amelioration of the lot of the millions of my poorer
fellow-creatures, I shall be prouder of that than of the combined
laurels of Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe."

This is the conception of a poet which was prevalent in Norway in the
olden time. The scalds of the sagas were warriors as well as singers.
They fought with sword and battle-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 demonstrated
not only the pugnacity, but also the noble courage of their ancestry by
espousing the cause of opposing parties during the struggle for national
independence.

Those who demand that literature shall be untinged by any tendency or
strong conviction will do well to eschew all the subsequent works of
Björnson. They might perhaps put up with the brief novel "Magnhild,"
which is tolerably neutral in tone, though it is the least enjoyable of
all Björnson's works. It gives the impression that 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 applied to people to whom this style of language
is foreign. Moreover, these condensed sentences are often vague, full of
innuendo, and mysterious as hieroglyphics. It is as if the author, in
the consciousness of the delicacy of his theme, had lost the bold
security of touch which in his earlier works made his meaning
unmistakable.

The drama "The King" (1877) is an attack upon the monarchical principle
in its political as well as its personal aspect. It is shown how
destructive the royal prerogative is and must be to the king as an
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
self-knowledge which normal relations supply. Royalty is therefore a
curse, because it robs its possessor of the wholesome discipline of life
which is the right of every man that is born into the world.

Furthermore, there is an obvious intention to show that the monarchy,
being founded upon a lie, is incapable of any real adaptation to the
age, and reconciliation with modern progress. The king in the play is a
young, talented, liberal-minded man, who is fully conscious of the
anomaly of his position, and determined to save his throne by stripping
it of all mediæval and mythological garniture. He dreams of being a
"folk-king," the first citizen of a free people, a kind of hereditary
president, with no sham divinity to fall back upon, and no "grace of
God" to shield him from criticism and sanctify his blunders. He resents
the _rôle_ of being the lock of the merchant's strong-box and the head
of that mutual insurance company which is called the state. He goes
about _incognito_, first in search of love adventures, and later in
order to acquaint himself with public opinion; and he proves himself
remarkably unprejudiced and capable of profiting by experience. He falls
in love with Clara Ernst, the daughter of a Radical professor, who, on
account of a book he has written, has been sentenced for _crimen læsæ
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, by discarding its senseless pomp and bringing it
into accord with, and down to the level of, common citizenship--it is
this, I say, which upholds her in the midst of opprobrium, insults, and
hostile demonstrations. For the king's subjects, so far from being
charmed by his resolution to marry a woman out of their midst, are
scandalized. They riot, sing mocking songs, circulate base slanders, and
threaten to mob the royal bride on her way to her first public function.
She is herself terribly wrought up, particularly by the curse of her
father, who hates the king with the deep hatred of a fanatical
Republican. A royal princess, who had come to insult her, is conquered
by her candor and truth, and stays to sympathize with her and lend her
the support of her presence. But just as the king comes to lead her out
to face the populace, the wraith of her father rises upon the threshold
and she falls back dead. It is learned afterward that Professor Ernst
had died in that very hour.

The king's bosom friend, the Minister of the Interior, Gran, who is
largely responsible for his liberalism, and whose whole policy it has
been to rejuvenate and revitalize the monarchy, is challenged and shot
by his old teacher, the Republican Flink; and the king himself,
convinced of the futility of all his efforts to realize his idea of a
democratic monarchy, commits suicide.

As a piece of sanguinary satire on royalty as an institution "The King"
is most interesting--that is, royalty logically and speculatively
considered, without reference to its historical basis and development.
To me the postulate that it had its origin in a kind of conspiracy (for
mutual benefit) of the priest and the king seems shallow and
unphilosophical. Björnson's fanatical partisanship has evidently carried
him a little too far. For surely he would himself admit that every free
nation 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
inertiæ_ 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)
Björnson has happily satirized in the scene before the Noblemen's Club
in the third act. But, I fancy, it looks to him only as a sinister
power, which for its own base purposes has smitten humanity with
blindness to its own welfare. Though not intending to enter into a
discussion, I am also tempted to put a respectful little interrogation
mark after the statement that the republic is so very much cheaper than
the monarchy. If the experience of the two largest republics in the
world counts for anything, I should say that in point of economy there
was not much to choose.

Strange as it may seem, Björnson did not intend "The King" as an
argument in favor of the republic. In his preface to the third edition
he distinctly repudiates the idea. The recent development of the
Norwegian people, has, he says, made the republic a remoter possibility
than it was ten years before (1875). But he qualifies this statement
with the significant condition, "If we are not checked by fraud." And I
fancy that he would have a perfect right to justify his present position
by demonstrating 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 upon Christianity, though he contends that
religion is subject to growth as well as other things. The ultimate form
of government he believes to be the republic, on the journey toward
which all European states are proceeding fast, or slow, and in various
stages of progress. There is something abrupt, gnarled, Carlylese, in
his urgent admonitions and appeals for fair-play. The personal note is
so distinct that I cannot read the play without unconsciously supplying
the very cadence of Björnson's voice.

A further attempt to extend the boundaries of free discussion is made in
the two dramas, "Leonarda" (1879) and "A Glove" (1883), which both deal
with interesting phases of the woman question, and both wage war
against conventional notions of right and wrong. The former elucidates
the attitude of society toward the woman who has been compromised
(whether justly or not), and the latter its attitude toward the man. I
confess there is something a trifle hazy in his exposition of the
problem in "Leonarda;" and I am unable to determine whether Leonarda
really has anything to reproach herself with or not. In her conversation
with the bishop in the second act, she appears to admit that she has
much to regret. She begs him "help her atone for her past." She
practically throws herself upon his mercy, reminding him that his
Master, Christ, was the friend of sinners. But in the last act she
appears suddenly with the halo of martyrdom. General Rosen, who has been
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 the nephew of the bishop of the
diocese, who, after much persuasion is induced to receive Agot, on
condition that her aunt will remove from the district and demand no
recognition from the family. Having been informed of these conditions,
Leonarda calls upon the bishop, uninvited, and vainly remonstrates with
him. The young people are, however, unwilling to accept happiness on the
terms offered by his reverence. At this point a new complication arises.
Hagbart who had loved in Agot a kind of reflection of her aunt's
character and manner, being now thrown into the company of the latter,
discovers his mistake and transfers his affection to Leonarda. Exactly
wherein the newness of Leonarda's type consists we are not fully
informed, but we are led to infer that she represents a purer and truer
humanity than the women bred in the traditions of feudalism, with their
hypocritical arts and conventions. She is not meant to be seductive, but
radiant, ravishing.

There is a candor in her speech, and an almost boyish
straightforwardness, for which she is not indebted to nature but to the
stanch idealism of her creator. She is, however, on that account no less
impressionable, no less ready to respond to the call 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 cannot conquer her affection for the young
man, she believes that he will, in the course of time, return to Agot,
as soon as she is out of his way. The author evidently believes the
same. It is a hard lot to be a man in these later dramas of Björnson.

With a slight violation of the chronological sequence I shall discuss "A
Glove" in this connection, because of its organic coherence with
"Leonarda." They are the obverse and reverse of the same subject--the
cruelty of society to the woman of a blemished reputation, and its
leniency to the man.

To those who worship the conventional ideal of womanly innocence "A
Glove" will seem a very shocking book, for it fearlessly discusses, and,
what is 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, elevated and of an almost Utopian idealism; and the author
obviously means to raise, not to lower, her in the eyes of the reader by
her passionate frankness.

The problem of the drama is briefly this: Society demands of women an
absolute chastity, and refuses to condone the least lapse, either before
or after marriage. But toward men it is indulgent. It readily overlooks
a plenteous seed of wild oats, and would regard it as the sheerest
Quixotism to judge the bridegroom by the same standard of purity as it
does the bride. It is easy enough, and perhaps also legitimate, to
exclaim with Björnson that this is all wrong, and that a man has no
right to ask any more than he gives. As a mere matter of equity a wife
owes her husband no more fidelity than he owes her, and may exact of
him, if she chooses, the same prematrimonial purity that he exacts of
her. But questions of this kind are never settled on the basis of
equity. The sentiments by which they are determined have long and
intricate roots in the prehistoric past; and we are yet very far from
the millennial 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 it was in the hoariest antiquity. A husband's infidelity,
though morally as reprehensible as that of the wife, does not entail
quite such monstrous consequences. For if she deceives him, he may
ignorantly bring up another man's children, toil for them, bestow his
name and affection upon them, and leave them his property. One can
scarcely conceive of a more outrageous wrong than this; and it is in
order to guard against such a possibility that society from remote ages
has watched over the chastity of women far more jealously than over that
of men. It is as a result of this vigilance of centuries that women
have, among civilized nations, a finer sense of modesty than men, and a
higher standard of personal purity. Men are, as yet, as Mr. Howells
remarks, "imperfectly monogamous;" and Björnson is, no doubt, in the
main right in the tremendous indictment he frames against them in the
present drama.

It may be expedient to give a brief outline of the action. Svava Riis,
the daughter of prosperous and refined parents, becomes engaged to Alf
Christensen, the son of a great commercial magnate.

Her father and mother are overjoyed at the happy event; she is herself
no less delighted. Her _fiancé_ has an excellent reputation, shares her
interest in social questions, and supports 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 of lovers, fancies that he has had no predecessors in the
affection of the beloved. Alf can scarcely endure to have any one touch
Svava, and is almost ill when any one dances with her.

"When I see you among all the others," he exclaims, "and catch, for
instance, a glimpse of your arm, then I think: That arm has been wound
about my neck, and about no one else's in the whole world. She is mine!
She belongs to me, and to no one, no one else!"

Svava finds this feeling perfectly natural, and reciprocates it. She
ardently believes that he brings her as fresh a heart as she brings him;
that his past is as free from contaminating experience as is her own.
When, therefore, she obtains proof to the contrary, in an indignant
revulsion 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 transgression easy. She discovers that what in her
would have been a crime is in him a lapse, readily forgiven. Her whole
soul revolts against this inequality of conditions; and in terminating
their relation, which has lost all its beauty, she wishes to cut off all
chance of its future resumption.

In order to determine whether this sentiment of passionate virginity
(which in effect makes the marriage vow of fidelity retroactive) is not,
in the present condition of the world, a trifle overstrained, I have
submitted the question to two refined women for whom I have a high
regard. To my surprise they both declared that Svava, whatever she may
have said to the contrary, did not love her _fiancé_; that her sorrow
and even her indignation were just and natural; but that her somewhat
over-conscious purity--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 coequal with man, whose charm shall be of a
wholly different order. The coquetry, the sweet hypocrisy, nay, all the
frivolous arts which exercise such a potent sway over the heart of man
have their roots in the prehistoric capture and thraldom; and from the
point of view of the woman suffragists, are so many reminiscences of
degradation. I fancy that Björnson, sharing this view, has with full
deliberation made Svava boldly and inexorably truthful, frank as a boy
and as uncompromisingly honest as a man.

She has sufficient use for this masculine equipment (I am speaking in
accordance with the effete standards) in the battle which is before her.
Dr. Nordan, the family physician, her parents, and those of her
_fiancé_, take her to task and endeavor to demonstrate to her the
consequences of her unprecedented demand. She learns in the course of
this prolonged debate that she has been living in a fool's paradise. She
has been purposely (and with the most benevolent intention) 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 revenge upon him who tells tales
out of school. It is a consciousness of this which makes Christensen,
after having declared war to the knife against the Riises, withdraw his
challenge and become doubly cordial toward his enemy. Alf, who in the
second act has expressed the opinion that a man is responsible to his
wife for his future, but not for his past, retracts, and does penance.
Svava, in consideration of his penitence, gives him a vague hope of
future reconciliation.[9]

    [9] In the later acting version of the play, which ends with the
    throwing of the glove, this hope of reconciliation is definitely cut
    off. The author has evidently come to the conclusion that his
    argument is weakened 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 here presented; but the other
    changes seem to be dictated by a stricter regard for the exigencies
    of theatrical representation. The play has been translated into
    English under the title, "A Gauntlet," London, 1894.

It will be observed by every reader of "A Glove" that it is not a drama,
according to our American notion. It has very little dramatic action. It
might be styled a series of brilliant 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. By power I do not mean noise, but convincing impressiveness and
concentration of interest. One could scarcely imagine anything farther
removed from the ha! and ho! style of melodrama.

"The New System" is primarily social satire. It is a psychological
analysis of the effect of the "small state" upon its citizens. It is an
expansion and exemplification of the proposition (Act I., 1) that "while
the great states cannot subsist without sacrificing their small people
by the thousands, small states cannot subsist without the sacrifice of
many of their great men, nay of the very greatest." The smooth, 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 Björnson written anything more convincing,
penetrating, subtly satirical. He cuts deep; every incision draws blood.
A Norwegian who reads the play cannot well rid himself of a startled
sense of exposure that is at first wounding to his patriotism. It is
mortifying to have to admit that things are thus in Norway. And the
worst of it is that there appears to be no remedy. The condition is,
according to Björnson, inherent in all small states which cripple the
souls of men, stunt their growth, and contract their horizon.

The first act opens with a conversation between the civil engineers
Kampe and Ravn, and the former's son Hans, who has just returned from a
prolonged sojourn abroad. The keynote is struck in the sarcastic remark
of Ravn, that in a small society only small truths can be tolerated--of
the kind that takes twenty to the inch; but great truths are apt to be
explosive and should therefore be avoided, for they might burst the
whole society. This is _à propos_ of a book which Hans Kampe has
written, exposing the wastefulness and antiquated condition of the
so-called "new system" of railway management introduced, 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 been subjected, the curbing and jailing of Titanic powers
which once sought outlet in significant action. The same mighty force
which in its repression drives the men to the brandy-bottle makes the
women intoxicate themselves with fictitious narratives of high courage,
daring rescues, and all kinds of melodramatic heroism. Extremely amusing
is the scene in which Karen Riis (who loves Hans and is beloved by him)
goes rowing with her friends Nora and Lisa, taking with her a stock of
high-strung novels, and when a drowning man cries to them for help they
row away posthaste, because the man is naked.

The second act shows us the type of the successful man of compromise,
who takes the world as he finds it, and cleverly utilizes the foibles of
his fellow-men. The supervisor-general is a sort of personification of
public opinion. He is always correct, professes to believe what others
believe, and conforms from prudent calculation to the religious customs
of the community. He demands of his son Frederic that he shall abandon a
young girl whom he loves and has seduced, and he requires 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) demands an official
inquiry into the state of his accounts. Then all the world will say that
Hans Kampe has been used as a cat's-paw by his father, who, knowing that
an investigation is inevitable, wishes to throw dust in the eyes of the
public and save his own reputation by attacking that of his superior. It
is needless to say that he has not a shadow of suspicion regarding
Kampe's honesty, but merely chooses for his own defence the weapon which
he knows to be the most effective.

In order to fortify his position and sound the sentiment of the
profession, Riis gives a grand dinner to the engineers of the city, to
which Kampe and his son are also invited. The chairman of the committee
on railways (of the national diet) is present, and when it appears that
Hans Kampe makes a favorable impression upon him, the friends of Riis
concoct a scheme to injure him. They inform his father that he is
suspected of embezzlement, and get him drunk, whereupon the old man
scandalizes the company by a burst of uncomplimentary candor. When Hans
arrives the mischief is done; though the pathetic scene between father
and son convinces the chairman that, 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. Björnson chooses, however, to let neither the one party nor the
other triumph. In a small state, he says, no one is victorious;
everything ends in compromise. If two parties championed two different
plans of railway construction, the one of which was demonstrated to be
superior in economy and safety to the other, such a demonstration would
not be likely to result in its adoption. No, the two parties would come
together, dicker and compromise, and in the end the diet would agree to
build one road according to the one plan, and one according to the
other. Agreeably to this principle Björnson leaves the honors between
the combatants about easy; but Riis, deserted by his children, undergoes
a partial change of heart and is seized with doubt as to the excellence
of his philosophy of life.

That the satire of "The New System" struck home is obvious from the
fierceness and virulence of the criticism with which it was hailed. It
has never become fairly domesticated on the Scandinavian stages, and
probably never will be. In Germany, France, and Holland it has received
respectful attention, and (I am informed) has proved extremely effective
upon the boards.

In the same year as "The New System" (1879) appeared the delightful
novelette "Captain Mansana," dealing with Italian life, and throwing
interesting side-lights 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 and
sophistication of the Italian character, the histrionic touch which yet
goes with perfect sincerity, the author has apprehended and presented
with happy realism.

In "Beyond their Strength" (_Over Aevne_) (1883) Björnson has invaded
the twilight realm of psycho-pathological phenomena, and refers the
reader for further information to _Leçons sur le système nerveux, faites
par J. M. Charcot_, and _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 pronounce upon the
validity of the theory which is here advanced. The play is an inquiry
into the significance and authenticity of miracles. Incidentally the
theme is faith-healing, the hypnotic effect of prayer, and kindred
phenomena.

Pastor Sang, a clergyman in a remote parish of Northern Norway, is famed
far and wide as the miracle-priest, and it is popularly believed that he
can work wonders, as the apostles did of old. He has given away his
large fortune to the poor; in a fervor of faith he plunges into every
danger, and comes out unscathed; he lives constantly in an overstrained
ecstasy, and by his mere presence, and the atmosphere which surrounds
him, forces his wife and children to live in the same state of high
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
half-suppressed criticism in her mind. She feels the unwholesomeness of
thus "living by inspiration, and not by reason." When he comes to her,
"beaming always with a Sabbath joy," she would fain tune him down, if
she could, into a lower key, "the C-major of every-day life," as
Browning calls it. But in this effort she has had no success, for Sang's
ecstatic elevation above the concerns of earth is not only
temperamental; nature itself, in the extreme North, favors it. As Clara
expresses it:

"Nature here exceeds the limits of the ordinary. We have night nearly
all winter; we have day nearly all summer--and then the sun is above the
horizon, both day 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-effects upon sky, sea, and mountain! From
the deepest glow of red to the finest, tenderest, golden white. And the
colors of the aurora upon the wintry sky!" etc.

It is the most ardent desire of Sang to heal his wife, as he has healed
many others. But the doubt in her mind baffles him, and for a long time
he is unsuccessful. At last, however, he resolves to make a mighty
effort--to besiege the Lord with his prayer, to wrestle with him, as
Jacob did of old, and not to release him, until he has granted his
petition. While he lies thus before the altar calling upon the Lord in
sacred rapture, 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 follows a long discussion between the bishop and the clergy
regarding the value of miracles, some maintaining that the church has
outgrown the need of them, others that they are indispensable--that
Christianity cannot survive without them. For has not Christ promised
that "even greater things than these shall ye do?" Is not this a case of
the faith which verily can say to the mountain, "Rise up and cast
thyself into the sea?"

The other miracle, scarcely less marvellous than the deflection of the
avalanche, is that Clara, who has slept for the first time in a month,
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 hallelujahs
of the assembled multitudes. But when he tries to raise her she is dead,
and he himself, overwhelmed by his emotion, falls dead at her side.

This is so obviously a closet-drama that it is difficult to imagine how
it would look under the illumination of the foot-lights. For all that, I
see a recent announcement that the trial is soon to be made at the
_Théâtre Libre_ in Paris.[10] No Scandinavian theatre, as far as I know,
has as yet had the courage to risk the experiment. In his next play,
however, "Love and Geography" (1885), Björnson reconquered the stage and
repeated his early triumphs. From the scientific seriousness of "Beyond
their Strength" his pendulum swung to the opposite extreme of light
comedy, almost bordering on farce. Not that "Love and Geography" is
without a Björnsonian moral, but it is amusingly, jocosely enforced in
scenes 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 Björn Björnson, 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 from
sheer abstraction and becomes almost a boor, because all the world
outside of his book pales into insignificance, and all persons and
events are merely interesting in so far as they can stimulate inquiry or
furnish information bearing upon the immortal opus. The inevitable
consequence follows. The professor alienates all who come in contact
with him. He is on the point of losing the affection of his wife, and
his daughter comes near going astray for want of paternal supervision.
Both these calamities are, however, averted, though in an arbitrary and
highly eccentric manner. The professor's eyes are opened to the error of
his ways, he does penance, and the curtain falls upon a reunited family.

    [10] July, 1894.

The unpretentious little story "Dust" (_Stöv_, 1882) undertakes to
demonstrate the unwholesomeness of the religious ideas regarding the
life to come usually impressed upon children by parents and teachers. By
dust Björnson means all obsolete, lifeless matter in the world 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 to be a man is
nothing compared to being an angel--that to be alive is nothing compared
to being dead--then that is not the way to give them the right view of
life; not the way to teach them to love life; not the way to inspire
them with courage, energy, and patriotism."

In his novel "Flags in City and Harbor" (1884), the English translation
of which is entitled "The Heritage of the Kurts," Björnson has attacked
a tremendous problem. He has attempted to illustrate the force of
heredity, and the exact extent to which it may be modified by
environment--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 as surely, unless powerfully modified, necessitate its
extinction in the present age. For the Kurts are incapable of
assimilating civilization. An excess of physical vigor in the first Kurt
who settled in Norway takes the form of lawlessness and an entire
absence of moral restraint.

Violence of the most atrocious kind goes unpunished because Kurt is
powerful and has friends at court. In his two legitimate sons, Adler and
Max (he has a host of illegitimate ones), the family temperament is
modified, though in Max, who perpetuates the race, the modification is
not radical. Adler is a weakling of enormous vanity, silent and moody,
and addicted to the pleasures of the table. Max, on the other hand, is a
man of inexhaustible vitality, violent like his father, but possessed of
a gift of speech and a tremendous voice which serve to establish his
authority over the simple inhabitants of the little coast town.
Moreover, he is endowed with great shrewdness and practical sense, and
is an expert in ship-building, agriculture, and other pursuits. But he
is the terror of women, and his sensual excesses so undermine his
strength that he becomes insane, and believes that he is continually
pursued by the spirit of his brother, whose death he had caused. Konrad
Kurt, the son of Max, runs away from home because he cannot endure to
see his mother maltreated by his father. 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, though
it is fully cognizant of his mode of life, not only tolerates but even
pets him. He is entertaining, has been everywhere and seen everything.
He meets a young girl, named Thomasine Rendalen, the daughter of an
educated peasant, who occupies a position as a teacher. She is large,
ruddy, full of health and uncorrupted vigor. John Kurt takes a violent
fancy to her, and moves heaven and earth to induce her to marry him. He
goes even to the length of bribing all her female friends, and they by
degrees begin to sing his praises. At last she yields; a net of subtle
influences surrounds her, and unconsciously she comes to reflect the
view of society. Her moral prudery begins to appear ridiculous to her,
and the so-called common-sense view predominates. The author here, with
great earnestness, emphasizes the responsibility of society in weakening
the moral resistance of the individual rather than strengthening it.
Thomasine Rendalen would not have married John Kurt if society had not
condoned his offences; and society in condoning such offences undermines
its own foundations.

After his marriage Kurt endeavors to hold his exuberant nature in check,
and for a while is moderately successful. But an uneasy suspicion haunts
him that his wife's friends, in a confidential moment, may expose his
delinquencies, and destroy her confidence in him. He watches her like a
lynx, surprises her at all hours and places, and thereby produces the
suspicion which he is endeavoring to avert. The relation develops with
inevitable logic toward 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 must succumb, her compact
frame, strengthened by generations of healthful toil, possesses an
endurance which in the end must prevail over the paroxysmal rage of John
Kurt. When the combatants part there is not a whole piece of furniture
in the room. John Kurt retires a conquered man. But with cowardly
viciousness he locks the door and leaves his wife for hours despairing,
while he himself goes to a dinner-party. There he is stricken down by
apoplexy.

The terror with which Thomasine contemplates her approaching maternity
is one of the finest points in the book. Has she the right to perpetuate
such a race, which will be a curse to itself and to future generations?
Would she not confer a boon upon mankind if, by destroying herself, she
sweetened the life-blood of humanity? For by self-destruction she would
forever cut off the turbid current of the Kurt blood which had darkened
the vital stream of the race for centuries. The moral exaltation which
manifests 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 Rendalens, she will devote her life to
obliterating in it, or transforming into useful activities, the
destructive vigor of the paternal character. Thomas, when he is born,
chooses a golden mean between these two extremes, and perversely makes
his appearance as a red-haired, gray-eyed infant, in which both a Kurt
and a Rendalen might have made comforting observations. He is
accordingly permitted to live, and to become the hero of one of the most
remarkable novels which has ever been published in Scandinavia.

He is by no means a good boy, but his mother, by a kind of heroic
conscientiousness and rationality, slowly conquers him and secures his
attachment. She has solemnly abjured her connection with her husband's
family, assumed her maiden name, and has consecrated her life to what
she regards as the highest 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, would, in the hands of
another novelist, have been made the central scene in the book. But
Björnson is so tremendously in earnest that he cannot afford to stop and
note picturesque effect. Therefore he relates the burning of the Kurts
quite incidentally, and proceeds at once to talk of more serious things.

By turning the great, dusky, ancestral mansion into a school, Mrs.
Rendalen believes that she can best settle the account of the Kurts with
humanity. All the latest, improved methods of education are introduced.
The Hall of Knights is turned into a chemical laboratory, and the
daylight is allowed to pour unobscured into all its murky recesses.
Through the dim and lofty passage-ways resounds the laughter of
children; on the scenes of so many hoary crimes the prattle of innocent
girls is heard; a multitude of scientific instruments labor to
demonstrate the laws of nature, and to simplify the problem of existence
which the crimes of the Kurts had tended to complicate. Thomas Rendalen,
profoundly impressed as he is with his responsibility as the last
descendant of such a race, takes up this educational mission with a
lofty humanitarian enthusiasm. He has spent many years abroad in
preparing himself for this work, and possesses, like his
great-grandfather, the gift of lucid exposition. But his perpetual and
conscious struggle with his heritage makes him nervous and ill-balanced.
He conceives the idea, fostered both by observation and by the study of
his own family history, that unchastity is the chief curse of humanity,
and the 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, Björnson 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
characteristic of Björnson's respect for reality that he makes Rendalen
neither agreeable, handsome, nor lovable; nay, he dwells again and again
on the bad relations which temporarily exist between him and his mother,
between him and the teachers, between him and the town. For all that we
are filled with a profound respect for a man who can fight in himself so
great a fight, and win so great a victory. It is the sturdy peasant
blood which he derived from his mother that enables him to wrestle thus
mightily with the Lord, and extort at last the tardy blessing; for we
are assured in the last pages of the book that he makes a marriage,
which is a further step toward health and virtue. We are not assured
that he conquers happiness either for himself or for his wife; and there
is not a syllable to betray that he cherishes for her any romantic
attachment. But the chances are that, in transforming and ennobling the
Kurt heritage, he insures vigor and usefulness to his descendants. He
bequeathes to them a more wholesome mixture of blood than he himself
possesses, and an energy, nay, perhaps a genius, derived from the Kurts,
which, with an upward instead of a downward tendency, may be a redeeming
force in society instead of a corrupting one.

In order not to miss any phase of his problem, Björnson also takes up
briefly the illegitimate line of the Kurts, which, being unsupplied with
any favorable 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, and her recognition of the peculiar
scream of her own son in a terrible little ragamuffin, is one of the
most remarkable incidents in this remarkable book.

One thing that especially strikes the reader in this novel is the
author's fierce indignation against all shams, deceits, and social lies.
Therefore he calls a spade a spade, and leaves you to blush if you are
so inclined. The young girls whom he introduces are mostly misses in
their teens, and his portrayal of them is 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 Björnson has repudiated) has nevertheless found its most
brilliant exponent in him. Here the sordid and cruel facts of life are
not dwelt upon by preference; nor are they optimistically glossed over.
I doubt if a great and vital problem has ever been more vigorously,
unflinchingly, and convincingly treated in a work of fiction.

"_Paa Guds Veje_" ("In the Ways of God"), (1889), in which Thomas
Rendalen again figures, though not as hero, is another indictment of
conventional morality. It is a very powerful but scarcely an agreeable
book. The abrupt, laconic style has no flux, no continuity, and gives
the reader the sensation of being pulled up sharply with a curb bit,
whenever he fancies that he has a free rein. Though every page is
crowded with trenchant and often admirable observations, they have not
the coherence of an organic structure, but rather that of a mosaic. The
design is obvious, striking, and impressive. It is neither distorted nor
overdrawn. It is unquestionably thus we treat moral non-conformists,
even though it be in pure self-preservation that they broke the bond
which we are agreed to enforce. The question resolves itself into this:
Has society, in its effort to uphold its moral standards, the right to
exact the sacrifice of life itself and every hope of happiness from the
victims of its own ignorance and injustice? When the young physician,
Edward 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?
Björnson'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, Björnson 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," says an oriental proverb; and poor Ragni had no chelonian
armor. When her most harmless remarks are misinterpreted and her most
generous acts become weapons wherewith to slay her, she loses all heart
for resistance, and merely lies down to die. Very subtile and beautiful
is the manner in which Björnson indicates the interaction of psychical
and physical conditions. The "soul-frost" which chills the very marrow
of her bones is so vividly conveyed that you shiver sympathetically. The
self-righteous and brutally censorious attitude of the community lowers
the temperature and makes the atmosphere deadly. And the fact that it
is Ragni's unsuspicious innocence, and even her love of her husband,
which expose her to this condemnation is made plain with much delicate
art. Her residence of five years in the United States after her divorce,
and before her second marriage, had, no doubt, accustomed her to a
greater freedom of intercourse between man and woman, and thereby
disposed her to trip rather lightly over the stumbling-blocks of
prudence.

The history of Kallem's sister, Josephine, and her husband, the Reverend
Ole Tuft, which is closely interwoven with the above, furnishes us with
two more characters deeply felt and strongly realized. It is they who
are the chief instruments of Ragni's martyrdom. As the upholders of
social purity, and, as it were, professional guardians of morals, it
would seem that Tuft and his wife had 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
operation. Out of the ancient religion of dogmas which judges and damns,
Tuft is by these experiences led into a new religion of love, which
values life above faith, and charity above all. The reconciliation of
brother and sister in the last chapter is profoundly moving. The moral
is emphasized in the phrase with which the story closes: "Wherever good
men walk, there are the ways of God."

The charm of this novel is, to me, that it is strong, virile, instinct
with vital thought. There are blemishes in it, too, which no one will be
likely to overlook. Several chapters read like the reports of a clinic
in a medical journal, so extremely minute and circumstantial are the
accounts of Kallem's operations and hypnotic 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 incomprehensible. Thus, when, after an absence of six years,
he calls upon his brother-in-law, the pastor, he proceeds to turn
handsprings about the latter's study. When, after his marriage, his
sister meets him in the street for the purpose of informing him of the
scandalous rumors concerning his wife, he gives her a box on the ear.

In Björnson's last book, "New Tales" (_Nye Fortaellinger_) (1894), this
tendency to vehemence is even more marked. In the masterly story,
"Absalom's Hair" (than which the author has never written anything more
boldly original) old Harold Kaas literally spanks his young wife in the
presence of his servants. And the matter is in nowise minced, but
described with an unblushing zest which makes the impression of
_naïveté_. It is obvious that in his delight in the exhibition of a
healthy, primitive wrath, Björnson 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
laughter and applause, "went away a defeated and irremediably crushed
man." But for all that the incident is crude, harsh, and needlessly
revolting. In Russia it might have happened; but I am inclined to doubt
if a Norwegian gentleman, even though he were descended from the
untamable Kurts, would have been capable of so outrageous a breach of
decency.

Apart from this incident, "Absalom's Hair" is so interpenetrated with a
sense of reality that we seem to live the story rather than read it. I
verily believe it to be a type of what the fiction of the future will
be, when scientific education shall have been largely substituted 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. Man's vital
coherence with his environment is but loosely indicated. Chance reigns
supreme. They have observed carefully enough the external phenomena of
life--and chiefly for their picturesque or dramatic interest--but of the
causes which underlie them they rarely give us a glimpse.

It is in this respect that Björnson's last tales offer so grateful a
contrast to conventional fiction. Here is a man who has resolutely
aroused himself from the old romantic doze, cleared his eyes of the film
of dreams, and with a sharp, wide-awake intensity focussed them to the
actual aspect of the actual world. He has sat down with his windows wide
open, and allowed the sounds and sights and smells of reality to pour in
upon him. And the magic spectacles are his which enable him to gauge the
significance of the phenomena and divine the causes which lurk behind
them. Therefore his characterizations are often extremely
unconventional, and amid all their picturesque vigor of phrase hint at
the kind of knowledge which could only be possessed 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 character of Rafael Kaas, there
is the same beautiful respect for human nature, the same unshrinking
statement of "shocking" facts, and the same undeviating adherence to the
logic of reality. The hair by which Rafael, as his prototype, the son of
David, is arrested and suspended in the midst of his triumphant race is
sensuality. His life is on the point of being wrecked, and his splendid
powers are dissipated by his inability to restrain his passions. The
tragic fate which hovers over him from the moment of his birth is
admirably hinted at, but not emphasized, in the sketch of his parents.
The carnal overbalance, supplied by the blood of the Kurts, wellnigh
neutralizes the mechanical genius which is hereditary in the blood of
the Ravns.

It is reported that "Absalom's Hair" has aroused great indignation in
Christiania, because it is claimed that the characters are drawn, with
scarcely an attempt at disguise, from well-known persons in the
Norwegian capital.

The remaining stories of the volume, "An Ugly Reminiscence of
Childhood," "Mother's Hands," and "One Day" betray the same contempt for
romantic standards, the same capacity for making acquaintance with life
at first hand. The first-named is an account of a murder and execution,
and extremely painful. 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 for the same reason. The cruel
disillusion which in consequence overtakes the poor little soul-starved
heroine rises almost to the height of tragedy. It is an every-day tale,
full of "deep and blood-veined humanity," and deriving its interest and
significance from the very fact of its commonness.

What distinguishes the Norsemen above other nations is, generally
speaking, an indestructible self-respect and force of individuality. The
old Norse sagas abound in illustrations of this untamable vigor and
ruthless self-assertion. It was the looseness of the social structure,
resulting from this sense of independence and consequent jealousy and
internecine warfare, which destroyed the Icelandic republic and made
Norway for four centuries a province of Denmark. In all the great 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 Björnson, 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, Björnson possesses in a high degree. He fights, not as a daring
guerilla, but as the spokesman and leader of thousands. He is the
chieftain who looms a head above all the people. He wields a heavy
sword, and he deals mighty blows. The wrath that possesses him is,
however, born of love. He fights man in the name of humanity. It is not
for himself, primarily, that he demands larger liberties, securer
rights, more humanizing conditions of life; but it is for his
fellow-men. The many, the small and down-trodden, the dumb millions,
whom Ibsen despises, Björnson loves. As Dr. Brandes[11] has so happily
said:

    [11] Det Moderne Gjennembruds Maend, p. 60.

"Ibsen is a judge, stern as the old judges of Israel. Björnson is a
prophet, the hopeful herald of a better day. Ibsen is, in the depth of
his mind, a great revolutionist. In 'The Comedy of Love,' 'A Doll's
House,' and 'Ghosts,' he scourges marriage; in 'Brand,' the State
Church; in the 'Pillars of Society,' 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. Björnson is a conciliatory
spirit who wages war without bitterness. April sunshine glints and
gleams through all his works, while those of Ibsen, with their sombre
seriousness, lie in deep shadow. Ibsen loves the idea--the logical and
psychological consistency which drives Brand out of the church and Nora
out of the marital relation. To Ibsen's love of the idea corresponds
Björnson's love of man."


BIBLIOGRAPHY.

As Björnson's works have been translated not only into English, French,
and German, but also largely into Russian, Italian, Spanish, Bohemian,
and even remoter tongues, a bibliography, including all translations,
would demand a volume by itself. I shall therefore only enumerate the
more important English translations; but would warn my readers not to
judge Björnson's style by that of his translators. _Arne_: Translated by
Augusta Plesner and S. R. Powers (Boston, 1872). _The Happy Boy_:
Translated by H. R. G. (Boston, 1872). _The Railroad 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): _Synnöve 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 New
York, 1888). _Arne_ and _The Fisher Lassie_: Translated, with an
Introduction, by W. H. Low (Bohn Library, London). _Pastor Sang (Over
Aevne)_: Translated by Wm. Wilson (London, 1893). _In God's Way_
(Heinemann's International Library, London, 1891). _The Heritage of the
Kurts_, 1892. _A Gauntlet_. A Play. London, 1894. A new translation of
all Björnson's novels and tales has just been announced by Messrs.
Macmillan & Co., and the first volume, _Synnöve Solbakken_ (New York and
London, 1895), has appeared. The translation is rather slipshod.




ALEXANDER KIELLAND


In June, 1867, about a hundred enthusiastic youths were vociferously
celebrating their attainment of the baccalaureate degree at the
University of Norway. The orator 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 the crudity of a
provincial either in his manners or his appearance. He spoke with a
quiet self-possession and a pithy incisiveness which were altogether
phenomenal.

"That young man will be heard from one of these days," was the unanimous
verdict of those who listened to his clear-cut and finished sentences,
and noted the maturity of his opinions.

But ten years passed, and outside of Stavanger no one ever heard of
Alexander Kielland. His friends were aware that he had studied law,
spent some winters in France, married, and settled himself as a
dignitary in his native town. It was understood that he had bought a
large brick and tile factory, 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 did, as the most brilliant and notable
personality among my university friends, I began to apply to him
Mallock's epigrammatic damnation of the man of whom it was said at
twenty that he would do great things, at thirty that he might do great
things, and at forty that he might have done great things.

This was the frame of mind of those who remembered Alexander Kielland
(and he was an extremely difficult man to forget), when in the year 1879
a modest volume of "Novelettes" appeared, bearing his name. It was, to
all appearances, a light performance, 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 seemed altogether un-Norwegian. It was obvious that this author
was familiar with the best French writers, and had acquired through them
that clear and crisp incisiveness of utterance which was supposed,
hitherto, to be untransferable to any other tongue.

As regards the themes of these "Novelettes," it was remarked at the time
of their first appearance that they hinted at a more serious purpose
than their style seemed to imply. Who can read, for instance, "Pharaoh"
(which in the original is entitled "A Ball Mood") without detecting the
revolutionary note that trembles quite audibly through the calm and
unimpassioned language? There is, by the way, a little touch of
melodrama in this tale which is very unusual with Kielland. "Romance and
Reality," too, is glaringly at variance with conventional romanticism 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 the more cruelly visible to the
visitors of the little alley-way at the rear of the tents. In "A Good
Conscience" the satirical note has a still more serious ring; but the
same admirable self-restraint which, next to the power of thought and
expression, is the happiest gift an author's fairy godmother can bestow
upon him, saves Kielland from saying too much--from enforcing his lesson
by marginal comments, _á la_ George Eliot. But he must be obtuse indeed
to whom this reticence is not more eloquent and effective than a page of
philosophical moralizing.

"Hope's Clad in April Green" and "The Battle of Waterloo" (the first
and the last tale in the Norwegian edition) are more untinged 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-love of very young
people, and the amusing over-estimate of our importance to which we are
all, at that age, peculiarly liable.

As an organist with vaguely melodious hints foreshadows in his prelude
the musical _motifs_ which he means to vary and elaborate in his fugue,
so Kielland 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 this little book was a light sketch of his mental physiognomy,
from which, perhaps, his horoscope might be cast and his literary future
predicted.

Though a patrician by birth and training, he revealed a strong sympathy
with the toiling masses. But it was a democracy of the brain, I should
fancy, rather than of the heart. As I read the book, sixteen years ago,
its tendency puzzled me considerably, remembering, as I did, with the
greatest vividness, the fastidious and _distingué_ personality of the
author. 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 bottle of seltzer presently reconciles him to his lot,
and restores the equilibrium of the universe. He loves the people at a
distance, can talk prettily about the sturdy son of the soil, who is the
core and marrow of the nation, etc.; but he avoids contact with him,
and, if chance brings them into contact, he loves him with his
handkerchief to his nose.

I may be pardoned for having identified Alexander Kielland with this
type, with which I am very familiar; and he convinced me presently that
I had done him injustice. In his next book, the admirable novel "Garman
and Worse," he showed that his democratic proclivities were something
more than a mood. He showed that he took himself seriously, and he
compelled the public to take him seriously. The tendency which had only
flashed forth here and there in the "Novelettes" now revealed its whole
countenance. The author's theme was the life of the prosperous
_bourgeoisie_ in the western coast towns; and he drew their types with a
hand that gave evidence of intimate knowledge. He had himself sprung
from one of these rich ship-owning, patrician families, had been given
every opportunity to study life both at home and abroad, 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 in fiction which is so vividly and
completely individualized, and populated with such living and credible
characters. Take, for instance, the two clergymen, Archdeacon Sparre and
the Rev. Mr. Martens, and it is not necessary to have lived in Norway in
order to recognize and enjoy the faithfulness and the artistic subtlety
of these portraits. If they have a dash of satire (which I will not
undertake to deny), it is such delicate and well-bred satire that no
one, except the originals, would think of taking offence. People are
willing, for the sake of the entertainment which it affords, to forgive
a little quiet malice at their neighbors' expense. The members of the
provincial bureaucracy are drawn with the same firm but delicate touch,
and everything has that beautiful air of reality which proves the world
akin.

It was by no means a departure from his previous style and tendency
which Kielland signalized in his next novel, "Laboring People" (1881).
He only emphasizes, as it were, the 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 the
corrupting influence of the upper upon the lower class. He has in this
book made some appalling, soul-searching studies in the pathology as
well as the psychology of vice.

Kielland's third novel, "Skipper Worse," marked a distinct step in his
development. It was less of a social satire and more of a social study.
It was not merely a series of brilliant, exquisitely finished scenes,
loosely strung together on a slender thread of narrative, but was a
concise and well-constructed story, full of beautiful scenes and
admirable portraits. The theme is akin to that of Daudet's
"L'Évangéliste;" but Kielland, as it appears to me, has in this instance
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, however,
the advantage (or, as he himself asserts, the disadvantage) of working
in a flexible and highly finished language, which bears the impress of
the labors of a hundred masters; while Kielland has to produce his
effects of style in a poorer and less pliable language, which often
pants and groans in its efforts to render a subtle thought. To have
polished this tongue and sharpened its capacity for refined and incisive
utterance, is one--and not the least--of his merits.

Though he has by nature no more sympathy with the pietistic movement
than Daudet, Kielland yet manages to get psychologically closer to his
problem. His pietists are more humanly interesting than those of Daudet,
and the little drama which they set in motion is more genuinely
pathetic. Two superb figures--the lay preacher Hans Nilsen and Skipper
Worse--surpass all that the author had hitherto produced in depth of
conception and brilliancy of execution. The marriage of that delightful,
profane old sea-dog Jacob Worse with the pious Sara Torvestad, and the
attempts of his 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
Björnson, in "The Heritage of the Kurts," primarily emphasizes the
responsibility of the individual to society, Kielland chooses to
emphasize the responsibility of society to the individual. The former
selects a hero with vicious inherited tendencies, redeemed by wise
education and favorable environment; the latter portrays a heroine with
no corrupt predisposition, destroyed by a corrupting environment. Elsie
could not be good, because the world was once so constituted that girls
of her kind were not expected to be good. Temptations, perpetually
thronging in her way, broke down the moral bulwarks of her nature;
resistance seemed in vain. In the end, there is scarcely one who, having
read the book, will have the heart to condemn her.

Incomparably clever is the satire on the benevolent societies which
exist to furnish a kind of officious sense of virtue to their
aristocratic members. "The Society for the Redemption of the Abandoned
Women of St. Peter's Parish" is presided over by a gentleman who is
responsible for the 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 veiled. The horror of the secretary of the
society, when she hears that "the abandoned woman" who calls upon her
for aid, has a child without being married, is both comic and pathetic.
In fact, there is not a scene in the book which is not instinct with
life and admirably characteristic.

Besides being the author of some minor comedies and a full-grown drama
("The Professor"), Kielland has published several novels, the more
recent being "Poison" (1883), "Fortuna" (1884), "Snow" (1886), and "St.
John's Eve" (1887).

The note of promise and suspense with which "Snow" ends is meant to be
symbolic. From Kielland's point of view, Norway is yet wrapped in the
wintry winding-sheet of a tyrannical orthodoxy, and all he dares assert
is that the chains of frost and snow seem to be loosening. There is a
spring feeling in the air.

This spring feeling is scarcely perceptible in his last book, "Jacob"
(1890), which is written in anything but a hopeful mood. It is rather a
protest against that optimism which in fiction we call poetic justice.
The harsh and unsentimental logic of reality is emphasized with a
ruthless disregard of rose-colored traditions.

From the pedagogic point of view, I have no doubt that "Jacob" would be
classed as an immoral book. But the question of its morality is of less
consequence than the question of its truth. The most modern literature,
which is interpenetrated with the spirit of the age, has a way of asking
dangerous questions--questions before which the reader, when he
perceives their full 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 adaptation to environment, and success
is the supreme aim of the modern man. The authors who, by their fearless
thinking and speaking, help us toward this readjustment should, in my
opinion, whether we choose to accept their conclusions or not, be hailed
as benefactors. It is in the ranks of these that Alexander Kielland has
taken his place, and occupies a conspicuous position.




JONAS LIE


The last Norwegian novelist who is in the Parisian sense _arrivé_ is
Jonas Lie.[12] The _Figaro_ has occupied itself with him of late; and
before long, I venture to predict, London and New York will also have
discovered him. English versions of a few of his earlier novels
appeared, to be sure, twenty years ago--in very bad translations--and
accordingly attracted no great attention. "The Visionary," which has
recently been published in London, has had better luck, having been
accorded a flattering reception. Of its popular success it is yet too
early to speak. But even if Jonas Lie were not about to knock at our
gates, I venture to say that I shall earn the 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 uncompromising
specimens of modern realism is a certain richness of temperament on the
author's part, which suffuses even the harshest narrative with a rosy
glow of hope. Though, generally speaking, there is no very close kinship
between him and the French realists, I am tempted to apply to him Zola's
beautiful characterization of Daudet: "Benevolent Nature placed him at
that exquisite point where reality ends and poetry begins." Before he
had yet written a single book, except a volume of flamboyant verse,
Björnson said of him in a public speech: "His friends know that he only
has to plunge his landing-net down into himself in order to bring it up
full."

    [12] Pronounced _Lee_.

The man who, in anticipation of his achievements, impressed Björnson so
deeply with his genius, was, however, by others, who felt themselves to
be no less entitled to an opinion, regarded as an "original," not to say
a fool. That he was decidedly queer, his biography by Arne Garborg amply
testifies.

    "Two souls, alas, abide within my breast,
    The one forever strives against the other,"

says Faust; and Jonas Lie's life and literary activity are apparently,
in a very real sense, the result of a similar warfare. There was,
indeed, a good ancestral reason for the duality of his nature. His
father, a judge of sterling ability and uprightness, was descended, but
a few generations back, from sturdy, blond, Norwegian peasants; while
his mother was of Finnish, or possibly Gypsy, 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 paternal ancestors, who were for three generations judges and
judicial functionaries, he has derived his good sense, his intense
appreciation of detail, and his strong grip on reality. His career
represents at its two poles a progression from the adventurous
romanticism of his maternal heritage to the severe, wide-awake realism
of the paternal--the emancipation of the Norseman from the Finn.

"Jonas Lie has a good memory," writes his biographer. "Thus he
remembers--even though it be as through a haze--that he was once in the
world as the son of a laborer, a carpenter, or something in that line,
and that 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 capacity he was shot one moonlight night on the snow. After that
he emerged, according to his recollection, as Jonas Lauritz Idemil, son
of the lawyer Mons Lie, at Hougsund, in Eker. This took place November
6, 1833."

When he was but a few years old his father removed, in various official
capacities, to Mandal, Söndhordland, and, finally, to the city of
Tromsoe, in Nordland. It was here, in the extreme north, that Jonas
spent the years of his boyhood, and it was this wild, enchanted region
which put the deepest impress upon his spirit.

"In Nordland," he says in "The Visionary," the hero of which is
essentially the Finnish half of himself, "all natural phenomena are
intense, and appear in colossal contrasts. There is an endless,
stony-gray desert as in primeval times, before men dwelt there; but in
the midst of this are also endless natural riches. There is sun and
glory of summer, the day of which is not only twelve hours, but lasts
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 white,
sixteen-year-old girls; while the fragrance of the strawberry and
raspberry fills the air as nowhere else; and the day is so hot that you
feel a need to bathe yourself in the sun-steeped, plashing sea, so
wondrously clear to the very bottom.... Myriads of birds are surging
through the air, like white breakers about the cliffs, and like a
screaming snow-storm about their brooding-places...."

But "as a contrast there is a night of darkness and terror which lasts
nine months."

In this arctic gloom, during which the yellow candle-light struggled all
day long through the frost-covered window-panes, the Finn grew big in
Jonas Lie, and the Norseman shrank and was almost dwarfed. The air was
teeming with superstitions which he could not help imbibing. His fancy
fed eagerly on stories of Draugen, the terrible sea-bogie who yells
heartrendingly in the storm, and the sight of whom means death; on
blood-curdling tales of Finnish sorcery and all sorts of uncanny
mysteries; on folk-legends of trolds, nixies, and foul-weather sprites.
He had his full share of that 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 to his rescue and routed
his uncomfortable yoke-fellow. Hence that very curious phenomenon that
the same man who has given us sternly and soberly realistic novels like
"The Family at Gilje" and "The Commodore's Daughters," is also the
author of the collection of tales called "Trold," in which his fancy
runs riot in a phantasmagoria of the grotesquest imaginings. The same
Jonas Lie who comports himself so properly in the parlor is quite
capable, it appears, of joining nocturnally the witches' dance at the
Brocken and cutting up the wildest antics under the pale glimpses of the
moon.

Throughout his boyhood he struggled rather ineffectually against his
Hyde, who made him kill roosters, buy cakes on credit, go on forbidden
expeditions by land and sea, and shamefully neglect his lessons.
Accordingly, he made an early acquaintance with the rod, and was
regarded as 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 was useless to criticise. In his reminiscences from his early
years, which he published some years ago, he is so delightfully boy,
that no one who has any recollection of that barbaric period in his own
life can withhold his sympathy. The following, for instance, seems to me
charming:

"I can still feel how she (Kvaen Marja, the maid) pulled us, cowering
and reluctant, out of our warm beds, where we lay snug like birds in
their nests, between the reindeer skin and the sheepskin covering. I
remember how I stood asleep 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 scant quarter hour,
while the breakfast was being devoured down in the dining-room with
mother, who sat and poured out tea before the big astral lamp, while
darkness and snow-drift lay black upon the window-panes. Then up and
away!...

"There (in the school) I sat and perspired in the sultry heat of the
stove, and with a studiously unconcerned face watched with strained
anxiety 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.... That was a perfect millstone lifted from my breast, though, as
yet, nothing could be sure. Now for a surreptitious peep at the end of
the lesson."

It was Jonas Lie's ambition at that time to become a gunsmith. He had a
profound respect for the ingenuity and skill required for such a curious
bit of mechanism. But his father, who could not afford to have a member
of his family descend into the rank of artisans, promptly strangled
that ambition. Then the sea, which has been "the Norseman's path to
praise and power," no less than the Dane's, lured the adventurous lad;
and his parent, who had no exalted expectations regarding him, gave his
consent to his entering the Naval Academy at Fredericksvaern. But here
he was rejected on account of near-sightedness. 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 Höiland 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 fancy, and so enamored was he of his own imaginary deeds, that
he lost sight of the fact that they were of the stuff that dreams are
made of. With frank and innocent trustfulness he told them to his
friends, both young and old, and soon earned a reputation as a most
unblushing liar. But if any one dared call him that to his face, he had
to reckon with an awe-inspiring pair of fists which were wielded with
equal precision and force. The youth, being at variance with the world,
lived in a state of intermittent warfare, and he gave and received
valiant blows, upon which he yet looks back with satisfaction.

In spite of his distaste for books Jonas Lie managed, when he was
eighteen years old, to pass the entrance examination to the University.
Among his schoolmates during his last year of preparation at Heltberg's
Gymnasium, in Christiania, were Björnstjerne Björnson and Henrik Ibsen.
The former took a great interest in the odd, _naïve_, near-sighted
Nordlander who walked his own ways, thought his own thoughts, and
accepted ridicule with crushing indifference.

"I was going about there in Christiania," he says in a published letter
to Björnson, "as a young student, undeveloped, dim, and unclear--a kind
of poetic visionary, a Nordland twilight nature--which after a fashion
espied what was abroad in the age, but indistinctly in the dusk, as
through a water telescope--when I met a young, clear, full-born force,
pregnant with the nation's new day, the blue steel-flash of
determination in his eyes and the 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 friend you are. You helped and guided and found grains of
gold, where others saw mostly nonsense, and perhaps half a screw loose.
While I was straying in search of the spiritual tinsel, with which the
_esprits forts_ of the age were glittering, you taught me, and impressed
upon me, again and again, that I had to seek in myself for whatever I
might possess of sentiment and simplicity--and that it was out of this I
would have to build my fiction."

This bit of confession is extremely significant. The Finnish Hyde was
evidently yet uppermost. Björnson taught Lie to distrust the tinsel
glitter of mere rhetoric, and the fantastic exuberance of invention in
which the young Nordlander believed that he had his _forte_. But the
matter had 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. He had been Hyde. The cold shudders which lurked in his blood
from the long, legend-haunted arctic night could break into open terror
on unforeseen occasions. Grown man though he was, he was afraid of being
alone in the dark--a peculiarity which once got him into a comical
predicament.

It was his habit when travelling to place his big top-boots at night
within easy reach, so that he might use them as weapons against any
ghost or suspicious-looking object that might be stirring in the gloom.
One evening when he had gone to bed at a country 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. It was a fellow-traveller--a lumber-dealer--who was to
occupy the other bed in the room. He had undressed and was disporting
himself in nocturnal attire before reposing, when Jonas Lie's well-aimed
missile hit him in the stomach and doubled him up with pain.

A skeleton in the den of a medical friend caused Lie many a shiver, for
he could never quite rid himself of the idea that it moved. All that lay
beyond the range of the senses 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, he
possesses in a marked degree the "sixth sense" that gropes eagerly and
with a half-terrified fascination in the dusk that lies beyond the
daylight of the other five.

The verses which Jonas Lie began about this time to produce are mostly
written for patriotic and other festive occasions, and therefore arouse
no creepy sensations. But they are so overladen with confusing imagery
that they have to be read twice to be understood. In the poem "Solveig"
(1855) he makes the heart "in its prison envy the free-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 is capable of. Nevertheless there
is often in his patriotic songs a most inspiriting bugle-note, which is
found nowhere in Browning, unless it be in the "Cavalier Tunes." The
curiosities of his prosody are (according to his biographer)
attributable to the Nordland accent in his speech. They would sound all
right, he says, to a Nordland ear.

    [13] Nordahl Rolfsen: Norske Digtere, p. 527.

At the risk of violating chronology I may as well speak here of his two
collections of "Poems" (1867 and 1889) (the latter being an expurgated
but enlarged edition of the earlier), to which the present criticisms
particularly apply. Both editions contain notable things amid occasional
bits of what scarcely rises above doggerel. 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 to such untranslatable poems as "Draugen," "Finn-Shot,"
"The Mermaid," and "Nightmare." The mood of these is heavy and uncanny,
like that of the "Ancient Mariner." But they are indubitably poetry. It
is by no means sure that the world has not lost a poet in Jonas Lie; but
probably a lesser one than the novelist that it gained.

As Jonas had been voted by his kin the family dullard, it was decided to
make a clergyman of him. But to this the young man objected, chiefly,
according to his own story, because the clerical gown looks too much
like a petticoat. At all events, after having equipped himself with a
set of theological tomes, and peeped cursorily 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 concluded to put in another year and try again. And this time he
managed to acquit himself creditably. He then began (1859) the practice
of the law in the little town of Kongsvinger, the centre of the richest
lumber districts in Norway. But in the meanwhile he had had an
experience of another kind which is worth recounting.

From his boyhood he had been a worshipper of the fair sex. Marriages (of
other people) had been among the most tragic events in his life; and he
rarely failed to shed tears at the thought that now this lovely charmer,
too, was removed from the number of his possible selections. If things
went on in this way he would have no choice but to be a bachelor.
However, one fine day a most attractive-looking 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 married. And from that day the Finnish Hyde in Jonas
was downed and reduced to permanent subjection. He never raised his head
again. The more sober-minded, industrious, and sensible Norse Jekyll
took command and steered with a steady hand, in fair weather and foul,
and often through dangerous waters, the barque Jonas Lie, which came to
carry more and more passengers the longer it proceeded on its voyage.

Truth to tell, I know among contemporary men of letters no more
complete, happy, and altogether beautiful marriage than that of Jonas
and Thomasine Lie. The nearest parallel to it that I can think of is
that of John Stuart Mill and Mrs. Taylor, who later became Mrs. Mill.

Lie's friends accuse him of carrying his admiration of his wife to the
verge of idolatry. He will leave himself but little merit, but with an
air of candid conviction 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 again, "If I have written
anything that is good, then my wife deserves as much credit for it as
myself ... Without her nothing would have come of it except nonsense."

Even though that may be an exaggeration, pure delusion it is not. For
Mrs. Lie is, in a certain way, the complement to her husband. She
possesses what he has not; and he possesses what she, in her modest
self-extinction, would never dream of laying claim to. The spirit of
order, adjustment, and lucidity is strong in her; while he, in his
fanciful exuberance, is often overwhelmed by his material, and is unable
to get it into shape. Then she quietly steps in and separates the dry
land from the water in his seething and struggling chaos. She is one of
those rare women who, while apparently only listening, can give you 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 superintendence of
her household. She understands to perfection the art of economy and has
a keen practical sense, which makes her admirably competent in all the
more difficult situations in life. And he, feeling her competence and
his own deficiency, frankly leans on her. Hence a certain motherliness
on her part (most beautiful to behold) has tinged their relation; and on
his an admiring and affectionate dependence. Each prizes in the other
what he himself lacks; and the husband's genius loses none of its
brightness to the wife, because it is herself who trims the wick and
adjusts the reflectors which send its light abroad.

I have again anticipated, because the subsequent career of Jonas Lie
could not be properly understood without a full appreciation of the new
factor which from this time enters into it. He developed signal ability
as a lawyer during the years of his practice at Kongsvinger; became
prosperous and influential, bought a considerable estate (called
Sigridnaes) and began to dabble in politics. He still wrote occasional
poems, and was the soul of all conviviality in the town. He entertained
celebrities, 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 last farthing. Quixotic as it may
seem, it was his intention to accomplish this by novel-writing. And to
his honor be it said that for a long series of years he kept sending
every penny he could spare, above the barest necessities, to his
creditors, refusing to avail himself of the bankruptcy law and accept a
compromise. But it was a bottomless pit into which he was throwing his
hard-earned pennies, and in the end he had to yield to the persuasions
of his family and abandon the hopeless enterprise.

In Christiania he spent some hard and penurious years, trying to make a
livelihood as a journalist and man of letters. Some of his friends
suspected that the Lie family were subsisting on very short rations; but
they were proud, and there was no way to 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 only made orations to his pupils, but taught them no
rhetoric. His volume of "Poems" (1867) had attracted no particular
attention; but his political articles were much read and discussed.
However, it was not in politics that he was to win his laurels.

    [14] A well-known Norwegian philanthropist, whose work on the
    Gypsies is highly regarded.

A little before Christmas, 1870, there appeared from Gyldendal's
publishing-house in Copenhagen a novel, entitled "The Visionary" (_Den
Fremsynte_), by Jonas Lie. To analyze the impression which 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-plant, and 'The Visionary' is his one
blossom. It is the one good novel which almost every life is said to
contain. Only this is so strikingly good that it is a pity it will have
no successors."

It was evidently himself, or rather the Finnish part of himself, the
author was exploring; it was in the mine of his own experience he was
delving; it was his own heart he was coining. That may, in a sense, be
true of every book of any consequence; but it was most emphatically true
of "The Visionary." It is not to the use of the first person that this
autobiographical note is primarily due; but to a certain beautiful
intimacy in the narrative, and a _naïve_ confidence which charms the
reader and takes him 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 is no small achievement. It is
the loveliness of love, the sweetness of womanhood, the glorious ferment
of the blood in the human springtide which are celebrated in "The
Visionary." The thing is beautifully done. I do not know where young
love has been more touchingly portrayed, unless it be in some of the
Russian tales of Tourguéneff.[15] The second-sight with which the hero,
David Holst, is afflicted, introduces an undertone of sadness--a pensive
minor key--and seems to necessitate the tragic _dénouement_.

    [15] Spring Floods, Liza, Faust.

The immediate success of "The Visionary" changed Jonas Lie's situation
and prospects. He was first sent with a public stipend to Nordland for
the purpose of studying the character, manners, and economic condition
of the dwellers within the polar zone; and, like the conscientious man
he is, he made an exhaustive report to the proper department, detailing
with touching minuteness the results of his observations. The Norwegian
government has always taken a strong (and usually very intelligent)
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 beneficiary of the well-known Schafer legacy for the training of
artists. In the autumn of 1871 he started with his wife and four
children for Rome. It was in a solemnly festal frame of mind that he now
resolved to devote the rest of his life to his real vocation, which at
last he had found. This was what they had all meant--his gropings,
trials, and failures. They had all fitted him for the life-work which
was now to be his. The world lay before him as in the shining calm after
storm.

He took his artistic training, as everything else, with extreme
seriousness. With the utmost conscientiousness he started out with his
Thomasine, morning after morning, to study the Vatican and the
Capitoline collections. "Happy is the man," says Goethe, "who learns
early in 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 is
so profoundly Germanic that only an ill-wisher would covet for him that
expansion of vision which would enable him to perceive with any degree
of artistic realization and intimacy the glorious serenity of the Juno
Ludovisi and the divine distinction of the Apollo Belvedere.

The two books which were the first-fruits of the Roman sojourn were a
disappointment to his friends, though in the case of the unpretentious
collection called "Tales and Sketches from Nordland" (1872) there is no
reason why it should have been. The public found that it was not on a
level with "The Visionary," and by "The Visionary" 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 interest in the material, and a delightful picturesque
vigor in the descriptions of nature. But of romantic interest of the
kind which the ordinary novel-reader craves, there was very little. _À
propos_ of "The Barque Future" let me quote a bit of general
characterization which applies to nearly all the subsequent works of
Jonas Lie.

"It is in this particular that Jonas Lie most distinctly diverges from
all romanticism and romance-writing: His interest in pra

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