Of the two great writers who have, more than any others, made it possible
for Norway to share in the comity of intellectual intercourse so
characteristic of the modern literary movement, it must be granted that
Björnson is, more distinctly than Ibsen, the representative of their
common nationality. Both are figures sufficiently commanding to belong,
in a sense, to the literature of the whole world, and both have had a
marked influence upon the ideals of other peoples than that from which
they sprung; but the wider intellectual scope of Ibsen has been gained
at some sacrifice of the strength that comes from taking firm root in
one's native soil, and speaking first and foremost to the hearts of
one's fellow-countrymen. What we may call the cosmopolitan standpoint of
the greater part of his work has made its author less typically a
Norwegian than Björnson has always remained. It is not merely that the
one writer has chosen to spend the best years of his life in countries
not his own, while the other has never long absented himself from the
scarred and storm-beaten shores of the land, rich in historic memories
and "dreams of the saga-night," that gave him birth and nurture.
Tourguénieff lived apart from his fellow-countrymen for as many years as
Ibsen has done, yet remained a Russian to the core. It is rather a
difference of native intellectual bent that has left Björnson to stand
as the typical representative of the Norwegian spirit, while the most
famous of his contemporaries has given himself up to the pursuit of
abstractions, and has been swept along by a current of thought resulting
from the confluence of many streams. The intensely national character of
Björnson's manifold activity is well illustrated by a remark of Georg
Brandes, to the effect that mention of Björnson's name in the presence
of any gathering of Norwegians is like running up the national flag. And
it seems, on the whole, that the sum total of his literary achievement
must be reckoned the greatest to be set down to the credit of any one
Norwegian since Norway began to develop a literature of her own. Far
nobler and finer than that of either Wergeland or Welhaven, the two most
conspicuous of his predecessors, this achievement is challenged by that
of Ibsen alone, and even then in but a single aspect. It is only as
dramatists that suspense of judgment between the two men is for a moment
admissible; as a poet the superiority of Björnson is unquestionable,
while his rank as the greatest of Norwegian novelists is altogether
beyond dispute.
[Illustration: BJÖRNSON]
The chief facts of Björnson's life may be briefly set forth. The son of
a parish priest, he was born December 8th, 1832, at Kvikne. When the boy
was six years of age, his family removed to the Romsdal, and a few years
later Björnstjerne was sent to school at Molde. His childhood was thus
passed in the midst of the noblest scenery of Norway, and in regions of
the richest legendary association. The austere sublimity of the
Jötunheim--the home of the frost-giants--first impressed his childish
sensibilities, but was soon exchanged for the more varied and
picturesque but hardly less magnificent scenery of the western fjords.
At the age of seventeen the boy was sent to school in Christiania, and
in 1852 entered the University. Instead of devoting himself to his
studies, he wrote a play called 'Valborg,' which was actually accepted
by the management of the Christiania Theatre. The piece was, however,
never printed or even performed; for the author became so conscious of
its imperfections that he withdrew it from rehearsal. But it gave him
the _entrée_ of the playhouse, a fact which did much to determine the
direction of his literary activities. He left the University with his
course uncompleted, and for two or three years thereafter supported
himself by journalism. In 1857, at the age of twenty-four, his serious
literary career began with the publication of 'Synnöve Solbakken,' his
first novel, and 'Mellern Slagene' (Between the Battles), his first
printed dramatic work. In this year also, upon the invitation of Ole
Bull, he went to Bergen, where he remained for two years as director of
the theatre. In 1860 he secured from the government a traveling stipend,
and spent the greater part of the next two years abroad, mostly in Rome,
busily writing all the time. Returning to Norway, he has since remained
there for the most part, although his winters have frequently been spent
in other countries. For a long time he lived regularly in Paris several
months of each year; one winter (1879-80) he was the guest of the Grand
Duke of Meiningen; the following (1880-81) he spent in the United
States, lecturing in many cities. Since 1874 his Norwegian home has been
at Aulestad in the Gausdal, where he has an estate, and occupies a
capacious dwelling--half farm-house, half villa--whose broad verandas
look out upon the charming open landscape of Southern Norway. For the
last twenty years he has been almost as conspicuous a figure in the
political as in the literary arena, and the recognized leader of the
Norwegian republican movement. Numerous kinds of social and religious
controversy have also engaged his attention, and made his life a
stirring one in many ways.
In attempting to classify Björnson's writings for the purpose of
rendering some critical account of the man's work, the first impulse is
to group them into the three divisions of fiction, lyric, and drama. But
the most obvious fact of his long literary life is after all not so much
that he has done great work in all three of these fundamental forms, as
that the whole spirit and method of his work, whatever the form,
underwent a radical transformation about midway in his career. For the
first twenty years of his active life, roughly speaking, he was an
artist pure and simple; during the subsequent twenty years, also roughly
speaking, he has been didactic, controversial, and _tendentious._ (The
last word is good Spanish and German and ought to be good English.) For
the purpose of the following summary analysis, I have therefore thought
it best to make the fundamental grouping chronological rather than
formal, since the plays and the novels of the first period have much
more in common with one another than either the plays or the novels of
the first period have in common with the plays or the novels of
the second.
Björnson's work in lyrical and other non-dramatic poetry belongs almost
wholly to the first period. It consists mainly of short pieces scattered
through the idyllic tales and saga-plays that nearly make up the sum of
his activity in its purely creative and poetic phase. Some of these
lyrics strike the very highest and purest note of song, and have secured
lasting lodgment on the lips of the people. One of them, indeed, has
become pre-eminently the national song of Norway, and may be heard
wherever Norsemen are gathered together upon festal occasions. It begins
in this fashion:--
"Ay, we love this land of ours,
Crowned with mountain domes;
Storm-scarred o'er the sea it towers
With a thousand homes.
Love it, as with love unsated
Those who gave us birth,
While the saga-night, dream-weighted,
Broods upon our earth."
Another patriotic song, hardly less popular, opens with the following
stanza:--
"There's a land where the snow is eternally king,
To whose valleys alone come-the joys of the spring,
Where the sea beats a shore rich, with lore of the past,
But this land to its children is dear to the last."
The fresh beauty of such songs as these is, however, almost utterly
uncommunicable in another language. Somewhat more amenable to the
translator is the song 'Over de Höje Fjelde' (Over the Lofty Mountains),
which occurs in 'Arne,' and which is perhaps the best of Björnson's
lyrics. An attempt at a version of this poem will be found among the
illustrative examples appended to the present essay. The scattered
verses of Björnson were collected into a volume of 'Digte og Sange'
(Poems and Songs) in 1870, and in the same year was published 'Arnljot
Gelline,' the author's only long poem not dramatic in form. This uneven
and in passages extraordinarily beautiful work is a sort of epic in
fifteen songs, difficult to read, yet simple enough in general outline.
Arnljot Gelline was a sort of freebooter of the eleventh century, whose
fierce deeds were preserved in popular tradition. The 'Heimskringla'
tells us how, grown weary of his lawless life, he joined himself to Olaf
the Holy, accepted baptism, and fell at Stiklestad righting for
Christianity and the King. From this suggestion, the imagination of the
poet has worked out a series of episodes in Arnljot's life, beginning
with his capture of the fair Ingigerd--whose father he slew, and who,
struggling against her love, took refuge in a cloister--and ending with
the day of the portentous battle against the heathen. It is all very
impressive, and sometimes very subtle, while occasional sections, such
as Ingigerd's appeal for admission to the cloister, and Arnljot's
apostrophe to the sea, must be reckoned among the finest of Björnson's
inspirations. Since 1870 Björnson has published little verse, although
poems of an occasional character and incidental lyrics have now and then
found their way into print. 'Lyset' (The Light), a cantata, is the only
recent example of any magnitude.
Björnson first became famous as the delineator of the Norwegian peasant.
He felt that the peasant is the lineal descendant of the man of the
sagas, and that in him lies the real strength of the national character.
The story of 'Synnöve Solbakken' (1857) was quickly followed by 'Arne'
(1858), 'En Glad Gut' (A Happy Boy: 1860), and a number of small pieces
in similar vein. They were at once recognized both at home and abroad as
something deeper and truer of their sort than had hitherto been achieved
in the Scandinavian countries, and perhaps in Europe. In their former
aspect, they were a reaction from the conventional ideals hitherto
dominant in Danish literature (which had set the pace for most of
Björnson's predecessors); and in their latter and wider aspect they were
the Norwegian expression of the tendency that had produced the German
and French peasant idyls of Auerbach and George Sand. They embodied a
return to Nature in a spirit that may, with a difference, be called
Wordsworthian. They substituted a real nineteenth-century pastoral for
the sham pastoral of the eighteenth century. They reproduced the simple
style of the sagas, and reduced life to its primitive elements. The
stories of 'Fiskerjenten' (The Fisher Maiden: 1868), and 'Brude Slaaten'
(The Bridal March: 1873), belong, on the whole, with this group;
although they are differentiated by a touch of modernity from which a
discerning critic might have prophesied something of the author's coming
development. These stories have been translated into many languages, and
have long been familiar to English readers. It is worth noting that
'Synnöve Solbakken,' the first of them all, appeared in English a year
after the publication of the original, in a translation by Mary Howitt.
This fact seems to have escaped the bibliographers; which is not
surprising, since the name of the author was not given upon the
title-page, and the name of the story was metamorphosed into 'Trust
and Trial.'
The inspiration of the sagas, strong as it is in these tales, is still
more evident in the series of dramas that run parallel with them. These
include 'Mellem Slagene' (Between the Battles: 1858), 'Halte Hulda'
(Lame Hulda: 1858), 'Kong Sverre' (1861), 'Sigurd Slembe' (1862), and
'Sigurd Jorsalfar' (Sigurd the Jerusalem-Farer: 1872). The first two of
these pieces are short and comparatively unimportant. 'Kong Sverre' is a
longer and far more ambitious work; while in 'Sigurd Slembe,' a trilogy
of plays, the saga-phase of Björnson's genius reached its culmination.
This noble work, which may almost claim to be the greatest work in
Norwegian literature, is based upon the career of a twelfth-century
pretender to the throne of Norway, and the material was found in the
'Heimskringla.' There are few more signal illustrations in literature of
the power of genius to transfuse with its own life a bare mediæval
chronicle, and to create from a few meagre suggestions a vital and
impressive work of art. One thinks instinctively, in seeking for some
adequate parallel, of what Goethe did with the materials of the Faust
legend, or of what Shakespeare did with the indications offered for
'King Lear' and 'Cymbeline' by Holinshed's chronicle-history. And the
two greatest names in modern literature are suggested not only by this
general fact of creative power, but also more specifically by certain
characters in the trilogy. Audhild, the Icelandic maiden beloved of
Sigurd, has more than once been compared with the gracious and pathetic
figure of Gretchen; and Earl Harald is one of the most successful
attempts since Shakespeare to incarnate once again the Hamlet type of
character, with its gentleness, its intellectuality, its tragic irony,
and the defect of will which forces it to sink beneath the too heavy
burden set upon its shoulders by fate. 'Sigurd Jorsalfar,' the last of
the saga-plays, was planned as the second part of a dramatic sequence,
of which the first was never written. Another work in this manner,
having for its protagonist the great national hero, Olaf Trygvason, was
also planned and even begun; but the author's energy flagged, and he
felt himself irresistibly impelled to devote himself to more modern
themes dealt with in a more modern way. But before leaving this phase of
Björnson's work, mention must be made of 'Maria Stuart i Skotland'
(1864), chronologically interjected among the saga-plays, and dealing
with the more definite history of the hapless Queen of Scots in much of
the saga-spirit. Björnson felt that the Scots had inherited no little of
the Norse blood and temper, and believed that the psychology of his
saga-heroes was adequate to account for the group of men whose fortunes
were bound up with those of Mary Stuart in Scotland. He finds his key to
the problem of her career in the fact that she was by nature incapable
of yielding herself up wholly to a man or a cause, yet was surrounded by
men who demanded of her just such whole-souled allegiance. Bothwell and
Knox were pre-eminently men of this stamp; as were also, in some degree,
Darnley and Rizzio. The theory may seem fanciful, but there is no doubt
that Björnson's treatment of this fascinating subject is one of the
strongest it has ever received, and that his play takes rank with such
European masterpieces as Scott's novel, and Alfieri's tragedy, and
Swinburne's great poetic trilogy.
The late sixties and the early seventies were with Björnson a period of
unrest and transformation. His previous work had been that of a genius
isolated, comparatively speaking, and concentrated upon a small part of
human life. His frequent journeys abroad and the wider range of his
reading now brought him into the full current of European thought, and
led to a substitution of practical ideals for those of the visionary. He
felt that he must _reculer pour mieux sauter_, and for nearly a decade
he produced little original work. Yet his first attempt at a modern
problem-play, 'De Nygifte' (The Newly Married Pair), curiously enough,
dates from as far back as 1865. This work was, however, a mere trifle,
and has interest chiefly as a forerunner of what was to come. It was not
until 1874 that Björnson became conscious that his new thought was ripe
enough to bear fruit, and that he began with 'Redaktören' (The Editor)
the series of plays dealing with social problems that have been the
characteristic work of his second period. It is interesting to note, for
comparison, the fact that the similar striking transformation of energy
in Ibsen's case dates from 1877, when 'Samfundet's Stötter' (The Pillars
of Society) was produced, and that this work had, like Björnson's
'Redaktören,' a forerunner in 'De Unges Forbund' (The League of Youth),
published in 1869. The list of Björnson's problem-plays--many of which
have been extraordinarily successful upon the stage, both in the
Scandinavian countries and in Germany--includes in addition to
'Redaktören,' seven other pieces. They are: 'En Fallit' (A Bankruptcy:
1875), 'Kongen' (The King: 1877), 'Leonarda' (1879), 'Det Ny System'
(The New System: 1879), 'En Hanske' (A Glove: 1883), 'Over Ævne' (Beyond
the Strength: 1883), and 'Geografi og Kjærlighed' (Geography and Love:
1885). A sequel to 'Over Ævne' has also recently appeared. The most
noteworthy of these works, considered as acting plays, are 'Redaktören'
and 'En Fallit.' The one has for its subject the degradation of modern
journalism; the other attacks the low standard of commercial morality
prevailing in modern society. 'En Hanske' plants itself squarely upon
the proposition that the obligations of morality are equally binding
upon both sexes; a problem treated by Ibsen, after a somewhat different
fashion, in 'Gengangere' (Ghosts). This play has occasioned much heated
discussion, for its theme is of the widest interest, besides being
pivotal as regards Björnson's sociological views. 'Over Ævne' is a
curiously wrought and delicate treatment of religious mysticism,
fascinating to read, but not very definite in outcome. 'Kongen' is
probably the most remarkable, all things considered, of this series of
plays, and Björnson told me some years ago that he considered it the
most important of his works. Taking frankly for granted that monarchy,
whether absolute or constitutional, is an outworn institution, the play
discusses the question whether it may not be possible so to transform
the institution as to fit it for a prolongation of existence. The
interest centres about the character of a king who is profoundly
convinced that the principle he embodies is an anachronism or a lie, and
who seeks to do away with the whole structure of convention, and
ceremonial, and hypocrisy, that the centuries have built about the
throne and its occupants. But his dearest hopes are frustrated by the
forces of malice, and dull conservatism, and invincible stupidity; the
burden proves too heavy for him, the fight too unequal, and he takes his
own life in a moment of despair. The terrible satirical power of certain
scenes in this play would be difficult to match were our choice to range
through the whole literature of Revolt. Its production brought upon the
author a storm of furious denunciation. He had outraged both throne and
altar, and his sacrilegious hand had not spared things the most
sacrosanct. But a less passionate judgment, while still deprecating
something of the author's violence, will recognize the fact that the
core of the work is a noble idealism in both politics and religion, and
will justify the hot indignation with which the author assails the shams
that in modern society stifle the breath of free and generous souls.
During all these years of writing for the stage Björnson did not,
however, forget that he was also a novelist; and it is in fiction that
he has scored the greatest of his recent triumphs. But the world of
'Synnöve' and 'Arne' is now far behind him. The transition from his
earlier to his later manner as a novelist is marked by two or three
stories delicate in conception but uncertain of utterance, and
relatively unimportant. These books are 'Magnhild' (1877), 'Kaptejn
Mansana' (1879), and 'Stöv' (Dust: 1882). They were, however,
significant of a new development of the author's genius, for they were
the precursors of two great novels soon thereafter to follow. 'Det
Flager i Byen og paa Havnen' (Flags are Flying in Town and Harbor)
appeared in 1884. (Paa Guds Veje) (In God's Way) was published in 1889.
These books are experiments upon a larger scale than their author had
previously attempted in fiction, and neither of them exhibits the
perfect mastery that went to the simpler making of the early peasant
tales. They are somewhat confused and turbulent in style, and it is
evident that their author is groping for adequate means of handling the
unwieldy material brought to his workshop by so many currents of modern
thought. The central theme of 'Det Flager' (in its English translation
called, by the way, 'The Heritage of the Kurts') is the influence of
heredity upon the life of a family group. The process of rehabilitation,
resulting from the introduction of a healthy and vigorous strain into a
stock weakened by the vices and passions of several generations, and
aided by a scientific system of education, is carried on before our
eyes, and the story of this process is the substance of the book.
Regeneration is not wholly achieved, but the end leaves us hopeful for
the future; and the flags that fly over town and harbor in the closing
chapter have a symbolical significance, for they announce a victory of
spirit over sense, not alone in the case of certain individuals, but
also in the case of the whole community with which they are identified.
If this book comes to be forgotten as a novel (which is not likely), it
will have a fair chance of being remembered, along with 'Levana' and
'Emile,' as a sort of educational classic. 'Paa Gud's Veje,' the last
great work of Björnson, is also strongly didactic in tone, yet it
attains at its highest to a tranquillity of which the author seemed for
many years to have lost the secret. The struggle it depicts is that
between religious bigotry and liberalism as they contend for the mastery
in a Norwegian town; and the moral is that "God's way" is the way of
people who order their lives aright and keep their souls sweet and pure,
rather than the way of the Pharisee who pins his faith to observances
and allows the letter of his religion to overshadow the spirit. Not an
unchristian inculcation, surely; yet for it and for similar earlier
utterances Björnson has been held up as Antichrist by the ministers of a
narrow Lutheran orthodoxy, very much as the spokesmen of an antiquated
caste-system of society have esteemed his ideas to be those of the most
ruthless and radical of iconoclasts. But he is a stout fighter, and
attacks of this sort only serve to arouse him to new energy. And so he
toils manfully on for the enlightenment of his people, knowing that his
cause is the cause of civilization itself--of a rational social
organization, an exalted ethical standard, and a purified religion.
Since the period when Björnson began to merge the artist in the thinker
and prophet, his work has given a strong impetus to progress in
religious, educational, and political affairs. As regards the first of
these matters, it must be remembered that the sort of intolerance with
which he has had to contend more resembles that of eighteenth-century
New England puritanism than anything we are familiar with in our own
time. As for the second matter, all of his work may in a sense be called
educational, while such a book as 'Det Flager' shows how closely he has
considered the subject of education in its special and even technical
aspects. Finally, as a political thinker, he has identified himself
indissolubly with the movement for the establishment of an independent
Norwegian Republic, although he is not sanguine of the near realization
of this aim. But if time should justify his prophetic attitude and give
birth to a republic in the north of Europe, however remote may be the
event, the name of Björnson will be remembered as that of one of the
founders, although as the Mazzini rather than as the Cavour of the Norse
_Risorgimento_. And whatever may be the future of the land that claims
him for her own, his spirit will walk abroad long after he has ceased to
live among men. His large, genial, optimistic personality is of the sort
that cannot fail to stamp itself upon other generations than the one
that actually counts him among its members.
[The following selections are given in translations of my own, excepting
'The Princess,' which was made by Mr. Nathan Haskell Dole, and the last
two, for which I am indebted to the edition of Björnson's novels
translated by Professor Rasmus B. Anderson, and published by Messrs.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. The extracts from 'Sigurd Slembe' are taken from
my translation of that work published by the same firm.--W.M.P.]
[Illustration: signature of William M. Payne]