(1848-1895)
Boyesen had thoroughly assimilated the spirit of his native Norway
before he left it. In the small southern seaport of Friedricksværn he
had lived the happy adventurous boyhood depicted in those loving
reminiscences 'Boyhood in Norway.' He knew the rugged little land and
the sparkling fiords; his imagination had delighted in Necken and Hulder
and trolls, and all the charming fantastic sprites of the Northland. So
when he was far away, during his bread-winning struggles in America,
they grew clearer and dearer in perspective; and in 'Gunnar,' 'A
Norseman's Pilgrimage,' 'Ilka on the Hilltop,' and other delightful
books, he bequeathed these memories to his adopted land.
[Illustration: HJALMAR H. BOYESEN]
He came of well-to-do people, and received a liberal education at the
gymnasium of Christiania, the University of Leipsic, and the University
of Norway. His father, professor of mathematics at the Naval Academy,
had made several trips to the United States and had been impressed by
the opportunities offered there to energetic young men. Upon his urgent
advice, Hjalmar when about twenty-one came to America, and soon obtained
a position upon a Norwegian newspaper, the Fremad of Chicago.
From childhood he had longed to write, but had been discouraged by his
father, who expatiated upon the limitations of their native tongue, and
assured him that to succeed in literature he must be able to write in
another language as readily as in his own. Even in his school days he
had shown a remarkable aptitude for languages; not only for
understanding and speaking them, but for a sympathetic comprehension of
foreign literatures, and that sensitiveness to shades of expression
which so rarely comes to any but a native. He now worked with all his
energy to acquire English, not only as a necessary tool, but as the best
medium for conveying his own thought.
This whole-souled devotion to an adopted tongue was soon rewarded by a
more spontaneous ease of expression than he possessed even in his
native Norwegian. No one could guess from his poems that he was foreign
to the speech in which he wrote them; few even among those born and bred
to its use have had such mastery of its capacities.
He soon left the Fremad and began teaching Greek and Latin at the small
Urbana University, in Ohio. Thence he was called to Cornell University
in 1874 as professor of German, and in 1880 to Columbia College, where
later he became professor of German languages and literatures. He was a
teacher of rare stimulus and charm. He had an attractive vigor of
personality; his treatment of subjects was at once keenly analytic and
very sympathetic, while his individual point of view was impressed in an
easy and vivid style.
The same qualities won for Boyesen a distinguished place in the
lecture-field, where he gave his audiences an exceptional combination of
solid learning and graceful and lucid expression. A series on the Norse
sagas, at the Lowell Institute in Boston, are still valued as
'Scandinavian Studies.'
In critical work, of which these studies form a part, Professor Boyesen
made his chief mark, as was natural, on the literature and legends of
his native land. The best commentary on Ibsen yet published in English
is his introduction to Ibsen's works; he manages to compress within the
space of a very few pages the pith of the great anarch's social ideas
and the character of his dramatic work. His 'Goethe and Schiller' is
also excellent.
In pure letters, his earliest poems collected into 'Idyls of Norway,'
and his early stories of Norse life, of which 'Gunnar' was first and
best, were never surpassed by him in later life, if indeed they were
equaled. The best powers of his mind were gradually drawn into fields
which solidified and broadened his intellect, but checked the free
inspiration and romantic feeling of youth. In gauging his merit as a
creative artist, we must set aside all but the work of these few
enthusiastic years. An important part of this change must be credited to
the influence of the Russian novelists and their American disciples.
Whatever may be the final verdict on Turgénieff and Tolstoy, their
tremendous effect on American literature is one of the most striking
facts in our recent literary history; its value is a more dubious
matter, according to the point of view. Boyesen met Turgénieff in Paris,
and was deeply impressed by him; he also became intimate with W.D.
Howells, and through the influence of the latter became an ardent
disciple of Tolstoy. The result was to transform the romanticist of
'Gunnar'--steeped in the legends of old Norway, creating a fairy-land
atmosphere about him and delighting to live in the ideal,--into a
so-called realist, setting himself to the task of brushing away all
illusions and painting life as sterile and unpicturesque as it is in
its meanest, most commonplace conditions. To do this, he claimed, was
the stern function of the author. To help his readers to self-knowledge,
although it might lessen their happiness, was the greatest service he
could render them.
He succeeded. The best comment on the theory and the practice alike is
that 'Gunnar' lives and its realistic successors do not, and indeed
never did; and that much the same may be said of the corresponding
epochs of other American novelists' work, with a few exceptions where
native genius was too strong to be spoiled even by a vicious artistic
principle. 'The Mammon of Unrighteousness' and 'The Golden Calf' belong
to the second half of Boyesen's work.
A high place must be given, however, to his stories for boys in the
children's magazines, principally on Norwegian themes. These are among
the best of their kind,--spirited, wholesome, strong in plot and
workmanship, and containing some examples of his most perfect style.
Even the more slender juvenile tales have passages of the finest poetic
spirit, and a charm scarcely equaled in his more ambitious work. He won
some laurels as a dramatist: 'Alpine Roses' was successfully acted in
New York in 1883, and 'Ilka on the Hilltop' (taken from his story of
that name) in 1884.
Although he was in complete sympathy with the American life and
character and wished to make them his own, Professor Boyesen was never
quite an American. His descriptions of life in the United States are
therefore always the result of a foreigner's observation. His generous
humanity appeals to all races, however, and his books have been
successfully translated into German, Russian, and Norwegian. For years
he had been collecting matter for an extensive history of Scandinavian
literature,--a task for which his nationality, his scholarship, and his
mastery of the English language especially fitted him. His sudden death
at forty-seven prevented its accomplishment, and perhaps deprived him of
a still wider and solider fame.