As yet the only woman winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the
prize awarded to Kipling, Maeterlinck, and Hauptmann, is the
Swedish author of this book, "Jerusalem." The Swedish Academy, in
recognizing Miss Selma Lagerlöf, declared that they did so "for
reason of the noble idealism, the wealth of imagination, the
soulful quality of style, which characterize her works." Five years
later, in 1914, that august body elected Doctor Lagerlöf into their
fellowship, and she is thus the only woman among those eighteen
"immortals."
What is the secret of the power that has made Miss Lagerlöf an
author acknowledged not alone as a classic in the schools but also
as the most popular and generally beloved writer in Scandinavia?
She entered Swedish literature at a period when the cold gray star
of realism was in the ascendant, when the trenchant pen of
Strindberg had swept away the cobwebs of unreality, and people were
accustomed to plays and novels almost brutal in their frankness.
Wrapped in the mantle of a latter-day romanticism, her soul filled
with idealism, on the one hand she transformed the crisp
actualities of human experience by throwing about them the glamour
of the unknown, and on the other hand gave to the unreal--to folk
tale and fairy lore and local superstition--the effectiveness of
convincing fact. "Selma Lagerlöf," says the Swedish composer,
Hugo Alfvén, "is like sitting in the dusk of a Spanish cathedral ...
afterward one does not know whether what he has seen was dream or
reality, but certainly he has been on holy ground." The average
mind, whether Swedish or Anglo-Saxon, soon wearies of heartless
preciseness in literature and welcomes an idealism as wholesome as
that of Miss Lagerlöf. Furthermore, the Swedish authoress attracts
her readers by a diction unique unto herself, as singular as the
English sentences of Charles Lamb. Her style may be described as
prose rhapsody held in restraint, at times passionately breaking
its bonds.
Miss Lagerlöf has not been without her share of life's perplexities
and of contact with her fellowmen, it is by intuition that she
_works_ rather than by experience. Otherwise, she could not have
depicted in her books such a multitude of characters from all parts
of Europe. She sees character with woman's warm and delicate
sympathy and with the clear vision of childhood. "Selma Lagerlöf,"
declared the Swedish critic, Oscar Levertin, "has the eyes of a
child and the heart of a child." This naïveté is responsible for
the simplicity of her character types. Deep and sure they may be,
but never too complex for the reader to comprehend. The more varied
characters--as the critic Johan Mortensen has pointed out--like
Hellgum, the mystic in "Jerusalem," are merely indicated and
shadowy. How unlike Ibsen! Selma Lagerlöf takes her delight, not in
developing the psychology of the unusual, but in analyzing the
motives and emotions of the normal mind. This accounts for the
comforting feeling of satisfaction and familiarity which comes over
one reading the chronicles of events so exceptionable as those
which occur in "Jerusalem."
In one of her books, "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils," Miss
Lagerlöf has sketched the national character of mart Swedish people
in reference to the various landscapes visited by the wild goose in
its flight. In another romance, "Gösta Berling," she has interpreted
the life of the province at Vermland, where she herself was born
on a farmstead in 1858. A love of starlight, violins, and dancing,
a temperament easily provoked to a laughing abandon of life's
tragedy characterizes the folk of Vermland and the impecunious
gentry who live in its modest manor halls. It is a different folk
to whom one is introduced in "Jerusalem," the people of Dalecarlia,
the province of Miss Lagerlöf's adopted home. They, too, have their
dancing festivals at Midsummer Eve, and their dress is the most
gorgeous in Sweden, but one thinks of them rather as a serious and
solid community given to the plow and conservative habits of
thought. They were good Catholics once; now they are stalwart
defenders of Lutheranism, a community not easily persuaded but,
once aroused, resolute to act and carry through to the uttermost.
One thinks of them as the people who at first gave a deaf ear to
Gustaf Vasa's appeal to drive out the Danes, but who eventually
followed him shoulder to shoulder through the very gates of
Stockholm, to help him lay the foundations of modern Sweden. Titles
of nobility have never prospered in Dalecarlia; these stalwart
landed peasants are a nobility unto themselves. The Swedish people
regard their Dalecarlians as a reserve upon whom to draw in times
of crisis.
"Jerusalem" begins with the history of a wealthy and powerful
farmer family, the Ingmarssons of Ingmar Farm, and develops to
include the whole parish life with its varied farmer types, its
pastor, schoolmaster, shopkeeper, and innkeeper. The romance
portrays the religious revival introduced by a practical mystic
from Chicago which leads many families to sell their ancestral
homesteads and--in the last chapter of this volume--to emigrate in
a body to the Holy Land.
Truth is stranger than fiction. "Jerusalem" is founded upon the
historic event of a religious pilgrimage from Dalecarlia in the
last century. The writer of this introduction had opportunity to
confirm this fact some years ago when he visited the parish in
question, and saw the abandoned farmsteads as well as homes to
which some of the Jerusalem-farers had returned. And more than
this, I had an experience of my own which seemed to reflect this
spirit of religious ecstasy. On my way to the inn toward midnight
I met a cyclist wearing a blue jersey, and on the breast, instead
of a college letter, was woven a yellow cross. On meeting me the
cyclist dismounted and insisted on shouting me the way. When we
came to the inn I offered him a krona. My guide smiled as though he
was possessed by a beatific vision. "No! I will not take the money,
but the gentleman will buy my bicycle!" As I expressed my
astonishment at this request, he smiled again confidently and
replied. "In a vision last night the Lord appeared unto me and said
that I should meet at midnight a stranger at the cross-roads
speaking an unknown tongue and 'the stranger will buy thy
bicycle!'"
The novel is opened by that favourite device of Selma Lagerlöf, the
monologue, through which she pries into the very soul of her
characters, in this case Ingmar, son of Ingmar, of Ingmar Farm.
Ingmar's monologue at the plow is a subtle portrayal of an heroic
battle between the forces of conscience and desire. Although this
prelude may be too subjective and involved to be readily digested
by readers unfamiliar with the Swedish author's method they will
soon follow with intent interest into those pages that describe how
Ingmar met at the prison door the girl for whose infanticide he was
ethically responsible. He brings her back apparently to face
disgrace and to blot the fair scutcheon of the Ingmarssons, but
actually to earn the respect of the whole community voiced in the
declaration of the Dean: "Now, Mother Martha, you can be proud of
Ingmar! It's plain now he belongs to the old stock; so we must
begin to call him '_Big_ Ingmar.'"
In the course of the book we are introduced to two generations of
Ingmars, and their love stories are quite as compelling as the
religious motives of the book. Forever unforgettable is the scene
of the auction where Ingmar's son renounces his beloved Gertrude
and betroths himself to another in order to keep the old estate
from passing out of the hands of the Ingmars. Thus both of these
heroes in our eyes "play yellow." On the other hand they have our
sympathy, and the reader is tossed about by the alternate undertow
of the strong currents which control the conduct of this farming
folk. Sometimes they obey only their own unerring instincts, as in
that vivid situation of the shy, departing suitor when Karin
Ingmarsson suddenly breaks through convention and publicly over the
coffee cups declares herself betrothed. The book is a succession of
these brilliantly portrayed situations that clutch at the
heartstrings--the meetings in the mission house, the reconciliation
scene when Ingmar's battered watch is handed to the man he felt on
his deathbed he had wronged, the dance on the night of the "wild
hunt," the shipwreck, Gertrude's renunciation of her lover for her
religion, the brother who buys the old farmstead so that his
brother's wife may have a home if she should ever return from the
Holy Land. As for the closing pages that describe the departure of
the Jerusalem-farers, they are difficult to read aloud without a
sob and a lump in the throat.
The underlying spiritual action of "Jerusalem" is the conflict of
idealism with that impulse which is deep rooted in the rural
communities of the old world, the love of home and the home soil.
It is a virtue unfortunately too dimly appreciated in restless
America, though felt in some measure in the old communities of
Massachusetts and Virginia, and Quaker homesteads near Philadelphia.
Among the peasant aristocracy of Dalecarlia attachment to the
homestead is life itself. In "Jerusalem" this emotion is pitted on
the one hand against religion, on the other against _love_. Hearts
are broken in the struggle _which_ permits Karin to sacrifice the
Ingmar Farm to obey the inner voice that summons her on her
religious pilgrimage, and _which_ leads her brother, on the other
hand, to abandon the girl of his heart and his life's personal
happiness in order to win back the farm.
The tragic intensity of "Jerusalem" is happily relieved by the
undercurrent of Miss Lagerlöf's sympathetic humour. When she has
almost succeeded in transporting us into a state of religious
fervour, we suddenly catch her smile through the lines and realize
that no one more than she feels the futility of fanaticism. The
stupid blunders of humankind do not escape her; neither do they
arouse her contempt. She accepts human nature as it is with a warm
fondness for all its types. We laugh and weep simultaneously at the
children of the departing pilgrims, who cry out in vain: "We don't
want to go to Jerusalem; we want to go home."
To the translator of "Jerusalem," Mrs. Velma Swanston Howard,
author and reader alike must feel indebted. Mrs. Howard has already
received generous praise for her translation of "Nils" and other
works of Selma Lagerlöf. Although born in Sweden she has achieved
remarkable mastery of English diction. As a friend of Miss Lagerlöf
and an artist she is enabled herself to pass through the temperament
of creation and to reproduce the original in essence as well as
sufficient verisimilitude. Mrs. Howard is no mere artisan
translator. She goes over her page not but a dozen times, and the
result is not a labored performance, but a work of real art in
strong and confident prose.
HENRY GODDARD LEACH.
Villa Nova, Pennsylvania.
June 28, 1915.