1832-1910
Eight years ago, taking a bird's-eye view of the mountain peaks of
contemporary literature, and writing with particular reference to
Björnson's seventieth birthday, it seemed proper to make the following
remarks about the most famous European authors then numbered among
living men. If one were asked for the name of the greatest man of
letters still living in the world, the possible claimants to the
distinction would hardly be more than five in number. If it were a
question of poetry alone, Swinburne would have to be named first, with
Carducci for a fairly close second. But if we take literature in its
larger sense, as including all the manifestations of creative activity
in language, and if we insist, furthermore, that the man singled out
for this preëminence shall stand in some vital relation to the
intellectual life of his time, and exert a forceful influence upon the
thought of the present day, the choice must rather be made among the
three giants of the north of Europe, falling, as it may be, upon the
great-hearted Russian emotionalist who has given us such deeply moving
portrayals of the life of the modern world; or upon the passionate
Norwegian idealist whose finger has so unerringly pointed out the
diseased spots in the social organism, earning by his moral surgery the
name of pessimist, despite his declared faith in the redemption of
mankind through truth and freedom and love; or, perchance, upon that
other great Norwegian, equally fervent in his devotion to the same
ideals, and far more sympathetic in his manner of inculcating them upon
his readers, who has just rounded out his scriptural tale of three
score years and ten, and, in commemoration of the anniversary, is now
made the recipient of such a tribute of grateful and whole-souled
admiration as few men have ever won, and none have better deserved. It
would be certainly invidious, and probably futile, to attempt a nice,
comparative estimate of the services of these three men to the common
cause of humanity; let us be content with the admission that
Björnstjerne Björnson is _primus inter pares_, and make no attempt to
exalt him at the expense of his great contemporaries. Writing now
eight years later, at the time when Björnson's death has plunged his
country and the world in mourning, it is impressive to note that of the
five men constituting the group above designated, Tolstoy alone
survives to carry on the great literary tradition of the nineteenth
century.
It will be well, however, to make certain distinctions between the life
work of Björnson and that of the two men whom a common age and common
aims bring into inevitable association with him. These distinctions are
chiefly two,--one of them is that while Tolstoy and Ibsen grew to be
largely cosmopolitan in their outlook, Björnson has much more closely
maintained throughout his career the national, or, at any rate, the
racial standpoint. The other is that while Tolstoy and Ibsen presently
became, the one indifferent to artistic expression, and the other
baldly prosaic where he was once deeply poetical, Björnson preserved
the poetic impulse of his youth, and continued to give it play even in
his envisagement of the most practical modern problems. Let us enlarge
a little upon these two themes. Ernest Renan, speaking at the funeral
of Tourguénieff, described the deceased novelist as "the incarnation of
a whole people." Even more fittingly might the phrase be applied to
Björnson, for it would be difficult to find anywhere else in modern
literature a figure so completely and profoundly representative of his
race. In the frequently quoted words of Dr. Brandes, to speak the name
of Björnson in any assembly of his countrymen is like "hoisting the
Norwegian flag." It has been maliciously added that mention of his
name is also like flaunting a red flag in the sight of a considerable
proportion of the assembly, for Björnson has always been a fighter as
well as an artist, and it has been his self-imposed mission to arouse
his fellow countrymen from their mental sluggishness no less than to
give creative embodiment to their types of character and their ideal
aspirations. But whatever the opposition aroused by his political and
social radicalism, even his opponents have been constrained to feel
that he was the mouthpiece of their race as no other Norwegian before
him had been, and that he has voiced whatever is deepest and most
enduring in the Norwegian temper. Powerful as has been his appeal to
the intellect and conscience of the modern world at large, it has
always had a special note of admonition or of cheer for his own people.
With reference to the second of our two themes, it is sufficient to say
that, although the form of verse was almost wholly abandoned by him
during the latter half of his life, the breath of poetry never ceased
to exhale from his work, and the lyric exuberance of his later prose
still recalls to us the singer of the sixties.
Few productions of modern literature have proved as epoch-making as the
modest little volume called "Synnöve Solbakken," which appeared in the
book shops of Christiania and Copenhagen in 1857. It was a simple tale
of peasant life, an idyl of the love of a boy and a girl, but it was
absolutely new in its style, and in its intimate revelation of the
Norwegian character. It must be remembered that until the year 1814,
Norway had for centuries been politically united with Denmark, and that
Copenhagen had been the common literary centre of the two countries.
To that city Norwegian writers had gravitated as naturally as French
writers gravitate to Paris. There had resulted from this condition of
things a literature which, although it owed much to men of Norwegian
birth, was essentially a Danish literature, and must properly be so
styled. That literature could boast, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, an interesting history comparable in its antiquity
with the greater literatures of Europe, and a brilliant history for at
least a hundred years past. But old literatures are sure to become
more or less sophisticated and trammelled by tradition, and to this
rule Danish literature was no exception. When the constitution of
Eidsvold, in 1814, separated Norway from Denmark, and made it into an
independent kingdom (save for the forced Swedish partnership), the
country had practically no literary tradition save that which centred
about the Danish capital. She might claim to have been the native
country of many Danish writers, even of Ludvig Holberg, the greatest
writer that the Scandinavian peoples have yet produced, but she could
point to nothing that might fairly be called a Norwegian literature.
The young men of the rising generation were naturally much concerned
about this, and a sharp divergence of opinion arose as to the means
whereby the interests of Norwegian literature might be furthered, and
the aims which it should have in view. One party urged that the
literature should break loose from its traditional past, and aim at the
cultivation of an exclusively national spirit. The other party
declared such a course to be folly, contending that literature must be
a product of gradual development rather than of set volition, and that,
despite the shifting of the political kaleidoscope, the national
literature was so firmly rooted in its Danish past that its natural
evolution must be an outgrowth from all that had gone before.
Each of these parties found a vigorous leader, the cause of
ultra-Norwegianism being championed by Wergeland, an erratic person in
whom the spark of genius burned, but who never found himself,
artistically speaking. The champion of the conservatives was Welhaven,
a polished writer of singular charm and much force, philosophical in
temper, whose graceful verse and acute criticism upheld by both precept
and practice the traditional standards of culture. Each of these men
had his followers, who proved in many cases more zealous than their
leaders. The period of the thirties and forties was dominated by this
Wergeland-Welhaven controversy, which engendered much bitterness of
feeling, and which constitutes the capital fact in Norwegian literary
history before the appearance of Ibsen and Björnson upon the scene. A
sort of parallel might be drawn for American readers by taking two such
men as Whitman and Longfellow, opposing them to one another in the most
outspoken fashion, assuming for both a sharply polemic manner, and
ranging among their respective followers all the other writers of their
time. Then imagine the issue between them to be drawn not only in the
field of letters, but also in the pulpit, the theatre, and the
political arena, and some slight notion may be obtained of the
condition of affairs which preceded the advent of Björnson and the true
birth of Norwegian literature with "Synnöve Solbakken."
The work which was thus destined to mark the opening of a new era in
Norwegian letters was written in the twenty-fifth year of its author's
life. The son of a country pastor, Björnstjerne Björnson was born at
Kvikne, December 8, 1832. At the age of six, his father was
transferred to a new parish in the Romsdal, one of the most picturesque
regions in Norway. The impression made upon his sensitive nature by
these surroundings was deep and enduring. Looking back upon his
boyhood he speaks with strong emotion of the evenings when "I stood and
watched the sunlight play upon mountain and fiord, until I wept, as if
I had done something wrong, and when, borne down upon my ski into one
valley or another I could stand as if spellbound by a beauty, by a
longing that I could not explain, but that was so great that along with
the highest joy I had, also, the deepest sense of imprisonment and
sorrow." This is the mood which was to be given utterance in that
wonderful lyric, "Over the Lofty Mountains," in which all the ardor and
the longings of passionate and impatient youth find the most appealing
expression. The song is found in "Arne," and may be thus reproduced,
after a fashion, in the English language.
"Often I wonder what there may be
Over the lofty mountains.
Here the snow is all I see,
Spread at the foot of the dark green tree;
Sadly I often ponder,
Would I were over yonder.
"Strong of wing soars the eagle high
Over the lofty mountains,
Glad of the new day soars to the sky,
Wild in pursuit of his prey doth fly;
Pauses, and, fearless of danger,
Scans the far coasts of the stranger.
"The apple-tree, whose thoughts ne'er fly
Over the lofty mountains,
Leaves, when the summer days draw nigh,
Patiently waits for the time when high
The birds in its boughs shall be swinging,
Yet will know not what they are singing.
"He who has yearned so long to go
Over the lofty mountains--
He whose visions and fond hopes grow
Dim, with the years that so restless flow--
Knows what the birds are singing,
Glad in the tree-tops swinging.
"Why, oh bird, dost thou hither fare
Over the lofty mountains?
Surely it must be better there,
Broader the view and freer the air;
Com'st thou these longings to bring me;
These only, and nothing to wing me?
"Oh, shall I never, never go
Over the lofty mountains!
Must all my thoughts and wishes so
Held in these walls of ice and snow
Here be imprisoned forever?
Till death shall I flee them never?
"Hence! I will hence! Oh, so far from here,
Over the lofty mountains!
Here 't is so dull, so unspeakably drear;
Young is my heart and free from fear--
Better the walls to be scaling
Than here in my prison lie wailing.
"One day, I know, shall my soul free roam
Over the lofty mountains.
Oh, my God, fair is thy home,
Ajar is the door for all who come;
Guard it for me yet longer,
Till my soul through striving grows stronger."
At the age of eleven Björnson's school days began at Molde, and were
continued at Christiania in a famous preparatory school, where he had
Ibsen for a comrade. He entered the university in his twentieth year,
but his career was not brilliant from a scholastic point of view, and
he was too much occupied with his own intellectual concerns to be a
model student. From his matriculation in 1852, to the appearance of his
first book in 1857, he was occupied with many sorts of literary
experiments, and became actively engaged in journalism. The theatre,
in particular, attracted him, for the theatre was one of the chief foci
of the intellectual life of his country (as it should be in every
country), and he plunged into dramatic criticism as the avowed partisan
of Norwegian ideals, holding himself, in some sort, the successor of
Wergeland, Who had died about ten years earlier. Before becoming a
dramatic critic, he had essayed dramatic authorship, and the acceptance
by the theatre of his juvenile play, "Valborg," had led to a somewhat
unusual result. He was given a free ticket of admission, and a few
weeks of theatre-going opened his eyes to the defects of his own
accepted work, which he withdrew before it had been inflicted upon the
public. The full consciousness of his poetical calling came to him
upon his return from a student gathering at the university town of
Upsala, whither he had gone as a special correspondent. "When I came
home from the journey," 'he says, "I slept three whole days with a few
brief intervals for eating and conversation. Then I wrote down my
impressions of the journey, but just because I had first lived and then
written, the account got style and color; it attracted attention, and
made me all the more certain that the hour had come. I packed up, went
home, thought it all over, wrote and rewrote `Between the Battles' in a
fortnight, and travelled to Copenhagen with the completed piece in my
trunk; I would be a poet." He then set to writing "Synnöve Solbakken,"
published it in part as a newspaper serial, and then in book form, in
the autumn of 1857. He had "commenced author" in good earnest.
The next fifteen years of Björnson's life were richly productive.
Within a single year he had published "Arne," the second of his peasant
idyls and perhaps the most remarkable of them all, and had also
published two brief dramas, "Halte-Hulda" and the one already mentioned
as the achievement of fourteen feverish days. The remaining product of
the fifteen years includes two more prose idyls, "A Happy Boy" and "The
Fisher Maiden" (with a considerable number of small pieces similar in
character); three more plays drawn from the treasury of old Norse
history, "King Sverre," "Sigurd Slembe," and "Sigurd Jorsalfar"; a
dramatic setting of the story of "Mary Stuart in Scotland"; a little
social comedy, "The Newly Married Couple," which offers a foretaste of
his later exclusive preoccupation with modern life; "Arnljot Gelline,"
his only long poem, a wild narrative of the clash between heathendom
and the Christian faith in the days of Olaf the Holy; and, last but by
no means least, the collection of his "Poems and Songs." Thus at the
age of forty, Björnson found himself with a dozen books to his credit
books which had stirred his fellow countrymen as no other books had
ever stirred them, arousing them to the full consciousness of their own
nature and of its roots in their own heroic past. He had become the
voice of his people as no one had been before him, the singer of all
that was noble in Norwegian aspiration, the sympathetic delineator of
all that was essential in Norwegian Character. He had, in short,
created a national literature where none had before existed, and he was
still in his early prime.
The collected edition of Björnson's "Tales," published in 1872,
together with "The Bridal March," separately published in the following
year, gives us a complete representation of that phase of his genius
which is best known to the world at large. Here are five stories of
considerable length, and a number of slighter sketches, in which the
Norwegian peasant is portrayed with intimate and loving knowledge. The
peasant tale was no new thing in European literature, for the names of
Auerbach and George Sand, to say nothing of many others, at once come
to the mind. In Scandinavian literature, its chief representative had
been the Danish novelist, Blicher, who had written with insight and
charm of the peasantry of Jutland. But in the treatment of peasant
life by most of Björnson's predecessors there had been too much of the
_de haut en bas_ attitude; the peasant had been drawn from the outside,
viewed philosophically, and invested with artificial sentiment.
Björnson was too near to his own country folk to commit such faults as
these; he was himself of peasant stock, and all his boyhood life had
been spent in close association with men who wrested a scanty living
from an ungrateful soil. Although a poet by instinct, he was not
afraid of realism, and did not shrink from giving the brutal aspects of
peasant life a place upon his canvas. In emphasizing the
characteristics of reticence and _naïveté_ he really discovered the
Norwegian peasant for literary purposes. Beneath the words spoken by
his characters we are constantly made to realize that there are depths
of feeling that remain unexpressed; whether from native pride or from a
sense of the inadequacy of mere words to set forth a critical moment of
life, his men and women are distinguished by the most laconic
utterance, yet their speech always has dramatic fitness and bears the
stamp of sincerity. Jaeger speaks of the manifold possibilities of
this laconic method in the following words:--
"It is as if the author purposely set in motion the reader's fancy and
feeling that they might do their own work. The greatest poet is he who
understands how to awaken fancy and feeling to their highest degree of
self-activity. And this is Björnson's greatness in his peasant novels,
that he has poured from his horn of plenty a wealth of situations and
motives that hold the reader's mind and burn themselves into it, that
become his personal possession just because the author has known how to
suggest so much in so few words."
In some respects, the little sketch called "The Father" is the supreme
example of Björnson's artistry in this kind. There are only a few
pages in all, but they embody the tragedy of a lifetime. The little
work is a literary gem of the purest water, and it reveals the whole
secret of the author's genius, as displayed in his early tales. It is
by these tales of peasant life that Björnson is best known outside of
his own country; one may almost say that it is by them alone that he is
really familiar to English readers. A free translation of "Synnöve
Solbakken" was made as early as 1858, by Mary Howitt, and published
under the title of "Trust and Trial." Translations of the other tales
were made soon after their original appearance, and in some instances
have been multiplied. It is thus a noteworthy fact that Björnson,
although four years the junior of Ibsen, enjoyed a vogue among English
readers for a score of years during which the name of Ibsen was
absolutely unknown to them. The whirligig of time has brought in its
revenges of late years, and the long neglected older author has had
more than the proportional share of our attention than is fairly his
due.
In his delineation of the Norwegian peasant character, Björnson was
greatly aided by the study of the sagas, which he had read with
enthusiasm from his earliest boyhood. Upon them his style was largely
formed, and their vivid dramatic representation of the life of the
early Norsemen impressed him profoundly, shaping both his ideals and
the form of their expression. The modern Scandinavian may well be
envied for his literary inheritance from the heroic past. No other
European has anything to compare with it for clean-cut vigor and wealth
of romantic material. The literature which blossomed in Iceland and
flourished for two or three centuries wherever Norsemen made homes for
themselves offers a unique intellectual phenomenon, for nothing like
their record remains to us from any other primitive people. This
"Tale of the Northland of old
And the undying glory of dreams,"
proved a lasting stimulus to Björnson's genius, and, during the early
period of his career, which is now under review, it made its influence
felt alike in his tales, his dramas, and his songs. "To see the
peasant in the light of the sagas and the sagas in the light of the
peasant" he declared to be the fundamental principle of his literary
method.
It has been seen that during the fifteen years which made Björnson in
so peculiar a sense the spokesman of his race, he wrote no less than
five saga dramas. The first two of these works, "Between the Battles"
and "Halte-Hulda," are rather slight performances, and the third, "King
Sverre," although a more extended work, is not particularly noteworthy.
The grimness of the Viking life is softened by romantic coloring, and
the poet has not freed himself from the influence of Oehlenschlaeger.
But in "Sigurd Slembe" he found a subject entirely worthy of his
genius, and produced one of the noblest masterpieces of all modern
literature. This largely planned and magnificently executed dramatic
trilogy was written in Munich, and published in 1862. The material is
found in the "Heimskringla," but the author has used the prerogative of
the artist to simplify the historical outline thus offered into a
superb imaginative creation, rich in human interest, and powerful in
dramatic presentation. The story is concerned with the efforts of
Sigurd, nicknamed "Slembe," to obtain the succession to the throne of
Norway during the first half of the twelfth century. He was a son of
King Magnus Barfod, and, although of illegitimate birth, might legally
make this claim. The secret of his birth has been kept from him until
he has come to manhood, and the revelation of this secret by his mother
is made in the first section of the trilogy, which is a single act,
written in blank verse. Recognizing the futility of urging his
birthright at this time, he starts off to win fame as a crusader, the
sort of fame that haloed Sigurd Jorsalfar, then king of Norway. The
remainder of the work is in prose, and was, in fact, written before
this poetical prologue. The second section, in three acts, deals with
an episode in the Orkneys, five years later. Sigurd has not even then
journeyed to the Holy Land, but he has wandered elsewhere afar,
thwarted ambition and the sense of injustice ever gnawing at his heart.
He becomes entangled in a feudal quarrel concerning the rule of the
islands. Both parties seek to use him for their purposes, but in the
end, although leadership is in his grasp, he tears himself away,
appalled by the revelation of crime and treachery in his surroundings.
In this section of the work we have the subtly conceived and
Hamlet-like figure of Earl Harald, in whose interest Frakark, a Norse
Lady Macbeth, plots the murder of Earl Paul, only to bring upon Harald
himself the terrible death that she has planned for his brother. Here,
also, we have the gracious maiden figure of Audhild, perhaps the
loveliest of all Björnson's delineations of womanhood, a figure worthy
to be ranked with the heroines of Shakespeare and Goethe, who remains
sweet and fragrant in our memory forever after. With the mutual love of
Sigurd and Audhild comes the one hour of sunshine in both their lives,
but the love is destined to end in a noble renunciation and to leave
only a hallowed memory in token of its brief existence.
Ten more years as a crusader and a wanderer over the face of the earth
pass by before we meet with Sigurd again in the third section of the
trilogy. But his resolution is taken. He has returned to his native
land, and will claim his own. The land is now ruled by Harald Gille,
who is, like Sigurd Slembe, an illegitimate son of Magnus Barfod, and
who, during the last senile years of Sigurd Jorsalfar's life, had won
the recognition that Sigurd Slembe might have won had he not missed the
chance, and been acknowledged as the king's brother. When the king
died, he left a son named Magnus, who should have been his successor,
but whom Harald Gille seized, blinded, and imprisoned that he might
himself occupy the throne. The five acts of this third section of the
trilogy cover the last two years of Sigurd Slembe's life, years during
which he seeks to gain his end, first by conciliation, and afterwards,
maddened by the base treachery of the king and his followers, by
assassination and violence. He has become a hard man, but, however
wild his schemes of revenge, and however desperate his measures, he
retains our sympathy to the end because we feel that circumstances have
made him the ravager of his country, and that his underlying motive all
along has not been a merely personal ambition, but an immense longing
to serve his people, and to rule them with justice and wisdom. The
final scene of all has a strange and solemn beauty. It is on the eve
of the battle in which Sigurd is to be captured and put to death by his
enemies. The actual manner of his death was too horrible even for the
purposes of tragedy; and the poet has chosen the better part in ending
the play with a foreshadowing of the outcome. Sigurd has made his last
stand, his Danish allies have deserted him, and he well knows what will
be the next day's issue. And here we have one of the noblest
illustrations in all literature of that _Versöhnung_ which is the last
word of tragic art. For in this supreme hour the peace of mind which
he has sought for so many years comes to him when least expected, and
all the tempests of life are stilled. That reconciliation which the
hour of approaching death brings to men whose lives have been set at
tragic pitch, has come to him also; he now sees that this was the
inevitable end, and the recognition of the fitness with which events
have shaped themselves brings with it an exaltation of soul in which
life is seen revealed in its true aspect. No longer veiled in the
mists which have hitherto hidden it from his passionate gaze, he takes
note of what it really is, and casts it from him. In this hour of
passionless contemplation such a renunciation is not a thing torn from
the reluctant soul, but the clear solution, so long sought, of the
problem so long blindly attempted. That which his passion enslaved
self has so struggled to avert, his higher self, at last set free,
calmly and gladly accepts.
"What miracle is this? for in the hour I prayed, the prayer was
granted! Peace, perfect peace! Then I will go to-morrow to my last
battle as to the altar; peace shall at last be mine for all my longings.
"How this autumn evening brings reconciliation to my soul! Sun and wave
and shore and sea flow all together, as in the thought of God all
others; never yet has it seemed so fair to me. But it is not mine to
rule over this lovely land. How greatly I have done it ill! But how
has it all so come to pass? for in my wanderings I saw thy mountains in
every sky, I yearned for home as a child longs for Christmas, yet I
came no sooner, and when at last I came, I gave thee wound upon wound.
"But now, in contemplative mood, thou gazest upon me, and givest me at
parting this fairest autumn night of thine; I will ascend yonder rock
and take a long farewell."
The action of "Sigurd Slembe," is interspersed with several lyrics, the
most striking of which is herd translated in exact reproduction of the
original form:
"Sin and Death, at break of day,
Day, day,
Spoke together with bated breath;
'Marry thee, sister, that I may stay,
Stay, stay,
In thy house,' quoth Death.
"Death laughed aloud when Sin was wed,
Wed, wed,
And danced on the bridal day:
But bore that night from the bridal bed,
Bed, bed,
The groom in a shroud away.
"Death came to her sister at break of day,
Day, day,
And Sin drew a weary breath;
'He whom thou lovest is mine for aye,
Aye, aye,
Mine he is,' quoth Death."
One more saga drama was to be written by Björnson, but "Sigurd Slembe"
remains his greatest achievement in this field of activity. Its single
successor, "Sigurd Jorsalfar," was not published until ten years later,
and may not be compared with it for either strength or poetic
inspiration. The author called it a "folkplay," and announced the
intention, which was never fulfilled, of making several similar
experiments with scenes from the sagas, "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 experiment proves interesting, and is carried
out without didacticism or straining after sensational effects; the
play is vigorous and well planned, but for the reader it has little of
the dramatic impressiveness of its predecessor, although as an acting
drama it is better fitted for the requirements of the stage.
The two volumes which contain the greater part of Björnson's poetry not
dramatic in form were both published in 1870. One of them was the
collection of his "Poems and Songs," the other was the epic cycle,
"Arnljot Gelline," the only long poem that he has written. The volume
of lyrics includes many pieces of imperfect quality and slight
value,--personal tributes and occasional productions,--but it includes
also those national songs that every Norwegian knows by heart, that are
sung upon all national occasions by the author's friends and foes
alike, and that have made him the greatest of Norway's lyric poets. No
translation can ever quite reproduce their cadence or their feeling;
they illustrate the one aspect of Björnson's many-sided genius that
must be taken on trust by those who cannot read his language. A friend
once asked him upon what occasion he had felt most fully the joy of
being a poet. His reply was as follows:--
"It was when a party from the Right in Christiania came to my house and
smashed all my windows. For when they had finished their assault, and
were starting home again, they felt that they had to sing something,
and so they began to sing, 'Yes, we love this land of ours'--they
couldn't help it. They had to sing
the song of the man they had attacked."
Into this collection were gathered the lyrics scattered through the
peasant tales and the saga dramas, thus making it completely
representative of his quality as a singer. A revised and somewhat
extended edition of this volume was published about ten years later.
Björnson has had the rare fortune of having his lyrics set to music by
three composers--Nordraak, Kjerulf, and Grieg--as intensely national in
spirit as himself, and no festal occasion among Norwegians is
celebrated without singing the national hymn, "Yes, We Love This Land
of Ours," or the noble choral setting of "Olaf Trygvason." The best
folk-singer is he who stands in the whirling round of life, says the
poet, and he reveals the very secret of his power when he tells us that
life was ever more to him than song, and that existence, where it was
worth while, in the thick of the human fray, always had for him a
deeper meaning than anything he had written. The longest poem in
Björnson's collection is called "Bergliot," and is a dramatic monologue
in which the foul slaying of her husband Ejnar Tambarskelve and their
son Ejndride is mourned by the bereaved wife and mother. The story is
from the saga of Harald Haardraada, and is treated with the deepest
tragic impressiveness.
"Odin in Valhal I dare not seek
For him I forsook in my childhood.
And the new God in Gimle?
He took all that I had!
Revenge:--Who says revenge?--
Can revenge awaken my dead
Or shelter me from the cold?
Has it comfort for a widow's home
Or for a childless mother?
Away with your revenge: Let be!
Lay him on the litter, him and the son.
Come, we will follow them home.
The new God in Gimle, the terrible, who took all,
Let him also take revenge, for he understands it!
Drive slowly: Thus drove Ejnar ever;
--Soon enough shall we reach home."
It was also to the "Heimskringla" that Björnson turned for the subject
of his epic cycle, "Arnljot Gelline." Here we read in various rhythms
of Arnljot the outlaw, how the hands of all men are against him; how he
offers to stay his wrath and end the blood feud if the fair Ingigerd,
Trand's daughter, may be bestowed upon him; how, being refused, he sets
fire to Trand's house and bears Ingigerd away captive; how her tears
prevail upon him to release her, and how she seeks refuge in a southern
cloister; how Arnljot wanders restless over sea and land until he comes
to King Olaf, on the eve of the great battle, receives the Christian
faith, fights fiercely in the vanguard against the hosts of the
heathen, and, smiling, falls with his king on the field of Stiklestad.
One song from this cycle, "The Cloister in the South" is here
reproduced in an exact copy of the original metre, in the hope that
even this imperfect representation of the poem may be better than none
at all.
"Who would enter so late the cloister in?"
"A maid forlorn from the land of snow."
"What sorrow is thine, and what thy sin?"
"The deepest sorrow the heart can know.
I have nothing done
Yet must still endeavor,
Though my strength be none,
To wander ever.
Let me in, to seek for my pain surcease,
I can find no peace."
"From what far-off land hast thou taken flight?"
"From the land of the North, a weary way."
"What stayed thy feet at our gate this night?"
"The chant of the nuns, for I heard them pray,
And the song gave peace
To my soul, and blessed me;
It offered release
From the grief that oppressed me.
Let me in, so if peace to give be thine,
I may make it mine."
"Name me the grief that thy life hath crossed."
"Rest may I never, never know."
"Thy father, thy lover, thou hast then lost?"
"I lost them both at a single blow,
And all I held dear
In my deepest affection;
Aye, all that was near
To my heart's recollection.
Let me in, I am failing, I beg, I implore,
I can bear no more."
"How was it that thou thy father lost?"
"He was slain, and I saw the deed."
"How was it that thou thy lover lost?"
"My father he slew, and I saw the deed.
I wept so bitterly
When he roughly would woo me,
He at last set me free,
And forbore to pursue me.
Let me in, for the horror my soul doth fill.
That I love him still."
_Chorus of nuns within the Church._
"Come child, come bride,
To God's own side,
From grief find rest
On Jesus' breast.
Rest thy burden of sorrow.
On Horeb's height;
Like the lark, with to-morrow
Shall thy soul take flight.
Here stilled is all yearning,
No passion returning;
No terror come near thee
When the Saviour can hear thee.
For He, if in need be
Thy storm-beaten soul,
Though it bruised as a reed be,
Shall raise it up whole."
Despite the power and beauty of an occasional manifestation of his
genius during the late sixties and early seventies, the poetic impulse
that had made Björnson the most famous of Norwegian authors seemed,
toward the close of the fifteen-year period just now under review, to
be well nigh exhausted. Even among those who had followed his career
most closely there were few who could anticipate the splendid new
outburst of activity for which he was preparing. These years seemed to
be a dead time, not only in Björnson's life, but also in the general
intellectual life of the Scandinavian countries. Dr. Brandes thus
describes the feelings of a thoughtful observer during that period of
stagnation. "In the North one had the feeling of being shut off from
the intellectual life of the time. We were sitting with closed doors, a
few brains struggling fruitlessly with the problem of how to get them
opened... With whole schools of foreign literature the cultivated Dane
had almost no acquaintance; and when, finally, as a consequence of
political animosity, intellectual intercourse with Germany was broken
off, the main channel was closed through which the intellectual
developments of the day had been communicated to Norway as well as
Denmark. French influence was dreaded as immoral, and there was but
little understanding of either the English language or spirit." But an
intellectual renaissance was at hand, an intellectual reawakening with
a cosmopolitan outlook, and, Björnson was destined to become its
leader, much as he had been the leader of the national movement of an
earlier decade. During these years of seeming inactivity,
comparatively speaking, he had read and thought much, and the new
thought of the age had fecundated his mind. Historical and religious
criticism, educational and social problems, had taken possession of his
thought, and the philosophy of evolution had transformed the whole
tenor of his ideas, shaping them to, deeper issues and more practical
purposes than had hitherto engaged them. He had read widely and
variously in Darwin, Spencer, Mill, Müller, and Taine; he had, in
short, scaled the "lofty mountains" that had so hemmed in his early
view, and made his way into the intellectual kingdoms of the modern
world that lay beyond. The _Weltgeist_ had appealed to him with its
irresistible behest, just as it appealed at about the same time to
Ibsen and Tolstoy and Ruskin, and had made him a man of new interests
and ideals.
One might have found foreshadowings of this transformation in certain
of his earlier works,--in "The Newly Married Couple," for example, with
its delicate analysis, of a common domestic relation, or in "The Fisher
Maiden," with its touch of modernity,--but from these suggestions one
could hardly have prophesied the enthusiasm and the genial force with
which Björnson was to project his personality into the controversial
arena of modern life. The series of works which have come from his pen
during the past thirty-five years have dealt with most of the graver
problems which concern society as a whole,--politics, religion,
education, the status of women, the license of the press, the demand of
the socialist for a reconstruction of the old order. They have also
dealt with many of the delicate questions of individual ethics,--the
relations of husband and wife, of parent and child, the responsibility
of the merchant to his creditors and of the employer to his dependants,
the double standard of morality for men and women, and the duty
devolving upon both to transmit a vigorous strain to their offspring.
These are some of the themes that have engaged the novelist and
dramatist; they have also engaged the public speaker and lay preacher
of enlightenment, as well as themes of a more strictly political
character, such as the separation of Norway from the Dual Monarchy, the
renewal of the ancient bond between Norway and Iceland, the free
development of parliamentary government, the cause of Pangermanism, and
the furtherance of peace between the nations. An extensive programme,
surely, even in this summary enumeration of its more salient features,
but one to which his capacity has not proved unequal, and which he has
carried out by the force of his immense energy and superabundant
vitality. The burden of all this tendencious matter has caused his art
to suffer at times, no doubt, but his inspiration has retained throughout
much of the marvellous freshness of the earlier years, and the genius of
the poet still flashes upon us from a prosaic environment, sometimes in a
lovely lyric, more frequently, however, in the turn of a phrase or the
psychological envisagement of some supreme moment in the action of the
story or the drama.
The great transformation in Björnson's literary manner and choice of
subjects was marked by his sending home from abroad, in the season of
1874-75, two plays, "The Editor" and "A Bankruptcy." It was two years
later that Ibsen sent home from abroad "The Pillars of Society," which
marked a similar turning point in his artistic career. It is a curious
coincidence that the plays of modern life produced during this second
period by these two men are the same in number, an even dozen in each
case. Besides the two above named, these modern plays of Björnson are,
with their dates, the following: "The King" (1877), "Leonarda" (1879),
"The New System" (1879), "A Glove" (1883), "Beyond the Strength I."
(1883), "Geography and Love" (1885), "Beyond the Strength II." (1895),
"Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg" (1898), "Laboremus" (1901), and "At
Storhove" (1902). Since the cessation of Ibsen's activity, Björnson
has outrun him in the race, adding "Daglannet" (1904), and "When the
New Wine Blooms" (1909) to the list above given. Besides these
fourteen plays, however, he has published seven important volumes of
prose fiction during the last thirty-five years. The titles and dates
are as follows: "Magnhild" (1877), "Captain Mansana" (1879), "Dust"
(1882), "Flags Are Flying in City and Harbor" (1884), "In God's Ways,"
(1889), "New Tales" (1894), (of which collection "Absalom's Hair" is
the longest and most important), and "Mary" (1906). The achievement
represented by this list is all the more extraordinary when we consider
the fact that for the greater part of the thirty-five years which these
plays and novels cover, their author has been, both as a public speaker
and as a writer for the periodical press, an active participant in the
political and social life of his country.
Most of these books must be dismissed with a few words in order that
our remaining space may be given to the four or five that are of the
greatest power and significance. "The Editor," the first of the modern
plays, offers a fierce satire upon modern journalism, its dishonesty,
its corrupt and malicious power, its personal and partisan prejudice.
The character of the editor in this play was unmistakeably drawn, in
its leading characteristics, from the figure of a well known
conservative journalist in Christiania, although Björnson vigorously
maintained that the protraiture was typical rather than personal.
"In various other countries than my own, I have observed the type of
journalist who is here depicted. It is characterized by acting upon a
basis of sheer egotism, passionate and boundless, and by terrorism in
such fashion that it frightens honest people away from every liberal
movement, and visits upon the individual an unscrupulous persecution."
This play was not particularly successful upon the stage, but the book
was widely read, and occasioned much excited personal controversy. "A
Bankruptcy," on the other hand, proved a brilliant stage success. Its
matter was less contentious, and its technical execution was effective
and brilliant. It was not in vain that Björnson had at different times
been the director of three theatres. This play has for its theme the
ethics of business life, and more especially the question of the extent
to which a man whose finances are embarrassed is justified in continued
speculation for the ultimate protection of himself and his creditors.
Despite its treatment of this serious problem, the play is lighter and
more genial in vein than the author's plays are wont to be, and the
element of humor is unusually conspicuous. Jaeger remarks that "A
Bankruptcy" did two new things for Norwegian dramatic literature. It
made money affairs a legitimate subject for literary treatment, and it
raised the curtain upon the Norwegian home. "It was with 'A Bankruptcy'
that the home made its first appearance upon the stage, the home with
its joys and sorrows, with its conflicts and its tenderness."
Two years later appeared "The King, which is in many respects
Björnson's greatest modern masterpiece in dramatic form. He had by
this time become a convinced republican, but he was also an
evolutionist, and he knew that republics are not created by fiat. He
believed the tendency toward republicanism to be irresistible, but he
believed also that there must be intermediate stages in the transition
from monarchy. Absolutism is succeeded by constitutionalism, and that
by parliamentarism, and that in the end must be succeeded by a
republicanism that will free itself from all the traditional forms of
symbol and ceremonial. He had also a special belief that the smaller
peoples were better fitted for development in this direction than the
larger and more complex societies, although, on the other hand, he
thought that the process of growth into full self-government was likely
to be slower among the Germanic than among the Latin races. In the
deeply moving play now to be considered, we have, in the character of
the titular king, an extraordinary piece of psychological analysis.
The king, is young, physically delicate, and of highly sensitive
organization. When he comes to the throne he realizes the hollowness
and the hypocrisy of the existence that prescription has marked out for
him; he realizes also that the very ideal of monarchy, under the
conditions of modern European civilization, is a gigantic falsehood.
For a time after his accession, he leads a life of pleasure seeking and
revelry, hoping that he may dull his sense of the sharp contrast that
exists between his station and his ideals. But his conscience will
give him no peace, and he turns to deliberate contemplation of the
thought, not indeed of abdicating his, false position, but of
transforming it into something more consonant with truth and the
demands of the age. He will become a citizen king, and take for wife a
daughter of the people; he will do away with the pomp and circumstance
of his court, and attempt to lead a simple and natural life, in which
the interests of the people shall be paramount in his attention. But
in this attempt he is thwarted at every step. All the forces of
selfishness and prejudice and ignorance combine against him; even the
people whom he seeks to benefit are so wedded to their idols that their
attitude is one of suspicion rather than of sympathy. He loves a young
woman of strong and noble character, and wins her love in return, but
she dies on the very eve of their union. His oldest and most
confidential friend, the wealthiest man in the kingdom, but a
republican, is murdered by a radical associate of the _intransigeant_
type, and the king is left utterly bereaved by his twofold loss. This
brings us to the closing scene of the drama, in which the king, his
nerves strained to the breaking point, confronts the group of officials
and others who bring to him the empty phrases of a conventional
condolence:--
The King. Hush! Have a little respect for the truth that should
follow death! Understand me rightly: I do not mean that any of you
would lie. But the very air about a king is infected. It was of
that-a word or two. My time is short. But a testament. ...
The Priest. Testament.
The King. Neither the Old nor the New! Greet what is called
Christianity here in this land-greet it from me! I have thought much
about Christian folk of late.
The Priest. That rejoices me.
The King. How your tone cuts me! Greet it from me, what is called
Christianity here in this land. Nay, do not crane your necks and bend
your backs as if the wisdom of the ages were now forthcoming. (_aside_)
Can there be any use in saying something seriously? (_aloud_) You are
Christians?
The General. God forbid the doubt! Faith is exceedingly useful. ...
The King. For discipline. (_to the Sheriff_) And you?
The Sheriff. From my blessed ancestors I received the faith.