1878.
Literary fame in the Scandinavian countries is for the most part a
matter of mere local importance. Works written in languages which are
spoken by a few million people only, and which in no portion of the
world are studied or read as polite languages, are likely to have every
chance of European and American renown against them. As a general
thing, but few poetic productions are translated into other tongues;
and, indeed, to a work that appeals to the sense of beauty, above all
to a metrical work, the outer form of language is what the enamel
is to the teeth: it invests it at the same time with durability and
brilliancy.
Nevertheless, it is a well-known fact that certain northern authors
have succeeded in finding more recognition in foreign countries than
at home; they represent, as it were, to the entire reading-world, the
poetic life of their fatherland, and their names are blended in the
public consciousness with the name of their native land. Such fame has
been attained by but one of the poets of Sweden,--Esaias Tegnér.
He is not the greatest among those who have contributed to the poetry
of the Swedish language; before him and after him another greater poet
produced in this tongue creations superior to his in clearness of style
and fidelity to life. With Bellman and Runeberg, however, he must be
classed; and, while inferior to them in poetic fancy, he may be said
to surpass both in intellectual vigor.
Three times in the course of history, the Swedish people has succeeded
in combining the classic and the popular in its poetry. The first time
was when Bellman, during the reign of Gustavus III., selected his types
from life among the people and in the inns of Stockholm, and sang "The
Songs of Fredman" to a zither accompaniment, with a mimic display of
masterly skill. The second time was when Tegnér, fifty years later,
turned back to the heroic life of the ancient North, found in an old
saga materials for a romance cycle, and gave Sweden a picture of Viking
life and Viking love in the North, as his contemporaries conceived
it. Finally this combination of the classic and the popular occurred
about a generation ago, when--forty years after Finland had been tom
from her old mother country--the greatest of Finland's sons, inspired
by recollections of his childhood, depicted the honorable struggle of
his fatherland against Russian supremacy, and thereby the national
characteristics of the Finnish people, in a more realistic style than
any one else had yet ventured to employ. Runeberg, in his soul-stirring
bivouac poetry, has compressed into the smallest limits war idyls and
tragedies of the battlefield.
Neither in a drama nor in an epic poem, therefore, has one of these
three Swedish poets found the possibility of presenting to the world
the best fruits of his genius. All three, however widely they may
otherwise differ, have triumphed in the same species of art, one that
is lyric in form, and whose contents compose an epic cycle of short
poems. The first of these poets has produced burlesque dithyrambs; the
second, old Norse heroic lays; the third, anecdotes of modern warfare;
but each one has arranged his choicest poems in a connected series,
and these three groups of songs alone invest Swedish poetry with
cosmopolitan rank.
The most celebrated of these three cycles is the "Fridthjof's Saga,"
and when Tegnér is mentioned outside of Sweden, it is exclusively
as its author. This work has become the national poem of the
Swedish people, and translations into all European tongues--among
others, eighteen different German, and twenty-two different English
translations--have spread it broadcast over the earth. Sweden has
not been lacking in gratitude to the man to whom she owes so much.
Such noble and eloquent words have been spoken, written, and sung
throughout Sweden, in honor of Tegnér, that no one could bestow on him
greater praise than has already been accorded him by the children of
his native land. Sweden has exalted the glorified form of the poet, in
supernatural size, upon a mighty pedestal, proved by closer scrutiny to
be a miniature mountain of massive eulogies, biographies, and festal
songs, while at the base incense without stint has been burned. What
then remains for the critic? Nothing, unless perchance to cleanse
from the beautiful face, with tender hand, the blinding fumes of the
incense, in order that the delicate features may stand out clearly,
and seem more human, more lifelike. Perchance, too, it may devolve
on him to compare the statue carefully with the original, and draw a
pen-and-ink sketch of the latter, in which it is plainly indicated
where the statue lacks precision or has a too abstract conception.
The writer of these pages, at all events, enters on his task with the
innate sympathy of the Scandinavian, the impartiality of one who is not
a Swede, and the honest purpose of the critic, to represent the form in
the sharp sun-light of truth.