The lyric inspiration of Tegnér early reveals itself as an innate
tendency to enthusiasm for everything that stands out in bold relief
from the gray and prosaic background of everyday life. All deeds of
heroic valor; all brilliant honors, let them be gained as they may,
attract him by their radiance, and he revels even in their tinsel. A
strong respect for the great names of history, a decided disinclination
to apply discriminating criticism to fame once established, form one
of the deepest and most unchangeable traits of his character. It is
the unusual climax attained by this fundamental tendency which impels
him to write poetry. Indeed, it is this which makes him a poet. In
order, however, the better to understand this tendency, we must go back
to the sources of his inspiration, investigate what ideal he seeks,
discovers, or creates, see in what sort of inner images he objectizes
the natural peculiarities or intellectual attributes which correspond
to the best of his native powers. He does not dream of Oehlenschläger's
Aladdin form; he is neither unsophisticated enough nor bold enough to
do so. Just as little is he inclined to mirror himself in a Hamlet or
a Faust. The heroes of scepticism and of thought are far too abstract
for his vigorous, boyish imagination; it dreams of sturdier ideals.
Still less do his conceptions concentrate about a Manfred type. Guilt
does not allure him, and the mysterious has for his frank nature no
charm. Brought up and developed amid idyllic conditions, and surrounded
by universal good-will in the little town which he himself named "an
academic village," he could not possibly give way to the cosmopolitan
prose pathos of the long repressed Schiller. The ideal which slowly
shapes itself in his mind is a national and northern romantic ideal.
It is a luminous image of stormily progressive and remodelling power,
partly of a warlike, partly of a civilizing nature. All of the forms
which Tegnér, in the course of years, has shown marked preference for
delineating, have been invested with it. In one of his university
addresses, for instance, he undertook to give a characterization of
Luther. In order to accomplish this he places his hero in the point
of view from which it is his wont to consider men of action. First he
emphatically declares that every word and action of Luther bore the
stamp of "overwhelming vigor."
"There was something chivalrous, in fact, I might almost say, romantic,
in his character, his every undertaking.... His action was like a
battle completed, his word like one just begun. He was one of those
mighty souls who, like certain trees, flourish only amid storms. His
grand, adventurous life always seemed to me like a heroic poem, with
its struggles and its final victory."
We are all the more strongly impressed with the character of the orator
from this very one-sided treatment of a many-sided theme when we note
that Tegnér has therein presented determining qualities which, with
slightly altered attributes, he can apply a few years later, almost
word for word, to King Gustavus III. of Sweden, whose personality
differs as widely as possible from that of Luther. Scarcely any proof
is needed to show that between the sturdy Saxon reformer and the
theatrical, Gallicized, and skeptical monarch there was no other bond
of union than that which Tegnér's admiration created for both. Tegnér
said of Gustavus, "In his nature there was not only something grand,
but at the same time something chivalrous; lofty heroic power was
displayed in him, not with shield and sword, but with the lightest
drapery of grace. He was a grand, romantic, heroic poem, with all its
adventures and fascinations, but at the same time with the tenderest
effusions of the heart and the most wanton gambols of joy."
Grandeur, strength, and adventurous romance, then, are the common
fundamental qualities for both Luther and Gustavus; both are knights
of chivalry, and the lives of both appear to Tegnér like a romantic
epic poem. What else and what more could he say about Fridthjof? What
else, in truth, has he said, when in his own characterization he called
attention to the fresh life, the bold defiance, and the haughtiness of
this hero and this heroic poem!
In this tendency we have the deepest, firmest foundation on which his
conceptions of heroic ideals gradually came to rest.
There are some youthful, innocent odes dating from the period of
Tegnér's sixteenth year, written on the occasion of the rumor of
Bonaparte's death in Egypt. In them the poet glorifies Bonaparte as the
hero of freedom, whose honor is not purchased through blood and tears,
yet who will bring enlightenment and joy to the whole world. It is an
echo from the refrain of the humanitarian period which rings from these
childish lips. They hail Napoleon with a categorical "Live for humanity
or perish!" The mature man views the subject differently. In the great
religious, political, and literary reaction against the period of
enlightenment, the anti-Gallican current which won Sir Walter Scott and
Oehlenschläger, was wholly obnoxious to Tegnér. The reaction, however,
struck an æsthetic chord which harmonized with his temperament. This
was its contempt for utility as a measure for the worth of a deed.
The fact was, ultra-utilitarianism, and the species of philanthropy
interlinked with it, had opposed itself to the conception of the
chivalrous and the romantic.
"The old chivalrous dream," says Tegnér, "of the honor of nations, was
either declared point-blank to be a freak of the imagination, or else
to be synonymous with their domestic welfare. Everything in history
was estimated, as in a counting-house, according to its practical
results; and no higher estimate placed on a house of correction, or a
threshing-machine, than on Alexander's adventurous expedition to India,
or the fruitless victory of Charles XII."
He does not exaggerate; poor Alexander the Great was ranked in
Sweden, by an inspired enlightener of the people, as far inferior
to that benefactor of mankind who invented the cheap and nutritious
Brunswick mum.[1] Tegnér's youthful conceptions of virtuous, useful
heroes now become modified by the prevailing controversies, and
are brought into harmony with the protest of the entire romantic
bent of his mind against the narrow-minded care for the welfare of
humanity as a main essential. Moral considerations give way before the
romantic-metaphysical adoration of the hero of fate.
"Wherefore scorn me thus forever,
Legions frail and transitory,
Shorn of will, devoid of might?
Catch the butterfly, but never
Stay the eagle, crown'd with glory,
As it seeks its mountain height.
* * * * * *
"Ask the storm, amid its wailing,
Ask the sky's majestic thunder,
When earth quails 'neath its alarms,
If the lily 'tis assailing;
Tho' the grove be thrilled with wonder,
If a loving pair it harms."
Thus he expresses himself in the poem entitled "Hjelten" (The Hero),
1813. These sentiments, to be sure, are far from being Tegnér's final
views. Accustomed as he was to gaze upward to individual personality
as the highest form of existence, he was only likely to be moved on
some special occasion and in a half defiant way to give vent to such
pantheistic notions as those in this poem. And, as a consciously
reflecting spirit, he was much rather inclined not to believe in
the unconscious than to overestimate it, making, for instance, a
large number of polemic attacks on the doctrine of a blind poetic
inspiration; yet his preference for the warlike stormy march of
progress was so deeply rooted in his heart that he did not recoil from
giving such bold expression to it as in the poem just cited.
Still more strongly than in the various lays to the honor of Napoleon,
does he express his contempt for material gain as the result of deeds
of heroism in his poem, "Alexander on the Hydaspes." The poet has
chosen the moment when the exhausted and dispirited troops implore the
great Alexander not to conduct them farther into Asia, but to lead his
army homeward. The king replies scornfully: "Do you think that I, as a
youth, came down from the Macedonian mountains to furnish you with gold
and purple raiment? I seek honor; honor alone and nothing else!"--a
reply which, in point of sharpness and precision, leaves nothing to be
desired. The disregard of human life and human happiness evinced by the
highly endowed and intrepid despot is represented as unconditionally
justifiable.
It is therefore very easy to understand how Charles XII., whom the
Swedish people, with justice, have never ceased to admire, could become
a hero without reproach to Tegnér. He scarcely even deems it a stain
upon Charles that, with all his brilliant qualities, he plunged Sweden
into such depths that it has never since been able to regain its place
among the great powers of Europe. It was no mere chance that it was
Tegnér, among all the poets of Sweden, who wrote the glorious poem on
this king, which, although composed merely as a poem for a special
occasion, became the national song of Sweden. An impractical rushing
into danger always fired his imagination; the stubbornness that, with
gaze fixed upon a self-written code of honor, despised prudent actions,
was in his eyes scarcely a fault, and consequently an indifference as
to whether a deed would lead to victory or destruction, if it were only
brilliant and noisy, was, in his estimation, a virtue.
"Northland's strength defies and never
Death can conquest from us sever,
For e'en should we fall at last,
Life in battle's sport was past,"[2]
are the words his "Gerda," in the epos of the same name, addresses to
Bishop Absalom.
The circumspection of the statesman and the lawgiver had no power
to rouse his enthusiasm; but he loved the royal youth "before whose
word the meshes of the statesman's wiles are rent asunder" (Tegnér's
"Charles XII."). The long-considered plans of the military commander
did not seem to him the true evidence of warlike genius; but he admired
beyond measure instantaneous inspiration on the battlefield, and the
courageous impetuosity which followed it.
This is apparent when Tegnér describes a hero so different from, and
so vastly superior to, Charles XII., as the Deliverer of Protestantism,
Gustavus Adolphus. What he commends in him is not so much his merits
as a political leader and warlike commander-in-chief, as it is the
qualities which place him, as much as possible, on a parallel with
a soldier-general like Charles XII. He lingers with enthusiasm over
the "sudden, lightning flashes of thought on the battlefield," which
characterized him, as "every other warrior-like genius." He extols
Gustavus because he loved danger for danger's sake, and delighted in
toying with death. In short, he holds fast to the narrow old Norse
measure of manliness, and endeavors to apply it even in cases where it
is far surpassed by genuine greatness. For instance, he considers it
almost ignominious in Wallenstein to have (for good reasons) declined
the battle that Gustavus, "his chivalrous opponent," offered him at
Nuremberg.
What gives this ideal of Tegnér its final _retouche_ is the candor he
demands of his heroes. His own honest and sturdy nature mirrors itself
therein. Of Wallenstein he says that he might have been called a great
man "had he been noble and candid." Magnanimity will not suffice;
candor is equally essential. The old Norse berserkers, in their martial
fervor, flung their shields on their backs, and this mode of action
found so much favor in Tegnér's eyes that he would gladly have seen it
transported to the intellectual battle-field. Indeed, frankness seemed
to him even a sort of guaranty for nobility of thought, and he regards
the former with more warmth than the latter; for in his derogatory
characterization of Wallenstein, he lays especial stress on his gloomy,
reserved nature, without charging him with a single really ignoble
trait. With him he contrasts Gustavus Adolphus, as the luminous, frank
nature, endowed with a candor which was less doubtful in Tegnér himself
than in the king who was, as a rule, retiring and little accessible.
Thus every form with which Tegnér's muse is occupied, receives a gentle
pressure which moulds it into the form of the ideal hero, ever hovering
before the poet's own mind.