"This is flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood," Paludan-Müller's
contemporaries might have exclaimed when "Adam Homo" appeared. The
same poet who in youth had painted nebulous images in the clouds, and
who as an old man, having returned to the standpoint of his youth,
wrote: "People demand flesh and blood of poetry; flesh and blood are
to be found in the slaughter-houses; of the poetic art sentiment and
soul alone should be required"--this same poet, in the meridian of his
manhood, gave to his contemporaries and to posterity the truest, most
lifelike poem Danish literature, up to that time, had produced,--a work
whose hero, far from resembling its author's former heroes, who were
simply poetically clad thoughts, was the reader's own brother, a being
whose character is a cruel satire. Like Shylock's pound of flesh, the
book was cut from the spot nearest the heart of the living generation,
with the knife of inexorable moral law.
Almost reluctantly the poet seems to have attacked his task. As the
realistic epoch was but of brief duration with him, he gives us the
impression of having actually drawn close to reality merely in order to
settle his account with it once for all, through his bitter derision
and his scathing judgment, and then to forsake it again in the utmost
haste. It seems as though he would say: "You have reproached me with
having no eye for the home-life about me, you have always charged me
with the foreign nature of my delineations; very well, I will make it
right with you, I will single out one from your very midst and take him
for my hero." About the same time Kierkegaard, who was also moved by a
bitter scorn for his contemporaries, wrote in his "Stages on the Path
of Life": "One step is yet to be taken, a veritable _non plus ultra,_
since such a generation of pot-house politicians and life-insurers
charge poesy with injustice because she does not select her heroes
among its own worthy contemporaries. Surely this is doing poesy a
wrong; but it would be well not to pursue her too long; otherwise
she might end Aristophanes-like by seizing the first sausage-dealer
that came in her way and making a hero of him." This step is actually
taken in "Adam Homo." The naked reality, all that is ugly in the
external world, the lack of ideality in social life, all the frailty,
wretchedness, baseness, and despicableness in the inner life of
humanity, is laid bare without reserve, without mercy. The poet's muse,
which formerly, in his "Dancing-Girl," coquettishly veiled in crêpe and
gauze, had sped lightly over the polished floor in dainty slippers,
has now transformed itself into a Sister of Mercy, who, at once stem
and gentle, ventures out in the worst weather, well shod in stout
shoes. Fearless of misery wherever it may be found, not susceptible to
any contagion whatever, she passes unharmed through the filthiest and
most wretched streets, or she stands in the houses of the aristocrats,
undazzled by their lustre and splendor, and penetrates all hearts with
her sublime, superior gaze. She calls everything by its true name, the
most delicate falsehood as well as the coarsest misery.
The poem was a bit of Denmark, a bit of history,--a bit of living
web cut from the great loom of time. The metaphysical mirror of the
humanity that the mythical poesies had produced was here supplanted
by the psychological and ethical study of a single individual. The
scene was no longer laid in a court in the land of romance, nor in an
air-castle in the realm of ether; the action took place in Jütland,
Zealand, and Fünen, and the period being neither the eternal moment
nor the fantastic "Once upon a time," embraced the years 1830-48, the
golden years of the bourgeoisie in Western Europe, and those in which
it founded its dominion in Northern Europe. For the first time, space
and time were recognized as significant powers by Paludan-Müller.
Yet while the poet's task had thus become individualized, and had
acquired defined boundary lines in time and space, it none the less
aimed at universality. Adam Homo--that was meant, as the title itself
indicated, to represent man in general, and the hero was no less
typical than the poet's previous mythical heroes. He is in the main
a mythical form; his history is the mythical biography of the Danish
bourgeoisie.
There was one expression that kept continually recurring in the
discourse of Paludan-Müller when he spoke of science or art, and that
expression was "great tasks." In these words were comprised his claims
upon himself and his fellow-laborers. He himself always sought out
great tasks, because it was his firm belief that they alone develop the
powers and are worthy of an effort of strength, and he was continually
encouraging us, his younger fellow-laborers, to set ourselves the task
of dealing with great problems, because only through the solution of
such could our work win a permanent place in literature. "There is,"
said he, "in all literatures more than enough that is scattered to the
winds like chaff; make it your task to attempt something that will
endure, something that has a future before it." The surest means of
attaining this end was, in his estimation, in his own art, the endeavor
to represent, in the characters and destinies of the individual
personalities, the type of universal humanity. Those poets, in whose
efforts the casual plays a certain rôle, will not attain so high a
plane, it is true, yet will often acquire, by way of compensation,
a more volatile, more sportive life, a more captivating charm; for
the accidental in poetic art is synonymous with the _bizarre,_
the gracefully surprising, the incalculable, and yet so natural
irregularity. In the choice of his plots Paludan-Müller is to a rare
degree the enemy of chance. His perception of what is fundamentally
human, no less than his lack of original creative genius, prevented him
from ever selecting psychologically singular subjects. The race of the
normal _homo sapiens,_ in its entire folly, was the sole material that
possessed for him a thorough power of attraction.
In "Adam Homo," the task the poet set himself was to show how a man,
taken from the masses, and equipped with neither the best nor the
poorest endowments, from youth up, a man as full of ideal hopes and
resolutions as his betters, can squander his entire intellectual
fortune, and finally end as a spiritless, narrow-minded old fogy. At
the same time he wished to portray how the hero for every degree he
descended in the intellectual and moral scale, was compelled, of a
necessity, to climb one round higher in the social ladder.
Paludan-Müller was little inclined to throw any light on the history of
his works; but when once, without any preliminary, I asked, "What part
of 'Adam Homo' did you write first?" he replied, unhesitatingly, "The
epitaph,"--the only lines in the poem that are printed in italics.
"Here Adam Homo rests, a worthy soul and bright,
A Baron, Statesman, too, who wore the ribbon white."
Had his contemporaries possessed this elucidation, which did not
surprise me in the least, they would not have fumbled about so blindly
in their efforts to understand the first six cantos of the poem that
appeared in 1841, and whose continuation and completion did not follow
until seven years later. Even Heiberg, the foremost Danish critic
of the day, after reading the first part, deemed it possible that
the poet might intend to let Adam end as a happy married man, in an
idyllic country parsonage. So far was the public at first removed from
comprehending the wrathful pessimism and the well-considered irony
from which the poetic work had proceeded. People had no idea that
from the moment Paludan-Müller had put pen to paper, it had been his
design to allow this representative of the Danish bourgeoisie, who
began life with youthful amiability and youthful enthusiasm, gradually
to give up all he had once believed in, and to betray the confidence
of all those who believed in him. No one suspected that it was Adam
Homo's destiny to come out as a popular man and a popular orator, only
directly afterwards to alter his "ideal," and to drop the love of
common people, to develop into a "polished man," to seek refuge amid
courtiers and statesmen, and finally, covered with titles, and hung all
over with orders, to be solemnly buried as a baron, a privy councillor,
a chevalier, etc.
And if Heiberg had no conception of this, can we wonder that the public
at first remained wholly without comprehension of the significance of
the poem? The book met with no success, and was pronounced decidedly
dull. The reading world, unaccustomed to such substantial food, and
having been so often invited by Paludan-Müller to feast at the table of
the gods on Olympus, found some passages offensive, others commonplace,
and came to the conclusion that Paludan-Müller must this time have
chosen a theme that lay quite beyond the province of his genius. And
yet this so deliberately condemned "Adam Homo" was destined, when
completed, not many years later, to take the rank of the most typical
and most significant existing Danish work of the narrative kind.
Doctrinal æsthetics would naturally object not a little to an epos
presenting a picture which, as a whole, is so little edifying, an
epos whose prevailing mood presents so imperfect an atonement,
indeed, properly speaking, only a theological atonement. Even from
a non-doctrinal standpoint there is also a fundamental objection to
be made. The great difficulty, based on the subject itself, was that
Paludan-Müller did not aim, as such an infinite number of other authors
have aimed, at portraying for the reader the narrow-minded, commonplace
citizen in his foil glory, in order to submit him at once to sharp
criticism. He on the contrary wanted to show how such strait-laced old
fogies become what they are. Now most characters of the kind in poetry,
as well as in real life, do not become what they are, or at least only
become so to a trifling degree: they are born Philistines. In such
forms the ugly element is resolved, without the slightest inharmonious
echo, into the comical. The father of Adam Homo is one of these
native-born Philistines, and is, therefore, thoroughly comical. But to
delineate the gradual growth of the comic character is upon the whole
a stumbling-block for modern poesy. Aristophanes would not attempt it;
as the Greek tragedy began with the catastrophe, so Greek comedy began
at once with the complete upheaval of the world. In "Adam Homo" the
consequence of the hero becoming comical instead of being so from the
beginning, is, in short, that at first he calls forth sympathy through
his amiability, and that toward the end he arouses merriment through
the ridiculousness that he manifests. But the transition itself,
which consists in the gradual ruin of a well-endowed human being, is
repulsively sorrowful, and yet it is the point of the whole.
Adam Homo is a weak person, whose weakness makes him faithless in love
and unreliable in politics. He is not weak, however, in the same way
as are so many of Goethe's principal characters, such as Weislingen,
Fernando, Clavigo, or Eduard; for he is not charmingly attractive in
his weakness. In common with the majority of modern authors, Goethe
has often invested weakness with the charm of amiability, as in modern
poetry generally it is but too frequently the secret of amiability.
Nothing, however, is the object of a more scathing irony on the
part of Paludan-Müller than a defence of Adam Homo, such as that of
the _advocates_ _hominis,_ in the last canto, which is based on the
amiability of the hero.
Without being directly amiable, weak people may have something
attractive from a humorous point of view. There is an old method,
based on the nature of the case, by means of which they are most sure
of pleasing. Personal amiability can invest weakness only for a time
with the lustre of freedom and the form of strength, yet it is always
on the point of transforming itself into something base or odious.
Against this downfall, however, it can secure itself by the acceptance
of an inexorable fate; for viewed in a fatalistic light it arouses
only laughter and deteriorates wholly into the comical. This general
application Paludan-Müller has succeeded in making with perhaps more
depth, and, from a psychological standpoint, more correctness, than
has ever before been employed. His Adam is a theoretician, who always
has at his command a ready supply of half-conscious sophistry, and who
throughout his entire life casts the responsibility of his pitiful
weakness alternately upon mere chance and upon stem necessity.
If, notwithstanding all this, the total impression be not
unconditionally comical, it is because of a circumstance that
Mendelssohn in his "Rhapsodien" has thus keenly and justly
characterized: "We cease to laugh," said he, "at persons who are dear
to us, or in any way near to us, as soon as their faults or follies
begin to assume an important character." Every one, however, is his own
nearest neighbor, and if a continual "Thou art the man" be hurled at
us, it becomes impossible for us to laugh.
In the course of the narrative, the author of "Adam Homo" is
continually telling us indirectly what he utters directly in the last
canto, as follows:--
"Thou, too, shalt make one day the selfsame journey,
When thou at length with life on earth art done;
And as the actor needs initiation,
So thou must make beforehand preparation.
"In Homo's stead thyself thou well mightst be,
And words that served for Homo's just confession,
When him behind the grave's dark brink we see,
Might rouse the thought: View all with due discretion;
Whate'er applies to him, applies as well to me."
Even the most ludicrous matters in such a case cease to be wholly
absurd, and absolute terror at thought of the possibilities that dwell
within his own soul readily seizes the reader, especially the youthful
reader, in considering passages which the author had meant to have a
purely poetic effect. Thus, for instance, in the place where Homo has
become lord chamberlain, we read:--
"There swayed his solitude a wondrous feeling;
His soul seemed freed from every narrowing band;
Within his heart of hearts he blessed the hand
That dealt his wounds and gave him means of healing,
That now so tenderly was balsam dealing,
That helped his spirit ruin to withstand.
A guiding Providence he saw most clearly,
And, deeply moved, his thanks he gave sincerely."
The biting satire in this gratitude for the keys of office has almost
a painful effect. The poet takes the matter too gravely to be able to
excite us to laughter over his hero; he does not venture to designate
him as amiable, for Adam is seriously to be condemned; he will not
abandon him to comedy, for Adam--in accordance with the author's views
of life as a theologian--must preserve a loop-hole for mercy.
The standpoint of Paludan-Müller is not that of humor but of ethical
irony, for what distinguishes irony from humor is its lack of sympathy
with its object. This standpoint is not the purely artistic one that
lingers with the same loving absorption over the sick and over the
well, over vice and over virtue, over what the artist hates in the
actual world, and over that which is dear to him. Nor is his mode
of contemplation the purely humane, which, arrayed by the love of
humanity, remains mild, considerate, and harmonious, and which begets
a laughter that is without bitterness. Paludan-Müller's satire is cold
and scathing, and thus acquires a peculiar power of its own. Just
observe how the burning scorn of the poet almost imperceptibly breaks a
path for itself through an adjective or an incidental remark, as often
as there is occasion to deride the hero's good impulses, which are of
such brief duration.
Here are a few examples: A letter from home announces to Adam that his
mother, who has long been in failing health, is lying at the point of
death, and in order to be able to see her once more, he tears himself
away from his affianced bride and starts on the journey to Jütland.
But while still under way he learns of his mother's death that has
meanwhile taken place. Deeply affected, he communicates the sorrowful
tidings to his sweetheart, assuring her at the same time of his faith
in the future and of his unchangeable fidelity. The letter is not
hypocritical, can scarcely even be called hollow; it is merely naïve.
The poet, however, who knows long before the reader how Adam is to
end, can scarcely wait for the moment when the change in him takes
place. A long time before Adam has merited the satirical chastisement
Paludan-Müller swings the scourge of mockery above his head to an
accompaniment of laughter, as follows:--
"He rose and his epistle sealed with power,
And then he sought the post-office once more,
Where he all franked his full confession bore,
Thus yielding up his bosom's richest dower."
Adam goes on board the steamer to hasten home to visit his mother's
newly made grave. On the vessel, however, he most unexpectedly
encounters his first flame, the Countess Clara, who in order to
secure the escort of Adam to her country estate, introduces him to
her husband, the corpulent, dull Chamberlain Galt. In vain does Adam
struggle against accepting the invitation, under the plea that his
mother has just died. Clara declares it to be her positive duty to
console him in his affliction. His betrothal he has either concealed
or denied. He allows himself to be persuaded to postpone his journey
home. Clara and he sally forth to make purchases; she wishes to buy a
feather for her hat, he a weed of crêpe for his. Clara first secures
her ostrich feather in her own hat:--
"Round Adam's hat she folded then the sable,
And that it charmingly became him found;
They entered now the carriage,--he complacently,
And Clara, waving plume and all, triumphantly."
If we but pause to remember that this weed is the badge of mourning
for his glorious, ardently loved mother, we find ourselves painfully
affected by this cruel irony. "If it be true," we involuntarily
exclaim, "that we are so completely children of the moment, of the
passing mood, of self-deception, that our best feelings, our most
earnest resolutions and our purest memories, may thus evaporate into
mist, or vanish like smoke, how canst thou, O poet, make so satirical
a face at the thought? Hast thou no tears for that singular and dismal
mixture of human nature that renders such misery possible?" The
questioner must compel himself to recall the fact that this poet beyond
all else is an enraged moralist, who is pursuing a combined religious
and poetical tendency in his poem. Personal morality is to him
everything, and he does not regard it as a link of the great whole,
a special organic function of the organism of the world, comparable
to that of the liver or the heart in the human body. He has eyes
for it alone. Wherever he finds it, his gaze becomes obscure to all
else; wherever it is lacking, he sees only its absence; and "_eo ipso
profulget, quod non videtur._"
Adam may be said to live through three periods; in the first he is
naïve, in the second he is wicked, in the third he is stupid. In
the first and third the masterly power of the portrayal is only
entertaining; in the middle period of selfdelusion and of slow inner
debasement and corruption, the same masterly power produces a painfully
distressing, effect on the tender-hearted reader, especially the lady
reader. But objections of this kind cannot mar the worth of a poem if
it but possess the merit of being alive, and "Adam Homo" bears within
itself a life that will survive the existence of a series of human
generations. The works which were mentioned in the same breath with
this poem at the time of its appearance are already forgotten, and
after the lapse of several hundred years people will in all probability
still turn back to it as one of the classic works of Danish literature;
for "Adam Homo" is not only a work of art, it is an historic record of
the first rank.
Unquestionably the views of a past period have left behind them strong
traces in the satire which uplifts itself above this period and
judges it. But without his vigorous hold on the current theological
and social views of life, the poet, on the other hand, would scarcely
have been able to preserve his never-failing surety of moral judgment,
which now makes the poem so clear and transparent. To him, as to his
contemporaries in Denmark, Strauss is a horror and George Sand an
absurdity. He is so eager to attack Strauss that he has the sponsors
mention him in the very first conversation in the book, at the time
of Adam's christening; although Adam, at the appearance of the poem
in 1841, must have been about twenty-five years old, and "The Life of
Jesus," by Strauss, only appeared in 1835. And if he wants to delineate
a representative of the female type that he detests, he knows no better
way than to make her a caricature of female emancipation, and let her
have the portrait of George Sand hanging on her wall. We would do
wrong, however, to cling to a single unwise judgment, or a limitation
in any one point, where there is so much that bears witness of the
keenest and most comprehensive mind. What though the metaphysical
threads that wind their way through the narrative, the numerous
reflections regarding the freedom of the will, chance, and necessity
appear to us a trifle antiquated; they occupy upon the whole so little
space that they could not prejudice the effect of the totality on any
susceptible mind. And what a fulness of deep and clear impressions do
not remain!
It appears to me unquestionable that this is the most masculine poetic
work that has been written in the Danish language. Many other poets
of modern times have been children, or blind enthusiasts, or wanton
youths, or vain egotists; the author of "Adam Homo" was a man. Who
would have thought that Paludan-Müller, when he once resolved to
descend from the ivory tower where he had hitherto held sway, would
have set foot on the pavement with so bold a tread! Other poetic works
of Danish literature are characterized by grace, beauty, romantic
enthusiasm, or thorough apprehension of nature; this book is true, and
is thus more instructive and more profound than all the rest combined.
Read it more than once, and you will be convinced of its truth.
The six last cantos of the poem appeared at an inopportune moment,
in December, 1848, just as an awakening national life had engendered
a host of bright hopes and beautiful illusions, in the midst of whose
brilliancy this book in its remoteness from the moment seemed to
signify no more than the light of a single star signifies to a ball
held in the open air with an illumination of a thousand torchlights.
Some nights later, however, long after the torches are burned out, the
star becomes visible. Or is it possible that the present generation
of cultured youth in Denmark does not yet see it? Often one cannot
help asking to what use the youth of a nation puts its most excellent
books. Are they really only extant that they may be handsomely bound
and placed on the book-shelves for display? Were it otherwise, how
could it be that so few traces of their influence are found? Or has the
influence of "Adam Homo" perhaps been that it has served other sons
of Adam as a sort of guide-book for the journey through life, with
directions concerning the goal that is to be reached, the means which
must be used, and the rocks that must be avoided, if they would attain
as many of the splendors of this earthly life as the hero of the poem?
"Adam Homo," more than all else that Paludan-Müller has written,
is a national poem. There is not the slightest doubt that it, like
Puschkin's "Eugen Onägin," was called forth and suggested by Byron's
"Don Juan"; the form of the work, the metre, the changeful mood, the
quaint swaying to and fro between irony and pathos, finally certain
points in Adam's amorous susceptibility when a schoolboy, and certain
details of his wedding, are reminders of the celebrated English epopee;
but although "Adam Homo" could never have gained its present shape had
it not been for the previous existence of the Byronic poem, the Danish
poetic work has such an aroma and earthly flavor of the soil which
engendered it that it can claim a place among the few original epic
poems of first rank which Europe has produced during the century. It is
a poem that stands alone in the field of literature.