It is only necessary to bestow a glance upon Björnson, in order to be
convinced how admirably he is equipped by nature for the hot strife a
literary career brings with it in most lands, and especially in the
combat-loving North. Shoulders as broad as his are not often seen, nor
do we often behold so vigorous a form, one that seems as though created
to be chiselled in granite.
There is, perhaps, no labor which so completely excites all the vital
forces, exhausts the nerves, refines and enervates the feelings, as
that of literary production. There has never been the slightest danger,
however, that the exertions of his poetic productiveness would affect
his lungs, as in the case of Schiller, or his spine, as in the case
of Heine; there has been no cause to fear that inimical articles in
the public journals would ever give him his death-blow, as they did
Halvdan, the hero of his drama "Redaktoren" (The Editor), or that he
would yield, as so many modern poets have yielded, to the temptation of
resorting to pernicious stimulants or dissipations, as antidotes for
the overwrought or depleted state of the nervous system, occasioned by
creative activity. Nothing has injured Björnson's spine, his lungs are
without blemish and know no cough, while his shoulders were fashioned
to bear, without discomposure, the rude thrusts which the world gives,
and to return them. As for his nerves, I am convinced that he has not
learned from personal experience the significance of the word. As an
author he is never nervous, neither when he displays his true delicacy,
nor even when he evinces his most marked sentimentality. He has nothing
of the refinement that a light degree of work, duty, or fatigue gives.
Strong as the beast of prey whose name twice occurs in his,[1]
muscular, without the slightest trace of corpulence, of an athletic
build, he looms up vigorously in my mind, with his massive head, his
firmly compressed lips, and his sharp, penetrating gaze from behind
his spectacles. His exterior reveals the son of a preacher, his voice,
play of features and gestures betray more of the actor's talent than
poets usually possess. It would be impossible for literary hostilities
to overthrow this man, and for him there never existed that greatest
danger to authors (a danger which for a long time menaced his great
rival, Henrik Ibsen), namely: that of having his name shrouded in
silence. Even as a very young author (as a theatrical critic and
political writer), he had entered the field of literature with such an
eagerness for combat, that a rumbling noise arose about him wherever he
appeared. Like his own Thorbjörn in "Synnöve Solbakken" he displayed in
early youth the combative tendency of the athlete, but like his Sigurd
in "Sigurd's Flight," he fought not merely to practise his strength,
but from genuine, although often mistaken love of truth and justice. At
all events, he understood thoroughly how to attract attention.
An author may possess great and rare gifts, and yet, through lack
of harmony between his own personal endowments and the national
characteristics or the degree of development of his people, may long
be prevented from attaining a brilliant success. Many of the world's
greatest minds have suffered from this cause. Many, as Byron, Heine,
and Henrik Ibsen, have left their native land; many more who have
remained at home have felt forsaken by their compatriots. With Björnson
the case is quite different. He has never, it is true, been peacefully
recognized by the entire Norwegian people; at first, because the form
he used was too new and unfamiliar; later, because his ideas were of
too challenging a nature for the ruling, conservative, and highly
orthodox circles of the land; even at the present time he is pursued
by the press of the Norwegian government and by the leading official
society, with a fury which is as little choice in its selection of
means as is in other countries the exasperation felt by the champions
of thrones and altars. In spite of all this, Björnstjerne Björnson
has his people behind him and about him, as perhaps no other poet,
unless it be Victor Hugo. When his name is mentioned it is equivalent
to hoisting the flag of Norway. In his noble qualities and in his
faults, in his genius and in his weak points, he as thoroughly bears
the stamp of Norway as Voltaire bore that of France. His boldness
and his naïveté, his open-heartedness as a man, and the terseness of
his style as an artist, the highly wrought and sensitive Norwegian
popular sentiment, and the lively consciousness of the one-sidedness
and the intellectual needs of his fellow-countrymen that has driven
him to Scandinavianism, Pan-Germanism, and cosmopolitanism,--all
this in its peculiar combination in him is so markedly national, that
his personality may be said to offer a _résumé_ of the entire people.
None of his contemporaries so fully represent this people's love of
home and of freedom, its self-consciousness, rectitude, and fresh
energy. Indeed, just now he also exemplifies, on a large scale, the
people's tendency to self-criticism, not that scourging criticism
which chastises with scorpions, and whose representative in Norway
is Ibsen, in Russia, Turgenief, but that sharp, bold expression of
opinion begotten of love. He never calls attention to an evil in
whose improvement and cure he does not believe, or to a vice which he
despairs of seeing outrooted. For he has implicit faith in the good
in humanity, and possesses entire the invincible optimism of a large,
genial, sanguine nature.
According to his character, he is half chieftain of a clan, half poet.
He unites the two forms most prominent in ancient Norway: that of the
warrior, and that of the skald. In his intellectual constitution he is
partly a tribune of the people, partly a lay preacher; in other words,
he combines, in his public demeanor, the political and religious pathos
of his Norwegian contemporaries, and this was yet more apparent after
he broke loose from orthodoxy than it was before. Since his so-called
apostasy, in fact, he has been a missionary and a reformer to a greater
degree than ever.
He could have been the product of no other land than Norway, and far
less than other authors could he thrive in any but his native soil. In
the year 1880, when the rumor spread through the German press, that
Björnson, weary of continual wrangling at home, was about to settle
in Germany, he wrote to me, "In Norway will I live, in Norway will
I lash and be lashed, in Norway will I sing and die." To hold such
intimate relations with one's fatherland is most fortunate for a person
who is sympathetically comprehended by this fatherland. And this is
the case with Björnson. It is a matter dependent on conditions deeply
rooted in his nature. He who cherishes so profound an enthusiasm for
the reserved, solitary Michael Angelo, and who feels constrained, as
a matter of course, to place him above Raphael, is himself a man of a
totally different temperament,--one who is never lonely, even when most
alone (as he has been since 1873 on his _gard_ in remote Gausdal), but
who is social to the core, or more correctly speaking, a thoroughly
national character. He admires Michael Angelo because he reveres and
understands the element of greatness, of profound earnestness, of
mighty ruggedness in the human heart and in style; but he has nothing
in common with the great Florentine's melancholy sense of isolation.
He was born to be the founder of a party, and was, therefore, early
attracted to enthusiastic and popular party leaders, such as the Dane
Grundtvig and the Norwegian Wergeland, although wholly unlike either
in his plastic, creative power. He is a man who needs to feel himself
the centre, or rather the focus of sympathy, and insensibly he forms a
circle about him, because his own nature is the _résumé_ of a social
union.