The first extensive work with which Björnson made his appearance before
the public, after a silence of several years, was the drama "En Fallit"
(The Bankrupt), that met with such unwonted success in Germany as well
as at home. It was a leap into modern life. The poetic hand which had
wielded the battle-swords of the Sigurds did not esteem itself too good
to count the cash of Tjælde or to sum up his debts. Björnson was the
first Scandinavian poet who entered with serious earnestness into the
tragi-comedy of money, and the victory that crowned his effort was a
brilliant one. Simultaneously with "The Bankrupt" he issued the play
called "Redaktoren" (The Editor), a scathing satire on the condition
of the press in Norway. Then followed in rapid succession the great
dramatic poem "Kongen" (The King), the novels "Magnhild" and "Captain
Mansana," the dramas "Det ny System" (The New System), and "Leonarda,"
new poems, republican essays, etc., and a profound and delicately
written story, entitled "Stöv" (Dust).
In conservative circles of Norway there has been a strenuous effort to
undervalue Björnson's poetic works in this new phase, by calling them
tendency poetry. This word "tendency" is the bugbear by means of which
attempts have too long been made to banish from the Danish-Norwegian
poetry all ideas of the modern world. By so doing the conviction is
fostered naïvely enough, that Björnson's older poetic works, which are
so highly extolled, are without any tendency, because they have the
opposite tendency from the later ones; the fact is, people had become
as thoroughly accustomed to that earlier tendency as to the atmosphere
of a room they never left. The obligato pagan and especially Viking
conversions, so common throughout the Northern literature of this
century, have never been regarded in the light of tendency efforts;
even the conversion in "Amljot Gelline" was not considered so because
the tendency was one that pleased. So what was now frowned upon was
not the idea of a tendency in itself, but the new tendency, that is to
say, the spirit and the ideas of the nineteenth century. These ideas,
however, are to poetry precisely what the circulation of the blood
is to the human body. What must be demanded in the true interest of
poetry is merely, that the veins which people like to see with a blue
glimmer beneath the skin, should not stand out in bold relief, swollen
and black, as in the case of a sick person, or one who is excited to
anger. Very rarely, indeed, does Björnson's tendency take such a form
as, for instance, in the hemorrhage, of which the young politician in
"The Editor" dies, solely that the mark of Cain may be stamped upon the
brow of the main personage of the drama; or in the vision in the drama,
"The King," which terrifies and kills the daughter of the political
martyr on the way to her marriage with the young king. No one, however,
who looks farther than failures in details can be obtuse enough not to
detect the fountain of new and individual poesy which streams through
all of Björnson's works of the second period, or second youth, as it
might be called. An ardent love of truth has imprinted its seal on
these books; a manly firmness of character proclaims itself in them.
What a wealth of new thoughts in all provinces of state and society,
marriage and home! What an energetic demand for veracity toward one's
self and toward others! Finally, what benignity, what sympathy with
people of opposite lines of thought, who are dealt with sparingly, even
idealized, as the bishop in "Leonarda," or the king in the drama of the
same name, while all attacks are aimed at institutions as such. This
is perhaps nowhere more sharply felt than in "The King," the leading
thought of which is the simple, and in itself by no means new idea,
that constitutional monarchy is a mere transitional form leading to the
republic, but whose originality consists in viewing the problem from
the inner ranks, by taking the person of the king as the starting point
of attack on the institution. This the author does by showing how the
nature of this institution must harm the king as an individual, how it
must blight his soul, at the same time portraying the character with a
sympathy, an intense warmth, that makes him the hero of the drama in
the proper sense of the word.
The opponents of Björnson's new departure now maintain that, as long as
he kept outside of the circle of burning questions and living ideas,
he was great and good as a poet, but declare that he has retrograded
since he embarked on the sea of modern problems and thought; that,
at all events, he no longer produces artistically finished works.
Similar judgments have been pronounced all over Europe whenever a poet
who, in his youth, had won the public favor by neutral, inoffensive
productions, showed his contemporaries that he studied and knew
them. There are numberless readers who place Byron's youthful poem
"Childe Harold" above the powerful, yet seldom pleasing realistic
poetry of "Don Juan." In Russia and elsewhere, there may be found a
refined public that prefers the first simple narratives of Turgenief,
the "Memoirs of a Sportsman," to the great romances "Fathers and
Sons" and "Virgin Soil"; there are in Germany many people who are
overwhelmed with regret because Paul Heyse forsook for a time his
peculiar form of love story to write his "Children of the World." It
is true that Björnson, in his second period has not yet attained the
lucidity and harmony of style that characterized his first efforts;
but it is neither just nor wise to declare for this reason that he
has retrograded. A new, rich, and seething group of ideas finds its
form slowly, sometimes fermenting and bubbling over its limits; strong
feelings and thoughts have a certain fire, a certain vibration, that
renders them less capable of appearing in a pleasing form than the idyl
with its poverty of thought.
In spite of all this, how much that is admirable from a technical
point of view Björnson has accomplished of late years! The exposé
in "The Bankrupt" is one of the best the literature of any land can
produce, and the diction in "The Editor," especially in the first act,
is the most excellent that Björnson has attained. These two dramas,
with which he first entered the career opened by Henrik Ibsen with
his drama "De Unges Forbund" (The Young Men's Union), follow close in
the footsteps of the latter's vigorously built and witty play. "The
Young Men's Union" actually contains the germ of both "The Bankrupt"
and "The Editor." There the bankruptcy was that of the light-minded
Erik Brattsberg; feeble outlines of "The Editor" may be found in
Steensgaard's relation to Aslaksen's newspaper and the article against
the chamberlain that was to have been printed first, and so did not get
printed at all. The public has usually viewed "The Young Men's Union"
and "The Editor" as contrasts, that is, as contradictory presentations
of different political situations. This is simply because in the first
play a dishonorable representative of the progressive party is derided,
and in the second a still bolder, more deceitful representative of the
conservative party. Viewed from a purely poetic standpoint, however,
these two plays are very nearly akin. Björnson's editor is Steinhoff
grown older (as years creep on he becomes highly conservative),
a Steensgaard, in whom the softer, more pliant elements, through
disappointments, defeats, and wild attacks of contempt of himself and
others, have been ossified, and in whom, therefore, coarse recklessness
alone remains.
In "The Bankrupt" the demands of truth in the humble walks of life are
urged. The poet holds up, within the plain, commonplace life of the
people, the ideal of truth as a simple matter of rectitude. His poetic
eye, however, sees that rectitude is not so simple as it appears.
Nothing is so reprehensible for the merchant as to risk the money of
others, and yet, to a certain degree, it is impossible for him to
avoid it. The moral problem revolves about the delicate boundary lines
between where it is allowable and where not allowable to risk it. "The
Editor" demands truth in the higher domains, where it is a bounden duty
to keep it in sight, and yet dangerous to carry it into execution.
While in the mercantile world there is danger of disappointing and
ruining others through self deception, in the journalistic world the
temptation is to keep silence concerning the truth, or to deny it. And
this, too, cannot be altogether avoided; for it is out of the question
for the politician to acknowledge everything he knows. It might be
esteemed a defect in Björnson's "Editor" that the representative of
journalism does not fully represent the dialectics of his class, the
inevitable collisions to which those connected with the daily press
are subjected. On the other hand, his opponent and victim, Halvdan,
is too passive and long-suffering to prove of thorough interest to
the reader. Björnson expressly attacks in this play the ideal of
composure which the hard necessities of our day have led us to hold up
as a model; he protests, in the name of the child within our souls,
against the doctrine that we must harden our hearts, and there is some
justice in his protest. But the fact is, we now-a-days only cherish a
qualified sympathy with those public personages who can never succumb
to persecutions of the press. The Christian ideal of the suffering
martyr has, in this case, lost its power over the reading world and
theatre-goers; there is a demand for a man from whom all the combined
written and spoken attacks of his opponents will glance off, leaving
him unharmed,--a man whom no idle words, not even a storm of idle
words can shake. It is not for me to decide whether such a mode of
contemplation is natural, but it certainly has much to recommend it.
"The Editor" may perhaps be most correctly comprehended as a great
allegory. The elder brother, Halvdan, who succumbs in the political and
literary strife, is Wergeland, who, after a life passed in enthusiastic
struggles for freedom, galled by the agitations caused by his own
attacks and the persecution of his opponents, lay so long stretched on
a couch of sickness,--a far greater and more poetic form shortly before
death than during the long feuds of his life. In the younger brother,
Harald, to whom falls the inheritance of Halvdan, I cannot but think
that Björnson wished to symbolize his own political endeavors, together
with the misunderstandings to which they have been exposed, and the
opponents they have found. Hakon, the eldest brother, who became a
farmer, and his wife, who plays a rôle without appearing on the stage,
represent the Norwegian people. The unusual vigor of the play, however,
is dependent on the fact that, in addition to the great breadth of its
horizon, it is individual and characteristic to a degree that has never
been surpassed by Björnson.
"The King" deals with political questions, as "The Bankrupt" and "The
Editor" with social ones. Here the problem is psychological. The poet
himself fights with the king of the drama his inner fight, and lets
his attempts to reconcile the requirements of his nature with those of
his position strand. Is the problem satisfactorily solved? Is not the
unhappy result in too high a degree caused by the king's wretched past
and his weak character? The worth of the play does not depend on the
answer, but on the depths to which it penetrates, on the fresh charm
which hovers about its love scenes, and on the rich, sparkling wit
of its dialogues. In "Magnhild" and "Leonarda," a new modern problem
is dealt with that had germed in the poet's own soul,--the relation
between morality as a virtue and as an institution, as a law of the
heart, and as a law of society. The doctrine proclaimed in "Magnhild"
is imparted in the modest form of a question: Are there not immoral
marriages, which it is our highest duty to dissolve?
"Magnhild" is a work that, in its search for reality, denotes a
turning-point in Björnson's novel-writing. In its characterizations it
displays a delicacy and a power the author had not previously attained.
The public had scarcely credited him with the ability to portray
figures like the young musician Tande, the beautiful Mrs. Bang and her
husband. And Magnhild's relation to this group is quite as exquisitely
delineated and as correctly conceived. Nevertheless, it is very
apparent that the author is moving in a sphere which is still somewhat
an unfamiliar one to him, that of social high life. It is a curious
fact, too, that Tande's cowardly denial of the woman he loves, at the
moment when she is scorned by the mob, has the poet's sympathy on the
ground of morality.
The novel suffers from a double defect. In the first place there
is a decided lack of clearness in the characterization of one of
the main personages, Skarlie. He is meant to impress the reader as
a sort of monster, and yet the reader feels continually obliged to
sympathize with him in his relations with his reserved, ideal wife.
In the most guarded manner conceivable, it is indicated that Skarlie
is a highly depraved person, and yet this monster of sensuality, in
his dealings with his own wife, of whom he has gained possession by a
not particularly sharp intrigue, displays a moonshine-like ideal of a
Platonic relation between husband and wife, in the Ingemann style, and
is content with the modest satisfaction of clothing and feeding her.
The second deficiency strikes deeper into the philosophy of the novel.
There is a good deal of old mysticism in the handling of the doctrine
concerning the "destiny" of men and women, about which the story
revolves, and (as is always the case with both Björnson and Ibsen) the
mysticism is strangely interwoven with rationalism. Björnson seems
to wish to have it firmly established as the sum of the story that
there is another way to happiness and beneficent activity for woman
than a relation to the man whom she loves, but the idea is not clearly
expressed.
"Leonarda," although not conspicuous for its dramatic merits, belongs
to the most thoroughly and richly poetic of the author's works.
Outside of the Scandinavian North, a drama of this kind cannot be
fully appreciated; perhaps the powerful, intellectual influence it has
exercised can scarcely be comprehended. When placed upon the boards in
Christiania it made its marked sensation, because it rang like a word
of deliverance into Norwegian affairs. The message of "Leonarda" is
that of moral and religious tolerance, from which the author himself,
in his early days, was so far removed. In this drama, with wonderful
display of intellectual superiority, Björnson brought forward a whole
series of generations of Norwegian society, showing the faults and
virtues of each generation, and allowing the great-grandmother, who,
as the grandmother in George Sand's drama, "L'autre," represents the
culture of the eighteenth century, so meanly estimated during the long
period of Northern reaction, to utter the solemn amen of the play. Her
concluding words read as follows:--
"The time of deep emotions has, indeed, come back again."
With "Leonarda," however, not only the time of deep emotions but
that of hardy thoughts had returned, although the poet, as already
indicated, fought his opponents with a benignity and forbearance, a
benevolence above all partisanship, that forms, perhaps, his most
marked characteristic.
Henrik Ibsen is a judge, stem as one of the judges of Israel of
old; Björnson is a prophet, the delightful herald of a better age.
In the depths of his nature, Ibsen is a great revolutionist. In his
"Kjærlighedens Komedie" (Love's Comedy), and in "Et Dukkehjem" (A Model
Home, known as "Nora" in Germany and England), he applies the scourge
to the marriage relation of the day; in "Brand" to the state church;
in "Samfundets Stötter" (The Pillars of Society), to the entire civil
society of his native land. Whatever he attacks is crushed beneath
the weight of his superior and penetrating criticism. Björnson's is
a conciliatory mind; he wages warfare without bitterness. His poetry
sparkles with the sunshine of April, while that of Ibsen, with its deep
earnestness, seems to lurk in dark shadows. Ibsen loves the idea,--that
logical, and psychological consistency which drives Brand out of the
church, and Nora out of the marriage relation. Ibsen's love of ideas
corresponds with Björnson's love of humanity.