Ole Bull was loved; this we see to–day; he was honored, but it is
more to be loved than to be honored!
If we would understand this deep attachment from its inception,
understand him, what he was, what he is to us, then we must go far
back to the time when he first appeared among us.
We were a poor, a small nation, with glorious traditions of
earlier times, starting afresh with longings not soon to be
realized, longings for which we were sometimes mocked.
Even of our own intellectual and spiritual inheritance but few
crumbs had fallen to us, Denmark having taken the loaf. They said
we were incapable of an independent intellectual existence, and
our best men believed this. A Norse literature was deemed an
impossibility, though the ample foundations were there to build
upon; an individual Norse school of history, a thing to be laughed
at; even our language was not acceptable unless spoken with a
Danish accent and soft consonants; a national theatre not even to
be thought of.
Our political situation was equally unfortunate. We had been newly
bought and sold, and what little liberty we had presumed to seize,
and had succeeded in extending, gave us no security, but much
concern.
We dared have no official celebrations, since it might offend in
high places. But a young generation came, nourished on freedom,
and without the fear and prudence of their elders, but with more
of defiance, more of anger. They lived in the morning of freedom
and honor, and in this dawn came Ole Bull’s tones like the first
rays of the sun over the mountain tops.
At that time the folk–melodies invaded our music, the democratic
invaded the aristocratic, the national the abstract, the
individual the formulated ideal. To our honor be it said, we
followed.
Older men have told you of the giant form which suddenly stood
forth, not in the low, no, in the highest places, before kings and
the most cultured, and played with a wild power, possessed by only
one man before, but in Ole Bull more original, more humanly
sympathetic,—a power for the first time Norse. When they read how
he stood and sang Norwegian melodies from his violin to other
nations, we felt that they were one with us while they were moved
to laughter and tears as they caught glimpses back of him of our
people and grand, beautiful nature; thus one may understand the
confidence, the faith, the pride he awakened,—he the foremost of
all in our Norse independence. Henrik Wergeland expresses this
when he makes Norway thus sing to Ole Bull:—
“Oh, world–wide is my son’s fair fame!
Anew my eye is proud aflame.
“On, on, my son! when thou art blest,
’Tis blessing in thy Mother’s breast.
“A poet I, for ages long;
The Norsemen’s legends are my song.
“My epic have I written too,
A noble thought each hero true.”
On his first return from his triumphs abroad it was a festival but
to look at him. When he played the folk–songs, which had been
timidly hidden, though cherished in memory, now through him
applauded by mighty rulers, that generation felt themselves borne
to the same heights; Ole Bull became the first and greatest
festival in this people’s life; he gave us self–respect, the
greatest gift possible at that time.
This is Ole Bull’s undying honor, this the supreme accomplishment
of his life.
If one would measure the depth of an impression, he must seek its
expression in literature. Read Welhaven’s poem at that time to Ole
Bull. Any man with a knowledge of European literature will not
hesitate to say that it is one of the most beautiful lyrics ever
written.
How happened it that he was the one to accomplish all this? His
birth of a musical race had not sufficed without the fervor of his
patriotism. During our war for independence he was still a boy at
play, and his childish voice was among the first to shout for our
young freedom. When a youth—I speak whereof I know—his violin,
with its boundless, exultant joy, sang our first national songs in
Henrik Wergeland’s college–room, and became the overture to
Wergeland’s inspiration of our national observance of the 17th of
May. These feelings Ole Bull carried with him to other lands.
Patriotism was the creative power in his life. When he established
the Norse theatre, assisted Norse art, helped the national museum,
his mighty instrument singing for other patriotic ends; when he
helped his countrymen and others wherever he found them, it was
not so much for the object, or the person, but for the honor of
Norway. He always felt himself our representative; and, if he felt
there was need, let it be at home or abroad, that “Ole Olsen Viol,
Norse Norman from Norway”[25] should appear, he never failed us.
[25] His own nickname for himself.
His patriotism had a certain tinge of _naïveté_, of morbidity,
about it; it was a consequence of the times. But it was of
importance to us that our finest gentleman, coming from Europe’s
most cultured salons, could and would go arm in arm with our poor
Norse beginnings. It lies in the nature of things that first
attempts are never popular; they only become so when developed and
recognized by all; but, as a rule, they have then outlived their
usefulness.
It was this sturdy faithfulness in Ole Bull, spite of his
impulsive temperament, that made him dear to our people; in other
words, it was his patriotism.
So it was with Henrik Wergeland. Ole Bull and Henrik Wergeland
were of the same age and temperament. The one responded to the
other as in the spring the wood–song answers the green of the
meadows, or on the western coast the sea skerries and irregular
mountain groups—the flickering sunshine on their grassy slopes,
their shifting lights and shadows—answer the wooded ridges, the
great, broad, rich landscape of the east, with Mjosen’s gleaming
surface in its midst. The one was the blue boy of the west, with
the ocean’s salt flavor, the restless spirit of the Vikings; the
other, the gray boy of the east.[26] There was western blood in
Henrik Wergeland; but his genius had the color of the mild, broad
outlook of an eastern landscape, with the mountains in the
distance.
[26] Gray and blue are the colors worn by the peasants in Norway.
When Ole Bull talked of his art, he was wont to say that he had
learned to “sing” of the Italians. Without doubt this was true;
the outer form he had learned from them, but the genius and the
colors were from the soul of our soul, the most spontaneous
message of the folk–song, as love of country made it glow in his
consciousness. An old, world–renowned artist[27] said to me:
“Faults in Ole Bull’s playing are more noticeable as he advances
in age; but no artist in our time has possessed Ole Bull’s poetic
power; no one has ever surpassed his playing of the ‘Adagio.’ I
think all his cultivated auditors will say the same.”
[27] Joachim.
The criticism has been made that Ole Bull has failed in not leaving
behind him great musical works. This is unjust. A man that could so
fully give what he at times gave us could not do more. In proportion to
the ability for the one, is the other impossible.
But it was important for us at that time, as it is always important for
a small nation, that we had a man of the first rank among us. It was a
direct connection with the outside world. It exalted our aims. As far as
human power could, it spurred our ambition,—and that in all directions.
Let us then, at the grave of our greatest citizen, say honor to him
beyond all the artists who have broken a way for us,—he who not alone
inspired followers in his profession, but also awakened ambition and
happiness wherever he was known; helping the moral and intellectual
forces,—the greatest legacy one can bequeath.
I love to remember him on the great 17th of May celebrations; for he was
a celebration himself, majestic, fascinating, as he walked among us. And
a gesture of his hand, a look, raised in him who received it a holiday
mood.
Thus hand in hand with all our national development, ennobling
it, cherishing in his love the least with the greatest, always
ennobling,—this was his life, this his inspiration. Such a love of
country rewards, as by miracle, him who cherishes it. When I read every
year how he came home with summer, like the bird of passage, how he came
this summer, and that his love of country, of home, bore him on, spite
of distance, the advice of physicians, and all hindrances, I thought of
Henrik Wergeland’s words of Robert Major: “First thence and then to
heaven would the old gray republican.” His eye would fondly rest on that
land he loved before it closed in death.
Countrymen! let us not leave this spot till we have thanked her who did
what a nation could not—opened to his age a home of beauty and
comfort....
Always before when we have spoken in Ole Bull’s honor we have closed
with a “Long live Ole Bull!” This we may never say again—though dead to
us he is not,—he will be with us when we return to our homes. Let my
last words be an appeal to the young here present. True to the dead one,
as your elders who knew him, ye cannot be; but by this grave, mark the
wonders worked by love of country, the miracle revealed forever in this
rich life of which we solemnize the earthly close.