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ESSAYS ON SCANDINAVIAN LITERATURE
by
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
* * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Goethe and Schiller. Their Lives and Works; with a commentary on "Faust."
Essays on German Literature.
Essays on Scandinavian Literature.
A Commentary on the Writings of Henrik Ibsen.
Literary and Social Silhouettes.
The Story of Norway.
Gunnar.
Tales from Two Hemispheres.
A Norseman's Pilgrimage.
Falconberg. A Novel.
Queen Titania.
Ilka on the Hill-top, and Other Tales.
A Daughter of the Philistines.
The Light of Her Countenance.
Vagabond Tales.
The Mammon of Unrighteousness.
The Golden Calf.
Social Strugglers.
Idyls of Norway, and Other Poems.
THE NORSELAND SERIES (JUVENILE).
The Modern Vikings: Stories of Life and Sport in the Northland.
Against Heavy Odds, and A Fearless Trio.
Boyhood in Norway.
Norseland Tales.
* * * * *
ESSAYS ON SCANDINAVIAN LITERATURE
by
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures in
Columbia College
London
David Nutt, 270, Strand
1895.
Copyright, 1895, by Charles Scribner's Sons
for the United States of America
Printed by the Trow Directory, Printing and Bookbinding Company
New York, U. S. A.
PREFACE
Some twenty years ago the ambition seized me to write a History of
Scandinavian Literature. I scarcely realized then what an enormous
amount of reading would be required to equip me for this task. My
studies naturally led me much beyond the scope of my original intention.
There was a fascination in the work which lured me perpetually on, and
made me explore with a constantly increasing zest the great literary
personalities of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Thus my chapter on Henrik
Ibsen grew into a book of three hundred and seventeen pages, which was
published a year ago, and must be regarded as supplementary to the
present volume. The chapter on Björnstjerne Björnson was in danger of
expanding to similar proportions, and only the most heroic condensation
saved it from challenging criticism as an independent work. As regards
Norway and Denmark, I have endeavored to select all the weightiest and
most representative names. The Swedish authors Johan Ludvig Runeberg,
Mrs. Edgren, and August Strindberg, and the Dane Oehlenschlaeger,
necessity has compelled me to reserve for a future volume.
COLUMBIA COLLEGE, NEW YORK,
February, 1895.
CONTENTS
PAGE
BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON, 3
ALEXANDER KIELLAND, 107
JONAS LIE, 121
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, 155
CONTEMPORARY DANISH LITERATURE, 181
GEORG BRANDES, 199
ESAIAS TEGNÉR, 219
BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
I
Björnstjerne Björnson is the first Norwegian poet who can in any sense
be called national. The national genius, with its limitations as well as
its virtues, has found its living embodiment in him. Whenever he opens
his mouth it is as if the nation itself were speaking. If he writes a
little song, hardly a year elapses before its phrases have passed into
the common speech of the people; composers compete for the honor of
interpreting it in simple, Norse-sounding melodies, which gradually work
their way from the drawing-room to the kitchen, the street, and thence
out over the wide fields and highlands of Norway. His tales, romances,
and dramas express collectively the supreme result of the nation's
experience, so that no one to-day can view Norwegian life or Norwegian
history except through their medium. The bitterest opponent of the poet
(for like every strong personality he has many enemies) is thus no less
his debtor than his warmest admirer. His speech has stamped itself upon
the very language and given it a new ring, a deeper resonance. His
thought fills the air, and has become the unconscious property of all
who have grown to manhood and womanhood since the day when his titanic
form first loomed up on the horizon of the North. It is not only as
their first and greatest poet that the Norsemen love and hate him, but
also as a civilizer in the widest sense. But like Kadmus, in Greek myth,
he has not only brought with him letters, but also the dragon-teeth of
strife, which it is to be hoped will not sprout forth in armed men.
A man's ancestry and environment, no doubt, account in a superficial
manner for his appearance and mental characteristics. Having the man, we
are able to trace the germs of his being in the past of his race and his
country; but, with all our science we have not yet acquired the
ingenuity to predict the man--to deduce him _a priori_ from the tangle
of determining causes which enveloped his birth. It seems beautifully
appropriate in the Elder Edda that the god-descended hero Helge the
Völsung should be born amid gloom and terror in a storm which shakes the
house, while the Norns--the goddesses of fate--proclaim in the tempest
his tempestuous career. Equally satisfactory it appears to have the
modern champion of Norway--the typical modern Norseman--born on the
bleak and wild Dovre Mountain,[1] where there is winter eight months of
the year and cold weather during the remaining four. The parish of
Kvikne, in Oesterdalen, where his father, the Reverend Peder Björnson,
held a living, had a bad reputation on account of the unruly ferocity
and brutal violence of the inhabitants. One of the Reverend Peder
Björnson's recent predecessors never went into his pulpit, unarmed; and
another fled for his life. The peasants were not slow in intimating to
the new pastor that they meant to have him mind his own business and
conform to the manners and customs of the parish; but there they
reckoned without their host. The reverend gentleman made short work of
the opposition. He enforced the new law of compulsory education without
heeding its unpopularity; and when the champion fighter of the valley
came as the peasants' spokesman to take him to task in summary fashion,
he found himself, before he was aware of it, at the bottom of the
stairs, where he picked himself up wonderingly and promptly took to his
heels.
[1] December 8, 1832.
During the winter the snow reached up to the second-story windows of the
parsonage; and the servants had to tunnel their way to the storehouse
and the stables. The cold was so intense that the little Björnstjerne
thought twice before touching a door knob, as his fingers were liable to
stick to the metal. When he was six years old, however, his father was
transferred to Romsdal, which is, indeed, a wild and grandly picturesque
region; but far less desolate than Dovre. "It lies," says Björnson,
"broad--bosomed between two confluent fjords, with a green mountain
above, cataracts and homesteads on the opposite shore, waving meadows
and activity in the bottom of the valley; and all the way out toward the
ocean, mountains with headland upon headland running out into the fjord
and a large farm upon each."
The feeling of terror, the crushing sense of guilt which Björnson has so
strikingly portrayed in the first chapters of "In God's Way," were
familiar to his own childhood. In every life, as in every race, the God
of fear precedes the God of love. And in Northern Norway, where nature
seems so tremendous and man so insignificant, no boy escapes these
phantoms of dread which clutch him with icy fingers. But as a
counterbalancing force in the young Björnson, we have his confidence in
the strength and good sense of his gigantic father, who could thrash the
strongest champion in the parish. He used to stand in the evening on the
beach "and gaze at the play of the sunshine upon fjord and mountain,
until he wept, as if he had done something wrong. Now he would suddenly
stop in this or that valley, while running on skees, and stand
spell-bound by its beauty and a longing which he could not comprehend,
but which was so great that in the midst of the highest joy he was
keenly conscious of a sense of confinement and sorrow."[2] "We catch a
glimpse in these childish memories," says Mr. Nordahl Rolfsen, "of the
remarkable character, we are about to depict: Being the son of a giant,
he is ever ready to strike out with a heavy hand, when he thinks that
anyone is encroaching upon what he deems the right. But this same
pugnacious man, whom it is so hard to overcome, can be overwhelmed by an
emotion and surrender himself to it with his whole being."
[2] Nordahl Rolfsen: Norske Digtere, pp. 450, 451.
At the age of twelve Björnson was sent to the Latin school at Molde,
where, however, his progress was not encouraging. He was one of those
thoroughly healthy and headstrong boys who are the despair of ambitious
mothers, and whom fathers (when the futility of educational chastisement
has been finally proved) are apt to regard with a resigned and
half-humorous regret. His dislike of books was instinctive, hearty, and
uncompromising. His strong, half-savage boy-nature could brook no
restraints, and looked longingly homeward to the wide mountain plains,
the foaming rivers where the trout leaped in the summer night, and the
calm fjord where you might drift blissfully along, as it were, suspended
in the midst of the vast, blue, ethereal space. And when the summer
vacation came, with its glorious freedom and irresponsibility, he would
roam at his own sweet will through forest and field, until hunger and
fatigue forced him to return to his father's parsonage.
After several years of steadily unsuccessful study, Björnson at last
passed the so-called _examen artium_, which admitted him to the
University of Christiania. He was now a youth of large, almost athletic
frame, with a handsome, striking face, and a pair of blue eyes which no
one is apt to forget who has ever looked into them. There was a certain
grand simplicity and _naïveté_ in his manner, and an exuberance of
animal spirits which must have made him an object of curious interest
among his town-bred fellow-students. But his University career was of
brief duration. All the dimly fermenting powers of his rich nature were
now beginning to clarify, the consciousness of his calling began to
assert itself, and the demand for expression became imperative. His
literary _début_ was an historic drama entitled "Valborg," which was
accepted for representation by the directors of the Christiania Theatre,
and procured for its author a free ticket to all theatrical
performances; it was, however, never brought on the stage, as Björnson,
having had his eyes opened to its defects, withdrew it of his own
accord.
At this time the Norwegian stage was almost entirely in the hands of the
Danes, and all the more prominent actors were of Danish birth.
Theatrical managers drew freely on the dramatic treasures of Danish
literature, and occasionally, to replenish the exchequer, reproduced a
French comedy or farce, whose epigrammatic pith and vigor were more than
half-spoiled in the translation. The drama was as yet an exotic in
Norway; it had no root in the national soil, and could accordingly in no
respect represent the nation's own struggles and aspirations. The
critics themselves, no doubt, looked upon it merely as a form of
amusement, a thing to be wondered and stared at, and to be dismissed
from the mind as soon as the curtain dropped. Björnson, whose patriotic
soul could not endure the thought of this abject foreign dependence,
ascribed all the existing abuses to the predominance of the Danish
element, and in a series of vehement articles attacked the Danish
actors, managers, and all who were in any way responsible for the
unworthy condition of the national stage. In return he reaped, as might
have been expected, an abundant harvest of abuse, but the discussion he
had provoked furnished food for reflection, and the rapid development of
the Norwegian drama during the next decade is, no doubt, largely
traceable to his influence.
The liberty for which he had yearned so long, Björnson found at the
International Students' Reunion of 1856. Then the students of the
Norwegian and Danish Universities met in Upsala, where they were
received with grand festivities by their Swedish brethren. Here the poet
caught the first glimpse of a greater and freer life than moved within
the narrow horizon of the Norwegian capital. This gay and careless
student-life, this cheerful abandonment of all the artificial shackles
which burden one's feet in their daily walk through a bureaucratic
society, the temporary freedom which allows one without offence to toast
a prince and hug a count to one's bosom--all this had its influence
upon Björnson's sensitive nature; it filled his soul with a happy
intoxication and with confidence in his own strength. And having once
tasted a life like this he could no more return to what he had left
behind him.
The next winter we find him in Copenhagen, laboring with an intensity of
creative ardor which he had never known before. His striking appearance,
the pithy terseness of his speech, and a certain _naïve_ self-assertion
and impatience of social restraints made him a notable figure in the
polite and somewhat effeminate society of the Danish capital. There was
a general expectation at that time that a great poet was to come, and
although Björnson had as yet published nothing to justify the
expectation, he found the public of Copenhagen ready to recognize in him
the man who was to rouse the North from its long intellectual torpor,
and usher in a new era in its literature. It is needless to say that he
did not discourage this belief, for he himself fervently believed that
he would before long justify it. The first proof of his strength he gave
in the tale "Synnöve Solbakken" (Synnöve Sunny-Hill), which he published
in an illustrated weekly, and afterward in book-form. It is a very
unpretending little story, idyllic in tone, but realistic in its
coloring, and redolent of the pine and spruce and birch of the Norwegian
highlands.
It had been the fashion in Norway since the nation regained its
independence to interest one's self in a lofty, condescending way in
the life of the peasantry. A few well-meaning persons, like the poet
Wergeland, had labored zealously for their enlightenment and the
improvement of their economic condition; but, except in the case of such
single individuals, no real and vital sympathy and fellow-feeling had
ever existed between the upper and the lower strata of Norwegian
society. And as long as the fellow-feeling is wanting, this zeal for
enlightenment, however laudable its motive, is not apt to produce
lasting results. The peasants view with distrust and suspicion whatever
comes to them from their social superiors, and the so-called "useful
books," which were scattered broadcast over the land, were of a
tediously didactic character, and, moreover, hardly adapted to the
comprehension of those to whom they were ostensibly addressed. Wergeland
himself, with all his self-sacrificing ardor, had but a vague conception
of the real needs of the people, and, as far as results were concerned,
wasted much of his valuable life in his efforts to improve, edify and
instruct them. It hardly occurred to him that the culture of which he
and his colleagues were the representatives was itself a foreign
importation, and could not by any violent process be ingrafted upon the
national trunk, which drew its strength from centuries of national life,
history, and tradition. That this peasantry, whom the _bourgeoisie_ and
the aristocracy of culture had been wont to regard with half-pitying
condescension, were the real representatives of the Norse nation; that
they had preserved through long years of tyranny and foreign oppression
the historic characteristics of their Norse forefathers, while the upper
classes had gone in search of strange gods, and bowed their necks to the
foreign yoke; that in their veins the old strong saga-life was still
throbbing with vigorous pulse-beats--this was the lesson which Björnson
undertook to teach his countrymen, and a very fruitful lesson it has
proved to be. It has inspired the people with renewed courage, it has
turned the national life into fresh channels, and it has revolutionized
national politics.
To be sure all this was not the result of the idyllic little tale which
marked the beginning of his career. But this little tale, although no
trace of what the Germans call "tendency" is to be found in it, is still
significant as being the poet's first indirect manifesto, and as such
distinctly foreshadowing the path which he has since followed.
First, in its purely literary aspect, "Synnöve Solbakken" was strikingly
novel. The author did not, as his predecessors had done, view the people
from the exalted pedestal of superior culture; not as a subject for
benevolent preaching and charitable condescension, but as a concrete
phenomenon, whose _raison d'étre_ was as absolute and indisputable as
that of the _bourgeoisie_ or the bureaucracy itself. He depicted their
soul-struggles and the incidents of their daily life with a loving
minuteness and a vivid realism hitherto unequalled in the literature of
the North. He did not, like Auerbach, construct his peasant figures
through laborious reflection, nor did he attempt by anxious
psychological analysis to initiate the reader into their processes of
thought and emotion. He simply depicted them as he saw and knew them.
Their feelings and actions have their immediate, self-evident motives in
the characters themselves, and the absence of analysis on the author's
part gives an increased energy and movement to the story.
Mr. Nordahl Rolfsen relates, _à propos_ of the reception which was
accorded Björnson's first book, the following amusing anecdote:
"'Synnöve Solbakken' was printed, and its author was anxious to have his
friends read it. But not one of them could be prevailed upon. At last a
comrade was found who was persuaded to attack it on the promise of a
bottle of punch. He entered Björnson's den, got a long pipe which he
filled with tobacco, undressed himself completely--for it was a hot
day--flung himself on the bed, and began to read. Björnson sat in the
sofa, breathless with expectation. Leaf after leaf was turned; not a
smile, not a single encouraging word! The young poet had good reason to
regard the battle as lost. At last the pipe, the bottle, and the book
were finished. Then the merciless Stoic rose and began to dress, and the
following little exclamation escaped him: 'That is, the devil take me,
the best book I have read in all my life.'"
Björnson's style was no less novel than his theme. It may or it may not
have been consciously modelled after the saga style, to which, however,
it bears an obvious resemblance. In his early childhood, while he lived
among the peasants, he became familiar with their mode of thought and
speech, and it entered into his being, and became his own natural mode
of expression. There is in his daily conversation a certain grim
directness, and a laconic weightiness, which give an air of importance
and authority even to his simplest utterances. This tendency to
compression frequently has the effect of obscurity, not because his
thought is obscure, but rather because energetic brevity of expression
has fallen into disuse, and even a Norse public, long accustomed to the
wordy diffuseness of latter-day bards, have in part lost the faculty to
comprehend the genius of their own language. As a Danish critic wittily
observed: "Björnson's language is but one step removed from pantomime."
In 1858 Björnson assumed the directorship of the theatre in Bergen, and
there published his second tale, "Arne," in which the same admirable
self-restraint, the same implicit confidence in the intelligence
of his reader, the same firm-handed decision and vigor in the
character-drawing, in fact, all the qualities which delighted the public
in "Synnöve Solbakken," were found in an intensified degree.
In the meanwhile, Björnson had also made his _début_ as a dramatist. In
the year 1858 he had published two dramas, "Mellem Slagene" (Between the
Battles) and "Halte-Hulda" (Limping Hulda) both of which deal with
national subjects, taken from the old sagas. As in his tales he had
endeavored to concentrate into a few strongly defined types the modern
folk-life of the North, so in his dramas the same innate love of his
nationality leads him to seek the typical features of his people, as
they are revealed in the historic chieftains of the past.
"Between the Battles" is a dramatic episode rather than a drama. During
the civil war between King Sverre and King Magnus in the twelfth
century, the former visits in disguise a hut upon the mountains where a
young warrior, Halvard Gjaela and Inga, his beloved, are living
together. The long internecine strife has raised the hand of father
against son, and of brother against brother. Halvard sympathizes with
Sverre; Inga, who hates the king because he has burned her father's
farm, is a partisan of Magnus. In the absence of her lover she goes to
the latter's camp and brings back with her a dozen warriors for the
purpose of capturing Halvard, and thereby preventing him from joining
the enemy. Sverre discovers the warriors, whom she has hidden in the
cow-stable, and persuading them that he is a spy for King Magnus sends
two of them to his own army for reinforcements. In the meanwhile he
reconciles the estranged lovers, makes peace between them and Inga's
father, and finally, in the last scene, as his men arrive, is recognized
as the king.
This is, of course, a venerable _coup de théâtre_. Whatever novelty
there is in the play must be sought, not in the situations, but in the
pithy and laconic dialogue, which has a distinct national coloring. This
was not the amiable diffuseness of Oehlenschlaeger, who had hitherto
dominated the Norwegian as well as the Danish stage; and yet it did not
by any means represent so complete a breach with the traditions of the
romantic drama as was claimed by Björnson's admirers. The fresh
naturalness and absence of declamation were a gain, no doubt; but there
are yet several notes remaining which have the well-known romantic
cadence. "Between the Battles," though too slight to be called an
achievement, was accepted as a pledge of achievement in future.
Björnson's next drama "Limping Hulda" ("Halte-Hulda") (1858) was a
partial fulfilment of this pledge. If it is not high tragedy, in the
ancient sense, it is of the stuff that tragedy is made of. Hulda is an
impressive stage figure in her demoniac passion and tiger-like
tenderness. Though I doubt if Björnson has, in this type, caught the
soul of a Norse woman of the saga age, he has come much nearer to
catching it than any of his predecessors. If Gudrun Osvif's Daughter, of
the Laxdoela Saga, was his model, he has modernized her considerably,
and thereby made her more intelligible to modern readers. Like her,
Hulda causes the murder of the man she loves; and there is a fateful
spell about her beauty which brings death to whomsoever looks too long
upon it. Though ostensibly a saga-drama, the harshness and grim ferocity
of that sanguinary period are softened; and a romantic illumination
pervades the whole action. A certain lyrical effusiveness in the love
passages (which is alien to all Björnson's later works) hints at the
influence of the Danish Romanticists, and particularly Oehlenschlaeger.
It would be unfair, perhaps, to take the author to task because this
youthful drama exhibits no remarkable subtlety in its conception of
character. It contains no really great living figure who stands squarely
upon his feet and lingers in the memory. A certain half-rhetorical
impulse carries you along; and the external effectiveness of the
situations keeps the interest on the alert. For all that "Limping
Hulda," like its predecessors and its successors, tended to stimulate
powerfully the national spirit, which was then asserting itself in every
department of intellectual activity. Thus a national theatre had, by the
perseverance and generosity of Ole Bull, been established in his native
city, Bergen; and it was almost a matter of course that an effort should
be made to identify Björnson with an enterprise which accorded so well
with his own aspirations. His connection with the Norwegian Theatre of
Bergen was, however, not of long duration, for though your enthusiasm
may be ever so great it is a thankless task to act as "artistic
director" of a stage in a town which is neither artistic enough nor
large enough to support a playhouse with a higher aim than that of
furnishing ephemeral amusement. From Bergen he was called to the
editorship of _Aftenbladet_ (The Evening Journal), the second political
daily of Christiania, and continued there with hot zeal and eloquence
his battle for "all that is truly Norse."
But a brief experience sufficed to convince him that daily journalism
was not his _forte_. He was and is too indiscreet, precipitate,
credulous, and inconsiderately generous to be a successful editor. If a
paper could be conducted on purely altruistic principles, and without
reference to profits, there would be no man fitter to occupy an
editorial chair. For as an inspiring force, as a radiating focus of
influence, his equal is not to be encountered "in seven kingdoms round."
However, this inspiring force could reach a far larger public through
published books than through the columns of a newspaper. It was
therefore by no means in a regretful frame of mind that he descended
from the editorial tripod, and in the spring of 1860 started for Italy.
Previous to his departure he published, through the famous house of
Gyldendal, in Copenhagen, a volume which, it is no exaggeration to say,
has become a classic of Norwegian literature. It bears the modest title
"Smaa-stykker" (Small Pieces), but it contains, in spite of its
unpretentiousness, some of Björnson's noblest work. I need only mention
the masterly tale "The Father," with its sobriety and serene strength. I
know but one other instance[3] of so great tragedy, told in so few and
simple words. "Arne," "En Glad Gut" (A Happy Boy), and the amusing
dialect story, "Ei Faarleg Friing" (A Dangerous Wooing), also belong to
this delightful collection. These little masterpieces of concise
story-telling have been included in the popular two-volume edition of
"Fortällinger," which contains also "The Fisher-maiden" (1867-68), the
exquisite story, "The Bridal March" (1872), originally written as text
to three of Tidemand's paintings, and a vigorous bit of disguised
autobiography, "Blakken," of which not the author but a horse is the
ostensible hero.
[3] Austin Dobson's poem, "The Cradle."
The descriptive name for all these tales, except the last, is idyl. It
was, indeed, the period when all Europe (outside the British empire) was
viewing the hardy sons of the soil through poetic spectacles. In Germany
Auerbach had, in his "Black Forest Village Tales" (1843, 1853, 1854),
discarded the healthful but unflattering realism of Jeremias Gotthelf
(1797-1854), and chosen, with a half-didactic purpose, to contrast the
peasant's honest rudeness and straightforwardness with the refined
sophistication and hypocrisy of the higher classes. George Sand, with
her beautiful Utopian genius, poured forth a torrent of rural narrative
of a crystalline limpidity ("Mouny Robin," "La Mare au Diable," "La
Petite Fadette," etc., 1841-1849), which is as far removed from the
turbid stream of Balzac ("Les Paysans") and Zola ("La Terre"), as
Paradise is from the Inferno. There is an echo of Rousseau's gospel of
nature in all these tales, and the same optimistic delusion regarding
"the people" for which the eighteenth century paid so dearly. The
painters likewise caught the tendency, and with the same thorough-going
conscientiousness as their brethren of the quill, disguised coarseness
as strength, bluntness as honesty, churlishness as dignity. What an
idyllic sweetness there is, for instance, in Tidemand's scenes of
Norwegian peasant life! What a _spirituelle_ and movingly sentimental
note in the corresponding German scenes of Knaus and Hübner, and, _longo
intervallo_, Meyerheim and Meyer von Bremen. Not a breath of the broad
humor of Teniers and Van Ostade in these masters; scarcely a hint of the
robust animality and clownish jollity with which the clear-sighted
Dutchmen endowed their rural revellers. Though pictorial art has not,
outside of Russia (where the great and unrivalled Riepin paints the
peasant with the brush as remorselessly as Tolstoï and Dostoyefski with
the pen), kept pace with the realistic movement in literature, yet there
is no lack of evidence that the rose-colored tinge is vanishing even
from the painter's spectacles; and such uncompromising veracity as that
of Millet and Courbet, which the past generation despised, is now hailed
with acclaim in such masters as Bastien-Lepage, Dagnan-Bouveret, and
the Scandinavians, Kristian Krog and Anders Zorn.
Björnson is, however, temperamentally averse to that modern naturalism
which insists upon a minute fidelity to fact without reference to
artistic values. His large and spacious mind has a Southern exposure,
and has all "its windows thrown wide open to the sun." A sturdy
optimism, which is prone to believe good of all men, unless they happen
to be his political antagonists, inclines him to overlook what does not
fit into his own scheme of existence. And yet no one can say that, as
presentations of Norwegian peasant life, "Synnöve," "Arne," "The Bridal
March," etc., are untrue, though, indeed, one could well imagine
pictures in very much sombrer colors which might lay a valider claim to
veracity. Kielland's "Laboring People," and Kristian Elster's "A Walk to
the Cross" and "Kjeld Horge," give the reverse of the medal of which
Björnson exhibits the obverse. These authors were never in any way
identified with "the people," and could not help being struck with many
of the rude and unbeautiful phases of rural existence; while Björnson,
who sprang directly from the peasantry, had the pride and intelligence
of kinship, and was not yet lifted far enough above the life he depicted
to have acquired the cultivated man's sense of condescension and
patronizing benevolence. He was but one generation removed from the
soil; and he looked with a strong natural sympathy and affectionate
predilection upon whatever reminded him of this origin. If he had been a
peasant, however, he could never have become the wonderful chronicler
that he is. It is the elevation, slight though it be, which enables him
to survey the fields in which his fathers toiled and suffered. Or, to
quote Mr. Rolfsen: "Björnson is the son of a clergyman; he has never
himself personally experienced the peasant's daily toil and narrow
parochial vision. He has felt the power of the mountains over his mind,
and been filled with longing, as a grand emotion, but the contractedness
of the spiritual horizon has not tormented him. He has not to take that
into account when he writes. During the tedious school-days, his
beautiful Romsdal valley lay waiting for him, beckoning him home at
every vacation--always alluring and radiant, with an idyllic shimmer."
Hence, no doubt, his sunny poetic vision which unconsciously idealizes.
Just as in daily intercourse he displays a positive genius for drawing
out what is good in a man, and brushes away as of small account what
does not accord with his own conception of him, nay, in a measure,
forces him to be as he believes him to be, so every character in these
early tales seems to bask in the genial glow of his optimism. The farm
Solbakken (Sunny Hill) lies on a high elevation, where the sun shines
from its rise to its setting, and both Synnöve and her parents walk
about in this still and warm illumination. They are all good, estimable
people, and their gentle piety, without any tinge of fanaticism, invests
them with a quiet dignity. The sterner and hardier folk at Granliden
(Pine Glen) have a rugged honesty and straightforwardness which, in
connection with their pithy and laconic speech, makes them less genial,
but no less typically Norse. They have a distinct atmosphere and spinal
columns that keep them erect, organic, and significant. Even
reprehensible characters like Aslak and Nils Tailor (in "Arne") have a
certain claim upon our sympathy, the former as a helpless victim of
circumstance, the latter as a suppressed and perverted genius.
In the spring of 1860 Björnson went abroad and devoted three years to
foreign travel, spending the greater part of his time in Italy. From
Rome he sent home the historical drama "King Sverre" (1861), which is
one of his weakest productions. It is written in blank verse, with
occasional rhymes in the more impressive passages. Of dramatic interest
in the ordinary sense, there is but little. It is a series of more or
less animated scenes, from the period of the great civil war
(1130-1240), connected by the personality of Sverre. Under the mask,
however, of mediæval history, the author preaches a political sermon to
his own contemporaries. Sverre, as the champion of the common people
against the tribal aristocracy, and the wily Bishop Nicholas as the
representative of the latter become, as it were, permanent forces, which
have continued their battle to the present day. There can be no doubt
that Björnson, whose sympathies are strongly democratic, permitted the
debate between the two to become needlessly didactic, and strained
historical verisimilitude by veiled allusions to contemporaneous
conditions. Greatly superior is his next drama, "Sigurd Slembe"[4]
(1862).
[4] An English version of "Sigurd Slembe" has been published by
William Morton Payne (Boston, 1888).
The story of the brave and able pretender, Sigurd Slembe, in his
struggle with the vain and mean-spirited king, Harold Gille, is the
theme of the dramatic trilogy. Björnson attempts to give the spiritual
development of Sigurd from the moment he becomes acquainted with his
royal birth until his final destruction. From a frank and generous
youth, who is confident that he is born for something great, he is
driven by the treachery, cruelty, and deceit of his brother, the king,
into the position of a desperate outlaw and guerilla. The very first
scene, in the church of St. Olaf, where the boy confides to the saint,
in a tone of _bonne camaraderie_, his joy at having conquered, in
wrestling, the greatest champion in the land, gives one the key-note to
his character:
"Now only listen to me, saintly Olaf!
To-day I whipped young Beintein! Beintein was
The strongest man in Norway. Now am I!
Now I can walk from Lindesnäs and on,
Up to the northern boundary of the snow,
For no one step aside or lift my hat.
There where I am, no man hath leave to fight,
To make a tumult, threaten, or to swear--
Peace everywhere! And he who wrong hath suffered
Shall justice find, until the laws shall sing.
And as before the great have whipped the small,
So will I help the small to whip the great.
Now I can offer counsel at the Thing,
Now to the king's board I can boldly walk
And sit beside him, saying 'Here am I!'"
The exultation in victory which speaks in every line of this opening
monologue marks the man who, in spite of the obscurity of his origin,
feels his right to be first, and who, in this victory, celebrates the
attainment of his birthright. Equally luminous by way of
characterization is his exclamation to St. Olaf when he hears that he is
King Magnus Barefoot's son:
"Then we are kinsmen, Olaf, you and I!"
According to Norwegian law at that time, every son of a king was
entitled to his share of the kingdom, and Sigurd's first impulse is to
go straight to Harold Gille and demand his right. His friend Koll
Saebjörnson persuades him, however, to abandon this hopeless adventure,
and gives him a ship with which he sails to the Orient, takes part in
many wars, and gains experience and martial renown.
The second part of the trilogy deals with Sigurd's sojourn at the
Orkneys, where he interferes in the quarrel between the Earls Harold
and Paul. The atmosphere of suspicion, insecurity, and gloom which hangs
like a portentous cloud over these scenes is the very same which blows
toward us from the pages of the sagas. Björnson has gazed deeply into
the heart of Northern paganism, and has here reproduced the heroic
anarchy which was a necessary result of the code permitting the
individual to avenge his own wrongs. The two awful women, Helga and
Frakark, the mother and the aunt of the earls, are types which are
constantly met with in the saga. It is a long-recognized fact that
women, under lawless conditions, develop the wildest extremes of
ambition, avarice, and blood-thirstiness, and taunt the men with their
weak scruples. These two furies of the Orkneys plot murder with an
infernal coolness, which makes Lady Macbeth a kind-hearted woman by
comparison. They recognize in Sigurd a man born for leadership;
determine to use him for the furtherance of their plans, and to get rid
of him, by fair means or foul, when he shall have accomplished his task.
But Sigurd is too experienced a chieftain to walk into this trap. While
appearing to acquiesce, he plays for stakes of his own, but in the end
abandons all in disgust at the death of Earl Harold, who intentionally
puts on the poisoned shirt, prepared for his brother. There is no great
and monumental scene in this part which engraves itself deeply upon the
memory. The love scenes with Audhild, the young cousin of the earls,
are incidental and episodical, and exert no considerable influence
either upon Sigurd's character or upon the development of the intrigue.
Historically they are well and realistically conceived; but dramatically
they are not strong. Another criticism, which has already been made by
the Danish critic, Georg Brandes, refers to an offence against this very
historical sense which is usually so vivid in Björnson. When Frakark,
the Lady Macbeth of the play, remarks, "I am far from feeling sure of
the individual mortality so much preached of; but there is an
immortality of which I am sure; it is that of the race," she makes an
intellectual somersault from the twelfth century into the nineteenth,
and never gets back firmly on her pagan feet again. As Brandes wittily
observes: "People who talk like that do not torture their enemy to
death; they backbite him."
The third part opens with Sigurd's appearance at court, where he reveals
his origin and asks for his share of the kingdom. The king is not
disinclined to grant his request, but is overruled by his councillors,
who profit by his weakness and rule in his name. They fear this man of
many battles, with the mark of kingship on his brow; and they determine
to murder him. But Sigurd escapes from prison, and, holding the king
responsible for the treachery, kills him. From this time forth he is an
outlaw, hunted over field and fell, and roaming with untold sufferings
through the mountains and wildernesses. There he meets a Finnish maiden
who loves him, reveals his fate to him, and implores him to abandon his
ambition and dwell among her people. These scenes amid the eternal
wastes of snow are perhaps the most striking in the trilogy and most
abounding in exquisite poetic thought. Sigurd hastens hence to his doom
at the battle of Holmengra, where he is defeated, and, with fiendish
atrocity, slowly tortured to death. The rather lyrical monologue
preceding his death, in which he bids farewell to life and calmly
adjusts his gaze to eternity, is very beautiful, but, historically, a
trifle out of tune. Barring these occasional lapses from the key, the
trilogy of "Sigurd Slembe" is a noble work.
A respectful, and in part enthusiastic, reception had been accorded to
Björnson's early plays. But his first dramatic triumph he celebrated at
the performance of "Mary Stuart in Scotland." Externally this is the
most effective of his plays. The dialogue is often brilliant, and
bristles with telling points. It is eminently "actable," presenting
striking tableaus and situations. Behind the author we catch a glimpse
of the practical stage-manager who knows how a scene will look on the
boards and how a speech will sound--who can surmise with tolerable
accuracy how they will affect a first-night audience.
"Mary Stuart" is theatrically no less than dramatically conceived.
Theatrically it is far superior to Swinburne's "Chastelard" (not to
speak of his interminable musical verbiage in "Bothwell") but it is
paler, colder, and poetically inferior. The voluptuous warmth and wealth
of color, the exquisite levity, the _débonnaire_ grace of the
Swinburnian drama we seek in vain. Björnson is vigorous, but he is not
subtile. Mere feline amorousness, such as Swinburne so inimitably
portrays, he would disdain to deal with if even he could. Such a bit of
intricate self-characterization as the English poet puts into the
Queen's mouth in the first scene with Chastelard, in the third act, lies
utterly beyond the range of the sturdier Norseman.
_Queen_: "Nay, dear, I have
No tears in me; I never shall weep much,
I think, in all my life: I have wept for wrath
Sometimes, and for mere pain, but for love's pity
I cannot weep at all. I would to God
You loved me less: I give you all I can
For all this love of yours, and yet I am sure
I shall live out the sorrow of your death
And be glad afterwards. You know I am sorry.
I should weep now; forgive me for your part.
God made me hard, I think. Alas! you see
I had fain been other than I am."
Add to this the beautifully illuminating threat, "I shall be deadly to
you," uttered in the midst of amorous cooings and murmurings, and we
catch a glimpse of the demoniac depth of this woman's nature. Björnson's
"Mary Stuart" weeps more than once; nay, she says to Bothwell, when he
has forcibly abducted her to his castle:
"This is my first prayer to you,
That I may weep."
Quite in the same key is her exclamation (in the same scene) in response
to Bothwell's reference to her son:
"My son, my lovely boy! Oh, God, now he lies sleeping in his little
white bed, and does not know how his mother is battling for his sake."
Schiller, whose conception of womankind was as honestly single and
respectful as that of Björnson, had set a notable precedent in
representing Mary Stuart as a martyr of a lost cause. The psychological
antitheses of her character, her softness and loving surrender, and her
treachery and cruelty--he left out of account.
Without troubling himself greatly about her guilt, which, though with
many palliating circumstances, he admitted, he undertook to exemplify in
her the beauty and exaltation of noble suffering. His Mary (which has
always been a favorite with tragic actresses) is in my opinion as devoid
of that insinuating, sense-compelling charm which alone can account for
this extraordinary woman's career as is the heroine of Björnson's play.
In fact Björnson's Mary lies half-way between the amorous young tigress
of Swinburne and the statuesque martyr of Schiller. She is less
intricately feminine than the former, and more so than the latter. But
she is yet a long way removed from her historical original, who must
have been a strong and full-blooded character, with just that touch of
mystery which nature always wears to whomsoever gazes deeply upon her.
That subtile intercoiling of antagonistic traits, which in a man could
never coexist, is to be found in many historic women of the
Renaissance--exquisite, dangerous creatures, half-doves, half-serpents,
half-Clytemnestra, half-Venus, whose full-throbbing passion now made
them soft and tender, over-brimming with loveliness, now fierce and
imperious, their outraged pride revelling in vengeance and blood. If
Björnson could have fathomed the depth and complexity of the historical
Mary Stuart to the extent that Swinburne has done, he would, no doubt,
also have devised a more effective conclusion to his play. There is no
dramatic climax, far less a tragic one, in the dethronement of Mary, and
the proclamation by John Knox, which is chiefly an assertion of popular
sovereignty, and the triumph of the Presbyterian Church. The declaration
of the final chorus, that
"Evil shall be routed
And weakness must follow,
The might of truth shall pierce
To the last retreat of gloom,"
seems to me rather to muddle than to clarify the situation. There is a
wavering and uncertain sound in it which seems inappropriate to a
triumphant strain, when the organist naturally turns on the full force
of his organ. If (as is obvious) the Queen represents the evil, or at
least the weakness, which has been routed, it would appear that she
ought to have been painted in quite different colors.
Björnson's next dramatic venture, which rejoices to this day in an
unabated popularity, was the two-act comedy, "The Newly Married" (_De
Nygifte_). Goethe once made the remark that he was not a good dramatist,
because his nature was too conciliatory. Without intending
disparagement, I am inclined to apply the same judgment to Björnson. His
sunny optimism shrinks from irreconcilable conflicts and insoluble
problems; and in his desire to reconcile and solve, he occasionally is
in danger of wrenching his characters out of drawing and muddling their
motives. Half a dozen critics have already called attention to the
ambiguity of Mathilde's position and intentions in "The Newly Married."
That she loves Axel, the husband, is clear; and the probability is that
she meant to avenge herself upon him for having before his marriage used
her as a decoy, when the real object of his attention was her friend
Laura. But if such was her object, she lacked the strength of mind and
hardness of heart to carry it out, and in the end she becomes a
benevolent providence, who labors for the reconciliation of the
estranged couple. She proves too noble for the ignoble _rôle_ she had
undertaken. Instead of wrecking the marriage, she sacrifices herself
upon the altar of friendship. To that there can, of course, be no
objection; but in that case the process of her mental change ought to
have been clearly shown. In Ibsen's "Rosmersholm," Rebecca West,
occupying a somewhat similar position, is subject to the same ennobling
of motive; but the whole drama hinges upon her moral evolution, and
nothing is left to inference.
The situation in "The Newly Married" is an extremely delicate one, and
required delicate handling. Axel, a young and gifted lawyer, has married
Laura, the daughter of a high and wealthy official, who prides himself
on his family dignity and connections. Laura, being an only child, has
been petted and spoiled since her birth, and is but a grown-up little
girl, with no conception of her matrimonial obligations. She
subordinates her relation to her husband to that to her parents, and
exasperates the former by her bland and obstinate immaturity. At last,
being able to bear it no longer, he compels her to leave the home of her
parents, where they have hitherto been living, and establishes himself
in a distant town. Mathilde, Laura's friend, accompanies them, though it
is difficult to conjecture in what capacity; and publishes an anonymous
novel, in which she enlightens the young wife regarding the probable
results of her conduct. She thrusts a lamp into the dusk of her soul and
frightens her by the things she shows her. She also, by arousing her
jealousy, leads her out of childhood, with its veiled vision and happy
ignorance, into womanhood, with its unflinching recognition of the
realities that were hidden from the child. And thus she paves the way
for the reconciliation which takes place in the presence of the old
people, who pay their daughter a visit _en route_ for Italy. Mathilde,
having accomplished her mission, acknowledges the authorship of the
anonymous novel, and is now content to leave husband and wife in the
confidence that they will work out their own salvation.