publishing-house in Copenhagen a novel, entitled "The Visionary" (_Den
Fremsynte_), by Jonas Lie. To analyze the impression which this strange
book makes at the first reading is difficult. I thought, as I sat
rejoicing in its vivid light and color, twenty-four years ago: "This
Jonas Lie is a sort of century-plant, and 'The Visionary' is his one
blossom. It is the one good novel which almost every life is said to
contain. Only this is so strikingly good that it is a pity it will have
no successors."
It was evidently himself, or rather the Finnish part of himself, the
author was exploring; it was in the mine of his own experience he was
delving; it was his own heart he was coining. That may, in a sense, be
true of every book of any consequence; but it was most emphatically true
of "The Visionary." It is not to the use of the first person that this
autobiographical note is primarily due; but to a certain beautiful
intimacy in the narrative, and a _naïve_ confidence which charms the
reader and takes him captive. With a lavish hand Lie has drawn upon the
memories of his boyhood in the arctic North; and it was the newness of
the nature which he revealed, no less than the picturesque force of his
language, which contributed in no small degree to the success of his
book. But, above all, it was the sweetness and pathos of the exquisite
love story. Susanna, though as to talents not much above the
commonplace, is ravishing. To have breathed the breath of such warm and
living life into a character of fiction is no small achievement. It is
the loveliness of love, the sweetness of womanhood, the glorious ferment
of the blood in the human springtide which are celebrated in "The
Visionary." The thing is beautifully done. I do not know where young
love has been more touchingly portrayed, unless it be in some of the
Russian tales of Tourguéneff.[15] The second-sight with which the hero,
David Holst, is afflicted, introduces an undertone of sadness--a pensive
minor key--and seems to necessitate the tragic _dénouement_.
[15] Spring Floods, Liza, Faust.
The immediate success of "The Visionary" changed Jonas Lie's situation
and prospects. He was first sent with a public stipend to Nordland for
the purpose of studying the character, manners, and economic condition
of the dwellers within the polar zone; and, like the conscientious man
he is, he made an exhaustive report to the proper department, detailing
with touching minuteness the results of his observations. The Norwegian
government has always taken a strong (and usually very intelligent)
interest in rising artists, musicians, and men of letters, and has
endeavored by stipends and salaries to compensate them for the smallness
of the public which the country affords. Jonas Lie was now a
sufficiently conspicuous man to come into consideration in the
distribution of the official _panem et circenses_. The state awarded
him a largess of $400 for one year (twice renewed), in order to enable
him to go to Italy and "educate himself for a poet;" and he was also
made a beneficiary of the well-known Schafer legacy for the training of
artists. In the autumn of 1871 he started with his wife and four
children for Rome. It was in a solemnly festal frame of mind that he now
resolved to devote the rest of his life to his real vocation, which at
last he had found. This was what they had all meant--his gropings,
trials, and failures. They had all fitted him for the life-work which
was now to be his. The world lay before him as in the shining calm after
storm.
He took his artistic training, as everything else, with extreme
seriousness. With the utmost conscientiousness he started out with his
Thomasine, morning after morning, to study the Vatican and the
Capitoline collections. "Happy is the man," says Goethe, "who learns
early in life what art means." But Jonas Lie was thirty-eight years old;
and, as far as I can judge from his writings, I should venture to say
that the secret of classical art has never been unlocked to him. It lies
probably rather remote from the sphere of his sensations. His genius is
so profoundly Germanic that only an ill-wisher would covet for him that
expansion of vision which would enable him to perceive with any degree
of artistic realization and intimacy the glorious serenity of the Juno
Ludovisi and the divine distinction of the Apollo Belvedere.
The two books which were the first-fruits of the Roman sojourn were a
disappointment to his friends, though in the case of the unpretentious
collection called "Tales and Sketches from Nordland" (1872) there is no
reason why it should have been. The public found that it was not on a
level with "The Visionary," and by "The Visionary" Jonas Lie was bound
to be judged, whether he liked it or not. That is the penalty of having
produced a masterpiece, that one is never permitted to follow the
example of _bonus Homerus_, who, as every one knows, sometimes nods.
Jonas Lie was far from nodding in "The Barque Future" (1872). There was
an abundance of interest in the material, and a delightful picturesque
vigor in the descriptions of nature. But of romantic interest of the
kind which the ordinary novel-reader craves, there was very little. _À
propos_ of "The Barque Future" let me quote a bit of general
characterization which applies to nearly all the subsequent works of
Jonas Lie.
"It is in this particular that Jonas Lie most distinctly diverges from
all romanticism and romance-writing: His interest in practical affairs,
his ability to see poetry in that which is contemporary. The sawdust in
the rivers has never offended him, nor the Briton's black cloud of
coal-smoke. The busy toil of office and shop is not prose to him. He
penetrates to the bottom of its meaning--its significance to
civilization."[16]
[16] Arne Garborg: Jonas Lie, p. 172.
"The Barque Future" is, as regards its problem, Gustav Freytag's _Soll
und Haben_ ("Debit and Credit") transferred to Nordland. Instead of the
noble house of Rothsattel we have the ancient and highly esteemed
commercial firm of Heggelund, whose chief falls into the toils of the
scoundrel, Stuwitz, very much as Baron Rothsattel was dragged to ruin by
the Jew Veitel Itzig. But no more than Freytag can find it in his heart
to award the victory to the Hebrew usurer, can Lie violate the
proprieties of fiction by permitting Stuwitz to fatten on his spoil. He
could not, like the German novelist, conjure up a noble gentleman of
democratic sympathies and practical ability (like von Finck) and make
him emerge in the nick of time as the heir of the ancient gentry,
justifying the dignities which he enjoys in the state by the uses which
he fulfils. In Norway there is no nobility; and Lie, therefore, had to
make his able and industrious plebeian, Morten Jonsen (the equivalent of
Anton Wohlfahrt in _Soll und Haben_) the inheritor of the future. He
accordingly awards to him the hand of Miss Edele Heggelund; but not
until he has put Jacob to shame by the amount and character of the work
by which he earns his Rachel.
The reception of "The Barque Future" was far from satisfactory to its
author. He grew apprehensive about himself. He could not afford another
failure; nay, not even a _succès d'estime_. Accordingly he waited two
years, and published in 1874 "The Pilot and his Wife," which made its
mark. It is an every-day story in the best sense of the word, the
history of a marriage among common folk. And yet so true is it, so
permeated with a warm and rich humanity, that it holds the reader's
attention from beginning to end. Then, to add to its interest, it has
some bearing upon the woman question. Lie maintains that no true
marriage can exist where the wife sacrifices her personality, and
submits without a protest to neglect and ill-treatment. Happily we are
not particularly in need of that admonition on our side of the ocean.
The wife of the pilot, Salve Christensen, had once broken her engagement
with him, having become enamored of the handsome naval lieutenant, Beck;
but she recovers her senses and marries Christensen, whom she really
loves. After her marriage she tries to do penance for the wrong she has
done him by being, as she fancies, a model wife. But by submission and
self-extinction, so alien to her character, she arouses his suspicion
that she has something on her conscience; and, in his feeling of
outrage, he begins to neglect and abuse her. When, at last, his
maltreatment reaches a climax, she arises in all the dignity of her
womanhood, and asserts her true self. Then comes reconciliation,
followed by a united life of true equality and loving comradeship.
Such a mere skeleton of a plot can, of course, give no conception of the
wealth of vivid details with which the book abounds. There is, however,
a certain air of effort about it, of a strenuous seriousness, which is,
I fancy, the temperamental note of this author.
"The Pilot and his Wife" besides reviving Lie's popularity also served
to define his position in Norwegian literature. He had at first been
assigned a definite corner as the "poet of Nordland," but his ambition
was not satisfied with so narrow a province. In all his tales, so far,
he has surpassed all predecessors in his descriptions of the sea; and
the critics, when favorably disposed, fell into the habit of referring
to him as "the novelist of the sea," "the poet of the ocean," etc. The
Norwegian sailor, whom he may be said to have revealed in "The Pilot,"
came to be considered more and more as his property; and no one can read
such tales as "Press On" (_Gaa Paa_) and "Rutland" without agreeing that
the title is well merited. I know of no English novelist since Smollett,
who produces so deep a sense of reality in his descriptions of maritime
life. Mr. Clark Russell, who knows his ship from masthead to keel as
thoroughly as Jonas Lie, and writes fully as clever a story, seems to me
to have a lower aim, in so far as the novel of adventure, _cæteris
paribus_, belongs on a lower level than the novel of character.
In the year 1874 the Norwegian Storthing conferred upon Jonas Lie an
annual "poet's salary" of about six hundred dollars. This is supposed to
supply a warranty deed to a lot on Parnassus. It removes any possible
flaw in the title to immortality. Lie was now lifted into the
illustrious triumvirate in which Björnson and Ibsen were his
predecessors. Great expectations were entertained of his literary
future. But, oddly enough, this official recognition did not have a
favorable effect upon Lie. He felt himself almost oppressed by a sense
of obligation to yield full returns for what he consumed of the public
revenues. In 1875 he published a versified tale, "Faustina Strozzi,"
dealing with the struggle for Italian liberty. In spite of many
excellences it fell rather flat, and was roughly handled by the critics.
Even a worse fate befell its successor, "Thomas Ross" (1878), a novel of
contemporary life in the Norwegian capital. It is a pale, and rather
labored story, in which a young girl, of the Rosamond Vincy type, is
held up to scorn, and the atrocity of flirtation is demonstrated by the
most tragic consequences. There is likewise an air of triviality about
"Adam Schrader" (1879); and Lie became seriously alarmed about himself
when he had to register a third failure. Like its predecessor, this book
is full of keen observations, and the sketches of the social futilities
and the typical characters at a summer watering-place are surely good
enough to pass muster. But, somehow, the material fails to combine into
a sufficiently coherent and impressive picture; and the total effect
remains rather feeble. In a drama, "Grabow's Cat" (1880), he suffered
shipwreck once more, though he saved something from the waves. The play
was performed in Christiania and Stockholm, and aroused interest, but
not enough to keep it afloat.
It has been said of Browning that he succeeded by a series of failures,
which meant, in his case, that his books failed to command instant
attention, but were gradually discovered by the thoughtful few who by
their appreciation spread the poet's fame among the thoughtless many. It
was not in this way that Jonas Lie's failures conduced to his final
success. "Thomas Ross," "Adam Schrader," and "Grabow's Cat" have not
grown perceptibly in the estimation either of the critics or of the
public since their first appearance. But they supplied their author a
hard but needed discipline. They warned him against over-confidence and
routine work. He had passed through a soul-trying experience, in its
effect not unlike the one which Keats describes _à propos_ of
"Endymion:"
"In 'Endymion' I leaped headlong into the sea and thereby have become
better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks than
if I had stayed upon the green shore, took tea and comfortable advice. I
was never afraid of failure--would rather fail than not be among the
greatest."
Jonas Lie reconquered at one stroke all that he had lost, by the
delightful sea-novel "Rutland" (1881), and reinstated himself still more
securely in the hearts of an admiring public by the breezy tale, "Press
On" (1882). But after so protracted a sea-voyage he began to long for
the shore, where, up to date he had suffered all his reverses. It could
not be that he who had lived all his life on _terra firma_, and was so
profoundly interested in the problems of modern society, should be
banished forever, like "The Man Without a Country," to the briny deep,
and be debarred from describing the things which he had most at heart.
One more attempt he was bound to make, even at the risk of another
failure. Accordingly in 1883 appeared "The Life Prisoner"
(_Livsslaven_), which deserved a better fate than befell it. The critics
found it depressing, compared it to Zola, and at the same time scolded
the author because he lacked indignation and neglected to denounce the
terrible conditions which he described. He replied to their arraignments
in an angry but very effective letter. But that did not save the book.
Truth to tell, "The Life Prisoner" is a dismal tale. It was, in fact,
the irruption of modern naturalism into Norwegian literature. It reminds
one in its tone more of Dostoyevski's "Crime and Punishment" than of
"L'Assommoir." For to my mind Dostoyevski is a greater exponent of
naturalism than Zola, whom Lemaitre not inaptly styles "an epic poet."
The pleasing and well-bred truths or lies, to the expounding of which
_belles lettres_ had hitherto been confined, were here discarded or
ignored. The author had taken a plunge into the great dumb deep of the
nethermost social strata, which he has explored with admirable
conscientiousness and artistic perception. Few men of letters would
object to being the father of so creditable a failure. Lie, being
convinced that his book was a good one, no matter what the wielders of
critical tomahawks might say to the contrary, resolved to persevere in
the line he had chosen and to pluck victory from the heels of defeat.
And the victory came even the same year (1883), when he published what,
to my mind, is the most charming of all his novels, "The Family at
Gilje." That is a book which is taken, warm and quivering, out of the
very heart of Norway. The humor which had been cropping out tentatively
in Lie's earlier tales comes here to its full right, and his shy,
beautiful pathos gleams like hidden tears behind his genial smile. It is
close wrought cloth of gold. No loosely woven spots--no shoddy woof of
cheaper material. Captain Jaeger and his wife, Inger-Johanna, Jörgen,
Grip, nay, the whole company of sober, everyday mortals that come
trooping through its chapters are so delightfully human that you feel
the blood pulse under their skin at the first touch. It is a triumph
indeed, to have written a book like "The Family at Gilje."
From this time forth Jonas Lie's career presents an unbroken series of
successes. "A Maelstrom" (1884), "Eight Stories," "Married Life" (_Et
Samliv_), (1887), "Maisa Jons" (1888), "The Commodore's Daughters" and
"Evil Powers" (1890), which deal with interesting phases of contemporary
life, are all extremely modern in feeling and show the same effort to
discard all tinsel and sham and get at the very heart of reality.
He had by this series of novels established his reputation as a
relentless realist, when, in 1892, he surprised his admirers by the
publication of two volumes of the most wildly fantastic tales, entitled
"Trold." It was as if a volcano, with writhing torrents of flame and
smoke, had burst forth from under a sidewalk in Broadway. It was the
suppressed Finn who, for once, was going to have his fling, even though
he were doomed henceforth to silence. It was the "queer thoughts" (which
had accumulated in the author and which he had scrupulously imprisoned)
returning to take vengeance upon him unless he released them. The most
grotesque, weird, and uncanny imaginings (such as Stevenson would
delight in) are crowded together in these tales, some of which are
derived from folk-lore and legends, while others are free fantasies.
Before taking leave of Jonas Lie, a word about his style is in order.
Style, as such, counts for very little with him. Yet he has a distinctly
individual and vigorous manner of utterance, though a trifle rough,
perhaps, abrupt, elliptic, and conversational. Mere decorative
adjectives and clever felicities of phrase he scorns. All scientific and
social phenomena--all that we include under the term modern
progress--command his most intense and absorbed attention. Having since
1882 been a resident of Paris (except during his annual summer
excursions to Norway or the mountains of Bavaria) he has had the
advantage of seeing the society which he describes at that distance
which, if it does not lend enchantment, at all events unifies the
scattered impressions, and furnishes a convenient critical outpost. He
does not permit himself, however, like so many foreigners in the French
capital, to lapse into that supercilious cosmopolitanism which deprives
a man of his own country without giving him any other in exchange. No;
Jonas Lie is and remains a Norseman--a fact which he demonstrated (to
the gratification of his countrymen) on a recent occasion. At the
funeral of the late Professor O. J. Broch--a famous Norwegian who died
in Paris--the chaplain of the Swedish legation made an oration in which
he praised the departed statesman and scientist, referring to him
constantly as "our countryman." When he had finished, Jonas Lie, without
anybody's invitation, stepped quietly up to the coffin and in the name
of Norway bade _his_ countryman a last farewell. "The spirit came over
Lie," says his biographer, "and he spoke with ravishing eloquence."
But why did he do such an uncalled-for thing, you will ask? Because
there is a systematic effort on the part of Sweden to suppress the very
name of Norway, and to give the impression, throughout the world, that
there is no such nationality as the Norwegian. Therefore every Norseman
(unless he chooses to be a party to this suppression) is obliged to
assert his nationality in season and out of season. But Jonas Lie has,
indeed, in a far more effective way borne aloft the banner of his
country. His books have been translated into French, German, English,
Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Russian, and Bohemian; and throughout
Europe the literary journals and magazines are beginning to discuss him
as one of the foremost representatives of modern realism.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN[17]
[17] A portion of this essay appeared originally in "The Dial" of
Chicago.
Hans Christian Andersen was a unique figure in Danish literature, and a
solitary phenomenon in the literature of the world. Superficial critics
have compared him with the Brothers Grimm; they might with equal
propriety have compared him with Voltaire or with the man in the moon.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were scientific collectors of folk-lore, and
rendered as faithfully as possible the simple language of the peasants
from whose lips they gathered their stories. It was the ethnological and
philological value of the fairy-tale which stimulated their zeal; its
poetic value was of quite secondary significance. With Andersen the case
was exactly the reverse. He was as innocent of scientific intention as
the hen who finds a diamond on a dunghill is of mineralogy. It was the
poetic phase alone of the fairy-tale which attracted him; and what is
more, he saw poetic possibilities where no one before him had ever
discovered them. By the alchemy of genius (which seems so perfectly
simple until you try it yourself) he transformed the common neglected
nonsense of the nursery into rare poetic treasure. Boots, who kills the
ogre and marries the princess--the typical lover in fiction from the
remotest Aryan antiquity down to the present time--appears in Andersen
in a hundred disguises, not with the rudimentary features of the old
story, but modernized, individualized, and carrying on his shield an
unobtrusive little moral. In "Jack the Dullard" he comes nearest to his
primitive prototype, and no visible effort is made to refine him. In
"The Most Extraordinary Thing" he is the vehicle of a piece of social
satire, and narrowly escapes the lot which the Fates seem especially to
have prepared for inventors, viz., to make the fortune of some
unscrupulous clown while they themselves die in poverty. In "The
Porter's Son" he is an aspiring artist, full of the fire of genius, and
he wins his princess by conquering that many-headed ogre with which
every self-made man has to battle--the world's envy, and malice, and
contempt for a lowly origin. It is easy to multiply examples, but these
may suffice.
In another species of fairy-tale, which Andersen may be said to have
invented, incident seems to be secondary to the moral purpose, which is
yet so artfully hidden that it requires a certain maturity of intellect
to detect it. In this field Andersen has done his noblest work and
earned his immortality. Who can read that marvellous little tale, "The
Ugly Duckling," without perceiving that it is a subtle, most exquisite
revenge the poet is taking upon the humdrum Philistine world, which
despised and humiliated him, before he lifted his wings and flew away
with the swans, who knew him as their brother? And yet, as a child, I
remember reading this tale with ever fresh delight, though I never for a
moment suspected its moral. The hens and the ducks and the geese were
all so vividly individualized, and the incidents were so familiar to my
own experience, that I demanded nothing more for my entertainment.
Likewise in "The Goloshes of Fortune" there is a wealth of amusing
adventures, all within the reach of a child's comprehension, which more
than suffices to fascinate the reader who fails to penetrate beneath the
surface. The delightful satire, which is especially applicable to Danish
society, is undoubtedly lost to nine out of ten of the author's foreign
readers, but so prodigal is he both of humorous and pathetic meaning,
that every one is charmed with what he finds, without suspecting how
much he has missed. "The Little Mermaid" belongs to the same order of
stories, though the pathos here predominates, and the resemblance to De
la Motte Fouqué's "Undine" is rather too striking. But the gem of the
whole collection, I am inclined to think, is "The Emperor's New
Clothes," which in subtlety of intention and universality of application
rises above age and nationality. Respect for the world's opinion and the
tyranny of fashion have never been satirized with more exquisite humor
than in the figure of the emperor who walks through the streets of his
capital in _robe de nuit_, followed by a procession of courtiers, who
all go into ecstasies over the splendor of his attire.