never quite satisfied Andersen.[22] He never accepted it without a
protest. It neither pleased nor sufficed him. He was especially eager to
win laurels as a dramatist; and in 1839 celebrated his first dramatic
success by a farcical vaudeville entitled "The Invisible at Sprogöe."
Then followed the romantic drama "The Mulatto" (1840), which charmed the
public and disgusted the critics; and "The Moorish Maiden," which
disgusted both. These plays are slipshod in construction, but
emotionally effective. The characters are loose-fibred and vague, and
have no more backbone than their author himself. J. L. Heiberg thought
it high time to chastise the half-cultured shoemaker's son for his
audacity, and in the third act of "A Soul after Death," held him up to
ridicule. Andersen, stabbed again to the heart, hastened away from home,
"suffering and disconcerted." But before leaving he published "A
Picture-Book without Pictures", (1840), which is attached to the
American edition of his "Stories and Tales," and deserves its place. The
moon's pathetic and humorous observations on the world she looks down
upon every evening of her thirty nights' circuit have already become
classic in half-a-dozen languages. The little girl who came to kiss the
hen and beg her pardon; the ragged street gamin who died upon the throne
of France; the Hindoo maiden who burned her lamp upon the banks of the
Ganges in order to see if her lover was alive; the little maid who was
penitent because she laughed at the lame duckling with a red rag around
its leg--who does not know the whole inimitable gallery from beginning
to end? The tenderest, the softest, the most virginal spirit breathes
through all these sketches. They are sentimental, no doubt, and a trifle
too sweet. But then they belong to a period of our lives when a little
excess in that direction does not trouble us.
[22] For verification of this statement I may refer to his indignant
letter _à propos_ of the statue that was to be raised to him in
Copenhagen, in which he was represented surrounded by listening
children: "None of the sculptors," he wrote, "have known me; none of
their sketches indicate that they have seen what is characteristic
in me. Never could I read aloud when anybody was sitting behind me
or close up to me; far less if I had children on my lap or on my
back, or young Copenhageners lying all over me. It is a _façon de
parler_ to call me 'the children's poet.' My aim has been to be the
poet of all ages; children could not represent me."
In 1842 Andersen gave to the world "A Poets' Bazaar," a chronicle of his
travels through nearly all the countries of Europe. In 1844 the drama
"The King is Dreaming," and in 1845 the fairy comedy "The Flower of
Fortune." But his highest dramatic triumph he celebrated in the
anonymous comedy "The New Lying-in Room," which in a measure proved his
contention that it was personal hostility and not critical scruples
which made so large a portion of the Copenhagen literati persecute him.
For the very men who would have been the first to hold his play up to
scorn were the heartiest in their applause, as long as they did not know
that Andersen was its author. Less pronounced was the success of the
lyrical drama "Little Kirsten" (1846); and the somewhat ambitious epic
"Ahasverus" comes very near being a failure. The next ventures of the
versatile and indefatigable poet were the novel "The Two Baronesses"
(1849), and the fairy comedies "More than Pearls and Gold" (1849),
adapted from a German original, "The Sandman"[23] (1850), and "The Elder
Tree Mother" (1851). The comedies "He was not Born" (1864), "On
Langebro" and "When the Spaniards were Here" (1869), complete the cycle
of his dramatic labors. But the most amusing thing he did, showing how
incapable he was of taking the measure of his faculties, was to write a
novel, "To Be or Not to Be" (1857), in which he proposed once and
forever to down the giant Unbelief, prove the immortality of the soul,
and produce "peace and reconciliation between Nature and the Bible." It
was nothing less than the evidences of Christianity in novelistic form
with which he designed to favor an expectant world. "If[24] I can solve
this problem," he naïvely wrote to a friend, "then the monster
materialism, devouring everything divine, will die." But rarely was a
bigger Gulliver tackled by a tinier Liliputian. The book not only fell
flat, but it was only the world-wide renown and the good intention of
its author which saved it from derision.
[23] Danish, Ole Luköie.
[24] Hansen: Illustreret Dansk Litteratur Historie, ii. p. 560.
Though Andersen never attained in Copenhagen an uncontested recognition
of his talent, honors both from at home and abroad were showered upon
him. The fame which undeniably was his commanded respect, but scarcely
approval. Heiberg made merry at his obscurity in the country of his
birth and his celebrity beyond its boundaries, and represented him as
reading "The Mulatto" to the Sultan's wives and the "Moorish Maiden" to
those who were to be strangled, kneeling in rapture, while the Grand
Eunuch, crowned his head with laurels. But in spite of obloquy and
ridicule, Andersen continued his triumphant progress through all the
lands of the civilized world, and even beyond it. In 1875 his tale, "The
Story of a Mother," was published simultaneously in fifteen languages,
in honor of his seventieth birthday. A few months later (August 4th) he
died at the villa Rolighed, near Copenhagen. His life was indeed as
marvellous as any of his tales. A gleam of light from the wonderland in
which he dwelt seems to have fallen upon his cradle and to have
illuminated his whole career. It was certainly in this illumination
that he himself saw it, as the opening sentence of his autobiography
proves: "My life is a lovely fairy-tale, happy and full of incidents."
The softness, the sweetness, the juvenile innocence of Danish
romanticism found their happiest expression in him; but also the
superficiality, the lack of steel in the will, the lyrical vagueness and
irresponsibility. If he did not invent a new literary form he at all
events enriched and dignified an old one, and revealed in it a world of
unsuspected beauty. He was great in little things, and little in great
things. He had a heart of gold, a silver tongue, and the spine of a
mollusk. Like a flaw in a diamond, a curious plebeian streak cut
straight across his nature. With all his virtues he lacked that higher
self-esteem which we call nobility.
CONTEMPORARY DANISH LITERATURE
The late Romantic authors of Denmark who lived on the traditions of
Oehlenschläger's time and the æsthetical doctrines of J. L. Heiberg,
have gradually been passing away; and a new generation has grown up,
which, though it knows Joseph, has repudiated his doctrine. A period of
stagnation followed the disappearance of the Romanticists. The
Sleswick-Holstein war of 1866, and the consequent hostility to Germany,
cut off the intellectual intercourse between the two countries which in
the first half of the century had been lively and intimate; and as, for
a while, no new ties were formed, a respectable dulness settled upon the
little island kingdom. People lived for the concerns of the day, earned
their bread and butter, amused themselves to the best of their ability,
but troubled themselves very little about the battles of thought which
were being fought upon the great arena of the world. The literary
activity which now and then flared up spasmodically, like flames over a
smouldering ash-heap, flickered and half-expired for want of fresh
sustenance. A direfully conventional romanticist, H. F. Ewald
(1821-1892), wrote voluminous modern and historical novels, the heroines
of which were usually models of all the copy-book virtues, and the
heroes as bloodless as their brave and loyal prototypes in "Ivanhoe" and
"Waverley." Instead of individualizing his _dramatis personæ_ this
feeble successor of Ingemann and Walter Scott gave them a certificate of
character, vouching for their goodness or badness, and trusting the
reader to take his word for it in either case. Like many another popular
novelist, he varnished them with the particular tint of excellence or
depravity that might suit his purpose, stuffed their heads with bran and
their bellies with sawdust, but troubled himself little about what lay
beneath the epidermis. There was something _naïve_ and juvenile in his
view of life which appealed to the large mass of half-educated people;
and the very absence of any subtle literary art tended further to
increase his public. Many of his books, notably "The Youth of Valdemar
Krone" (_Valdemar Krone's Ungdomshistorie_), "The Swedes at Kronborg"
(_Svenskerne paa Kronborg_), have achieved an extraordinary success. The
former deals with contemporary life, while the latter expurgates and
embellishes history after the manner of Walter Scott. Two subsequent
novels, "The Family Nordby" and "Johannes Falk," are, like all of
Ewald's writings, pervaded by a robust optimism and a warm Danish
sentiment, which in a large measure account for their popularity with
the public of the circulating libraries.
A lesser share of the same kind of popularity has fallen to the lot of
an author of a much higher order--Wilhelm Bergsöe (born 1835). His
voluminous novel "Fra Piazza del Popolo" (1860) made a sensation in its
day, and "From the Old Factory" (1869), which constructively is a
maturer book, is likewise full of fascination. The description of the
doings of the artistic guild in Rome, which occupies a considerable
portion of the former work, is delightful, though intermingled with a
deal of superfluous mysticism and romantic entanglements which were then
held to be absolutely indispensable. "In the Sabine Mountains" (1871),
the scene of which is laid in Genazzano during the struggle for Italian
independence, is a trifle too prolix; and its effect is lessened by the
old-fashioned epistolary form. Signor Carnevale, the revolutionary
apothecary, is, however, a very amusing figure, and would be still
better if he were not caricatured. The tendency to screw the characters
up above the normal--to tune them up to concert pitch as it
were--interferes seriously with the pleasure which the book otherwise
might yield.
The conception of art as something wholly distinct from and above nature
animates all Bergsöe's productions. The theory of fiction which R. L.
Stevenson has so eloquently propounded has found an able practitioner in
him. For all that, I am indebted to Bergsöe's two Italian romances for
a great deal of enjoyment, the afterglow of which still warms my memory.
But that was long ago. A young man is apt to enjoy in a book quite as
much what he himself supplies as that which the author has deposited
therein. Each word is a key which unlocks a store of imprisoned
emotions. The very word Italy has a magic which imparts to it a charm
even in the geography. And Bergsöe, though he works, without suspicion
of its decrepitude, the ancient machinery of Italian romance, is
unaffectedly eloquent and unsophistically entertaining. The historic
whisperings which he catches from the names, the ruins, the facial
types, and the very trees and grass of Genazzano invest his letters from
that picturesque neighborhood with a certain beautiful glow of color and
a dusky richness of decay. The autobiographical form imposes, to be
sure, an increasing strain on the reader's credulity, as the plot
thickens, and we find ourselves, half-unexpectedly, involved in a lurid
tale of monks, priests, disguised revolutionists, cruel, mercenary
fathers, etc., and the Danish author playing his favorite _rôle_ of
_deus ex machina_. Still more incredible is the part of benevolent
Providence which he assigns to himself in "The Bride of Rörvig," where
he saves the heroine's life by restoring to her a ring given to her
lover, and thus assuring her that he is alive when she believes him
dead. The autobiographical story (especially when the writer is a mere
convenient supernumerary, designed, like the uncle from America in the
old-fashioned melodrama, to straighten out the tangled skein), is apt to
involve other difficulties than the mere embarrassment of having to
distrust the author's assertion, or censure his indiscretions. The
illusion is utterly spoiled by that haunting _arrière pensée_ that this
or that writer, whom you know perhaps at first or second-hand, or whose
features, at all events, are familiar to you from pictures, never could
or would have played the more or less heroic _rôle_ with which he here
delights to impose upon you.
Altogether the best book which Bergsöe has written is the
autobiographical romance "From the Old Factory," the scene of which is
laid in Denmark. This book evidently contains a great deal of genuine
reminiscence, and is therefore devoid of that air of laborious
contrivance and artificial intrigue which brings the foregoing novels
into such unpleasant relationship with Wilkie Collins and his _genre_.
The incidents of the hero's boyhood in the old porcelain factory, and
his uncle's agitating experiments for the rediscovery of a lost process
of glazing are saner and soberer and lie closer to the soil of common
experience than the exploits of monks and pirates and revolutionists.
Among the notable men of the expiring Danish romanticism Meyer Aaron
Goldschmidt (1819-1886) holds a leading position. A comic paper,
_Corsaren_, which he edited (1840-1846) made a tremendous stir in its
day; and its scathing wit and satire were not without influence upon
current events. His two novels, _En Jöde_ (1845), _Hjemlös_ (1857), and
a large number of clever novelettes (_Ravnen_, _Arvingen Flyveposten_,
etc.), are full of psychological subtleties, and often charmingly told.
_Flyveposten_ ("The Flying Mail") was translated into English (Boston
and Cambridge, 1870) but attracted no particular attention. For all
that, Goldschmidt, in spite of occasional prolixity, stands the test of
time remarkably well. His Jewish stories, notably _Maser, Aron og
Esther_, and _En Jöde_, contain a higher order of work, though less
dramatically effective, than that of Sacher-Masoch, and Emil Franzos,
and the later Ghetto romancers. Goldschmidt's double nationality, as a
Danish-born Jew, indicates his position and the source from which he
drew his weakness and his strength. As a Jew he saw and judged the
Danish character, and as a Dane he saw and judged the Jewish character
with a liberality and insight of which no autochthon would have been
capable. For all that his tales aroused anything but friendly feelings
among his own people. They felt it to be a profanation thus to expose
the secluded domestic and religious life of the children of Israel. It
is to this sentiment that Dr. Brandes has given utterance in his protest
against "perpetually serving up one's grandmother with sauce piquante."
An author who is born into an age of transition, when old faiths are
passing away and new ones are struggling for recognition, is placed in
a serious dilemma. Where he makes his choice by mere temperamental bias,
he is apt to miss that element of growth which is involved in every
spiritual struggle. But if, as is so frequently the case, he finds his
choice in a measure made for him, his education, kinships, and worldly
advantage identifying him with the established order, it takes a
tremendous amount of courage and character to break away from old
moorings and steer, without other compass than a sensitive conscience,
toward the rosy dawn of the unknown. There was a desperate need of such
men in Denmark in the seventies, when the little kingdom was sinking
deeply and more deeply into a bog of patriotic delusion and spiritual
stagnation. An infusion of new blood was needed--a re-establishment of
that circulation of thought which keeps the whole civilized world in
vital connection and makes it akin. No country can cut itself off from
this universal world-life without withering like a diseased limb. The
man who undertook to bring Denmark again into _rapport_ with Europe was
Dr. Georg Brandes, whom I have characterized at length in another essay.
It was his admirable book, "The Men of the Modern Transition"
(translated into German under the title _Moderne Geister_) which
impelled me, some years ago, to make the acquaintance of the three
authors who represent whatever there is of promise in contemporary
Danish literature, viz., Sophus Schandorph, Holger Drachmann, and J. P.
Jacobsen. The last named, who died (1884) in the flower of his young
manhood, is, perhaps, not in the strictest sense contemporary. But he is
indispensable to the characterization of the group.
Widely different as these three men are in almost everything, they have
this in common, that they have deeply breathed the air of the nineteenth
century; and they all show more or less the influence of Brandes. That
this influence has been direct and personal seems probable from the
relation which they have sustained to the revolutionary critics. Of this
I am, however, by no means sure. Mr. Jacobsen, who was by profession a
botanist, and translated Darwin into Danish, no doubt came by his
"advanced views" at first hand. In the case of Schandorph it is more
difficult to judge. He is an excellent linguist, and may have had access
to the same sources from which Brandes drew his strength. Drachmann is
so vacillating in his tendencies that he refuses to be permanently
classified in any school of art or thought. Of the three, Schandorph
seems altogether the maturest mind and furnishes the most finished and
satisfactory work. In his novel "Without a Centre" (_Uden Midtpunkt_)
the reader feels himself at once face to face with an interesting and
considerable personality. He has that sense of surprise and delighted
expectation which only the masters of fiction are apt to evoke. It is a
story of a Danish national type--the conversational artist. In no
country in the world is there such a conversational fury as in Denmark.
A people has, of course, to do something with its surplus energy; and as
political opposition is sure to prove futile, there is nothing left to
do but to talk--not only politics, but art, poetry, religion, in fact,
everything under the sun. At the time, however, when Albrecht, the hero
of "Without a Centre," plied his nimble tongue, the country had a more
liberal Government, and criticism of the Ministry was not yet high
treason. But centuries of repression and the practical exclusion of the
bourgeoisie from public life were undoubtedly the fundamental causes of
this abnormal conversational activity. There is something soft and
emotional in the character of the Danes, which distinguishes them from
their Norwegian and Swedish kinsmen--an easily flowing lyrical vein,
which imparts a winning warmth and cordiality to their demeanor.
Socially they are the most charming people in the world. Also in this
respect Albrecht is typical, and the songs in which he gives vent to his
lyrical moods have such a rapturous melody that they keep humming in the
brain long after the reader has closed the book. It almost follows as a
psychological necessity that a man so richly endowed with the gift of
speech is feeble and halting in action. Like Tourguéneff's "Rudin," who
suffered from the same malady, he gains by the brilliancy and novelty of
his speech the love of a noble young girl, who, taking his phrases at
their face value, believes his heart to be as heroic as his tongue.
Like him, too, he fails in the critical moment; nay, restrained by petty
scruples, he even stays away from the rendezvous, and by his cowardice
loses what by his eloquence he had won.
A second novel, "Common People," which deals with low life in its most
varied phases, shows the same admirable truthfulness and exactness in
the character drawing, the same refreshing humor and universal sympathy
and comprehension. "The Story of Thomas Friis" undertakes to show, in
the career of a Danish youth who is meant to be typical, the futility of
the vainglorious imaginings with which the little nation has inflated
itself to a size out of proportion to its actual historic _rôle_. In
"The Old Pharmacy" the necessity of facing the changed reality of the
modern world, instead of desperately hugging an expiring past, is
enforced in a series of vivid and vigorous pictures of provincial life.
"The Forester's Children," which is one of the latest of this author's
novels, suffers by comparison with its predecessors, but is yet full of
cleverness and smacks of the soil.
Schandorph's naturalism is not pathological; not in the nature of an
autopsy or a diagnosis of disease. It is full-blooded and vigorous--not
particularly squeamish--but always fresh and wholesome. His shorter
tales and sketches ("From the Province," "Five Stories," "Novelettes")
are of more unequal merit, but are all more or less strongly
characterized by the qualities which fascinate in his novels. Of his
poems "_Samlede Digte_," (1882) I have not the space to speak, and can
only regret that they are written in a language in which they will
remain as hidden from the world as if they had been imprinted in
cuneiform inscriptions upon Assyrian bricks. They are largely occasional
and polemical; and more remarkable for vigor of thought than sweetness
of melody.