trying to account for him. From his Homer, whom he loved above all other
poets, he had in a measure derived that artistic paganism which
perceptibly colored his personality. There was nothing of the scholarly
prig or pedant about him. In his lectures he gave himself, his own view
of life, and his own interpretation of his authors. And it was because
of the greatness of the man, the unhackneyed vigor of his speech, and
the power of his intellect that the students flocked to his lecture-hall
and listened with enthusiasm to his teaching.
I am not by any means sure, however, that much of his popularity was
also due to what, at this stage of his career, may without disrespect
be called his immaturity. That wholesome robustness in his acceptance
of life which finds utterance in his early songs must have established a
quick bond of sympathy between him and his youthful hearers. The
instincts of the predatory man were yet strong in him. The tribal
feeling which we call patriotism, the juvenile defiance which carries a
chip on its shoulder as a challenge to the world, the boastful
self-assertion which is always ridiculous in every nation but our
own--impart a splendid martial resonance to his first notable poem,
"War-Song for the Scanian Reserves" (1808). There was a charming, frank
ferocity in this patriotic bugle-blast which found an echo in every
Swedish heart. The rapid dactylic metres, with the captivating rhymes,
alternating with the more contemplative trochees, were admirably adapted
for conveying the ebullient indignation and wrath which hurls its
gauntlet into the face of fate itself,[28] checked, as it were, and
cooled by soberer reflection and retrospective regret. It is the sorrow
for the yet recent loss of Finland which inspires the elegiac tones in
Tegnér's war-song; and it is his own ardent, youthful spirit, his own
deep and sincere love of country, which awakes the martial melody with
the throbbing of the drum and the rousing alarum of trumpets. What can
be more delightfully--shall I say juvenile--than this reference to the
numerical superiority of the Muscovites:
"Many, are they? Well, then, of the many
Sweden shall drink the red blood and be free!
Many? We count not the warriors' numbers
Only the fallen shall numbered be."
[28]
"Vi Kaste var handske
Mot ödet sjelf."
It is with no desire to disparage Tegnér that I say that this strain,
which is that of all his early war-songs, is extremely becoming to him.
It is not a question of the legitimacy of the sentiment, but of the
fulness and felicity of its expression. As long as we have wars we must
have martial bards, and with the exception of the German, Theodor
Körner, I know none who can bear comparison with Tegnér. English
literature can certainly boast no war-poem which would not be drowned in
the mighty music of Tegnér's "Svea," "The Scanian Reserves," and that
magnificent, dithyrambic declamation, "King Charles, the Young Hero."
Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" is technically a finer poem
than anything Tegnér has written, but it lacks the deep virile bass, the
tremendous volume of breath and voice, and the captivating martial lilt
which makes the heart beat willy nilly to the rhythm of the verse.
The popularity which Tegnér gained by "The Scanian Reserves" was the
immediate cause of his appointment to a professorship at the University
of Lund, and his next notable poem, "Svea," which won him the great
prize of the Swedish Academy, raised him to a height of fame which
naturally led to further promotion. According to the curious custom of
Sweden, a professor may, even though he has never studied theology, take
orders and accept the charge of a parish. He is regarded as being, by
dint of his learning, in the regular line of clerical promotion; and the
elevation from a professorship (though it be not a theological one) into
a bishopric is no infrequent occurrence. There was therefore nothing
anomalous in Tegnér's appointment (February, 1812) as pastor of Stäfvie
and Lackalänge, and his subsequent promotion (February, 1824) to the
bishopric of Wexiö. His pastorate he was permitted to combine with his
professorship of Greek, to which he was simultaneously transferred from
that of æsthetics, and the office was chiefly valuable to him on account
of the addition which it procured him to his income. The nearness of his
parish to Lund enabled him to preach in the country on Sundays as
regularly as he lectured in the city on week-days. His other pastoral
duties he could not very well discharge _in absentia_, and they probably
remained in a measure undischarged. He had not sought the parish; it was
the parish which had sought him; and he exerted himself to the utmost to
fill the less congenial office as conscientiously as he did his academic
chair. The peasants of Stäfvie and Lackalänge were always welcome at his
hospitable board; he gave them freely his advice, and in order to recall
and emphasize his own kinship with them, he invited a peasant woman to
become the godmother of his youngest son, and selected all the sponsors
from the same class.
This was not the only occasion on which Tegnér demonstrated his
superiority to all snobbish pretensions. He was not only not ashamed of
his peasant descent, but he was proud of it. Once (1811) during a visit
to Rämen, he took it into his head that he desired to know, from actual
experience, the kind of lives which his ancestors must have lived; and
to that end he dressed himself in wadmal, loaded a dray with pig-iron,
greased its axles, harnessed his team, and drove it to the nearest city,
a distance of ten to twelve miles. He induced three of his
brothers-in-law, two of whom were army officers and one a government
clerk, to follow his example. Up hill and down hill they trudged, and
arrived late in the afternoon, footsore and with blistered hands, in the
town, where they reported at the office of a commission merchant, sold
their iron and obtained their receipts. That of Tegnér was made out to
Esaias Esaiasson, which would have been his name, if his father had
never risen from the soil. The four sham peasants now bought seed-corn
with the money they had obtained for their iron, loaded again their
wagons, and started for home. But they had forgotten to take into
account the robustness of the rustic appetite, and before they had
proceeded far their bag of provisions was empty. To add to their
discomfort the rain began to pour down, but they would not seek
shelter. After midnight they arrived at Rämen, hungry and drenched, not
having slept for two nights, but happy and proud of their feat of
endurance.
It was in 1811 that Tegnér's poem "Svea" received the prize of the
Swedish Academy; and the fact that it recalled (in single passages at
least) Oehlenschläger's "The Golden Horns," does not seem to have
weighed in the verdict. It is not in any sense an imitation; but there
is an audible reminiscence which is unmistakable in the metre and
cadence of the short-lined verses, descriptive of the vision. Never, I
fancy, had the Swedish language been made to soar with so strong a
wing-beat, never before had it been made to sing so bold a melody. To
me, I admit, "Svea" is too rhetorical to make any deep impression. It
has a certain stately academic form, which, as it were, impedes its
respiration and freedom of movement. When, for all that, I speak of
wing-beat and melody, it must be borne in mind that Sweden had produced
no really great poet[29] before Tegnér; and that thus, relatively
considered, the statement is true. But Tegnér seems himself to have
been conscious of the strait-jacket in which the old academic rules
confined him, for in the middle of the poem he suddenly discards the
stilted Alexandrines with which he had commenced and breaks into a
rapturous old-Norse chant, the abrupt metres of which recall the
_fornyrdhalag_ of the Elder Edda. Soon after "Svea" followed, in 1812,
"The Priestly Consecration," the occasion of which was the poet's own
ordination. Here the oratorical note and a certain clerical rotundity of
utterance come very near spoiling the melody. "At the Jubilee in Lund"
(1817) is very much in the same strain, and begins with the statement so
characteristic of Tegnér:
"Thou who didst the brave twin stars enkindle,
Reason and Religion, guard the twain!
Each shines by other; else they fade and dwindle.[30]
Fill with clearness every human brain:
Faith and hope in every bosom reign!"
[29] Carl Michael Bellman, the Swedish Béranger (1740-1795), whose
wanton music resounded through the latter half of the eighteenth
century, would, no doubt, by many be called a great poet. But his
Bacchanalian strain, though at times exquisite and captivating,
lacks the universality of sentiment and that depth of resonance of
which greatness can alone be predicated. Both his wild mirth and his
sombre melancholy exhale the aroma of ardent spirits.
[30] This line reads literally: "Guard them both; they are willingly
reconciled."
He was, in fact, never very orthodox; and if he had belonged to the
American branch of his denomination would surely have been tried for
heresy. Rarely has a deadlier foe of priestly obscurantism and mediæval
mysteries worn the episcopal robes. With doctrinal subtleties and
ingenious hair-splitting he had no patience; conduct was with him the
main, if not the only, thing to be considered. The Christian Church, as
he conceived it, was primarily a civilizer, and the expression of the
highest ethical sentiment of the age.
"The Church," he writes, "can surely not be re-established in its former
religious significance, for the system upon which it rests has slept
away three centuries of history; and it is of no use that this man or
that man yet pretends to believe in the somnambulist. But the church has
also a civic significance as an integral part of the social order of
humanity. If you abandon that to the spirit of laxity and drowsiness, I
can see no reason why the clergy and the whole religious apparatus
should not be, and ought not to be, abolished and their costs covered
into the treasury."
These are not highly episcopal sentiments; but they are in keeping with
Tegnér's whole personality and his conception of his duty. His first
concern was to purge his diocese of drunken clergymen, a task in which
he encountered many unforeseen difficulties.
"It is nowadays less difficult," he says, "to get rid of a king than a
drunken clergyman."
He was, indeed, very moderate in his demands, stipulating only that no
shepherd of souls should show himself drunk in public. But the bibulous
parsons frequently had influential relatives, who exerted themselves
with the government to thwart the bishop's reformatory schemes. If
Tegnér had not been the masterful, tireless, energetic prelate that he
was, his ardor would have cooled; and he would have contented himself
with drawing the revenues of his office, and left with the lukewarm
government the responsibility for frustrating his purposes. But this was
contrary to his nature. He could not calmly contemplate abuses which it
was his duty to remedy; and no discouragement ever sufficed to dampen
his noble zeal. The marked and fanatical pietism which then was much
diffused among the Småland peasantry he fought with his cheerful gospel
of reason and sanity. Just as poetry to him meant the highest bloom of
life, and his radiant lyre resounded with noble music like the statue of
Memnon, when touched by the rays of the dawn; so religion was, in its
essence, perfect sanity of soul, a beautiful equilibrium of mind, and
complete self-mastery. His Christ was not primarily the bleeding, the
scourged, the crucified, but rather a benigner and lovelier Phoebus
Apollo, the bringer of clearness and light, the dispeller of the
unwholesome mists and barbaric gloom that yet brood over the human soul.
Like Goethe, he cherished a veritable abhorrence of the mystic symbolism
of the mediæval church; and was rather inclined to minimize the
significance of Christ's death and passion. He had undeniably imparted
into his Christianity a great deal of sunny Hellenic paganism--a fact
which in his familiar correspondence with Franzén he scarcely cares to
disguise.
Having this conception of the episcopal office, he could not escape
emphasizing his function as the supervisor of the schools of his
diocese. If he was to be a civilizer on any great scale, the chance
which was here afforded him to impress his ideals upon the rising
generation was not one to be neglected. And, as a matter of fact, Tegnér
was indefatigable in his labors as an educator. His many speeches at
school celebrations preached, as ever, a gospel derived from Greece
rather than Judæa; and half-improvised though some of them appear to be,
they contain passages of lofty eloquence.
It was inevitable that a bishop of such commanding personality, who
wielded his authority at times somewhat ruthlessly, should make enemies.
But, on the other hand, the beautiful beneficence and sincere humanity
of the man often obliterated the ill-feeling which his official severity
had aroused. To the widows of deceased clergymen in his diocese he was a
veritable guardian, to their children a father, to his peasantry a
friend, adviser, and monitor. He was an expert at detecting errors in
ecclesiastical balance-sheets; and woe to the cleric who dared present
to him inaccurate accounts of income and expenditures. By sheer dint of
his personal superiority and that quality of soul which George Eliot
calls dynamic, he impressed himself strongly upon all with whom he came
in contact; and though he was feared, he was also beloved as few. A very
delightful instance of the reverence with which he was regarded is
recorded by Böttiger.
One summer evening he arrived at a remote parsonage which had never, in
the memory of man, been visited by a bishop. Some time after his arrival
Tegnér observed two young ladies, the daughters of the house, coming
across the yard carrying between them a big tub, full of water. When he
asked them, in a friendly way, why they subjected themselves to such
hard labor, one of them replied: "Should we not regard it as an honor to
be allowed to water the bishop's horses?"
In order to give a clear and coherent idea of Tegnér in his prime, I
have been obliged to anticipate events. Many literary achievements which
I have left unrecorded belong to the period previous to his assumption
of the bishopric of Wexiö. Unhappily Professor Böttiger's edition is
very chary of dates, and as Dr. Brandes has truly observed, is arranged
with the obvious purpose of falsifying the sequence of Tegnér's poems
and confusing the reader. The three periods--previous to 1812, 1812-40,
and 1840-46--are entirely arbitrary, and plainly devised with a view to
concealing, in so far as they are capable of concealment, the unhappy
events which undermined the strength of the Titan and wrecked his
splendid powers. But such a purpose is utterly futile, as long as the
poems themselves had once escaped into publicity.
It was during the period while his sky was yet unclouded that Tegnér
enriched Swedish literature with a series of lyrics which in point of
lucidity of thought and brilliancy of diction have rarely been
surpassed. It may be admitted, without materially detracting from his
merit, that in some of them the foreign models from which they were in a
measure fashioned shimmer through. Just as the Germans, Gottsched and
Bodmer, held foreign models to be indispensable, and only disagreed as
to which were the best, so the Swedish Academy, which in its
predilections was French, had no scruple in recommending this or that
literary form for imitation. That degree of literary independence which
Germany reached with Goethe and Schiller, who discarded all models, the
Scandinavian countries did not reach until a much later period; and
Tegnér was one of those who stimulated that national self-respect
without which independence is impossible.
A strong spiritual kinship drew him to Schiller, whose splendor of
imagery and impassioned rhetoric were the very gifts which he himself in
a superlative degree possessed. The breath of political and religious
liberalism which pervades the writings of the German poet was also
highly congenial to Tegnér, and last, but not least, they were both
light-loving, beauty-worshipping Hellenists, and, though externally
conformists, hid joyous pagan souls under imperfect Christian draperies.
Small blame it is therefore to Tegnér that Schiller's poems furnished
him with frequent suggestions and sometimes also with metres. Schiller
had, in "The Gods of Greece," sung a glorious elegy on the Olympian age
which stimulated his Swedish rival to write "The Asa Age," in which he
regretted, though in a rather half-hearted way, the disappearance of
Odin, Thor, and Freya. The poem, it must be admitted, falls much below
Tegnér at his best. Schiller's "Three Words of Faith," in which liberty,
virtue, and God are declared to be the only essentials of religion,
finds a parallel (which even retains the metre) in Tegnér's "The
Eternal," in which truth, justice, and beauty are substituted. A kindred
poetic creed is far more consciously proclaimed in the famous poem
_Sangen_ (Poetry), which was primarily a protest against the gloomy and
morbid view of poetry entertained by the Swedish Romanticists (the
so-called Phosphorists). Tegnér here declares that the poet "with
heavenly joy embraces life," that "he knows no weak lament" (at its
misery), "no dissonance which is not dissolved" (in harmony). His temple
stands in light and flame; and at its base a fountain gurgles, a draught
from which is an elixir of strength and a panacea for all ills.
"Well, then," he continues, "from this fountain will I drink, if I am
worthy of such a draught. With healthy eyes will I look about me in the
sick world. My golden lyre shall not resound with sorrows which I myself
have invented. For the poet's sorrows are none; and the sky of song is
forever bright."
Peter Amadeus Atterbom, the leader of the Phosphorists, replied with
much moderation and good sense to the obvious reflections upon his
school which this poem contained. He intimates plainly enough that
Tegnér's philosophy of life, in so far as it ignores sin and sorrow,
which are too real to be banished by song, is a hopelessly shallow one.
"The undissolved dissonances," he says, "in the sense in which Mr.
Tegnér uses the expression, certainly betray a disease of the soul, but
this disease is not peculiar to a temperament which is fostered by a
personal emotional affinity for lugubrious topics and ideas given by
birth and developed by circumstances; but it is inherent in the weakness
(which at times doubtless surprises even the strongest ...) of desiring
to set up its sorrowful view of the world as a theory, and treat it as
absolutely true and fundamentally valid for all. Sorrow, as such, is no
more a diseased state than is joy; both are alike primordial, necessary,
indispensable elements and halves of human life. Who would venture to
assert that the day might dispense with the night? And does not the
latter's glorious starry sky rival in majesty (though different in kind)
the former's bright and dazzling blitheness?"
The fact was that Tegnér's cheery sun-worship was as much temperamental
as was Atterbom's sentimental reveries and nocturnal melancholy. The
Phosphorist is unquestionably right, however, in asserting that as a
theory of life the one is as limited and imperfect as the other. It was
because of the abhorrence of all the darker phases of existence that
Tegnér's bright Hellenic muse never struck those notes which thrill
with deepest resonance through the human heart. Tegnér's acquaintance
with suffering during the early part of his career was chiefly a
literary one, and like Goethe he went far out of his way to avoid the
sight of it. As there can be no victory without combat--no laurel
without dust--the Mount of Transfiguration is not reached except through
the valley of the Shadow of Death.
There are, however, many fair flowers to be plucked in Tempe and the
blooming vales of Arcady. Goethe had in 1798 published "Hermann and
Dorothea," the form of which was Greek, though the theme was Teutonic;
and Tegnér's "Children of the Lord's Supper" (1820), which Longfellow
has translated so admirably into English, derived its inspiration
primarily from the German idyl:
"Pentecost, day of rejoicing, had come, the church of the village
Stood, gleaming white in the morning sheen. On the spire of the belfry,
Decked with a brazen cock, the friendly flames of the spring sun
Glanced like the tongues of fire beheld by Apostles aforetime."
Thus run the beautiful, stately hexameters, which, whatever cavilling
critics may say, are delightfully adapted for epic narrative in any
fairly polysyllabic language. And Swedish, which is the most sonorous of
all Germanic tongues, and full of Gothic strength, produces the most
delectable effects in the long, rolling line of slow-marching dactyls
and spondees. The tempered realism of Tegnér, which shuns all that is
harsh and trite, accords well with the noble classical verse. He employs
it, as it were, to dignify his homely tale, as Raphael draped the
fishermen of Galilee in the flowing robes of Greek philosophers. The
description of the church, the rustic youth, and the patriarchal
clergyman has, however, the note of experience and the touch of earth
which we miss in the more declamatory passages. If, however, declamation
is anywhere in place it is in the three orations of the rural parson,
which occupy the larger portion of the poem. It is all very lovely and
edifying; full of sacred eloquence and a grand amplitude of phrase which
is distinctly clerical.
The romantic tale of "Axel" (1822), modelled after Byron's narrative
poems, rejoiced in a greater popularity, in spite of the carping
criticism with which it was received by the _Svensk Litteratur-Tidning,_
the organ of the Phosphorists. Though, to be sure, the merits of the
poem are largely ignored in this review, it is undeniable that the
faults which are emphasized do exist. First, the frequent violations of
probability (which, by the way, ought not to have been so offensive to a
romanticist) draw tremendous draughts upon the reader's credulity; and
secondly, the lavish magnificence of imagery rarely adds to the
vividness of the situations, but rather obscures and confuses them. It
reminds one of a certain style of barocque architecture in which the
rage for ornamentation twists every line into a scroll or spiral or
arabesque, until whatever design there originally was is lost in a riot
of decoration. The metaphors exist for their own sake, and are in nowise
subordinate to the themes which they profess to illustrate. Take, for
instance, the oft-quoted passage:
"The night drew near, and in the west
Upon its couch lay Evening dreaming,
And silent, like the priests of Egypt,
The stars pursued their radiant paths,
And earth stood in the starry eve,
As blissful as a bride who stands,
The garland in her dusky hair,
Beneath the baldaquin and blushes.
Tired of the games of day, and warm,
The Naïad rested, still and smiling,
The glow of evening shone resplendent,
A gorgeous rose upon her breast;
And merry Cupid, who had slept
When sun was high, awoke and rode
Upon the moonbeams up and down,
With bow and arrow, through the forest."
This is all very magnificent; but the images tread so close upon each
other's heels, that they come near treading each other down, and
tumbling together in a confused jumble. I claim no originality in
calling attention to the fact that it must have been a colossal Naïad
who could wear the evening glow like "a gorgeous rose upon her breast."
Likewise former critics have questioned whether the stars gain in the
least in vividness by being compared to the priests of Egypt,[31] who
were certainly far less familiar to the reader's vision.
[31] L. Dietrichson: Indledning i Studiet af Sveriges Litteratur.
Kjöbenhavn, 1862. See also Svensk Litteratur-Tidning as quoted in B.
E. Malmström: Grunddragen af Svenska Vitterhetens Historia, vol. v.,
p. 423. Oerebro.