Amazon, Maria, has from beginning to end a flavor of Byron, and recalls
alternately "the Corsair" and "Lara." The extravagant sentimentality of
the tale appealed, however, powerfully to the contemporary taste, and
the dissenting voice of criticism was drowned like the shrill note of a
single fife in the noisy orchestra of praise. The Swedish matrons and
maidens wept over Axel's and Maria's heroic, but tragic love, as those
of England, nay, of all Europe, wept over that of Conrad and Medora.
Maria, when she hears that Axel has a betrothed at home, enlists as a
man in the Russian army (a very odd proceeding by the way, and scarcely
conducive to her purpose) and resolves to kill her rival. She is,
however, mortally wounded, and Axel finds her dying upon the
battlefield.
"Yea, it was she; with smothered pain
She whispers with a voice full faint:
'Good-evening, Axel, nay, good-night,
For death is nestling at my heart.
Oh! ask not what hath brought me hither;
'Twas love alone led me astray.
Alas! the last long night is dusking;
I stand before the grave's dread door.
How different life, with all its small distresses,
Seems now from what it seemed of yore!
And only love--love fair as ours,
Can I take with me to the skies.'"[32]
[32] The original is in the rhymed Byronic metre, mostly in
couplets. In order not to sacrifice anything of the meaning I have
chosen to put it into blank verse.
This is exactly the Byronic note, which would be still more audible, if
I had preserved the rhymed couplets. Even Medora's male attire is
borrowed by Maria, and much more of this Byronic melodramatic heroism is
there, only a little more conventionally draped and with larger
concessions to the Philistine sense of propriety. But even if Tegnér in
"Axel" had coquetted with the Romantic muse, it would be rash to
conclude that he contemplated any durable relation. The note which he
had struck in his renowned oration at the festival commemorating the
Reformation (1817), came from the depth of his heart, and continued to
resound through his speech and song for many years to come. I do not
moan to imply, of course, that the Byronic Romanticism was very closely
akin to that of Tieck, the Schlegels, and Novalis; or that Tegnér in the
least compromised his frank and manly liberalism by composing a
variation, as it were, on a Byronic theme. How deeply he hated the
mediæval obscurantism which then, under the auspices of Metternich and
his unholy "Holy Alliance" was spreading over Europe, he showed in
numerous private and public utterances concerning the political
condition of Europe after the fall of Napoleon. His greeting to the "New
Year, 1816" (which his son-in-law has foolishly excluded from his
edition of the collected works), is overbrimming with bitterness at the
triumph of the enemies of the light.
"Hurrah! Religion is a Jesuit,
The rights of man are Jacobins;
The world is free; the raven is white;
Long live the Pope--and that other;
I am going to Germany, and there I'll learn
Sonnets to sing and incense to burn.
"Welcome, thou New Year, with murder and gloom,
Stupidity, lies, and fraud!
I hope thou'lt make an end of our earth,
A bullet at least she's worth;
She's restless, poor thing, like many another,
A shot through the head--she'll cause no more bother!"
It was the fashion in those days to revile the Revolution, because it
had produced the man on horseback who had turned the old order of things
topsy-turvy in a very unceremonious fashion. Coleridge, Southey, and
Wordsworth in England, and Klopstock, Schiller, and a horde of lesser
lights in Germany, had hailed the French uprising as the bloody dawn of
a new and more glorious day; but the excesses of the Reign of Terror
frightened them back into the old fastnesses of Conservatism. Tegnér
(and to his honor be it said) was one of the few who did not despair of
liberty because a people born and bred in despotism failed to exercise
the wisdom and self-restraint which only liberty can foster. For the
only road to the attainment of liberty is its practice and its abuse,
and the slow education which can be acquired by no theoretical teaching,
but only in the hard and expensive school of experience. For the
terrible birth-pangs of liberty no despotically governed people can
escape, unless it chooses to remain in thraldom.
This is the spirit that breathes through Tegnér's speeches and poems,
during his most vigorous manhood; and even, when the rift in his lute
made its music harsh and uncertain, the strain was yet essentially the
same, though transposed into an alien key. It is very tempting to quote
the many noble sayings of this master of the commanding phrase, but one
or two must suffice. It is a delight to read his published
correspondence, because of this power of strong and luminous utterance,
which he wields with such Titanic ease. Then, again, there is no
affectation or cant, but an engaging candor and straightforwardness
which bespeak a true man, considering the time when they were written.
What clarity of political vision there is in such passages as these:
(1813.) "He who fancies that Europe will be delivered by Russia and her
confederates, or that the progress of the Cossacks is for the advantage
of Sweden, may perhaps be in the right; but his views are very different
from mine. In the hatred of the Barbarians I am born and bred, and I
hope to die in it, unbewildered by modern sophisms."
(1814.) "Who can believe in the re-establishment of the European balance
of power or rejoice in the victory of wretched mediocrity over power and
genius. The upheavals of the age will soon affect us all--at least us
Swedes."
(1817) "That we are living on an earth yet quaking from the French
Revolution is undeniable; and extremely foolish seems to me the speech
of those who insist that the Revolution is finished, or even approaching
its end."
"Napoleon fell, not on account of his wretched opponents, but because
despotism is the livery of all strong souls, because his spirit was
opposed to the spirit of the age, with which he wrestled, and which was
stronger than he."[33]
[33] Quoted from G. Brandes: Esaias Tegnér: En
Litteraturpsychologisk Studie. Kjöbenhavn, 1878, pp. 87 and 88.
Living as he did in an age of general disillusion, Tegnér performed an
important service in endeavoring to stem with the full force of his
personality the rising tide of reaction. How much he accomplished in
this direction is difficult to estimate, for we can never know what turn
Swedish affairs might have taken, if his clarion voice had not been
heard. But it could scarcely fail that such a speech as the one at the
Festival of the Reformation (1817), delivered in the presence of a large
assembly of scholars and public men, must have made a great impression,
and in a hundred direct and indirect ways affected public opinion.
Luther is to Tegnér a hero of liberty, a breaker of human shackles, a
deliverer from spiritual bondage and gloom.
"Luther was one of those rare historical characters who always, in
whatever they undertake, by their very manner, surprise, and indelibly
impress themselves upon the memory. There was something chivalrous, I
could almost say adventurous, in his whole personality, in his whole way
of beginning and prosecuting an enterprise. He put upon whatever he did
the stamp of an almost inconceivable greatness--of an almost
overwhelming force. His mere word was half a battle, his deed was a
whole one. He was one of those mighty souls which, like certain trees,
can only bloom in a storm. His whole great, rich, marvellous life has
always seemed to me like an epic with its battles and its final victory.
Such a spirit must of necessity make room for itself, and decisively
assert itself in history, in whatever direction its activity may be
turned, under whatever circumstances and at whatever time it enters upon
its career. The time when Luther came was one of those great historical
epochs when the world-serpent sheds its skin and reappears in
rejuvenated shape.... A great man, even the very greatest, is always the
son of his age--only he is the eldest son; he is the deputy and executor
of the age. The age is his, and he administers its substance according
to his judgment. He finds the scattered elements to his hand, but
usually tangled up and struggling in chaotic disorder. To gather and
arrange them into a creation, to direct them toward a definite goal, ...
this is his greatness; this is his creative powers.... In this ... sense
Luther created his age."[34]
[34] Esaias Tegnér's Samlade Skrifter, vol. v., pp. 6, 7, 9, and 10.
Dr. Brandes has anticipated me in calling attention to the fact that the
orator's characterization of Luther, though highly interesting, is
one-sided. But as his admirable monograph on Tegnér is not accessible to
English readers, I feel justified in repeating his argument in
abbreviated form. There is a great uniformity, he says, in substance, in
all Tegnér's heroes. They are all men of action--bold, strong,
adventurous heroes, such as boys delight in. They have a striking family
resemblance. With the change of a few attributes Tegnér applies his
characterization of Luther to such a widely differing personality as
King Gustavus III. of Sweden, a frivolous, theatrical, Frenchified,
infidel monarch. And Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII. are forced into
the same livery, in spite of their diversity of structure, because
Tegnér admired them all, and had practically but one type which appeared
to his frank, open, and somewhat boyish fancy wholly worthy of
admiration.[35]
[35] Georg Brandes: Esaias Tegnér, pp. 17-19.
In reading consecutively the whole series of Tegnér's collected works I
am much struck with the force of this criticism. The brave man who
defies the world single-handed, and plunges up to his ears into dangers,
without counting the odds against him, is the typical juvenile hero; and
it is strange, though by no means incomprehensible, that a man like
Tegnér, who could betray such political insight as is shown in his
letters to Franzén and Leopold had not really gotten beyond this
primitive type of excellence. In a certain sense, perhaps, it was not
desirable that he should. For the tremendous popularity which greeted
"Frithjof's Saga" was due in no small measure to this half-juvenile
robustness of its author's genius. As I cannot help regretting in myself
the loss of my boyish appetite for swashbuckling marauders, and
mysterious treasure-diggers, I am, indeed, far from deploring Tegnér's
delight in the insane prowess of Charles XII., or the gay and chivalrous
gallantry of Gustavus III. There is a sort of fine salubriousness in it
which makes one, on the whole, like him the more.
It might well be said of Tegnér, as he said of Luther, that his word was
half a battle. At all events he accomplished by his speeches a complete
overthrow of his opponents the Phosphorists, without engaging in the
barren polemics to which they invited him. He waited until some
appropriate public occasion occurred, and then spoke out of the fulness
of his conviction. And his words spread like undulating waves of light
from one end of the land to the other, finding lodgement in thousands
of hearts. Thus his beautiful epilogue at the "magister promotion"[36]
in Lund (1820) was a direct manifesto (and a most incisive one) against
that mystic obscurity which, according to the Phosphorists, was
inseparable from the highest and deepest poetic utterance:
"In vain they call upon the lofty Truth
With sombre conjurations; for the dark
She ne'er endures; for her abode is light.
In Phoebus' world, in knowledge as in song,
All things are bright. Bright beams the radiant sun;
Clear runs and pure his bright Castalian fountain.
Whate'er thou canst not clearly say thou know'st not.
Twin-born with thought is word on lips of man;
That which is darkly said is darkly thought;
For wisdom true is like the diamond,
A drop that's petrified of heavenly light;
The purer that it is, the more its value,
The more the daylight shines and glitters through it.
The ancients builded unto Truth a temple,
A fair rotunda, light as heaven's vault.
And freely poured the sunshine from all sides
Into its open round; the winds of heaven
Amid its ranks of pillars gayly gambolled.
But now instead we build a Tower of Babel,
A heavy, barbarous structure. Darkness peeps
From out its deep and narrow grated casements.
Unto the sky the tower was meant to reach,
But hitherto we've only had confusion.
As in the realm of thought, in that of song
It is; and poesy is e'er transparent ..."
[36] A magister promotion corresponds approximately to our
university commencements. It is the ceremony of bestowing the degree
of master of arts.
This was certainly an attractive doctrine, and it did not fail to
command public approval. But it suffers from exactly the same limitation
as Tegnér's gospel of joy. It is only relatively (I might almost say
temperamentally) true; and the opposite might be maintained with equal
force, and in fact was so maintained by Atterbom, who declared (in the
"Poetical Calendar for 1821") that there can be no such a conception as
light without darkness. Darkness, he says, is the condition of all color
and form. You distinguish the light and all things in it only by the
contrasting effect of shadow--all of which, I fancy, Tegnér would not
have denied. More to the point would have been the query whether in
poetry darkness and indistinctness are synonymous terms. It is only the
most commonplace truths which can be made intelligible to all. Much of
the best and highest thinking of humanity lies above the plane of the
ordinary untrained intellect. What is light to me may be twilight or
darkness to you. What to you is clear as the daylight, may to me be as
densely impenetrable as the Cimmerian night. Christ himself recognized
this fact when he said to his disciples: "I have yet many things to say
unto you, but ye cannot bear them now."
For all that, Tegnér's doctrine was in its effect wholesome. It
discouraged the writers of the Romantic School, who under the guise of
profundity gave publicity to much immature and confused thinking. He was
no doubt right in saying that "a poetry which commences with
whooping-cough is likely to end in consumption." His frequently repeated
maxim, that poetry is nothing but the health of life, "occasioned by an
abounding intellectual vigor, a joyous leap over the barriers of
everyday life," applied, however, to his own poetry only so long as his
vigor was unimpaired. His terrible poem "Hypochondria" (_Mjeltsjukan_)
is to me no less poetical because it is not "a petrified drop of
heavenly light," and mocks all the cheerful theories of its author's
prime.
Tegnér had yet a few years in which to rejoice in this "health of life"
in which he found the inspiration for his song; and these last years
were the most fruitful in his entire career. He was about forty years of
age when, in 1820, he began to compose the first cantos of "Frithjof's
Saga." He was living in modest comfort, happy in his marital relation,
and surrounded by a family of children to whom he was a most
affectionate father. He could romp and play with his curly-headed boys
and girls without any loss of dignity; and they loved nothing better
than to invade his study. Next to them in his regard was a black-nosed
pug, named Atis, who invariably accompanied him to his lectures and
remained sitting at his feet listening with intelligent gravity to his
explanations of the Greek poets. If by chance his master, in his zeal
for his own poetry, forgot the lecture-hour, Atis would respectfully
pull him by the tails of his coat. No man at the University of Lund was
more generally beloved than Tegnér, and all honors which the University
could bestow had been offered to him. The office of Rector Magnificus he
had, however, persisted in declining.
There was at that time a general revival of interest in the so-called
saga-age. The Danish poet, Oehlenschläger, had published his old-Norse
cycle of poems, "Helge," which aroused a sympathetic reverberation in
Tegnér's mind. The idea took possession of him that here was a theme
which lay well within the range of his own voice, and full of alluring
possibilities. Accordingly he chose the ancient "Saga of Frithjof the
Bold," and resolved to embody in it all the characteristic features of
the old heroic life. And what Oehlenschläger had attempted to do, and
partly succeeded in doing, he accomplished with a completeness of
success which was a surprise to himself. No sooner had "Iduna," the
organ of the Gothic League, published the first nine cantos (1821), than
all Sweden resounded with enthusiastic applause; and even from beyond
the boundaries of the fatherland came voices of praise. When the
completed poem appeared in book-form, it was translated into all
civilized languages, and everywhere, in spite of the translators'
shortcomings, it was hailed with delight. Not only England, France, and
Germany hastened to appropriate it, but even in Spain, Greece, and
Russia tears were shed over "Ingeborg's Lament," and tender bosoms
palpitated with sympathy for Frithjof's sorrows. I know a dozen English
translations of "Frithjof's Saga" (a friend of mine, who is a
bibliophile, assures me that the exact number is at present twenty-one),
and of German versions the number is not very much less. A Norwegian (or
rather Danish) rendering was presented to me on my twelfth birthday; and
the sentiment which then most forcibly appealed to me was, as I vividly
remember, embodied in the following verse, in which Björn chides his
friend's grief for the loss of his beloved:
"Frithjof, 'tis time for your folly's abating;
Sigh and lament for a woman's loss:
Earth is, alas, too full of such dross;
One may be lost, still a thousand are waiting.
Say but the word, of such goods I will bring
Quickly a cargo--the Southland can spare them,
Bed as the rose, mild as lambs in the spring;
Then we'll cast lots, or as brothers we'll share them."[37]
[37] Holcomb's translation.
It was not the unconscious humor of this proposition which struck me the
most in those days; but it was the bluff frankness of the gruff old
viking which then seemed truly admirable. In fact, I am not sure but
that Björn appeared to me a more sympathetic figure than Frithjof. But a
little later it dawned upon me that his utter lack of chivalry was
rather revolting; and I began to marvel at my former admiration. At
fourteen the following verse (which at twelve was charmingly heroic)
caused me to revise my opinion of Björn:
"Good! to King Ring it shall be my glad duty
Something to teach of a wronged viking's power;
Fire we his palace at midnight's still hour,
Scorch the old graybeard and bear off the beauty."
For all that, Björn with his rough speech and hearty delight in fighting
and drinking, is far truer to the spirit of the old heroic age than is
Frithjof with his sentimentality and lovesick reveries. This verse, for
instance, is replete with the briny breath of the northern main. The
north wind blows through it:
"Good is the sea, your complaining you squander,
Freedom and joy on the sea flourish best.
He never knoweth effeminate rest
Who on the billows delighteth to wander.
When I am old, to the green-growing land
I, too, will cling, with the grass for my pillow.
Now I will drink and will fight with free hand,
Now I'll enjoy my own sorrow-free billow."
I might continue in the autobiographical vein; but must forbear. For
there is a period in the life of every young Norseman when, untroubled
by its anachronism, he glories in Frithjof's melancholy mooning, his
praise of Ingeborg, his misanthropy, and all the manifold moods of love
so enchantingly expressed in Tegnér's melodious verse.
When a book acquires this significance as an expression of the typical
experience in the lives of thousands, the critical muse can but join in
the general chorus, and find profound reasons for the universal praise.
In the case of "Frithjof's Saga" this is not a difficult matter. From
beginning to end the poem has a lyrical intensity which sets the mind
vibrating with a responsive emotion. It is not a coldly impersonal epic,
recounting remote heroic events; but there is a deeply personal note in
it, which has that nameless moving quality--_la note émue_, as the
French call it--which brings the tear to your eye, and sends a delicious
breeze through your nerves. All that, to be sure, or nearly all of it,
evaporates in translation; for no more than you can transfer the
exquisite dewy intactness of the lily to canvas can you transfer the
rapturous melody of noble verse into an alien tongue. The subtlest
harmonies--those upon which the thrill depends--are invariably lost. If
Longfellow, instead of giving us two cantos, had translated the whole
poem, we should, at least, have possessed an English version which would
have afforded us some conception of the charm of the renowned original.
The objections to "Frithjof's Saga" which have been urged by numerous
critics may all be admitted as more or less valid; yet something remains
which will account for its astounding popularity. Tegnér at the time
when he was singing of Frithjof's and Ingeborg's love was himself
suffering from a consuming but unrequited passion. The strong, warm
pulse of life which throbs in Frithjof's wrath, defiance, and scorn, and
in his deep and manly tenderness is the poet's own. It marks but the
rhythm of his own tumultuous heart-beat. It is altogether an unhappy
chapter, which his biographer has vainly striven to suppress. There was
among his acquaintance in Lund a certain Mrs. Palm, toward whom he felt
drawn with an irresistible half-demonic force. Beyond this fact we know
nothing of the lady, except that she was handsome, cultivated, and
well-connected. Whatever approaches Tegnér may have made toward her (and
it is not known of what nature they were) she appears to have repelled;
and the poet, though fighting desperately against his growing
infatuation, wore out his splendid vitality in the conflict of emotions
which the unhappy relation occasioned. He became a prey to the most
terrible melancholy, and a misanthropy of the deepest hue spread its
sombre veil over the world which hitherto had given to him its brightest
smile. The dread of insanity became an _idée fixe_ with him; and the
pathetic cry, "God preserve my reason," rings again and again through
his private correspondence. One of his brothers was insane; and he
fancied that there must be a taint in his blood which menaced him with
the same tragic doom.
Happily, he could as yet conjure the storm. It hung threateningly on the
horizon of his mind, with mutterings of thunder and stray flashes of
lightning. But his poetic bark still sped along with full sails, bravely
breasting the waves.
"Und wenn der Mensch in seiner Qual verstummt
Gab mir ein Gott zu sagen was ich leide,"
says Goethe. And this divine gift of saying, or, better still, of
singing, what he suffered made Tegnér, during this period, master of his
sufferings. They did not overwhelm him and ruin his usefulness. On the
contrary, these were the most active and fruitful years of his life. But
it was the deep agitation which possessed him--it was the suppressed
tumult of his strong soul which vibrated through "Frithjof" and which
imparted to it that vital quality, that moving ring which arouses the
deeper feelings in the human heart.
Archæologically the poem was not correct, and was not meant to be.
Tegnér distinctly disclaimed the intention of producing a historically
accurate picture of the saga age; and all criticism censuring the
modernness of Frithjofs and Ingeborg's sentiments is, therefore,
according to his idea, wide of the mark. I do not quite agree with his
point of view, but will state his argument. For the historical Frithjof,
as he is represented in the ancient Norse saga bearing his name, Tegnér
cared but little. What he wished to do was to give a poetic presentation
of the old heroic life, and he chose Frithjof as his representative of
this age because he united in himself so many of its characteristics: