God's likeness art thou, oh, how true, how striking!
Two lies thou hast natheless, in sooth, to show;
The name of one is man, the other's woman!
Of faith and honor there's an ancient ditty,
'Tis sung the best, when men each other cheat.
Thou child of heaven, the one thing true thou hast
Is Cain's foul mark upon thy forehead branded.
"A mark quite legible, writ by God's finger;
Why did I fail ere now to heed that sign?
A smell of death pervades all human life,
And poisons spring's sweet breath and summer's splendor.
Out of the grave that odor is exhaling.
The grave is sealed and marble guards its freight,
But still corruption is the breath of life,
Eludes its guard and scatters everywhere.
"Oh, watchman, tell me now the night's dark hour!
Will it then never wane unto its end?
The half-devoured moon is gliding, gliding,
The tearful stars forever onward go,
My pulse beats fast as in the time of youth,
But ne'er beats out the hours of torment sore.
How long, how endless is each pulse-beat's pain!
Oh, my consuméd, oh, my bleeding heart.
"My heart! Nay in my bosom is no heart,
There's but an urn that holds life's burnt-out ashes;
Have pity on me, thou green mother Earth,
And hide that urn full soon in thy cool breast.
In air it crumbles, moulders; earth's deep woe
Has in the earth, I ween, at last an end;
And Time's poor foundling, here in school constrained,
Finds then, perchance, beyond the sun--a father."
[40] The poem is written in the _ottava rime_, but in order to
preserve the sense intact I have rendered it in blank verse.
A physical disease which seems to have baffled the skill of physicians
may have been the primary cause of the sufferings here described, and
was no doubt aggravated by the psychical condition to which I have
alluded. Now it was supposed to be the liver which was affected; then
again Tegnér was treated for gall-stones. In the summer of 1833 he made
a journey through Germany and spent some months at Carlsbad; but he
returned without sensible relief. His foreign sojourn was, however, of
some benefit in widening his mental horizon. Tegnér's intellectual
affinities had always been French; and toward Germany he had assumed a
more or less unsympathetic attitude. A slight acquaintance with the
philosopher Schleiermacher and the Germanized Norwegian author Henrik
Steffens (who was then a professor at the University of Berlin) did not,
indeed, reverse his predilections, but it opened his eyes to
excellences in the German people to which he had formerly been blind,
and removed prejudices which had obscured his vision. He had everywhere
the most distinguished reception, and was honored with an invitation to
Sans Souci, where he was the guest of the witty Crown Prince of Prussia,
later Frederick William IV. But these agreeable incidents of his journey
were a poor compensation for his failure to obtain that which he had
gone in search of. Fame, honor, and distinguished friends, without
health, are but a Tantalus feast, the sweets of which are seen but never
tasted.
"I fear," said Tegnér, in his hopelessness, "that my right side, like
that of the Chamber of Deputies, is incurable."
"When this Saul's spirit comes over me I often feel an indescribable
bitterness, which endures nothing, spares nothing, in heaven or on
earth. It usually finds vent in misanthropic reflections, sarcasms, and
ideas which I have no sooner written down than I repent of them."
The activity which he unfolded, even in the midst of intolerable
sufferings, was phenomenal. He possessed an energy of will and vigor of
temperament which enabled him to rise superior to his physical
condition, and lure strong music (though sometimes jarred into discords)
from the broken lyre. It was in 1829, after his illness had fastened its
hold upon him, that he pronounced the beautiful epilogue in hexameters
at the graduating festivities at the University of Lund, and crowned
the Dane, Adam Oehlenschläger, as the king of poets:
"Now, before thou beginnest the distribution of laurels
Grant me one for him in whom I shall honor them all.
Lo, the Adam of poets is here, the Northern king among singers;
Heir to the throne in poesy's world; for the throne yet is Goethe's.
Oscar, the king, if he knew it, would give his grace to my action.
Now I speak not for him, still less for myself, but the laurel
Place on thy brow in poesy's name, the bright, the eternal.
* * * * *
Past is disunion's age (in the infinite realm of the spirit
Never it ought to have reigned), and kindred tones o'er the water
Ring, which enrapture us all, and they are especially thine.
Therefore, Svea--I speak in her name--adorns thee with laurel:
Take it from brotherly hand, of the day in festal remembrance."
Restless official activity, parliamentary labors, educational addresses,
and metrical discourses on memorable occasions filled the years from
1829 to 1840. He felt the demon of insanity lurking behind him, now
close at his heels, now farther away; and it was a desperate race, in
which life and death, nay, worse than death, was at stake. His
indefatigable exertions afforded him a respite from the thought of his
terrible pursuer. We can only regard with respectful compassion the
outbreaks of misanthropic spleen which often disfigure his
correspondence from this period of deepening twilight, relieved by a
brief interval of brightness. It is especially woman who is the object
of his bitterest objurgation. The venerable _mutabile et varium_ of
Virgil is the theme upon which he perpetually rings the changes. No
occasion is too inappropriate for a joke at the fickle and faithless
sex; and even the school-boys in the Wexiö gymnasium are treated to some
ironical advice, _à propos_ of the beautiful jade, which must have
sounded surprising in an episcopal oration. Life with its bright pageant
was oppressive, like a nightmare to the afflicted poet. All charm, all
rationality had departed from existence, which was but a meaningless
dance of hideous marionettes. The world was battered and befouled;
inexpressibly loathsome. And finally, in 1840, while Tegnér was
attending the Riksdag (of which in his official capacity he was a
member), the long-dreaded catastrophe occurred. His insanity manifested
itself in tremendous projects of reform, world-conquests, and outbreaks
of wild sensuality. He was sent to a celebrated asylum in Sleswick; and
on the way thither wrote a series of "Fantasies of Travel" which have
all the rich harmony of his earlier verse, and are full of delightful
imagery. He fancied that there was a huge wheel of fire revolving with
furious haste in his head, and his sufferings were terrific. The
following fragment from the notes of his attendant, who kept a record of
his ravings, has a cosmic magnificence:
"The whole trouble comes from that accursed nonsense about the
diadem which they wanted to put on me. You may believe, though,
that it was a splendid piece. Pictures in miniature, not painted,
but living, really existing miniatures of fourteen of the noblest
poets were made into a wreath. It was Homer and Pindar, Tasso and
Virgil, Schiller, Petrarch, Ariosto, Goethe, Sophocles, Leopold,
Milton, and several more. Between each one of them burned a radiant
star, not of tinsel, but of real cosmic material. In the middle of
my forehead there was the figure of a lyre on the diadem, which had
borrowed something of the sun's own living light; it poured with
such bright refulgence upon the wreath of stars that I seemed to be
gazing straight through the world. As long as the lyre stood still,
everything was well with me--but all of a sudden it began to move
in a circle. Faster and ever faster it moved, until every nerve in
my body was shaken. At last it began to rotate in rings with such
speed that it was transformed into a sun. Then my whole being was
broken, and it moved and trembled; for you must know that the
diadem was no longer put on the outside of my head, but inside, on
my very brain. And now it began to whirl around with an
inconceivable violence, until it suddenly broke and burst into
pieces. Darkness--darkness--darkness and night spread over the
whole world wherever I turned. I was bewildered and faint, and I
who had always hated weakness in men--I wept; I shed hot, burning
tears. All was over."[41]
[41] Brandes: Esaias Tegnér, pp. 231-223.
Contrary to the expectation of his friends he recovered rapidly, and was
able to return home in May, 1841. He promptly resumed his episcopal
functions, and even wrote a beautiful rural idyl in hexameters called
"The Crowned Bride" (_Kronbruden_), which he dedicated to Franzén. He
was well aware, however, that his powers were on the wane, and in 1845
he was persuaded to apply for a year's relief from his official duties.
The last months of his life he spent mostly lying upon a sofa in his
library, surrounded by great piles of books containing a most
miscellaneous assortment of classics, from Homer to Goethe,
intersprinkled with controversial pamphlets and recent novels. He was
gentle and affectionate in his demeanor; and his beautiful face lighted
up with a smile whenever any of his children or grandchildren approached
him. Once or twice a day he drove out in his carriage, and he was even
able to visit his eldest son, who was a clergyman in Scania, and to
receive the sacrament for the last time from his hand. Shortly after his
return he was stricken with paralysis, and died November 2, 1846, in the
sixty-fourth year of his age. His mind was unclouded and his voice was
clear. When the autumnal sun suddenly burst through the windows and
shone upon the dying poet, he murmured: "I will lift up mine hands unto
the house and the mountain of God."
These were his last words. He was carried to the grave at night by the
light of lanterns, followed by a long procession of the clergy,
citizens, and the school-boys of his diocese. Peasants, from whose ranks
he had sprung and to whom he was always a good friend, bore his coffin.
The academic tendency which "idealizes" life and shuns earth-scented
facts, had, through the decisive influence of Tegnér, been victorious in
Swedish literature. I am aware that some will regard this as a
questionable statement; for the academicism of Tegnér is not the
stately, bloodless, Gallic classicism of the Gustavian age, of which
Leopold was the last representative. It is much closer to the classicism
of Goethe in "Iphigenia" and "Hermann and Dorothea," and of Schiller in
"Wallenstein" and "Wilhelm Tell." Tegnér's poetic creed was exactly that
of Schiller, who saw no impropriety in making the peasant lad, Arnold
Melchthal, when he hears that his father has been blinded, deliver an
enraptured apostrophe to the light:
"O eine edle Himmelsgabe ist
Das Licht des Auges," etc.
The rhetorical note is predominant in both. Their thoughts have to be
arrayed in the flowing toga before they are held to be presentable. This
is the academic tendency in Sweden as in France, even though the degree
of euphemistic magniloquence may differ with the age and latitude. The
Swedes have been called the Frenchmen of the North, and there is no
doubt that delight in this toga-clad rhetoric is inherent in both. It
was because Tegnér, in appealing to this delight, was so deeply
representative that he extinguished the old school and became the
national poet of Sweden.
* * * * *
Transcriber's notes:
Dostoyevski is also spelled Dostojevski and Dostoyefski
Tolstoi is also spelled Tostoï.
It appears that Fortällinger is also spelled Fortaellinger.
Page 11: valuble changed to valuable. Typo.
Page 45: Gjeunembrud's is a typo for Gjennembrud's. Changed
in text.
Page 191: Open parenthesis added to 1882.
Page 262: ["The objections to "Frithjof's Saga" which] was
changed to [The objections to "Frithjof's Saga" which].
The first double quote appears to be unnecessary.
Page 270: The stanzas are spaced as they appear in the original
text, although they appear to be in error.