_It is a sad thought that everyone cannot enjoy Söderberg, that this
master of delicate and incisive realism, this prince of humorists,
is--for Anglo-Saxons, at least--an acquired taste. But it is
well to face at the outset the fact that Söderberg is a European
Continental, an Anatole France of Sweden. To those who believe that
a man is unvirile or at least anæmic if he refuses to believe in
human perfectibility this attitude toward life will seem barren and
depressing, one to encourage discouragement. How much pleasanter to
feel with Pippa, not only at 7_ +A.M.+ _on a May morning, but at all
hours and seasons, that «all’s right with the world»! To insinuate the
contrary is to give sanction to those doubts which, if they overtake
even the most confident of us at unguarded moments, should all the more
be repressed. What is culture if it is not sweetness and light? Listen
to Söderberg: «Why all this optimism when not one of the old problems
is solved?» And again, one of his characters affirms, «I believe in the
lust of the flesh and the incurable loneliness of the soul.»_
_We read fiction for pleasure. What does this new Swedish novelist
offer in compensation for a somewhat despondent view of life? He
himself rather hesitates to tell us and in this very hesitation we
may, if the faculty be in us, discern one of his chief attractions.
Söderberg is reticent because he wishes to present the truth as he sees
it without exaggeration and without prejudice. He colors his picture
neither with the golden glow of the untroubled believer nor with the
red zeal of the revolutionary. He is honest to such a degree that he
will not stress his own honesty. On the contrary, he doubts his very
doubt: «How could I, a boy of sixteen, be right and all my elders
and betters wrong?» And again in_ +Martin Birck+, _«he was not quite
certain that truth in itself could produce happiness, but history
had taught him that illusion created unhappiness and crime.» And yet
all the more from this unobtrusiveness we divine the intellectual
honesty of the skeptic, which bursts out only once in the present
novel: «Would a man never come who did not sing, but spoke, and spoke
plainly!» Such a man has the right to «paint the thing as he sees it,»
to revalue the time-honored beliefs and customs of the past in the
light of his own experience._
_We may, I think, trust in Söderberg’s fidelity to his vision as
in that of few living writers. He collects his data carefully and
transmits them simply. In that there is always stimulus to a reader who
appreciates how difficult it is to do. But he might do all this and be
no more than a good photographer._
_As we follow the everyday run of events in_ +Martin Birck+, _we may at
first be impressed with their perfect verisimilitude and yet incline to
class the author as unoriginal. In that respect, though probably in no
other, the prose of Söderberg resembles the poetry of Wordsworth. Few
readers will progress more than a page or two without that sense of the
significant in the commonplace which is the very soul of originality.
Söderberg has followed the famous counsel of Flaubert to De Maupassant:
«Look at an object until you have seen in it everything that anyone
else can see, and then look until you perceive what no one else has
seen!» Rarely has any prose been fuller of implications--emotional,
psychological, moral--than Söderberg’s. To re-read him is invariably
to be surprised at all one has missed before. One passes through life
with him as one might walk through a meadow with a great naturalist
or stroll through a city at night with Whistler. The trivial is
clothed with meaning, the habitual is touched with magic. The world of
Söderberg lives; it lives in beauty._
_And as one grows more and more conscious of the author’s pregnance
in matter, one is equally delighted with the perfect consonance of
his manner. He gives not only the thing in itself, but the feel of
the thing, the overtone. His curious felicity is never startling or
precious, it is simply adequate. How far this may be recaptured in
translation may of course be an open question. Here at least is an
attempt from the short story_ +Margot+:
_It was a cool night in the early part of October. The moon was up;
a cold, moist wind was blowing. The big buildings on Blasieholm
formed a dark mass, whose broken and irregular edge seemed to
be catching at the wisps of cloud that drove forward against a
deep-blue background. The still, heavy water of Nybro Inlet
mirrored a broad glittering moonpath in oily rings, and along the
wharves the lumber sloops raised a thin and motionless forest
of masts and tackle. In the upper air was haste and tumult; the
clouds hunted each other from west to east, till over the woods
of Djurgården they congested into a low black wall. It was as if
Heaven were breaking camp for a journey, for a flight._
_The reader of_ +Martin Birck+ _will find any number of similar
passages, in description, character-drawing and the power of the author
to express his own reactions on life and art_.
_What manner of man is this quiet interpreter of the life about him?
Hjalmar Söderberg was born in Stockholm, 1869. The outward tenor of
his way has been uneventful. After trying journalism in a provincial
town he tired of «serving caviare to the Bœotians» and returned to
his native city, the background of nearly all his work. He first
achieved distinction in the «Storiettes,» miniature stories usually
told in the first person and based on some casual incident of daily
life. In this form he is unsurpassed._ +Martin Birck+, _his first
novel, published in 1907, was partly inspired by «Niels Lyhne,» the
work of his elder Danish contemporary, J. P. Jacobsen, but was mainly
autobiographical. Söderberg was also influenced by the modern French
novelists, especially Flaubert, Maupassant and Anatole France. The last
named he translated. He wrote two other novels, «Dr. Glas» and «The
Serious Game,» and two plays, «Gertrud» and «The Hour of Fate,» besides
numerous collections of short stories. His last long book is «Jehovah’s
Fire,» an historico-religious narrative. Some early poems and a small
sheaf of criticism complete the tally of his rather moderate output. Of
recent years he has been living in Copenhagen. He has never married._
_How little this dry recital of facts has to do with the real case in
point! The genius of Söderberg is inherent in the temperament of the
man. In appearance he is homely, stoutish, and suave, a bit Bohemian
but decidedly a gentleman. Quiet, observant, unpretentious, and rather
indolent, he gives an impression of infinite leisure and tolerance
which is largely borne out by his writing. His mind is a rich,
seemingly passive soil, in which small events take root and grow, as it
were, without an effort on his part. Therein lies the unique charm of
his stories; their unforced, organic quality._
_But in the simplicity of Söderberg there is infinite subtlety. He lets
life speak through him because he realizes that in the last analysis
nothing speaks as persuasively as life. In his presentation there is
a skill beyond praise. With all his naturalism and tranquillity of
style, he gives us great moments, moments of profound insight, of
wistful loveliness, of quaint and surprising humor. After all, things
do not choose themselves or arrange themselves in right relation on
the canvas; they only seem to do so. Without obtruding his personality
Söderberg speaks to the mind and emotions of his audience in no
uncertain terms._
_What does he give us finally? First, perhaps, the delight of seeing
nature and humanity clearly and the greater delight of entering
imaginatively into the essence of both. His truth has the beauty of
understanding. We find that life does not need to be idealized to be
beautiful; it needs only to be realized. And as a corollary he gives us
a sympathy in this manifestation which is not unlike that of Whitman,
for it is the sympathy of acceptance. There is a tone of sadness,
sometimes of almost tragic depth, in the knowledge of «what man has
made of man,» and with it a smile of forgiveness. What we understand we
pardon. Men and women are lovable in spite of, largely no doubt because
of, their mistakes._
_But also men and women are irresistibly funny. Söderberg has almost
exactly the mood of Jaques in «As You Like It.» But whereas Jaques is
dry, Söderberg is sly, with an ingenuous slyness that never, as with
Sterne, slips off into a leer. How he enjoys letting his people amuse
us, in watching with us their self-important gestures, the eternal
passions that fade away in a month or a year, their curious delusions
about fame and money and respectability! If these people could see
themselves! And as we look, we may perhaps be a little mortified to
see_ our_selves. How foolishly we have wasted our energies and annoyed
those about us, for what? Perhaps we shall be a little more lenient to
the faults of others from now on. The laughter which Söderberg evokes
is thoughtful laughter._
_Are we then given no positive impulse, is there no meaning in life,
nothing worth striving for? «Perhaps not,» says Söderberg. And yet,
pessimist though he is, he has a reticent pride of his own. He cannot,
we feel, tell a lie, cannot force anyone in his stories to do or think
anything that is not in character. Furthermore, he adumbrates through
the philosophy of Martin the ideal of writing «so that each and all who
really cared to could understand him.» And, like most of Söderberg’s
simple statements, that means considerably more than appears on the
surface._
_Enough, perhaps more than enough, has been said to indicate the
mood for best enjoying_ +Martin Birck+. _To call further attention
to details would only tend to spoil the pleasure of those attempered
to appreciate it. I must return to the original statement that the
reader’s reaction to it will be peculiarly personal. For myself, I
differ almost completely from the author in his conclusions about life,
I object strongly to his rather supine attitude, yet I admire and love
him. I find him as brilliant as the modern French masters, and much
more kindly. He has given me more than have nine-tenths of the worthy
authors with whom I agree. There is in him a strict sense of truth, a
tenderness, a humor which put him definitely on the side of the angels.
He will annoy, will scandalize, many excellent people, but I am afraid
I am not sorry that he should. He has been called the_ enfant terrible
_of Swedish literature. Perhaps we have been taking him too seriously;
no doubt he himself will think so. After all, there is something
perennially fascinating about a naughty child._
_C. W. S._