Essays on Scandinavian Literature Part 9

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 BOttiger.

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 Tegner 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 Tegner in his prime, I have been obliged to antic.i.p.ate events. Many literary achievements which I have left unrecorded belong to the period previous to his a.s.sumption of the bishopric of WexiO. Unhappily Professor BOttiger'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 Tegner'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 t.i.tan 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 Tegner enriched Swedish literature with a series of lyrics which in point of lucidity of thought and brilliancy of diction have rarely been surpa.s.sed. 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 fas.h.i.+oned s.h.i.+mmer 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 Tegner was one of those who stimulated that national self-respect without which independence is impossible.

A strong spiritual kins.h.i.+p drew him to Schiller, whose splendor of imagery and impa.s.sioned 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 Tegner, and last, but not least, they were both light-loving, beauty-wors.h.i.+pping h.e.l.lenists, and, though externally conformists, hid joyous pagan souls under imperfect Christian draperies.

Small blame it is therefore to Tegner that Schiller's poems furnished him with frequent suggestions and sometimes also with metres. Schiller had, in "The G.o.ds 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 Tegner at his best. Schiller's "Three Words of Faith," in which liberty, virtue, and G.o.d are declared to be the only essentials of religion, finds a parallel (which even retains the metre) in Tegner's "The Eternal," in which truth, justice, and beauty are subst.i.tuted. 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). Tegner 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 Tegner'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.

Tegner 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 circ.u.mstances; 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 a.s.sert 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 Tegner's cheery sun-wors.h.i.+p was as much temperamental as was Atterbom's sentimental reveries and nocturnal melancholy. The Phosphorist is unquestionably right, however, in a.s.serting 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 Tegner's bright h.e.l.lenic muse never struck those notes which thrill with deepest resonance through the human heart. Tegner'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 Tegner'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 c.o.c.k, 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 Tegner, which shuns all that is harsh and trite, accords well with the n.o.ble cla.s.sical 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 pa.s.sages. 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 ill.u.s.trate. Take, for instance, the oft-quoted pa.s.sage:

"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 Naad 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 Naad 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.

KjObenhavn, 1862. See also Svensk Litteratur-Tidning as quoted in B.

E. MalmstrOm: Grunddragen af Svenska Vitterhetens Historia, vol. v., p. 423. Oerebro.

The story of the Swedish officer Axel and his beloved, the Cossack 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 Tegner 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 Tegner 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 mediaeval 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 overbr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 fas.h.i.+on. Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth in England, and Klopstock, Schiller, and a horde of lesser lights in Germany, had hailed the French uprising as the b.l.o.o.d.y 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. Tegner (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 Tegner'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 n.o.ble 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 t.i.tanic 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 pa.s.sages 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 Tegner: En Litteraturpsychologisk Studie. KjObenhavn, 1878, pp. 87 and 88.

Living as he did in an age of general disillusion, Tegner 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 a.s.sembly 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 Tegner 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 a.s.sert itself in history, in whatever direction its activity may be turned, under whatever circ.u.mstances 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 Tegner's Samlade Skrifter, vol. v., pp. 6, 7, 9, and 10.

Dr. Brandes has antic.i.p.ated 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 Tegner 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 Tegner'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 Tegner 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 Tegner 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 Tegner, pp. 17-19.

In reading consecutively the whole series of Tegner'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 Tegner, who could betray such political insight as is shown in his letters to Franzen 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 appet.i.te for swashbuckling marauders, and mysterious treasure-diggers, I am, indeed, far from deploring Tegner'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 Tegner, 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 s.h.i.+nes and glitters through it.

The ancients builded unto Truth a temple, A fair rotunda, light as heaven's vault.

And freely poured the suns.h.i.+ne 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 cas.e.m.e.nts.

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.