Bjornstjerne Bjornson

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Title:     Bjornstjerne Bjornson
Author: Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen [More Titles by Boyesen]

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON

I

Björnstjerne Björnson is the first Norwegian poet who can in any sense be called national. The national genius, with its limitations as well as its virtues, has found its living embodiment in him. Whenever he opens his mouth it is as if the nation itself were speaking. If he writes a little song, hardly a year elapses before its phrases have passed into the common speech of the people; composers compete for the honor of interpreting it in simple, Norse-sounding melodies, which gradually work their way from the drawing-room to the kitchen, the street, and thence out over the wide fields and highlands of Norway. His tales, romances, and dramas express collectively the supreme result of the nation's experience, so that no one to-day can view Norwegian life or Norwegian history except through their medium. The bitterest opponent of the poet (for like every strong personality he has many enemies) is thus no less his debtor than his warmest admirer. His speech has stamped itself upon the very language and given it a new ring, a deeper resonance. His thought fills the air, and has become the unconscious property of all who have grown to manhood and womanhood since the day when his titanic form first loomed up on the horizon of the North. It is not only as their first and greatest poet that the Norsemen love and hate him, but also as a civilizer in the widest sense. But like Kadmus, in Greek myth, he has not only brought with him letters, but also the dragon-teeth of strife, which it is to be hoped will not sprout forth in armed men.

A man's ancestry and environment, no doubt, account in a superficial manner for his appearance and mental characteristics. Having the man, we are able to trace the germs of his being in the past of his race and his country; but, with all our science we have not yet acquired the ingenuity to predict the man--to deduce him a priori from the tangle of determining causes which enveloped his birth. It seems beautifully appropriate in the Elder Edda that the god-descended hero Helge the Völsung should be born amid gloom and terror in a storm which shakes the house, while the Norns--the goddesses of fate--proclaim in the tempest his tempestuous career. Equally satisfactory it appears to have the modern champion of Norway--the typical modern Norseman--born on the bleak and wild Dovre Mountain,[1] where there is winter eight months of the year and cold weather during the remaining four. The parish of Kvikne, in Oesterdalen, where his father, the Reverend Peder Björnson, held a living, had a bad reputation on account of the unruly ferocity and brutal violence of the inhabitants. One of the Reverend Peder Björnson's recent predecessors never went into his pulpit, unarmed; and another fled for his life. The peasants were not slow in intimating to the new pastor that they meant to have him mind his own business and conform to the manners and customs of the parish; but there they reckoned without their host. The reverend gentleman made short work of the opposition. He enforced the new law of compulsory education without heeding its unpopularity; and when the champion fighter of the valley came as the peasants' spokesman to take him to task in summary fashion, he found himself, before he was aware of it, at the bottom of the stairs, where he picked himself up wonderingly and promptly took to his heels.

[1] December 8, 1832.

During the winter the snow reached up to the second-story windows of the parsonage; and the servants had to tunnel their way to the storehouse and the stables. The cold was so intense that the little Björnstjerne thought twice before touching a door knob, as his fingers were liable to stick to the metal. When he was six years old, however, his father was transferred to Romsdal, which is, indeed, a wild and grandly picturesque region; but far less desolate than Dovre. "It lies," says Björnson, "broad--bosomed between two confluent fjords, with a green mountain above, cataracts and homesteads on the opposite shore, waving meadows and activity in the bottom of the valley; and all the way out toward the ocean, mountains with headland upon headland running out into the fjord and a large farm upon each."

The feeling of terror, the crushing sense of guilt which Björnson has so strikingly portrayed in the first chapters of "In God's Way," were familiar to his own childhood. In every life, as in every race, the God of fear precedes the God of love. And in Northern Norway, where nature seems so tremendous and man so insignificant, no boy escapes these phantoms of dread which clutch him with icy fingers. But as a counterbalancing force in the young Björnson, we have his confidence in the strength and good sense of his gigantic father, who could thrash the strongest champion in the parish. He used to stand in the evening on the beach "and gaze at the play of the sunshine upon fjord and mountain, until he wept, as if he had done something wrong. Now he would suddenly stop in this or that valley, while running on skees, and stand spell-bound by its beauty and a longing which he could not comprehend, but which was so great that in the midst of the highest joy he was keenly conscious of a sense of confinement and sorrow."[2] "We catch a glimpse in these childish memories," says Mr. Nordahl Rolfsen, "of the remarkable character, we are about to depict: Being the son of a giant, he is ever ready to strike out with a heavy hand, when he thinks that anyone is encroaching upon what he deems the right. But this same pugnacious man, whom it is so hard to overcome, can be overwhelmed by an emotion and surrender himself to it with his whole being."

[2] Nordahl Rolfsen: Norske Digtere, pp. 450, 451.

At the age of twelve Björnson was sent to the Latin school at Molde, where, however, his progress was not encouraging. He was one of those thoroughly healthy and headstrong boys who are the despair of ambitious mothers, and whom fathers (when the futility of educational chastisement has been finally proved) are apt to regard with a resigned and half-humorous regret. His dislike of books was instinctive, hearty, and uncompromising. His strong, half-savage boy-nature could brook no restraints, and looked longingly homeward to the wide mountain plains, the foaming rivers where the trout leaped in the summer night, and the calm fjord where you might drift blissfully along, as it were, suspended in the midst of the vast, blue, ethereal space. And when the summer vacation came, with its glorious freedom and irresponsibility, he would roam at his own sweet will through forest and field, until hunger and fatigue forced him to return to his father's parsonage.

After several years of steadily unsuccessful study, Björnson at last passed the so-called examen artium, which admitted him to the University of Christiania. He was now a youth of large, almost athletic frame, with a handsome, striking face, and a pair of blue eyes which no one is apt to forget who has ever looked into them. There was a certain grand simplicity and naïveté in his manner, and an exuberance of animal spirits which must have made him an object of curious interest among his town-bred fellow-students. But his University career was of brief duration. All the dimly fermenting powers of his rich nature were now beginning to clarify, the consciousness of his calling began to assert itself, and the demand for expression became imperative. His literary début was an historic drama entitled "Valborg," which was accepted for representation by the directors of the Christiania Theatre, and procured for its author a free ticket to all theatrical performances; it was, however, never brought on the stage, as Björnson, having had his eyes opened to its defects, withdrew it of his own accord.

At this time the Norwegian stage was almost entirely in the hands of the Danes, and all the more prominent actors were of Danish birth. Theatrical managers drew freely on the dramatic treasures of Danish literature, and occasionally, to replenish the exchequer, reproduced a French comedy or farce, whose epigrammatic pith and vigor were more than half-spoiled in the translation. The drama was as yet an exotic in Norway; it had no root in the national soil, and could accordingly in no respect represent the nation's own struggles and aspirations. The critics themselves, no doubt, looked upon it merely as a form of amusement, a thing to be wondered and stared at, and to be dismissed from the mind as soon as the curtain dropped. Björnson, whose patriotic soul could not endure the thought of this abject foreign dependence, ascribed all the existing abuses to the predominance of the Danish element, and in a series of vehement articles attacked the Danish actors, managers, and all who were in any way responsible for the unworthy condition of the national stage. In return he reaped, as might have been expected, an abundant harvest of abuse, but the discussion he had provoked furnished food for reflection, and the rapid development of the Norwegian drama during the next decade is, no doubt, largely traceable to his influence.

The liberty for which he had yearned so long, Björnson found at the International Students' Reunion of 1856. Then the students of the Norwegian and Danish Universities met in Upsala, where they were received with grand festivities by their Swedish brethren. Here the poet caught the first glimpse of a greater and freer life than moved within the narrow horizon of the Norwegian capital. This gay and careless student-life, this cheerful abandonment of all the artificial shackles which burden one's feet in their daily walk through a bureaucratic society, the temporary freedom which allows one without offence to toast a prince and hug a count to one's bosom--all this had its influence upon Björnson's sensitive nature; it filled his soul with a happy intoxication and with confidence in his own strength. And having once tasted a life like this he could no more return to what he had left behind him.

The next winter we find him in Copenhagen, laboring with an intensity of creative ardor which he had never known before. His striking appearance, the pithy terseness of his speech, and a certain naïve self-assertion and impatience of social restraints made him a notable figure in the polite and somewhat effeminate society of the Danish capital. There was a general expectation at that time that a great poet was to come, and although Björnson had as yet published nothing to justify the expectation, he found the public of Copenhagen ready to recognize in him the man who was to rouse the North from its long intellectual torpor, and usher in a new era in its literature. It is needless to say that he did not discourage this belief, for he himself fervently believed that he would before long justify it. The first proof of his strength he gave in the tale "Synnöve Solbakken" (Synnöve Sunny-Hill), which he published in an illustrated weekly, and afterward in book-form. It is a very unpretending little story, idyllic in tone, but realistic in its coloring, and redolent of the pine and spruce and birch of the Norwegian highlands.

It had been the fashion in Norway since the nation regained its independence to interest one's self in a lofty, condescending way in the life of the peasantry. A few well-meaning persons, like the poet Wergeland, had labored zealously for their enlightenment and the improvement of their economic condition; but, except in the case of such single individuals, no real and vital sympathy and fellow-feeling had ever existed between the upper and the lower strata of Norwegian society. And as long as the fellow-feeling is wanting, this zeal for enlightenment, however laudable its motive, is not apt to produce lasting results. The peasants view with distrust and suspicion whatever comes to them from their social superiors, and the so-called "useful books," which were scattered broadcast over the land, were of a tediously didactic character, and, moreover, hardly adapted to the comprehension of those to whom they were ostensibly addressed. Wergeland himself, with all his self-sacrificing ardor, had but a vague conception of the real needs of the people, and, as far as results were concerned, wasted much of his valuable life in his efforts to improve, edify and instruct them. It hardly occurred to him that the culture of which he and his colleagues were the representatives was itself a foreign importation, and could not by any violent process be ingrafted upon the national trunk, which drew its strength from centuries of national life, history, and tradition. That this peasantry, whom the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy of culture had been wont to regard with half-pitying condescension, were the real representatives of the Norse nation; that they had preserved through long years of tyranny and foreign oppression the historic characteristics of their Norse forefathers, while the upper classes had gone in search of strange gods, and bowed their necks to the foreign yoke; that in their veins the old strong saga-life was still throbbing with vigorous pulse-beats--this was the lesson which Björnson undertook to teach his countrymen, and a very fruitful lesson it has proved to be. It has inspired the people with renewed courage, it has turned the national life into fresh channels, and it has revolutionized national politics.

To be sure all this was not the result of the idyllic little tale which marked the beginning of his career. But this little tale, although no trace of what the Germans call "tendency" is to be found in it, is still significant as being the poet's first indirect manifesto, and as such distinctly foreshadowing the path which he has since followed.

First, in its purely literary aspect, "Synnöve Solbakken" was strikingly novel. The author did not, as his predecessors had done, view the people from the exalted pedestal of superior culture; not as a subject for benevolent preaching and charitable condescension, but as a concrete phenomenon, whose raison d'étre was as absolute and indisputable as that of the bourgeoisie or the bureaucracy itself. He depicted their soul-struggles and the incidents of their daily life with a loving minuteness and a vivid realism hitherto unequalled in the literature of the North. He did not, like Auerbach, construct his peasant figures through laborious reflection, nor did he attempt by anxious psychological analysis to initiate the reader into their processes of thought and emotion. He simply depicted them as he saw and knew them. Their feelings and actions have their immediate, self-evident motives in the characters themselves, and the absence of analysis on the author's part gives an increased energy and movement to the story.

Mr. Nordahl Rolfsen relates, _à propos of the reception which was accorded Björnson's first book, the following amusing anecdote:

"'Synnöve Solbakken' was printed, and its author was anxious to have his friends read it. But not one of them could be prevailed upon. At last a comrade was found who was persuaded to attack it on the promise of a bottle of punch. He entered Björnson's den, got a long pipe which he filled with tobacco, undressed himself completely--for it was a hot day--flung himself on the bed, and began to read. Björnson sat in the sofa, breathless with expectation. Leaf after leaf was turned; not a smile, not a single encouraging word! The young poet had good reason to regard the battle as lost. At last the pipe, the bottle, and the book were finished. Then the merciless Stoic rose and began to dress, and the following little exclamation escaped him: 'That is, the devil take me, the best book I have read in all my life.'"

Björnson's style was no less novel than his theme. It may or it may not have been consciously modelled after the saga style, to which, however, it bears an obvious resemblance. In his early childhood, while he lived among the peasants, he became familiar with their mode of thought and speech, and it entered into his being, and became his own natural mode of expression. There is in his daily conversation a certain grim directness, and a laconic weightiness, which give an air of importance and authority even to his simplest utterances. This tendency to compression frequently has the effect of obscurity, not because his thought is obscure, but rather because energetic brevity of expression has fallen into disuse, and even a Norse public, long accustomed to the wordy diffuseness of latter-day bards, have in part lost the faculty to comprehend the genius of their own language. As a Danish critic wittily observed: "Björnson's language is but one step removed from pantomime."

In 1858 Björnson assumed the directorship of the theatre in Bergen, and there published his second tale, "Arne," in which the same admirable self-restraint, the same implicit confidence in the intelligence of his reader, the same firm-handed decision and vigor in the character-drawing, in fact, all the qualities which delighted the public in "Synnöve Solbakken," were found in an intensified degree.

In the meanwhile, Björnson had also made his début as a dramatist. In the year 1858 he had published two dramas, "Mellem Slagene" (Between the Battles) and "Halte-Hulda" (Limping Hulda) both of which deal with national subjects, taken from the old sagas. As in his tales he had endeavored to concentrate into a few strongly defined types the modern folk-life of the North, so in his dramas the same innate love of his nationality leads him to seek the typical features of his people, as they are revealed in the historic chieftains of the past.

"Between the Battles" is a dramatic episode rather than a drama. During the civil war between King Sverre and King Magnus in the twelfth century, the former visits in disguise a hut upon the mountains where a young warrior, Halvard Gjaela and Inga, his beloved, are living together. The long internecine strife has raised the hand of father against son, and of brother against brother. Halvard sympathizes with Sverre; Inga, who hates the king because he has burned her father's farm, is a partisan of Magnus. In the absence of her lover she goes to the latter's camp and brings back with her a dozen warriors for the purpose of capturing Halvard, and thereby preventing him from joining the enemy. Sverre discovers the warriors, whom she has hidden in the cow-stable, and persuading them that he is a spy for King Magnus sends two of them to his own army for reinforcements. In the meanwhile he reconciles the estranged lovers, makes peace between them and Inga's father, and finally, in the last scene, as his men arrive, is recognized as the king.

This is, of course, a venerable coup de théâtre. Whatever novelty there is in the play must be sought, not in the situations, but in the pithy and laconic dialogue, which has a distinct national coloring. This was not the amiable diffuseness of Oehlenschlaeger, who had hitherto dominated the Norwegian as well as the Danish stage; and yet it did not by any means represent so complete a breach with the traditions of the romantic drama as was claimed by Björnson's admirers. The fresh naturalness and absence of declamation were a gain, no doubt; but there are yet several notes remaining which have the well-known romantic cadence. "Between the Battles," though too slight to be called an achievement, was accepted as a pledge of achievement in future.

Björnson's next drama "Limping Hulda" ("Halte-Hulda") (1858) was a partial fulfilment of this pledge. If it is not high tragedy, in the ancient sense, it is of the stuff that tragedy is made of. Hulda is an impressive stage figure in her demoniac passion and tiger-like tenderness. Though I doubt if Björnson has, in this type, caught the soul of a Norse woman of the saga age, he has come much nearer to catching it than any of his predecessors. If Gudrun Osvif's Daughter, of the Laxdoela Saga, was his model, he has modernized her considerably, and thereby made her more intelligible to modern readers. Like her, Hulda causes the murder of the man she loves; and there is a fateful spell about her beauty which brings death to whomsoever looks too long upon it. Though ostensibly a saga-drama, the harshness and grim ferocity of that sanguinary period are softened; and a romantic illumination pervades the whole action. A certain lyrical effusiveness in the love passages (which is alien to all Björnson's later works) hints at the influence of the Danish Romanticists, and particularly Oehlenschlaeger.

It would be unfair, perhaps, to take the author to task because this youthful drama exhibits no remarkable subtlety in its conception of character. It contains no really great living figure who stands squarely upon his feet and lingers in the memory. A certain half-rhetorical impulse carries you along; and the external effectiveness of the situations keeps the interest on the alert. For all that "Limping Hulda," like its predecessors and its successors, tended to stimulate powerfully the national spirit, which was then asserting itself in every department of intellectual activity. Thus a national theatre had, by the perseverance and generosity of Ole Bull, been established in his native city, Bergen; and it was almost a matter of course that an effort should be made to identify Björnson with an enterprise which accorded so well with his own aspirations. His connection with the Norwegian Theatre of Bergen was, however, not of long duration, for though your enthusiasm may be ever so great it is a thankless task to act as "artistic director" of a stage in a town which is neither artistic enough nor large enough to support a playhouse with a higher aim than that of furnishing ephemeral amusement. From Bergen he was called to the editorship of Aftenbladet (The Evening Journal), the second political daily of Christiania, and continued there with hot zeal and eloquence his battle for "all that is truly Norse."

But a brief experience sufficed to convince him that daily journalism was not his forte. He was and is too indiscreet, precipitate, credulous, and inconsiderately generous to be a successful editor. If a paper could be conducted on purely altruistic principles, and without reference to profits, there would be no man fitter to occupy an editorial chair. For as an inspiring force, as a radiating focus of influence, his equal is not to be encountered "in seven kingdoms round." However, this inspiring force could reach a far larger public through published books than through the columns of a newspaper. It was therefore by no means in a regretful frame of mind that he descended from the editorial tripod, and in the spring of 1860 started for Italy. Previous to his departure he published, through the famous house of Gyldendal, in Copenhagen, a volume which, it is no exaggeration to say, has become a classic of Norwegian literature. It bears the modest title "Smaa-stykker" (Small Pieces), but it contains, in spite of its unpretentiousness, some of Björnson's noblest work. I need only mention the masterly tale "The Father," with its sobriety and serene strength. I know but one other instance[3] of so great tragedy, told in so few and simple words. "Arne," "En Glad Gut" (A Happy Boy), and the amusing dialect story, "Ei Faarleg Friing" (A Dangerous Wooing), also belong to this delightful collection. These little masterpieces of concise story-telling have been included in the popular two-volume edition of "Fortällinger," which contains also "The Fisher-maiden" (1867-68), the exquisite story, "The Bridal March" (1872), originally written as text to three of Tidemand's paintings, and a vigorous bit of disguised autobiography, "Blakken," of which not the author but a horse is the ostensible hero.

[3] Austin Dobson's poem, "The Cradle."

The descriptive name for all these tales, except the last, is idyl. It was, indeed, the period when all Europe (outside the British empire) was viewing the hardy sons of the soil through poetic spectacles. In Germany Auerbach had, in his "Black Forest Village Tales" (1843, 1853, 1854), discarded the healthful but unflattering realism of Jeremias Gotthelf (1797-1854), and chosen, with a half-didactic purpose, to contrast the peasant's honest rudeness and straightforwardness with the refined sophistication and hypocrisy of the higher classes. George Sand, with her beautiful Utopian genius, poured forth a torrent of rural narrative of a crystalline limpidity ("Mouny Robin," "La Mare au Diable," "La Petite Fadette," etc., 1841-1849), which is as far removed from the turbid stream of Balzac ("Les Paysans") and Zola ("La Terre"), as Paradise is from the Inferno. There is an echo of Rousseau's gospel of nature in all these tales, and the same optimistic delusion regarding "the people" for which the eighteenth century paid so dearly. The painters likewise caught the tendency, and with the same thorough-going conscientiousness as their brethren of the quill, disguised coarseness as strength, bluntness as honesty, churlishness as dignity. What an idyllic sweetness there is, for instance, in Tidemand's scenes of Norwegian peasant life! What a spirituelle and movingly sentimental note in the corresponding German scenes of Knaus and Hübner, and, longo intervallo, Meyerheim and Meyer von Bremen. Not a breath of the broad humor of Teniers and Van Ostade in these masters; scarcely a hint of the robust animality and clownish jollity with which the clear-sighted Dutchmen endowed their rural revellers. Though pictorial art has not, outside of Russia (where the great and unrivalled Riepin paints the peasant with the brush as remorselessly as Tolstoï and Dostoyefski with the pen), kept pace with the realistic movement in literature, yet there is no lack of evidence that the rose-colored tinge is vanishing even from the painter's spectacles; and such uncompromising veracity as that of Millet and Courbet, which the past generation despised, is now hailed with acclaim in such masters as Bastien-Lepage, Dagnan-Bouveret, and the Scandinavians, Kristian Krog and Anders Zorn.

Björnson is, however, temperamentally averse to that modern naturalism which insists upon a minute fidelity to fact without reference to artistic values. His large and spacious mind has a Southern exposure, and has all "its windows thrown wide open to the sun." A sturdy optimism, which is prone to believe good of all men, unless they happen to be his political antagonists, inclines him to overlook what does not fit into his own scheme of existence. And yet no one can say that, as presentations of Norwegian peasant life, "Synnöve," "Arne," "The Bridal March," etc., are untrue, though, indeed, one could well imagine pictures in very much sombrer colors which might lay a valider claim to veracity. Kielland's "Laboring People," and Kristian Elster's "A Walk to the Cross" and "Kjeld Horge," give the reverse of the medal of which Björnson exhibits the obverse. These authors were never in any way identified with "the people," and could not help being struck with many of the rude and unbeautiful phases of rural existence; while Björnson, who sprang directly from the peasantry, had the pride and intelligence of kinship, and was not yet lifted far enough above the life he depicted to have acquired the cultivated man's sense of condescension and patronizing benevolence. He was but one generation removed from the soil; and he looked with a strong natural sympathy and affectionate predilection upon whatever reminded him of this origin. If he had been a peasant, however, he could never have become the wonderful chronicler that he is. It is the elevation, slight though it be, which enables him to survey the fields in which his fathers toiled and suffered. Or, to quote Mr. Rolfsen: "Björnson is the son of a clergyman; he has never himself personally experienced the peasant's daily toil and narrow parochial vision. He has felt the power of the mountains over his mind, and been filled with longing, as a grand emotion, but the contractedness of the spiritual horizon has not tormented him. He has not to take that into account when he writes. During the tedious school-days, his beautiful Romsdal valley lay waiting for him, beckoning him home at every vacation--always alluring and radiant, with an idyllic shimmer."

Hence, no doubt, his sunny poetic vision which unconsciously idealizes. Just as in daily intercourse he displays a positive genius for drawing out what is good in a man, and brushes away as of small account what does not accord with his own conception of him, nay, in a measure, forces him to be as he believes him to be, so every character in these early tales seems to bask in the genial glow of his optimism. The farm Solbakken (Sunny Hill) lies on a high elevation, where the sun shines from its rise to its setting, and both Synnöve and her parents walk about in this still and warm illumination. They are all good, estimable people, and their gentle piety, without any tinge of fanaticism, invests them with a quiet dignity. The sterner and hardier folk at Granliden (Pine Glen) have a rugged honesty and straightforwardness which, in connection with their pithy and laconic speech, makes them less genial, but no less typically Norse. They have a distinct atmosphere and spinal columns that keep them erect, organic, and significant. Even reprehensible characters like Aslak and Nils Tailor (in "Arne") have a certain claim upon our sympathy, the former as a helpless victim of circumstance, the latter as a suppressed and perverted genius.

In the spring of 1860 Björnson went abroad and devoted three years to foreign travel, spending the greater part of his time in Italy. From Rome he sent home the historical drama "King Sverre" (1861), which is one of his weakest productions. It is written in blank verse, with occasional rhymes in the more impressive passages. Of dramatic interest in the ordinary sense, there is but little. It is a series of more or less animated scenes, from the period of the great civil war (1130-1240), connected by the personality of Sverre. Under the mask, however, of mediæval history, the author preaches a political sermon to his own contemporaries. Sverre, as the champion of the common people against the tribal aristocracy, and the wily Bishop Nicholas as the representative of the latter become, as it were, permanent forces, which have continued their battle to the present day. There can be no doubt that Björnson, whose sympathies are strongly democratic, permitted the debate between the two to become needlessly didactic, and strained historical verisimilitude by veiled allusions to contemporaneous conditions. Greatly superior is his next drama, "Sigurd Slembe"[4] (1862).

[4] An English version of "Sigurd Slembe" has been published by William Morton Payne (Boston, 1888).

The story of the brave and able pretender, Sigurd Slembe, in his struggle with the vain and mean-spirited king, Harold Gille, is the theme of the dramatic trilogy. Björnson attempts to give the spiritual development of Sigurd from the moment he becomes acquainted with his royal birth until his final destruction. From a frank and generous youth, who is confident that he is born for something great, he is driven by the treachery, cruelty, and deceit of his brother, the king, into the position of a desperate outlaw and guerilla. The very first scene, in the church of St. Olaf, where the boy confides to the saint, in a tone of bonne camaraderie, his joy at having conquered, in wrestling, the greatest champion in the land, gives one the key-note to his character:

"Now only listen to me, saintly Olaf!
To-day I whipped young Beintein! Beintein was
The strongest man in Norway. Now am I!
Now I can walk from Lindesnäs and on,
Up to the northern boundary of the snow,
For no one step aside or lift my hat.
There where I am, no man hath leave to fight,
To make a tumult, threaten, or to swear--
Peace everywhere! And he who wrong hath suffered
Shall justice find, until the laws shall sing.
And as before the great have whipped the small,
So will I help the small to whip the great.
Now I can offer counsel at the Thing,
Now to the king's board I can boldly walk
And sit beside him, saying 'Here am I!'"

The exultation in victory which speaks in every line of this opening monologue marks the man who, in spite of the obscurity of his origin, feels his right to be first, and who, in this victory, celebrates the attainment of his birthright. Equally luminous by way of characterization is his exclamation to St. Olaf when he hears that he is King Magnus Barefoot's son:

"Then we are kinsmen, Olaf, you and I!"

According to Norwegian law at that time, every son of a king was entitled to his share of the kingdom, and Sigurd's first impulse is to go straight to Harold Gille and demand his right. His friend Koll Saebjörnson persuades him, however, to abandon this hopeless adventure, and gives him a ship with which he sails to the Orient, takes part in many wars, and gains experience and martial renown.

The second part of the trilogy deals with Sigurd's sojourn at the Orkneys, where he interferes in the quarrel between the Earls Harold and Paul. The atmosphere of suspicion, insecurity, and gloom which hangs like a portentous cloud over these scenes is the very same which blows toward us from the pages of the sagas. Björnson has gazed deeply into the heart of Northern paganism, and has here reproduced the heroic anarchy which was a necessary result of the code permitting the individual to avenge his own wrongs. The two awful women, Helga and Frakark, the mother and the aunt of the earls, are types which are constantly met with in the saga. It is a long-recognized fact that women, under lawless conditions, develop the wildest extremes of ambition, avarice, and blood-thirstiness, and taunt the men with their weak scruples. These two furies of the Orkneys plot murder with an infernal coolness, which makes Lady Macbeth a kind-hearted woman by comparison. They recognize in Sigurd a man born for leadership; determine to use him for the furtherance of their plans, and to get rid of him, by fair means or foul, when he shall have accomplished his task. But Sigurd is too experienced a chieftain to walk into this trap. While appearing to acquiesce, he plays for stakes of his own, but in the end abandons all in disgust at the death of Earl Harold, who intentionally puts on the poisoned shirt, prepared for his brother. There is no great and monumental scene in this part which engraves itself deeply upon the memory. The love scenes with Audhild, the young cousin of the earls, are incidental and episodical, and exert no considerable influence either upon Sigurd's character or upon the development of the intrigue. Historically they are well and realistically conceived; but dramatically they are not strong. Another criticism, which has already been made by the Danish critic, Georg Brandes, refers to an offence against this very historical sense which is usually so vivid in Björnson. When Frakark, the Lady Macbeth of the play, remarks, "I am far from feeling sure of the individual mortality so much preached of; but there is an immortality of which I am sure; it is that of the race," she makes an intellectual somersault from the twelfth century into the nineteenth, and never gets back firmly on her pagan feet again. As Brandes wittily observes: "People who talk like that do not torture their enemy to death; they backbite him."

The third part opens with Sigurd's appearance at court, where he reveals his origin and asks for his share of the kingdom. The king is not disinclined to grant his request, but is overruled by his councillors, who profit by his weakness and rule in his name. They fear this man of many battles, with the mark of kingship on his brow; and they determine to murder him. But Sigurd escapes from prison, and, holding the king responsible for the treachery, kills him. From this time forth he is an outlaw, hunted over field and fell, and roaming with untold sufferings through the mountains and wildernesses. There he meets a Finnish maiden who loves him, reveals his fate to him, and implores him to abandon his ambition and dwell among her people. These scenes amid the eternal wastes of snow are perhaps the most striking in the trilogy and most abounding in exquisite poetic thought. Sigurd hastens hence to his doom at the battle of Holmengra, where he is defeated, and, with fiendish atrocity, slowly tortured to death. The rather lyrical monologue preceding his death, in which he bids farewell to life and calmly adjusts his gaze to eternity, is very beautiful, but, historically, a trifle out of tune. Barring these occasional lapses from the key, the trilogy of "Sigurd Slembe" is a noble work.

A respectful, and in part enthusiastic, reception had been accorded to Björnson's early plays. But his first dramatic triumph he celebrated at the performance of "Mary Stuart in Scotland." Externally this is the most effective of his plays. The dialogue is often brilliant, and bristles with telling points. It is eminently "actable," presenting striking tableaus and situations. Behind the author we catch a glimpse of the practical stage-manager who knows how a scene will look on the boards and how a speech will sound--who can surmise with tolerable accuracy how they will affect a first-night audience.

"Mary Stuart" is theatrically no less than dramatically conceived. Theatrically it is far superior to Swinburne's "Chastelard" (not to speak of his interminable musical verbiage in "Bothwell") but it is paler, colder, and poetically inferior. The voluptuous warmth and wealth of color, the exquisite levity, the débonnaire grace of the Swinburnian drama we seek in vain. Björnson is vigorous, but he is not subtile. Mere feline amorousness, such as Swinburne so inimitably portrays, he would disdain to deal with if even he could. Such a bit of intricate self-characterization as the English poet puts into the Queen's mouth in the first scene with Chastelard, in the third act, lies utterly beyond the range of the sturdier Norseman.

Queen: "Nay, dear, I have
No tears in me; I never shall weep much,
I think, in all my life: I have wept for wrath
Sometimes, and for mere pain, but for love's pity
I cannot weep at all. I would to God
You loved me less: I give you all I can
For all this love of yours, and yet I am sure
I shall live out the sorrow of your death
And be glad afterwards. You know I am sorry.
I should weep now; forgive me for your part.
God made me hard, I think. Alas! you see
I had fain been other than I am."

Add to this the beautifully illuminating threat, "I shall be deadly to you," uttered in the midst of amorous cooings and murmurings, and we catch a glimpse of the demoniac depth of this woman's nature. Björnson's "Mary Stuart" weeps more than once; nay, she says to Bothwell, when he has forcibly abducted her to his castle:

"This is my first prayer to you,
That I may weep."

Quite in the same key is her exclamation (in the same scene) in response to Bothwell's reference to her son:

"My son, my lovely boy! Oh, God, now he lies sleeping in his little white bed, and does not know how his mother is battling for his sake."

Schiller, whose conception of womankind was as honestly single and respectful as that of Björnson, had set a notable precedent in representing Mary Stuart as a martyr of a lost cause. The psychological antitheses of her character, her softness and loving surrender, and her treachery and cruelty--he left out of account.

Without troubling himself greatly about her guilt, which, though with many palliating circumstances, he admitted, he undertook to exemplify in her the beauty and exaltation of noble suffering. His Mary (which has always been a favorite with tragic actresses) is in my opinion as devoid of that insinuating, sense-compelling charm which alone can account for this extraordinary woman's career as is the heroine of Björnson's play. In fact Björnson's Mary lies half-way between the amorous young tigress of Swinburne and the statuesque martyr of Schiller. She is less intricately feminine than the former, and more so than the latter. But she is yet a long way removed from her historical original, who must have been a strong and full-blooded character, with just that touch of mystery which nature always wears to whomsoever gazes deeply upon her. That subtile intercoiling of antagonistic traits, which in a man could never coexist, is to be found in many historic women of the Renaissance--exquisite, dangerous creatures, half-doves, half-serpents, half-Clytemnestra, half-Venus, whose full-throbbing passion now made them soft and tender, over-brimming with loveliness, now fierce and imperious, their outraged pride revelling in vengeance and blood. If Björnson could have fathomed the depth and complexity of the historical Mary Stuart to the extent that Swinburne has done, he would, no doubt, also have devised a more effective conclusion to his play. There is no dramatic climax, far less a tragic one, in the dethronement of Mary, and the proclamation by John Knox, which is chiefly an assertion of popular sovereignty, and the triumph of the Presbyterian Church. The declaration of the final chorus, that

"Evil shall be routed
And weakness must follow,
The might of truth shall pierce
To the last retreat of gloom,"

seems to me rather to muddle than to clarify the situation. There is a wavering and uncertain sound in it which seems inappropriate to a triumphant strain, when the organist naturally turns on the full force of his organ. If (as is obvious) the Queen represents the evil, or at least the weakness, which has been routed, it would appear that she ought to have been painted in quite different colors.

Björnson's next dramatic venture, which rejoices to this day in an unabated popularity, was the two-act comedy, "The Newly Married" (De Nygifte). Goethe once made the remark that he was not a good dramatist, because his nature was too conciliatory. Without intending disparagement, I am inclined to apply the same judgment to Björnson. His sunny optimism shrinks from irreconcilable conflicts and insoluble problems; and in his desire to reconcile and solve, he occasionally is in danger of wrenching his characters out of drawing and muddling their motives. Half a dozen critics have already called attention to the ambiguity of Mathilde's position and intentions in "The Newly Married." That she loves Axel, the husband, is clear; and the probability is that she meant to avenge herself upon him for having before his marriage used her as a decoy, when the real object of his attention was her friend Laura. But if such was her object, she lacked the strength of mind and hardness of heart to carry it out, and in the end she becomes a benevolent providence, who labors for the reconciliation of the estranged couple. She proves too noble for the ignoble rôle she had undertaken. Instead of wrecking the marriage, she sacrifices herself upon the altar of friendship. To that there can, of course, be no objection; but in that case the process of her mental change ought to have been clearly shown. In Ibsen's "Rosmersholm," Rebecca West, occupying a somewhat similar position, is subject to the same ennobling of motive; but the whole drama hinges upon her moral evolution, and nothing is left to inference.

The situation in "The Newly Married" is an extremely delicate one, and required delicate handling. Axel, a young and gifted lawyer, has married Laura, the daughter of a high and wealthy official, who prides himself on his family dignity and connections. Laura, being an only child, has been petted and spoiled since her birth, and is but a grown-up little girl, with no conception of her matrimonial obligations. She subordinates her relation to her husband to that to her parents, and exasperates the former by her bland and obstinate immaturity. At last, being able to bear it no longer, he compels her to leave the home of her parents, where they have hitherto been living, and establishes himself in a distant town. Mathilde, Laura's friend, accompanies them, though it is difficult to conjecture in what capacity; and publishes an anonymous novel, in which she enlightens the young wife regarding the probable results of her conduct. She thrusts a lamp into the dusk of her soul and frightens her by the things she shows her. She also, by arousing her jealousy, leads her out of childhood, with its veiled vision and happy ignorance, into womanhood, with its unflinching recognition of the realities that were hidden from the child. And thus she paves the way for the reconciliation which takes place in the presence of the old people, who pay their daughter a visit en route for Italy. Mathilde, having accomplished her mission, acknowledges the authorship of the anonymous novel, and is now content to leave husband and wife in the confidence that they will work out their own salvation.

A mere skeleton of this simple plot (which barely hints at the real problem) can, of course, give no conception of the charm, the color, and the wonderful poetic afflatus of this exquisite little play. It may be well enough to say that such a situation is far-fetched and not very typical--that outside of "The Heavenly Twins," et id omne genus, wives who insist upon remaining maidens are not very frequent; but, in spite of this drawback, the vividness and emotional force of the dialogue and the beautiful characterization (particularly of the old governor and his wife) set certain sweet chords in vibration, and carry the play to a triumphant issue.

As a school-boy I witnessed the first performance of "The Newly Married," at the Christiania Theatre (1865), (as, indeed, of all the Björnsonian dramas up to 1869); and I yet remember my surprise when, instead of mail-clad Norse warriors, carousing in a sooty, log-built hall, the curtain rose upon a modern interior, in which a fashionably attired young lady kissed a frock-coated old gentleman. It was a dire disappointment to me and my comrade, who had come thirsting for gore. But how completely the poet conquered us! Each phrase seemed to woo our reluctant ears, and the pulse of life that beat in the characters and carried along the action awakened in us a delighted recognition. Truth to tell, we had but the very vaguest idea of what was the prima causa malorum; but for all that, with the rest of the audience, we were immensely gratified that the upshot of it all was so satisfactory.

During the years 1865-67 Björnson occupied the position of artistic director of the Christiania Theatre, and edited the illustrated weekly paper, Norsk Folkeblad ("The Norwegian People's Journal"). As the champion of Norwegian nationality in literature, and on the stage, he unfolded an amazing activity. In 1870 he published "Arnljot Gelline," a lyrical epic, relating, in a series of poems of irregular metres, the story of the pagan marauder of that name, and his conversion to Christianity by King Olaf the Saint. Never has he found a more daring and tremendous expression for the spirit of old Norse paganism than in this powerful but somewhat chaotic poem. Never has anyone gazed more deeply into the ferocious heart of the primitive, predatory man, whose free, wild soul had not yet been tamed by social obligations and the scourge of the law. In the same year (1870) was published the now classical collection of "Poems and Songs" (Digte og Sange), which, it is no exaggeration to say, marks a new era in the Norwegian lyric. Among Björnson's predecessors there are but two lyrists of the first order, viz., Wergeland and Welhaven. The former was magnificently profuse and chaotic, abounding in verve and daring imagery, but withal high-sounding, declamatory, and, at his worst, bombastic. There is a reminiscence in him of Klopstock's inflated rhetoric; and a certain dithyrambic ecstasy--a strained, high-keyed aria-style which sometimes breaks into falsetto. His great rival, Welhaven, was soberer, clearer, more gravely melodious. He sang in beautiful, tempered strains, along the middle octaves, never ranging high into the treble or deep into the base. There is a certain Tennysonian sweetness, artistic self-restraint, and plastic simplicity in his lyrics; just as there is in Wergeland's reformatory ardor, his noble rage, and his piling up of worlds, æons, and eternities a striking kinship to Shelley. But both these poets, though their patriotism was strong, were intellectually Europeans, rather than Norwegians. The roots of their culture were in the general soil of the century, whose ideas they had absorbed. Their personalities were not sufficiently tinged with the color of nationality to give a distinctly Norse cadence to their voices. Wergeland seems to me like a man who was desperately anxious to acquire a national accent; but somehow never could catch the trick of it. As regards Welhaven, he was less aware of his deficiency (if deficiency it was); but was content to sing of Norse themes in a key of grave, universal beauty. Of the new note that came into the Norwegian lyric with Björnson, I can discover no hint in his predecessors. Such a poem as, for instance, "Nils Finn," with its inimitably droll refrain--how utterly inconceivable it would be in the mouth of Wergeland or Welhaven! The new quality in it is as unexplainable as the poem itself is untranslatable. It has that inexpressible cadence and inflection of the Norse dialect which you feel (if you have the conditions for recognizing it) in the first word a Norseman addresses to you. It has that wonderful twang of the Hardanger fiddle, and the color and sentiment of the ballads sung and the legendary tales recited around the hearth in a Norwegian homestead during the long winter nights. With Björnson it was in the blood. It was his soul's accent, the dialect of his thought, the cadence of his emotion. And so, also, is the touching minor undertone in the poem, the tragic strain in the half burlesque, which is again so deeply Norwegian. Who that has ever been present at a Norse peasant wedding has failed to be struck with the strangely melancholy strain in the merriest dances? And in Landstad's collection of "Norwegian Ballads" there is the same blending of humor and pathos in such genuine folk-songs as Truls med bogin, Mindre Alf, and scores of others. To this day I cannot read "Nils Finn," humorous though it is, without an almost painful emotion. All Norway, with a host of precious memories, rises out of the mist of the past at the very first verse:

"Og vetli Nils Finn skuldi ut at gå,
Han fek inki ski 'i tel at hanga på
--'Dat var ilt' sa'd 'uppundir.'"

Neither Wergeland nor Welhaven nor any other poet has with all his rapturous description of fjord, valley, and mountain, this power to conjure up the very soul of the Norseland. The purely juvenile rhymes of Björnson, such as Killebukken, Lokkeleg and Haren og Raeven ("The Hare and the Fox"), are significant because of the masterly security with which they strike the national key and keep it. Not a word is there that rings false. And with what an exquisite tenderness the elegaic ballad strain is rendered in Venevil and "Hidden Love" (Dulgt Kaerlighed), and the playful in the deliciously girlish roguery of Vidste du bare ("If you only knew"), and the bold dash and young wantonness of "Marit's Song!"

It seems to me that every Norseman's life, whether he is willing to acknowledge it or not, has been made richer and more beautiful by this precious volume. It contains a legacy to the Norwegian people which can never grow old. If Björnson had written nothing else, he would still be the first poet of Norway. How brazen, hollow, and bombastic sound the patriotic lyrics of Bjerregaard Johan Storm Munch, S. O. Wolff, etc., which are yet sung at festal gatherings, by the side of Björnson's "Yes, we Love our Native Country," and "I will Guard Thee, my Land!" There is the brassy blare of challenging trumpets in the former; they defy all creation, and make a vast deal of impotent and unprofitable noise about "The roaring northern main," "The ancient Norway's rocky fastness," "Liberty's temple in Norroway's valleys," and "Norway's lion, whose axe doth threaten him who dares break the Northland's peace."

Not a suggestion of this juvenile braggadocio is there to be found in Björnson. Calm, strong, and nobly aglow with love of country, he has no need of going into paroxysms in order to prove his sincerity. To those who regard the declamatory note as indispensable to a national hymn (as we have it, for instance, in "Hail, Columbia," and "The Star-spangled Banner") the low key in which Björnson's songs are pitched will no doubt appear as a blemish. But it is their very homeliness in connection with the deep, full-throbbing emotion which beats in each forceful phrase--it is this, I fancy, which has made them the common property of the whole people, and thus in the truest sense national. I could never tell why my heart gives a leap at the sound of the simple verse:

"Yes, we love this land of ours,
Rising from the foam,
Rugged, furrowed, weather-beaten,
With its thousand homes."

Kjerulf's glorious music is, no doubt, in a measure accountable for it; but even apart from that, there is a strangely moving power in the words. The poem, as such, is by no means faultless. It is easy to pick flaws in it. The transition from the fifth and sixth lines of the first verse: "Love it, love it, and think of our father and mother," to the seventh and eighth, "And the saga night which makes dreams to descend upon our earth," is unwarrantably forced and abrupt. And yet who would wish it changed? It may be admitted that there is no very subtle art in the rude rhyme:

"I will guard thee, my land,
I will build thee, my land,
I will cherish my land in my prayer, in my child!
I will foster its weal,
And its wants I will heal
From the boundary out to the ocean wild;"

but, for all that, it touches a chord in every Norseman's breast, which never fails to vibrate responsively.

As regards Björnson's prosody, I am aware that it is sometimes defective. Measured by the Tennysonian standard it is often needlessly rugged and eccentric. But a poet whose bark carries so heavy a cargo of thought may be forgiven if occasionally it scrapes the bottom. Moreover, the Norwegian tongue has never, as a medium of poetry, been polished and refined to any such elaborate perfection as the English language exhibits in the hands of Swinburne and Tennyson.

The saga-drama, "Sigurd the Crusader," which was also published in 1870, is a work of minor consequence. Its purpose may be stated in the author's own words:

"'Sigurd the Crusader' is meant to be what is called a 'folk-play.' It is my intention to make several dramatic experiments with grand scenes from the sagas, lifting them into a strong but not too heavy frame. By a 'folk-play' I mean a play which should appeal to every eye and every stage of culture, to each in its own way, and at the performance of which all, for the time being, would experience the joy of fellow-feeling. The common history of a people is best available for this purpose--nay, it ought dramatically never to be treated otherwise. The treatment must necessarily be simple and the emotions predominant; it should be accompanied with music, and the development should progress in clear groups....

"The old as well as the new historic folk literature will, with its corresponding comic element, as I think, be a great gain to the stage, and will preserve its connection with the people where this has not already been lost--so that it be no longer a mere institution for amusement, and that only to a single class. Unless we take this view of our stage, it will lose its right to be regarded as a national affair, and the best part of its purpose, to unite while it lifts and makes us free, will be gradually assumed by some other agency. Nor shall we ever get actors fit for anything but trifles, unless we abandon our foreign French tendency as a leading one and substitute the national needs of our own people in its place."

It would be interesting to note how the poet has attempted to solve a problem so important and so difficult as this. In the first place, we find in "Sigurd the Crusader" not a trace of a didactic purpose beyond that of familiarizing the people with its own history, and this, as he himself admits in the preface just quoted, is merely a secondary consideration. He wishes to make all, irrespective of age, culture, and social station, feel strongly the bond of their common nationality; and, with this in view, he proceeds to unroll to them a panorama of simple but striking situations, knit together by a plot or story which, without the faintest tinge of sensationalism, appeals to those broadly human and national sympathies which form the common mental basis of Norse ignorance and Norse culture. He seizes the point in the saga where the long-smouldering hostility between the royal brothers, Sigurd the Crusader and Eystein, has broken into full blaze, and traces, in a series of vigorously sketched scenes, the intrigue and counter-intrigue which hurry the action onward toward its logically prepared climax--a mutual reconciliation. The dialogue is pithy, simple, and sententious. Nevertheless the play, as a whole, makes the impression of incompleteness. It is a dramatic sketch rather than a drama. It marks no advance on Björnson's previous work in the same line; but perhaps rather a retrogression.

II

A period is apt to come in the life of every man who is spiritually alive, when his scholastic culture begins to appear insufficient and the traditional premises of existence seem in need of readjustment and revision. This period, with the spiritual crisis which it involves, is likely to occur between the thirtieth and the fortieth meridian. Ibsen was thirty-four years old (1862) when in "The Comedy of Love" he broke with the romanticism of his youth, and began to wrestle with the problems of contemporary life. Goethe was thirty-seven when, in 1786, he turned his back upon the Storm and Stress, and in Italy sought and gained a new and saner vision of the world. This renewal of the sources which water the roots of his spiritual being becomes an imperative necessity to a man when he has exhausted the sources which tradition supplies. It is terrible to wake up one morning and see one's past life in a new and strange illumination, and the dust of ages lying inch-thick upon one's thoughts. It is distressing to have to pretend that you do not hear the doubt which whispers early and late in your ear, Vanitas, vanitas, vanitas vanitatum. Few are those of us who have the courage to face it, to rise up and fight with it, and rout it or be routed by it.

Björnson had up to this time (1870) built solely upon tradition. He had been orthodox, and had exalted childlike peace and faith above doubt and struggle. Phrases indicative of a certain spiritual immaturity are scattered through his early poems. In "The Child in our Soul," he says, for instance: "The greatest man on earth must cherish the child in his soul and listen, amid the thunder, to what it whispers low;" and again: "Everything great that thought has invented sprouted forth in childlike joy; and everything strong, sprung from what is good, obeyed the child's voice." Though in a certain sense that may be true enough, it belongs to the kind of half-truths which by constant repetition grow pernicious and false. The man who at forty assumes the child's attitude of mere wondering acceptance toward the world and its problems, may, indeed, be a very estimable character; but he will never amount to much. It is the honest doubters, the importunate questioners, the indefatigable fighters who have broken humanity's shackles, and made the world a more comfortable abiding-place to the present generation than it was to the past. There is unquestionably a strain of Danish romanticism in Björnson's persistent harping upon childlike faith and simplicity and a childlike vision of the world. Grundtvig, with whom this note is pervasive, had in his early youth a great influence over him. The glorification of primitive feeling was part of the romantic revolt against the dry rationalism of the so-called period of enlightenment.

To account for the fact that so mighty a spirit as Björnson could have reached his thirty-eighth year before emerging from this state of idyllic naïveté, I am inclined to quote the following passage from Brandes, descriptive of the condition of the Scandinavian countries during the decade preceding 1870:

"While the intellectual life languished, as a plant droops in a close, confined place, the people were self-satisfied--though not with a joyous or noisy self-satisfaction; for there was much sadness in their minds after the great disasters [the Sleswick-Holstein War].... They rested on their laurels and fell into a doze. And while they dozed they had dreams. The cultivated, and especially the half-cultivated, public in Denmark and Norway dreamed that they were the salt of Europe. They dreamed that by their idealism--the ideals of Grundtvig and Kierkegaard--and their strong vigilance, they regenerated the foreign nations. They dreamed that they were the power which could rule the world, but which, for mysterious and incomprehensible reasons, had for a long series of years preferred to eat crumbs from the foreigners' table. They dreamed that they were the free, mighty North, which led the cause of the peoples to victory--and they woke up unfree, impotent, ignorant."[5]

[5] Brandes: Det Moderne Gjennembrud's Maend, pp. 44, 45.

Though there is a good deal of malice, there is no exaggeration in this unflattering statement. Scandinavia had by its own choice cut itself off from the cosmopolitan world life; and the great ideas which agitated Europe found scarcely an echo in the three kingdoms. In my own boyhood, which coincides with Björnson's early manhood, I heard on all hands expressions of self-congratulation because the doubt and fermenting restlessness which were undermining the great societies abroad had never ruffled the placid surface of our good, old-fashioned, Scandinavian orthodoxy. How heartily we laughed at the absurdities of Darwin, who, as we had read in the newspapers, believed that he was descended from an ape! How deeply, densely, and solidly ignorant we were; and yet how superior we felt in the midst of our ignorance!

All this must be taken into account, if we are to measure the significance, as well as the courage, of Björnson's apostasy. For five years (1870-74) he published nothing of an æsthetical character. But he plunged with hot zeal into political life, not only because he needed an outlet for his pent-up energy; but because the question at issue engaged him, heart and soul. The equal and co-ordinate position of Norway and Sweden under the union had been guaranteed by the Constitution of 1814; but, as a matter of fact, the former kingdom is by all the world looked upon as a dependency, if not a province, of the latter. The Bernadottes, lacking comprehension of the Norwegian character, had shown themselves purblind as bats in their dealings with Norway. They had mistaken a perfectly legitimate desire for self-government for a demonstration of hostility to Sweden and the royal house; and instead of identifying themselves with the national movement (which they might well have done), they fought it, first by cautious measures of repression, and later by vetoes and open defiance. Charles XV., and, later, Oscar II., kept the minority ministries, Stang and Selmer, in power, with a bland disregard of popular condemnation, and snapped their fingers at the parliamentary majorities which, for well-nigh a quarter of a century, fought persistently, bravely, and not altogether vainly, for their country's rights.

There is no doubt that Norway is the most democratic country in Europe, if not in the world. There is a far sturdier sense of personal worth, a far more fearless assertion of equality, and a far more democratic feeling permeating society than, for instance, in the United States. Sweden, on the other hand, is essentially an aristocratic country, with a landed nobility and many other remnants of feudalism in her political and social institutions. Two countries so different in character can never be good yoke-fellows. They can never develop at an even pace, and the fact of kinship scarcely helps matters where the temperaments and the conditions are so widely dissimilar. Brothers who fall out are apt to fight each other the more fiercely on account of the relationship. Björnson certainly does not cherish any hatred of Sweden, nor do I believe that there is any general animosity to the Swedish people to be found anywhere in Norway. It is most unfortunate that the mistaken policy of the Bernadottes has placed the two nations in an attitude of apparent hostility. In spite of the loud denunciation of Norway by the so-called Grand Swedish party, and the equally vociferous response of the Norwegian journals (of the Left) there is a strong sympathy between the democracy of Norway and that of Sweden, and a mutual respect which no misrepresentation can destroy.

It was Björnson who, in 1873, began the agitation for the actual and not merely nominal, equality of the two kingdoms;[6] he appealed to the national sense of honor, and by his kindling eloquence aroused the tremendous popular indignation that swept the old ministry of Stang from power, and caused the impeachment and condemnation of the Selmer ministry. It would seem when the king, in 1882, charged the liberal leader, Mr. Johan Sverdrup, to form a ministry, that parliamentarism had actually triumphed. But unhappily a new Stang ministry (the chief of which is the son of the old premier) has, recently (1893) re-established the odious minority rule, which sits like a nightmare upon the nation's breast, checking its respiration, and hindering its natural development.

[6] I had the pleasure of accompanying Björnson on his first political tour in the summer of 1873, and I shall never forget the tremendous impression of the man and his mighty eloquence at the great folk-meeting at Böe in Guldbrandsdalen.

During this period of national self-assertion Björnson has unfolded a colossal activity. Though holding no office, and steadily refusing an election to the Storthing, he has been the life and soul of the liberal party. The task which he had undertaken grew upon his hands, and assumed wider and wider dimensions. As his predecessor Wergeland had done, and in a far deeper sense, he consecrated his life to the spiritual and intellectual liberation of his people. It is told of the former that he was in the habit of walking about the country with his pockets full of seeds of grass and trees, of which he scattered a handful here and a handful there; for, he said, you can never tell what will grow up after it. There is to me something quite touching in the patriotism which prompted this act. Björnson, too, is in the same sense "a sower who went forth for to sow." And the golden grain of his thought falls, as in the parable, in all sorts of places; but, unlike some of the seed in the parable, it all leaves some trace behind. It stimulates reflection, it awakens life, it arouses the torpid soul, it shakes the drowsy soul, it shocks the pious soul, it frightens the timid soul, but it lifts them all, as it were, by main force, out of themselves, and makes healthful breezes blow, and refreshing showers fall upon what was formerly a barren waste. This is Björnson's mission; this is, during the second period of his career, his greatness and his highest significance.

Of course there are many opinions as to the value of the work he has accomplished in this capacity of political and religious liberator. The Conservative party of Norway, which runs the errands of the king and truckles to Sweden, hates him with a bitter and furious hatred; the clergy denounce him, and the official bureaucracy can scarcely mention his name without an anathema. But the common people, though he has frightened many of them away by his heterodoxy, still love him. It is especially his disrespect to the devil (whom he professes not to believe in) which has been a sore trial to the Bible-reading, hymn-singing peasantry. Does not the Bible say that the devil goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour? Nevertheless Björnson has the hardihood to assert that there is no such person. And yet Björnson is a man who can talk most beautifully, and who knows as much as any parson. It is extremely puzzling.

The fact was, Björnson's abolition of the devil, and his declaration of a war against the orthodox miracle faith, were, as far as the Norwegian people were concerned, somewhat premature. The peasant needs the old scriptural devil, and is not yet ready to dispense with him. The devil is a popular character in the folk-stories and legends, and I have known some excellent people who declare that they have seen him. Creeds are like certain ancient tumuli, which now are but graves, but were once the habitations of living men. The dust, ashes, and bones of defunct life which they often contain, nourish in the dark the green grass, the fair flowers, the blooming trees, that shoot up into the light. You cannot dig it all up and throw it out without tearing asunder the net-work of roots which organically connects the living with the dead.

Björnson, though he is an evolutionist, is far removed from the philosophic temper in his dealings with the obsolete or obsolescent remnants in political and religious creeds. He has the healthful intolerance of strong conviction. He is too good a partisan to admit that there may be another side to the question which might be worth considering. With magnificent ruthlessness he plunges ahead, and with a truly old Norse pugnacity he stands in the thick of the fight, rejoicing in battle. Only combat arouses his Titanic energy and calls all his splendid faculties into play.

Even apart from his political propaganda the years 1870-74 were a period of labor and ferment to Björnson. The mightier the man, the mightier the powers enlisted in his conversion, and the mightier the struggle. A tremendous wrench was required to change his point of view from that of a childlike, wondering believer to that of a critical sceptic and thinker. In a certain sense Björnson never took this step; for when the struggle was over, and he had readjusted his vision of life to the theory of evolution, he became as ardent an adherent of it as he had ever been of the naïve Grundtvigian miracle-faith. And with the deep need of his nature to pour itself forth--to share its treasures with all the world--he started out to proclaim his discoveries. Besides Darwin and Spencer, he had made a study of Stuart Mill, whose noble sense of fair-play had impressed him. He plunged with hot zeal into the writings of Steinthal and Max Müller, whose studies in comparative religion changed to him the whole aspect of the universe. Taine's historical criticism, with its disrespectful derivation of the hero from food, climate, and race, lured him still farther away from his old Norse and romantic landmarks, until there was no longer any hope of his ever returning to them. But when from this promontory of advanced thought he looked back upon his idyllic love-stories of peasant lads and lasses, and his taciturn saga heroes, with their predatory self-assertion, he saw that he had done with them forever; that they could never more enlist his former interest. On the other hand, the problems of modern contemporary life, of which he had now gained quite a new comprehension, tempted him. The romantic productions of his youth appeared as a more or less arbitrary play of fancy emancipated from the stern logic of reality. It was his purpose henceforth to consecrate his powers to the study of the deeper soul-life of his own age and the exposition of the forces which in their interdependence and interaction make modern society.

This is the significance of the four-act drama "Bankruptcy," with which, in 1874, he astounded and disappointed the Scandinavian public. I have called it a drama, in accordance with the author's designation on the title-page; but it is, in the best sense, a comedy of manners, of the kind that Augier produced in France; and in everything except the mechanics of construction superior to the plays of Sardou and Dumas. The dialogue has the most admirable accent of truth. It is not unnaturally witty or brilliant; but exhibits exactly the traits which Norwegians of the higher commercial plutocracy are likely to exhibit. All the poetic touches which charmed us in Björnson's saga dramas were conspicuous by their absence. Scarcely a trace was there left of that peculiar and delightful language of his early novels, which can only be described by the term "Björnsonian."

"Dry, prosaic, trivial," said the reviewers; "Björnson has evidently worked out his vein. He has ceased to be a poet. He has lost with his childhood's faith his ideal view of life, and become a mere prosy chronicler of uninteresting everyday events."

This was, indeed, the general verdict of the public twenty years ago. Scarcely anyone had a good word to say for the abused play that marked the poet's fall from the idealism of his early song. But, for all that, "Bankruptcy" made a strong impression upon the boards. It not only conquered a permanent place in the répertoires of the theatres of the Scandinavian capitals, but it spread through Austria, Germany, and Holland, and has finally scored a success at the Théâtre Libre in Paris. There is scarcely a theatre of any consequence in Germany which has not made "Bankruptcy" part of its répertoire. At the Royal Theatre in Munich it was accorded a most triumphant reception, and something over sixty representations has not yet exhausted its popularity.

The effort to come to close quarters with reality is visible in every phrase. The denial of the value of all the old romantic stage machinery, with its artificial climaxes and explosive effects, is perceptible in the quiet endings of the acts and the entirely unsensational exposition of the dramatic action. There is one scene (and by no means an unnatural one) in which there is a touch of violence, viz., where Tjaelde, while he hopes to avert his bankruptcy, threatens to shoot Lawyer Berent and himself; but there is a very human quiver in the threat and in the passionate outbreak which precedes it. Nowhere is there a breath of that superheated hot-house atmosphere which usually pervades the modern drama.

"Bankruptcy" deals, as the title indicates, with the question of financial honesty. Zola has in Le Roman Sentimental made the observation that "absolute honesty no more exists than perfect healthfulness. There is a tinge of the human beast in us all, as there is a tinge of illness." Tjaelde, the great merchant, exemplifies this proposition. He is a fairly honest man, who by the modern commercial methods, which, in self-defence, he has been forced to adopt, gets into the position of a rogue. The commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," seems at first glance an extremely simple injunction; but in the light of Björnson's searching analysis it becomes a complex and intricate tangle, capable of interesting shades and nuances of meaning. Tjaelde, in the author's opinion, certainly does steal, when, in order to save himself (and thereby the thousands who are involved in his affairs), he speculates with other people's money and presents a rose-colored account of his business, when he knows that he is on the verge of bankruptcy. But, on the other hand, it is extremely difficult to determine the point where legitimate speculation ceases and the illegitimate begins. And if Tjaelde neglected any legitimate means of saving his estate he would be culpable. A stern code of morals (which the commercial world of to-day would scarcely exact), the poet enforces in the fourth act, where Tjaelde refuses to accept any concession from his creditors, but insists upon devoting the remainder of his life to the liquidation of his debts.

Admirably strong and vital is the exposition of the rôle and functions of money in the modern world, and the nearer and remoter psychological effects of the tremendous tyranny of money. A certain external _éclat is required to give the great commercial house the proper splendor in the sight of the world. Thus Tjaelde speculates in hospitality as in everything else, and when he virtually has nothing, makes the grandest splurge in order to give a spurious impression of prosperity. Though by nature an affectionate man, he neglects his family because business demands all his time. He defrauds himself of the happiness which knocks at his door, because business fills his head by night and by day, and absorbs all his energy. A number of parasites (such as the fortune-hunting lieutenant) attach themselves to him, as long as he is reputed to be rich, and make haste to vanish when his riches take wings. On the other hand, the true friends whom in his prosperity he hectored and contemned are revealed by adversity. There would be nothing remarkable in so common an experience, if the friends themselves, as well as the parasites, were not so delightfully delineated. The lieutenant, with his almost farcical interest in the bay trotter, is amusingly but lightly drawn; but the awkward young clerk, Sannaes, who refuses to abandon his master in the hour of trial, is a deeply typical Norwegian figure. All the little coast towns have specimens to show of these aspiring, faithful, sensitively organized souls, who, having had no social advantages are painfully conscious of their deficiencies, but whose patient industry and sterling worth in the end will triumph. No less keenly observed and effectively sketched is the whole gallery of dastardly little village figures--Holm, Falbe, Knutson with an s, Knutzon, with a z, etc. Signe and Valborg, the two daughters of Tjaelde, have, in spite of their diversity, a common tinge of Norwegian nationality which gives a gentle distinctness and relief to the world-old types.

Björnson's next play,[7] "The Editor," grapples with an equally modern and timely subject, viz., the license of the press. With terrible vividness he shows the misery, ruin, and degradation which result from the present journalistic practice of misrepresentation, sophistry, and defamation. It is a very dark picture he draws, with scarcely a gleam of light. The satire is savage; and the quiver of wrath is perceptible in many a sledge-hammer phrase. You feel that Björnson himself has suffered from the terrorism which he here describes, and you would surmise too, even if you did not know it, that the editor whom he has here pilloried is no mere general editorial type, but a well-known person who, until recently, conducted one of the most influential journals in Norway. The play is an act of retribution, and a deserved one. But its weaknesses, which it is vain to disguise, are also explained by the author's personal bias--the desire to wreak vengeance upon an enemy.

[7] All the literary histories and other authorities which I have consulted put the publication of "Bankruptcy," as well as that of "The Editor," in 1875. But my own copy of the latter play bears on its title-page the year 1874.

The situation is as follows: Mr. Evje, a rich and generally respected distiller, has a daughter, Gertrude, who is engaged to Harold Rein, a political leader of peasant origin. Mr. Rein's brother, Halfdan, from whom he has, in a measure, inherited the leadership, is dying from the persecution to which he has been exposed by the Conservative press and public. In his zeal for the Radical cause it is his consolation that he leaves it in such strong hands as those of his brother. The election is impending and a meeting of the electors has been called for the following day. Harold is the candidate of the Left. It now becomes a question with the party of the Right so to ridicule and defame him as to ruin his chances. His position as prospective son-in-law of the rich Mr. Evje lends an air of importance and respectability to his candidacy. Mr. Evje must therefore be induced, or, if necessary, compelled, to throw him overboard. With this end in view the editor of the Conservative journal goes to Evje (whose schoolmate and friend he has been) and tries to persuade him to break the alliance with Rein. Evje, who prides himself on his "moderation" and tolerance, and his purpose to keep aloof from partisanship, refuses to be bullied; whereupon the editor threatens him with social ostracism and commercial ruin. The distiller, who is at heart a coward, is completely unnerved by this threat. Well knowing how a paper can undermine a man's reputation without making itself liable for libel, he sends his friend the doctor to the editor, suing for peace. Late in the evening he meets his foe outside of his house, and after much shuffling and parleying agrees to do his will. He surprises his daughter and Harold Rein in a loving tête-à-tête, and lacks the courage to carry out his bargain. He vainly endeavors to persuade them to break the engagement and separate until after the election.

In the meanwhile, John, a discharged servant of Evje (of whose drunkenness and political radicalism we have previously been informed), has overheard the parley with the editor, and in order to get even with his master countermands in the editor's name his order to the foreman of the printing-office; and the obnoxious article which was intended to be omitted appears in the paper. John also takes care to procure Evje an early copy, which, first utterly crushes him, then arouses his wrath, convinces him that "holding aloof" is mere cowardice, and makes him resolve to bear his share in the great political battle. The meanness, the malice of each ingenious thrust, while it stings and burns also awakens a righteous indignation. He goes straight to the lodgings of Harold Rein and determines to attend the Radical meeting. Not finding him at home he goes to the house of his brother Halfdan, where he leaves the copy of the paper. The sick man picks it up, reads an onslaught on himself which in baseness surpasses the attack on Evje, starts up in uncontrollable excitement, and dies of a hemorrhage. The maid, who sees him lying on the floor, cries out into the street for help, and the editor, who chances to pass by, enters. He finds the Radical leader dead, with the paper clutched in his hand.

The fourth act opens with a festal arrangement at Evje's in honor of the great success of Rein's electoral meeting. There is no more "holding aloof." Everybody has convictions and is ready to avow the party that upholds them. All are ignorant of Halfdan Rein's death, until the editor arrives, utterly broken in spirit and asks Evje's pardon. He wishes to explain, but no one wishes to listen. When Evje wavers and is on the point of accepting his proffered hand, his wife and daughter loudly protest.

The editor declares his purpose to renounce journalism. The festivities are abandoned, and all betake themselves to the house of the dead leader. Thus the play ends; there is no tableau, no climax, no dramatic catastrophe. It is Zola's theory[8] and Maeterlink's practice anticipated.

[8] "Naturalism on the Stage."

The journalistic conditions here described are, of course, those of the Norwegian capital nearly a quarter of a century ago. Few editors, I fancy, outside of country towns, now go about personally spreading rumors, with malice aforethought, and collecting gossip. But the power of the press for good and for ill, and the terrorism which, in evil hands, it exercises, are surely not exaggerated. But its most striking application has the drama in its exposure of the desperate and ignominious expedients to which a party will resort in order to defeat, defame, and utterly destroy a political opponent. The following passages may be worth quoting:

"Most of the successful politicians nowadays win not by their own greatness but by the paltriness of the rest."

"Here is a fine specimen of a fossil. It is a piece of a palm-leaf, ... which was found in a stratum of Siberian rock.... Thus one must become in order to endure the ice-storms. Then one is not harmed. But your brother! In him lived yet the whole murmuring, singing palm-forest.... As regards you, it remains to be seen whether you can get all humanity in you completely killed.... But who would at that price be a politician?... That one must be hardened is the watchword of all nowadays. Not only army officers but physicians, merchants, officials are to be hardened or dried up; ... hardened for the battle of life, as they say. But what does that mean? We are to expel and evaporate the warmth of the heart, the fancy's yearning, ... before we are fit for life.... No, I say, it is those very things we are to preserve. That's what we have got them for."

Björnson's increasing Radicalism and his outspoken Socialistic sympathies had by this time alienated a large portion of the Scandinavian public. The cry was heard on all sides that he had ceased to be a poet, and had become instead a mere political agitator. I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting Björnson's reply when at his request a friend repeated to him the opinion which was entertained of him in certain quarters:

"Oh, yes," he cried, with a wrathful laugh, "don't I know it? You must be a poet! You must not mingle in the world's harsh and jarring tumult. They have a notion that a poet is a longhaired man who sits on the top of a tower and plays upon a harp while his hair streams in the wind. Yes, a fine kind of poet is that! No, my boy, I am a poet, not primarily because I can write verse (there are lots of people who can do that) but by virtue of seeing more clearly, and feeling more deeply, and speaking more truly than the majority of men. All that concerns humanity concerns me. If by my song or my speech I can contribute ever so little toward the amelioration of the lot of the millions of my poorer fellow-creatures, I shall be prouder of that than of the combined laurels of Shakespeare, Milton, and Goethe."

This is the conception of a poet which was prevalent in Norway in the olden time. The scalds of the sagas were warriors as well as singers. They fought with sword and battle-axe, and their song rang the more boldly because they knew how to strike up another tune--the fierce song of the sword. In modern times Wergeland and Welhaven have demonstrated not only the pugnacity, but also the noble courage of their ancestry by espousing the cause of opposing parties during the struggle for national independence.

Those who demand that literature shall be untinged by any tendency or strong conviction will do well to eschew all the subsequent works of Björnson. They might perhaps put up with the brief novel "Magnhild," which is tolerably neutral in tone, though it is the least enjoyable of all Björnson's works. It gives the impression that the author is half afraid of his subject (which is an illicit love), and only dares to handle it so gingerly as to leave half the tale untold. The short, abrupt sentences which seemed natural enough when he was dealing with the peasants, with their laconic speech and blunt manners, have a forced and unnatural air when applied to people to whom this style of language is foreign. Moreover, these condensed sentences are often vague, full of innuendo, and mysterious as hieroglyphics. It is as if the author, in the consciousness of the delicacy of his theme, had lost the bold security of touch which in his earlier works made his meaning unmistakable.

The drama "The King" (1877) is an attack upon the monarchical principle in its political as well as its personal aspect. It is shown how destructive the royal prerogative is and must be to the king as an individual; how the artificial regard which hedges him in, interposing countless barriers between the truth and him, makes his relations to his surroundings false and deprives him of the opportunity for self-knowledge which normal relations supply. Royalty is therefore a curse, because it robs its possessor of the wholesome discipline of life which is the right of every man that is born into the world.

Furthermore, there is an obvious intention to show that the monarchy, being founded upon a lie, is incapable of any real adaptation to the age, and reconciliation with modern progress. The king in the play is a young, talented, liberal-minded man, who is fully conscious of the anomaly of his position, and determined to save his throne by stripping it of all mediæval and mythological garniture. He dreams of being a "folk-king," the first citizen of a free people, a kind of hereditary president, with no sham divinity to fall back upon, and no "grace of God" to shield him from criticism and sanctify his blunders. He resents the rôle of being the lock of the merchant's strong-box and the head of that mutual insurance company which is called the state. He goes about incognito, first in search of love adventures, and later in order to acquaint himself with public opinion; and he proves himself remarkably unprejudiced and capable of profiting by experience. He falls in love with Clara Ernst, the daughter of a Radical professor, who, on account of a book he has written, has been sentenced for crimen læsæ majestatis, and in an attempt to escape from prison has broken both his legs. Clara, who is supporting her father in his exile by teaching, repels the king's advances with indignation and contempt. He perseveres, however, fascinated by the novelty of such treatment. He manages to convince her of the purity of his motives; and finally succeeds in winning her love. It is not a liaison he contemplates, but a valid and legitimate marriage for which he means to compel recognition. The court, which he has no more use for, he desires to abolish as a costly and degrading luxury; and in its place to establish a home--a model bourgeois home--where affection and virtue shall flourish. Clara, seeing the vast significance of such a step, is aglow with enthusiasm for its realization. It is not vanity, but a lofty faith in her mission to regenerate royalty, by discarding its senseless pomp and bringing it into accord with, and down to the level of, common citizenship--it is this, I say, which upholds her in the midst of opprobrium, insults, and hostile demonstrations. For the king's subjects, so far from being charmed by his resolution to marry a woman out of their midst, are scandalized. They riot, sing mocking songs, circulate base slanders, and threaten to mob the royal bride on her way to her first public function. She is herself terribly wrought up, particularly by the curse of her father, who hates the king with the deep hatred of a fanatical Republican. A royal princess, who had come to insult her, is conquered by her candor and truth, and stays to sympathize with her and lend her the support of her presence. But just as the king comes to lead her out to face the populace, the wraith of her father rises upon the threshold and she falls back dead. It is learned afterward that Professor Ernst had died in that very hour.

The king's bosom friend, the Minister of the Interior, Gran, who is largely responsible for his liberalism, and whose whole policy it has been to rejuvenate and revitalize the monarchy, is challenged and shot by his old teacher, the Republican Flink; and the king himself, convinced of the futility of all his efforts to realize his idea of a democratic monarchy, commits suicide.

As a piece of sanguinary satire on royalty as an institution "The King" is most interesting--that is, royalty logically and speculatively considered, without reference to its historical basis and development. To me the postulate that it had its origin in a kind of conspiracy (for mutual benefit) of the priest and the king seems shallow and unphilosophical. Björnson's fanatical partisanship has evidently carried him a little too far. For surely he would himself admit that every free nation is governed about as well as it deserves to be--that its political institutions are a reflection of its maturity and capacity for self-government. A certain allowance must, indeed, be made for the vis inertiæ of whatever exists, which makes it exert a stubborn and not unwholesome resistance to the reformer's zeal. This conservatism (which may, however, have more laudable motives than mere self-interest) Björnson has happily satirized in the scene before the Noblemen's Club in the third act. But, I fancy, it looks to him only as a sinister power, which for its own base purposes has smitten humanity with blindness to its own welfare. Though not intending to enter into a discussion, I am also tempted to put a respectful little interrogation mark after the statement that the republic is so very much cheaper than the monarchy. If the experience of the two largest republics in the world counts for anything, I should say that in point of economy there was not much to choose.

Strange as it may seem, Björnson did not intend "The King" as an argument in favor of the republic. In his preface to the third edition he distinctly repudiates the idea. The recent development of the Norwegian people, has, he says, made the republic a remoter possibility than it was ten years before (1875). But he qualifies this statement with the significant condition, "If we are not checked by fraud." And I fancy that he would have a perfect right to justify his present position by demonstrating the fraud, trickery, if not treason, by which Norway has during the last decade been thwarted in her aspirations and checked in her development. That preface, by the way, dated Paris, October, 1885, is one of the most forceful and luminous of his political pronunciamientos. It rings from beginning to end with conviction and a manly indignation. His chief purpose, he says, in writing this drama was, "to extend the boundaries of free discussion." His polemics against the clergy are not attacks upon Christianity, though he contends that religion is subject to growth as well as other things. The ultimate form of government he believes to be the republic, on the journey toward which all European states are proceeding fast, or slow, and in various stages of progress. There is something abrupt, gnarled, Carlylese, in his urgent admonitions and appeals for fair-play. The personal note is so distinct that I cannot read the play without unconsciously supplying the very cadence of Björnson's voice.

A further attempt to extend the boundaries of free discussion is made in the two dramas, "Leonarda" (1879) and "A Glove" (1883), which both deal with interesting phases of the woman question, and both wage war against conventional notions of right and wrong. The former elucidates the attitude of society toward the woman who has been compromised (whether justly or not), and the latter its attitude toward the man. I confess there is something a trifle hazy in his exposition of the problem in "Leonarda;" and I am unable to determine whether Leonarda really has anything to reproach herself with or not. In her conversation with the bishop in the second act, she appears to admit that she has much to regret. She begs him "help her atone for her past." She practically throws herself upon his mercy, reminding him that his Master, Christ, was the friend of sinners. But in the last act she appears suddenly with the halo of martyrdom. General Rosen, who has been the cause of her social ostracism, turns out to be her husband, whom she has divorced on account of his dissipated habits, and now keeps, in the hope of saving him, on a sort of probation. She believes that without her he would go straight to perdition, and from a sense of duty she tolerates him, not daring to shirk her responsibility for the old reprobate's soul. Truth to tell, she treats him like a naughty boy, punishing him, when he has been drunk, with a denial of favors; and when he has been good, rewarding him with her company. I suppose there are men who might be saved by such treatment, but I venture to doubt whether they are worth saving. As for Leonarda, she has apparently no cause for encouragement. But she perseveres, heedless of obloquy, as long as her own affections are disengaged. She presently falls in love, however, with a young man named Hagbart Tallhaug, who has insulted her and is now engaged to her niece, Agot. Hagbart is the nephew of the bishop of the diocese, who, after much persuasion is induced to receive Agot, on condition that her aunt will remove from the district and demand no recognition from the family. Having been informed of these conditions, Leonarda calls upon the bishop, uninvited, and vainly remonstrates with him. The young people are, however, unwilling to accept happiness on the terms offered by his reverence. At this point a new complication arises. Hagbart who had loved in Agot a kind of reflection of her aunt's character and manner, being now thrown into the company of the latter, discovers his mistake and transfers his affection to Leonarda. Exactly wherein the newness of Leonarda's type consists we are not fully informed, but we are led to infer that she represents a purer and truer humanity than the women bred in the traditions of feudalism, with their hypocritical arts and conventions. She is not meant to be seductive, but radiant, ravishing.

There is a candor in her speech, and an almost boyish straightforwardness, for which she is not indebted to nature but to the stanch idealism of her creator. She is, however, on that account no less impressionable, no less ready to respond to the call of love. She struggles manfully (or ought I not, in deference to the author's contention, to say "womanfully") against her love for Hagbart, and at last has no choice but to escape from the cruel dilemma by accepting the bishop's demand. Though she cannot conquer her affection for the young man, she believes that he will, in the course of time, return to Agot, as soon as she is out of his way. The author evidently believes the same. It is a hard lot to be a man in these later dramas of Björnson.

With a slight violation of the chronological sequence I shall discuss "A Glove" in this connection, because of its organic coherence with "Leonarda." They are the obverse and reverse of the same subject--the cruelty of society to the woman of a blemished reputation, and its leniency to the man.

To those who worship the conventional ideal of womanly innocence "A Glove" will seem a very shocking book, for it fearlessly discusses, and, what is more, makes a young girl discuss--the standards of sexual purity as applied to men and women. The sentiments which she utters are, to be sure, elevated and of an almost Utopian idealism; and the author obviously means to raise, not to lower, her in the eyes of the reader by her passionate frankness.

The problem of the drama is briefly this: Society demands of women an absolute chastity, and refuses to condone the least lapse, either before or after marriage. But toward men it is indulgent. It readily overlooks a plenteous seed of wild oats, and would regard it as the sheerest Quixotism to judge the bridegroom by the same standard of purity as it does the bride. It is easy enough, and perhaps also legitimate, to exclaim with Björnson that this is all wrong, and that a man has no right to ask any more than he gives. As a mere matter of equity a wife owes her husband no more fidelity than he owes her, and may exact of him, if she chooses, the same prematrimonial purity that he exacts of her. But questions of this kind are never settled on the basis of equity. The sentiments by which they are determined have long and intricate roots in the prehistoric past; and we are yet very far from the millennial condition of absolute equality between the sexes. According to Herbert Spencer there is a hereditary transmission of qualities which are confined exclusively to the male, and of others which are confined to the female; and these are the results of the primitive environments and conditions which were peculiar to each sex. Even the best of us have a reminiscent sense of proprietorship in our wives, dating from the time when she was obtained by purchase or capture and could be disposed of like any other chattel. Wives, whose prehistoric discipline has disposed them to humility and submission (I am speaking of the European, not the American species, of course), have not yet in the same degree acquired this sense of ownership in their husbands, involving the same strict accountability for affectional aberrations. And for this there is a very good reason, which is no less valid now than it was in the hoariest antiquity. A husband's infidelity, though morally as reprehensible as that of the wife, does not entail quite such monstrous consequences. For if she deceives him, he may ignorantly bring up another man's children, toil for them, bestow his name and affection upon them, and leave them his property. One can scarcely conceive of a more outrageous wrong than this; and it is in order to guard against such a possibility that society from remote ages has watched over the chastity of women far more jealously than over that of men. It is as a result of this vigilance of centuries that women have, among civilized nations, a finer sense of modesty than men, and a higher standard of personal purity. Men are, as yet, as Mr. Howells remarks, "imperfectly monogamous;" and Björnson is, no doubt, in the main right in the tremendous indictment he frames against them in the present drama.

It may be expedient to give a brief outline of the action. Svava Riis, the daughter of prosperous and refined parents, becomes engaged to Alf Christensen, the son of a great commercial magnate.

Her father and mother are overjoyed at the happy event; she is herself no less delighted. Her fiancé has an excellent reputation, shares her interest in social questions, and supports her in her efforts to found kindergartens and to ameliorate the lot of the poor. Each glories in the exclusive possession of the other's love, and with the retrospective jealousy of lovers, fancies that he has had no predecessors in the affection of the beloved. Alf can scarcely endure to have any one touch Svava, and is almost ill when any one dances with her.

"When I see you among all the others," he exclaims, "and catch, for instance, a glimpse of your arm, then I think: That arm has been wound about my neck, and about no one else's in the whole world. She is mine! She belongs to me, and to no one, no one else!"

Svava finds this feeling perfectly natural, and reciprocates it. She ardently believes that he brings her as fresh a heart as she brings him; that his past is as free from contaminating experience as is her own. When, therefore, she obtains proof to the contrary, in an indignant revulsion of feeling, she hurls her glove in his face and breaks the engagement. This act is, I fancy, intended to be half symbolic. The young girl expresses not only her personal sense of outrage; but she flings a challenge in the face of the whole community, which by its indulgence made his transgression easy. She discovers that what in her would have been a crime is in him a lapse, readily forgiven. Her whole soul revolts against this inequality of conditions; and in terminating their relation, which has lost all its beauty, she wishes to cut off all chance of its future resumption.

In order to determine whether this sentiment of passionate virginity (which in effect makes the marriage vow of fidelity retroactive) is not, in the present condition of the world, a trifle overstrained, I have submitted the question to two refined women for whom I have a high regard. To my surprise they both declared that Svava, whatever she may have said to the contrary, did not love her fiancé; that her sorrow and even her indignation were just and natural; but that her somewhat over-conscious purity--her virginité savante, as Balzac phrases it in "Modeste Mignon," and her inability to give due weight to ameliorating circumstances were unwomanly. I confess I am not without sympathy with this criticism. Svava, though she is right in her vehement protest against masculine immorality, is not charming--that is, according to our present notion of what constitutes womanly charm. It is not unlikely, however, that like Leonarda she is meant to anticipate a new type of womanhood, co-ordinate and coequal with man, whose charm shall be of a wholly different order. The coquetry, the sweet hypocrisy, nay, all the frivolous arts which exercise such a potent sway over the heart of man have their roots in the prehistoric capture and thraldom; and from the point of view of the woman suffragists, are so many reminiscences of degradation. I fancy that Björnson, sharing this view, has with full deliberation made Svava boldly and inexorably truthful, frank as a boy and as uncompromisingly honest as a man.

She has sufficient use for this masculine equipment (I am speaking in accordance with the effete standards) in the battle which is before her. Dr. Nordan, the family physician, her parents, and those of her fiancé, take her to task and endeavor to demonstrate to her the consequences of her unprecedented demand. She learns in the course of this prolonged debate that she has been living in a fool's paradise. She has been purposely (and with the most benevolent intention) deceived in regard to this question from the very cradle. Her father, whom she has believed to be a model husband, proves to have been unworthy of her trust. The elder Christensen has also had a compromising intrigue of the same kind; and it becomes obvious that each male creature is so indulgent in this chapter toward every other male creature, because each knows himself to be equally vulnerable. There is a sort of tacit freemasonry among them, which takes its revenge upon him who tells tales out of school. It is a consciousness of this which makes Christensen, after having declared war to the knife against the Riises, withdraw his challenge and become doubly cordial toward his enemy. Alf, who in the second act has expressed the opinion that a man is responsible to his wife for his future, but not for his past, retracts, and does penance. Svava, in consideration of his penitence, gives him a vague hope of future reconciliation.[9]

[9] In the later acting version of the play, which ends with the throwing of the glove, this hope of reconciliation is definitely cut off. The author has evidently come to the conclusion that his argument is weakened by Svava's conciliatory attitude, and he enforces his moral by making the sin appear unpardonable. The acting version, which is more dramatically concise, differs in several other respects from the version here presented; but the other changes seem to be dictated by a stricter regard for the exigencies of theatrical representation. The play has been translated into English under the title, "A Gauntlet," London, 1894.

It will be observed by every reader of "A Glove" that it is not a drama, according to our American notion. It has very little dramatic action. It might be styled a series of brilliant and searching debates concerning a theme of great moment. The same definition applies, though in a lesser degree, to "The New System" (1879), a five-act play of great power and beauty. By power I do not mean noise, but convincing impressiveness and concentration of interest. One could scarcely imagine anything farther removed from the ha! and ho! style of melodrama.

"The New System" is primarily social satire. It is a psychological analysis of the effect of the "small state" upon its citizens. It is an expansion and exemplification of the proposition (Act I., 1) that "while the great states cannot subsist without sacrificing their small people by the thousands, small states cannot subsist without the sacrifice of many of their great men, nay of the very greatest." The smooth, crafty man, "who can smile ingratiatingly like a woman," rises to the higher heights; while the bold, strong, capable man, who is unversed in the arts of humility and intrigue, struggles hopelessly, and perhaps in the end goes to the dogs, because he is denied the proper field for his energy. Never has Björnson written anything more convincing, penetrating, subtly satirical. He cuts deep; every incision draws blood. A Norwegian who reads the play cannot well rid himself of a startled sense of exposure that is at first wounding to his patriotism. It is mortifying to have to admit that things are thus in Norway. And the worst of it is that there appears to be no remedy. The condition is, according to Björnson, inherent in all small states which cripple the souls of men, stunt their growth, and contract their horizon.

The first act opens with a conversation between the civil engineers Kampe and Ravn, and the former's son Hans, who has just returned from a prolonged sojourn abroad. The keynote is struck in the sarcastic remark of Ravn, that in a small society only small truths can be tolerated--of the kind that takes twenty to the inch; but great truths are apt to be explosive and should therefore be avoided, for they might burst the whole society. This is _à propos of a book which Hans Kampe has written, exposing the wastefulness and antiquated condition of the so-called "new system" of railway management introduced, or supposed to have been introduced, by Kampe's and Ravn's brother-in-law, the supervisor-general Riis. The way for Hans to make a career, declares the worldly wise Ravn, is not to oppose the source of promotion and power, but to be silent and marry the supervisor-general's daughter. Ravn has learned this lesson by bitter experience, and hopes that his nephew will profit by it. All talk about duty to the state and society he pretends to regard as pure moonshine, and he professes not to see the connection between the elder Kampe's drunkenness and the artificial bottling up to which he has been subjected, the curbing and jailing of Titanic powers which once sought outlet in significant action. The same mighty force which in its repression drives the men to the brandy-bottle makes the women intoxicate themselves with fictitious narratives of high courage, daring rescues, and all kinds of melodramatic heroism. Extremely amusing is the scene in which Karen Riis (who loves Hans and is beloved by him) goes rowing with her friends Nora and Lisa, taking with her a stock of high-strung novels, and when a drowning man cries to them for help they row away posthaste, because the man is naked.

The second act shows us the type of the successful man of compromise, who takes the world as he finds it, and cleverly utilizes the foibles of his fellow-men. The supervisor-general is a sort of personification of public opinion. He is always correct, professes to believe what others believe, and conforms from prudent calculation to the religious customs of the community. He demands of his son Frederic that he shall abandon a young girl whom he loves and has seduced, and he requires of his daughter Karen that she shall, out of regard for her family, renounce her lover. He feigns all proper sentiments and emotions, while under the smooth, agreeable mask lurk malice and cunning. When Hans Kampe's book reaches him, it never occurs to him to examine it on its merits; his only thought is to make it harmless by inventing a scandalous motive. The elder Kampe has just resigned from the railway service; the supervisor-general (with infamous shrewdness) demands an official inquiry into the state of his accounts. Then all the world will say that Hans Kampe has been used as a cat's-paw by his father, who, knowing that an investigation is inevitable, wishes to throw dust in the eyes of the public and save his own reputation by attacking that of his superior. It is needless to say that he has not a shadow of suspicion regarding Kampe's honesty, but merely chooses for his own defence the weapon which he knows to be the most effective.

In order to fortify his position and sound the sentiment of the profession, Riis gives a grand dinner to the engineers of the city, to which Kampe and his son are also invited. The chairman of the committee on railways (of the national diet) is present, and when it appears that Hans Kampe makes a favorable impression upon him, the friends of Riis concoct a scheme to injure him. They inform his father that he is suspected of embezzlement, and get him drunk, whereupon the old man scandalizes the company by a burst of uncomplimentary candor. When Hans arrives the mischief is done; though the pathetic scene between father and son convinces the chairman that, whatever their failings, these men are true and genuine. Simply delicious is the satire in the scene where the ladies discuss the question at issue between Riis and Kampe. But this satire is deprived of much of its force by the subsequent development of the plot. The logical ending would seem to be the triumph of the supervisor-general's defensive tactics and the discomfiture of his critics. That would have given point to the criticism of the small state and invested the victims of progress with an almost tragic dignity. Björnson chooses, however, to let neither the one party nor the other triumph. In a small state, he says, no one is victorious; everything ends in compromise. If two parties championed two different plans of railway construction, the one of which was demonstrated to be superior in economy and safety to the other, such a demonstration would not be likely to result in its adoption. No, the two parties would come together, dicker and compromise, and in the end the diet would agree to build one road according to the one plan, and one according to the other. Agreeably to this principle Björnson leaves the honors between the combatants about easy; but Riis, deserted by his children, undergoes a partial change of heart and is seized with doubt as to the excellence of his philosophy of life.

That the satire of "The New System" struck home is obvious from the fierceness and virulence of the criticism with which it was hailed. It has never become fairly domesticated on the Scandinavian stages, and probably never will be. In Germany, France, and Holland it has received respectful attention, and (I am informed) has proved extremely effective upon the boards.

In the same year as "The New System" (1879) appeared the delightful novelette "Captain Mansana," dealing with Italian life, and throwing interesting side-lights upon the War of Liberation. There is an irresistible charm in the freshness, the vividness, the extreme modernness of this little tale. The mingled simplicity and sophistication of the Italian character, the histrionic touch which yet goes with perfect sincerity, the author has apprehended and presented with happy realism.

In "Beyond their Strength" (Over Aevne) (1883) Björnson has invaded the twilight realm of psycho-pathological phenomena, and refers the reader for further information to Leçons sur le système nerveux, faites par J. M. Charcot, and _Études cliniques sur l'hystéro-épilepsie ou grande hystérie, par le Dr. Richer. As a man is always in danger of talking nonsense in dealing with a subject concerning which his knowledge is superficial, I shall not undertake to pronounce upon the validity of the theory which is here advanced. The play is an inquiry into the significance and authenticity of miracles. Incidentally the theme is faith-healing, the hypnotic effect of prayer, and kindred phenomena.

Pastor Sang, a clergyman in a remote parish of Northern Norway, is famed far and wide as the miracle-priest, and it is popularly believed that he can work wonders, as the apostles did of old. He has given away his large fortune to the poor; in a fervor of faith he plunges into every danger, and comes out unscathed; he lives constantly in an overstrained ecstasy, and by his mere presence, and the atmosphere which surrounds him, forces his wife and children to live in the same state of high nervous tension and unnatural abstraction from mundane reality and all its concerns. His wife, Clara, who loves him ardently, is gradually worn out by this perpetual strain, which involves a daily overdraft upon her vitality; and finally the break comes, and she is paralyzed. For, like everyone who comes in contact with Sang, she has had to live "beyond her strength." She does not fully share her husband's faith, and though she feels his influence and admires his lofty devotion, there is a half-suppressed criticism in her mind. She feels the unwholesomeness of thus "living by inspiration, and not by reason." When he comes to her, "beaming always with a Sabbath joy," she would fain tune him down, if she could, into a lower key, "the C-major of every-day life," as Browning calls it. But in this effort she has had no success, for Sang's ecstatic elevation above the concerns of earth is not only temperamental; nature itself, in the extreme North, favors it. As Clara expresses it:

"Nature here exceeds the limits of the ordinary. We have night nearly all winter; we have day nearly all summer--and then the sun is above the horizon, both day and night. Have you seen it in the night? Do you know that behind the ocean vapors it often looks three or four times as large as usual? And then the color-effects upon sky, sea, and mountain! From the deepest glow of red to the finest, tenderest, golden white. And the colors of the aurora upon the wintry sky!" etc.

It is the most ardent desire of Sang to heal his wife, as he has healed many others. But the doubt in her mind baffles him, and for a long time he is unsuccessful. At last, however, he resolves to make a mighty effort--to besiege the Lord with his prayer, to wrestle with him, as Jacob did of old, and not to release him, until he has granted his petition. While he lies thus before the altar calling upon the Lord in sacred rapture, a tremendous avalanche sweeps down the mountainside, but divides, leaving the church and parsonage unharmed. The rumor of this new wonder spreads like fire in withered grass, and among thousands of others a number of clergymen, with their bishop, on their way to some convention, stop to convince themselves of the authenticity of the miracle, and to determine the attitude which they are to assume toward it. Then follows a long discussion between the bishop and the clergy regarding the value of miracles, some maintaining that the church has outgrown the need of them, others that they are indispensable--that Christianity cannot survive without them. For has not Christ promised that "even greater things than these shall ye do?" Is not this a case of the faith which verily can say to the mountain, "Rise up and cast thyself into the sea?"

The other miracle, scarcely less marvellous than the deflection of the avalanche, is that Clara, who has slept for the first time in a month, now rises from her bed and goes forth to meet her husband, and falls upon his neck amid the ringing of the church-bells and the hallelujahs of the assembled multitudes. But when he tries to raise her she is dead, and he himself, overwhelmed by his emotion, falls dead at her side.

This is so obviously a closet-drama that it is difficult to imagine how it would look under the illumination of the foot-lights. For all that, I see a recent announcement that the trial is soon to be made at the Théâtre Libre in Paris.[10] No Scandinavian theatre, as far as I know, has as yet had the courage to risk the experiment. In his next play, however, "Love and Geography" (1885), Björnson reconquered the stage and repeated his early triumphs. From the scientific seriousness of "Beyond their Strength" his pendulum swung to the opposite extreme of light comedy, almost bordering on farce. Not that "Love and Geography" is without a Björnsonian moral, but it is amusingly, jocosely enforced in scenes of great vivacity and theatrical effect. This time it is himself the author has chosen to satirize. The unconscious tyranny of a man who has a mission, a life-work, is delightfully illustrated in the person of the geographer, Professor Tygesen, to whom Björn Björnson, the actor, when he played the part at the Christiania Theatre, had the boldness to give his father's mask. Professor Tygesen is engaged upon a great geographical opus, and gradually takes possession of the whole house with his maps, globes, and books, driving his wife from the parlor floor and his daughter to boarding-school. So absorbed is he in his work that he can talk and think of nothing else. He neglects the social forms from sheer abstraction and becomes almost a boor, because all the world outside of his book pales into insignificance, and all persons and events are merely interesting in so far as they can stimulate inquiry or furnish information bearing upon the immortal opus. The inevitable consequence follows. The professor alienates all who come in contact with him. He is on the point of losing the affection of his wife, and his daughter comes near going astray for want of paternal supervision. Both these calamities are, however, averted, though in an arbitrary and highly eccentric manner. The professor's eyes are opened to the error of his ways, he does penance, and the curtain falls upon a reunited family.

[10] July, 1894.

The unpretentious little story "Dust" (Stöv, 1882) undertakes to demonstrate the unwholesomeness of the religious ideas regarding the life to come usually impressed upon children by parents and teachers. By dust Björnson means all obsolete, lifeless matter in the world of thought which settles upon, and often impairs, the vitality of the living growth, or even chokes it outright. "When children are taught that the life here is nothing compared to the life to come--that to be visible is nothing compared to being invisible--that to be a man is nothing compared to being an angel--that to be alive is nothing compared to being dead--then that is not the way to give them the right view of life; not the way to teach them to love life; not the way to inspire them with courage, energy, and patriotism."

In his novel "Flags in City and Harbor" (1884), the English translation of which is entitled "The Heritage of the Kurts," Björnson has attacked a tremendous problem. He has attempted to illustrate the force of heredity, and the exact extent to which it may be modified by environment--to what extent an unfavorable heredity may be counteracted by a favorable environment. The family of Kurt, whose history is here traced through five generations, inherits a temperament which would have secured its survival and raised it to distinction in barbaric ages, but which will as surely, unless powerfully modified, necessitate its extinction in the present age. For the Kurts are incapable of assimilating civilization. An excess of physical vigor in the first Kurt who settled in Norway takes the form of lawlessness and an entire absence of moral restraint.

Violence of the most atrocious kind goes unpunished because Kurt is powerful and has friends at court. In his two legitimate sons, Adler and Max (he has a host of illegitimate ones), the family temperament is modified, though in Max, who perpetuates the race, the modification is not radical. Adler is a weakling of enormous vanity, silent and moody, and addicted to the pleasures of the table. Max, on the other hand, is a man of inexhaustible vitality, violent like his father, but possessed of a gift of speech and a tremendous voice which serve to establish his authority over the simple inhabitants of the little coast town. Moreover, he is endowed with great shrewdness and practical sense, and is an expert in ship-building, agriculture, and other pursuits. But he is the terror of women, and his sensual excesses so undermine his strength that he becomes insane, and believes that he is continually pursued by the spirit of his brother, whose death he had caused. Konrad Kurt, the son of Max, runs away from home because he cannot endure to see his mother maltreated by his father. He inherits a shattered constitution and poor nerves; outwardly he is quite a respectable man, but he has a strong physical need of drink, and every night he goes to bed intoxicated. It is the author's purpose to show how the sins of his fathers, by a physiological necessity, predisposed Konrad Kurt to drink. His son, John Kurt, who is the result of a criminal relation, is the complete incarnation of the genius of the family. The fresh blood which he has derived from his English mother has postponed the doom of the race and enabled him to repeat, in a modified form, the excesses of his ancestors. He first distinguishes himself as a virtuoso in swearing. The magnificent redundance and originality of his oaths make him famous in the army, which he chooses as the first field of his exploits. Later he roams aimlessly about the world, merely to satisfy a wild need of adventure. On his return to his native town he signalizes himself by his vices as a genuine Kurt. The little town, however, cannot find it in its heart to condemn a man of so distinguished a race, and society, though it is fully cognizant of his mode of life, not only tolerates but even pets him. He is entertaining, has been everywhere and seen everything. He meets a young girl, named Thomasine Rendalen, the daughter of an educated peasant, who occupies a position as a teacher. She is large, ruddy, full of health and uncorrupted vigor. John Kurt takes a violent fancy to her, and moves heaven and earth to induce her to marry him. He goes even to the length of bribing all her female friends, and they by degrees begin to sing his praises. At last she yields; a net of subtle influences surrounds her, and unconsciously she comes to reflect the view of society. Her moral prudery begins to appear ridiculous to her, and the so-called common-sense view predominates. The author here, with great earnestness, emphasizes the responsibility of society in weakening the moral resistance of the individual rather than strengthening it. Thomasine Rendalen would not have married John Kurt if society had not condoned his offences; and society in condoning such offences undermines its own foundations.

After his marriage Kurt endeavors to hold his exuberant nature in check, and for a while is moderately successful. But an uneasy suspicion haunts him that his wife's friends, in a confidential moment, may expose his delinquencies, and destroy her confidence in him. He watches her like a lynx, surprises her at all hours and places, and thereby produces the suspicion which he is endeavoring to avert. The relation develops with inevitable logic toward an awful crisis. This is brought about by a mere trifle. John Kurt, failing to humble his wife, strikes her. The baleful forces that lurk in the depths of the Kurt temperament rise to the surface; the whole terrible heritage of savagery overwhelms the feeble civilization which the last scion has acquired. If Thomasine had been weak, she would have been killed; but she defends herself with fierce persistency, and though it seems as if she must succumb, her compact frame, strengthened by generations of healthful toil, possesses an endurance which in the end must prevail over the paroxysmal rage of John Kurt. When the combatants part there is not a whole piece of furniture in the room. John Kurt retires a conquered man. But with cowardly viciousness he locks the door and leaves his wife for hours despairing, while he himself goes to a dinner-party. There he is stricken down by apoplexy.

The terror with which Thomasine contemplates her approaching maternity is one of the finest points in the book. Has she the right to perpetuate such a race, which will be a curse to itself and to future generations? Would she not confer a boon upon mankind if, by destroying herself, she sweetened the life-blood of humanity? For by self-destruction she would forever cut off the turbid current of the Kurt blood which had darkened the vital stream of the race for centuries. The moral exaltation which manifests itself in this struggle is most vividly portrayed. She clings to life desperately; she is young and strong, unsentimental, and averse to ascetic enthusiasm. It finally occurs to her that her own race, too, will assert itself in this child; that the pure and vigorous strain which her own blood will infuse may redeem it from the dark destiny of the Kurts. She finally resolves upon a compromise; if the child is dark, like the Kurts, both it and its mother shall die. If it is blue-eyed and light-haired, like the Rendalens, she will devote her life to obliterating in it, or transforming into useful activities, the destructive vigor of the paternal character. Thomas, when he is born, chooses a golden mean between these two extremes, and perversely makes his appearance as a red-haired, gray-eyed infant, in which both a Kurt and a Rendalen might have made comforting observations. He is accordingly permitted to live, and to become the hero of one of the most remarkable novels which has ever been published in Scandinavia.

He is by no means a good boy, but his mother, by a kind of heroic conscientiousness and rationality, slowly conquers him and secures his attachment. She has solemnly abjured her connection with her husband's family, assumed her maiden name, and has consecrated her life to what she regards as the highest utility--the work of education. She wishes to atone to the race for her guilt in having perpetuated the race of the Kurts. The scene in which she makes a bonfire of all the ancestral portraits in the Hall of Knights, and the smell of all the burning Kurts is blown far and wide over city and harbor, would, in the hands of another novelist, have been made the central scene in the book. But Björnson is so tremendously in earnest that he cannot afford to stop and note picturesque effect. Therefore he relates the burning of the Kurts quite incidentally, and proceeds at once to talk of more serious things.

By turning the great, dusky, ancestral mansion into a school, Mrs. Rendalen believes that she can best settle the account of the Kurts with humanity. All the latest, improved methods of education are introduced. The Hall of Knights is turned into a chemical laboratory, and the daylight is allowed to pour unobscured into all its murky recesses. Through the dim and lofty passage-ways resounds the laughter of children; on the scenes of so many hoary crimes the prattle of innocent girls is heard; a multitude of scientific instruments labor to demonstrate the laws of nature, and to simplify the problem of existence which the crimes of the Kurts had tended to complicate. Thomas Rendalen, profoundly impressed as he is with his responsibility as the last descendant of such a race, takes up this educational mission with a lofty humanitarian enthusiasm. He has spent many years abroad in preparing himself for this work, and possesses, like his great-grandfather, the gift of lucid exposition. But his perpetual and conscious struggle with his heritage makes him nervous and ill-balanced. He conceives the idea, fostered both by observation and by the study of his own family history, that unchastity is the chief curse of humanity, and the primal cause of the degeneracy of races. He believes that the false modesty which leaves young people in ignorance of one of the most important natural functions is largely responsible for the prevailing immorality, and he advocates, as a remedy, fearless and searching physiological study. His inaugural address as superintendent of the school deals uncompromisingly with this subject, and excites such universal indignation that it comes near wrecking the promising enterprise. A great speech in a small town, Björnson hints, is always more or less risky. But we are also given to understand that though Rendalen obviously speaks out of the author's heart, this very speech is in itself a subtle manifestation of the Kurt heritage. Rendalen is as immoderate in virtue as his ancestors have been in vice. The violent energy which formerly expended itself in lawless acts now expends itself in an excessive, ascetic enthusiasm for self-conquest and lofty humanitarian ideals. As a piece of psychology this is admirable. Prudent, well adapted or adaptable to the civilization in which he lives, the scion of the Kurts is not yet; but as a promise of the redemption of the race he represents the first upward step. It is highly characteristic of Björnson's respect for reality that he makes Rendalen neither agreeable, handsome, nor lovable; nay, he dwells again and again on the bad relations which temporarily exist between him and his mother, between him and the teachers, between him and the town. For all that we are filled with a profound respect for a man who can fight in himself so great a fight, and win so great a victory. It is the sturdy peasant blood which he derived from his mother that enables him to wrestle thus mightily with the Lord, and extort at last the tardy blessing; for we are assured in the last pages of the book that he makes a marriage, which is a further step toward health and virtue. We are not assured that he conquers happiness either for himself or for his wife; and there is not a syllable to betray that he cherishes for her any romantic attachment. But the chances are that, in transforming and ennobling the Kurt heritage, he insures vigor and usefulness to his descendants. He bequeathes to them a more wholesome mixture of blood than he himself possesses, and an energy, nay, perhaps a genius, derived from the Kurts, which, with an upward instead of a downward tendency, may be a redeeming force in society instead of a corrupting one.

In order not to miss any phase of his problem, Björnson also takes up briefly the illegitimate line of the Kurts, which, being unsupplied with any favorable environment, sinks deeper and deeper into the mire of vice. The inevitable result is insanity and ultimate extinction. Mrs. Rendalen's visit to the slums, and her recognition of the peculiar scream of her own son in a terrible little ragamuffin, is one of the most remarkable incidents in this remarkable book.

One thing that especially strikes the reader in this novel is the author's fierce indignation against all shams, deceits, and social lies. Therefore he calls a spade a spade, and leaves you to blush if you are so inclined. The young girls whom he introduces are mostly misses in their teens, and his portrayal of them is physiological rather than pictorial. The points which he selects for comment are those which would particularly be noted by their medical advisers; and the progress of their histories, as he follows them, is characterized by this same scientific minuteness of observation. Zola's ideal of scientific realism (which Björnson has repudiated) has nevertheless found its most brilliant exponent in him. Here the sordid and cruel facts of life are not dwelt upon by preference; nor are they optimistically glossed over. I doubt if a great and vital problem has ever been more vigorously, unflinchingly, and convincingly treated in a work of fiction.

"Paa Guds Veje" ("In the Ways of God"), (1889), in which Thomas Rendalen again figures, though not as hero, is another indictment of conventional morality. It is a very powerful but scarcely an agreeable book. The abrupt, laconic style has no flux, no continuity, and gives the reader the sensation of being pulled up sharply with a curb bit, whenever he fancies that he has a free rein. Though every page is crowded with trenchant and often admirable observations, they have not the coherence of an organic structure, but rather that of a mosaic. The design is obvious, striking, and impressive. It is neither distorted nor overdrawn. It is unquestionably thus we treat moral non-conformists, even though it be in pure self-preservation that they broke the bond which we are agreed to enforce. The question resolves itself into this: Has society, in its effort to uphold its moral standards, the right to exact the sacrifice of life itself and every hope of happiness from the victims of its own ignorance and injustice? When the young physician, Edward Kallem, rescues the eighteen-year old Ragni Kule from the degradation of her marriage to a husband afflicted with a most loathsome disease, and afterward marries her--does he deserve censure or praise? Björnson's answer is unmistakable. It is exactly the situation, depicted five years later, by Madame Sarah Grand in the relation of Edith to the young rake, Sir Moseley Menteith. Only, Björnson rescues the victim, while the author of "The Heavenly Twins" makes her perish. In both instances it is the pious ignorance of clerical parents which precipitates the tragedy. Ragni's deliverance is, however, only an apparent one. Society, which without indignation had witnessed her sale to the corrupt old libertine, is frightfully shocked by her marriage to Dr. Kallem, and manifests its disapproval with an emphasis which takes no account of ameliorating circumstances. The sanguinary ingenuity in the constant slights and stabs to which she is exposed makes her life a martyrdom and finally kills her. "Contempt will pierce the armor of a tortoise," says an oriental proverb; and poor Ragni had no chelonian armor. When her most harmless remarks are misinterpreted and her most generous acts become weapons wherewith to slay her, she loses all heart for resistance, and merely lies down to die. Very subtile and beautiful is the manner in which Björnson indicates the interaction of psychical and physical conditions. The "soul-frost" which chills the very marrow of her bones is so vividly conveyed that you shiver sympathetically. The self-righteous and brutally censorious attitude of the community lowers the temperature and makes the atmosphere deadly. And the fact that it is Ragni's unsuspicious innocence, and even her love of her husband, which expose her to this condemnation is made plain with much delicate art. Her residence of five years in the United States after her divorce, and before her second marriage, had, no doubt, accustomed her to a greater freedom of intercourse between man and woman, and thereby disposed her to trip rather lightly over the stumbling-blocks of prudence.

The history of Kallem's sister, Josephine, and her husband, the Reverend Ole Tuft, which is closely interwoven with the above, furnishes us with two more characters deeply felt and strongly realized. It is they who are the chief instruments of Ragni's martyrdom. As the upholders of social purity, and, as it were, professional guardians of morals, it would seem that Tuft and his wife had scarcely any choice but to condemn marriage with a divorcée. When, however, after Ragni's death, they discover whom they have slain--how much purer, nobler, and of more delicate nature she was than either of them--they are dissolved in shame and remorse. A tremendous crisis in their spiritual lives is produced by the mortal peril of their only child, whom Kallem saves by a skilful operation. Out of the ancient religion of dogmas which judges and damns, Tuft is by these experiences led into a new religion of love, which values life above faith, and charity above all. The reconciliation of brother and sister in the last chapter is profoundly moving. The moral is emphasized in the phrase with which the story closes: "Wherever good men walk, there are the ways of God."

The charm of this novel is, to me, that it is strong, virile, instinct with vital thought. There are blemishes in it, too, which no one will be likely to overlook. Several chapters read like the reports of a clinic in a medical journal, so extremely minute and circumstantial are the accounts of Kallem's operations and hypnotic experiments. An excursion into botany, _à propos of Ragni's walk in the woods, is likewise overloaded with details and teems with scientific terms. But the greatest blemish is the outbreak in Kallem (who has the author's fullest sympathy) of a certain barbaric violence which to civilized people is well-nigh incomprehensible. Thus, when, after an absence of six years, he calls upon his brother-in-law, the pastor, he proceeds to turn handsprings about the latter's study. When, after his marriage, his sister meets him in the street for the purpose of informing him of the scandalous rumors concerning his wife, he gives her a box on the ear.

In Björnson's last book, "New Tales" (Nye Fortaellinger) (1894), this tendency to vehemence is even more marked. In the masterly story, "Absalom's Hair" (than which the author has never written anything more boldly original) old Harold Kaas literally spanks his young wife in the presence of his servants. And the matter is in nowise minced, but described with an unblushing zest which makes the impression of naïveté. It is obvious that in his delight in the exhibition of a healthy, primitive wrath, Björnson half forgets how such barbarism must affect his readers. We hear, to be sure, that the servants were filled with indignation and horror, and that Harold Kaas, having expected laughter and applause, "went away a defeated and irremediably crushed man." But for all that the incident is crude, harsh, and needlessly revolting. In Russia it might have happened; but I am inclined to doubt if a Norwegian gentleman, even though he were descended from the untamable Kurts, would have been capable of so outrageous a breach of decency.

Apart from this incident, "Absalom's Hair" is so interpenetrated with a sense of reality that we seem to live the story rather than read it. I verily believe it to be a type of what the fiction of the future will be, when scientific education shall have been largely substituted for the classical; and even the novelists will be expected to know something about the world in which they live and the sublime and inexorable laws which govern it. At present the majority of them spin irresponsible yarns, and play Providence ad libitum to their characters. Man's vital coherence with his environment is but loosely indicated. Chance reigns supreme. They have observed carefully enough the external phenomena of life--and chiefly for their picturesque or dramatic interest--but of the causes which underlie them they rarely give us a glimpse.

It is in this respect that Björnson's last tales offer so grateful a contrast to conventional fiction. Here is a man who has resolutely aroused himself from the old romantic doze, cleared his eyes of the film of dreams, and with a sharp, wide-awake intensity focussed them to the actual aspect of the actual world. He has sat down with his windows wide open, and allowed the sounds and sights and smells of reality to pour in upon him. And the magic spectacles are his which enable him to gauge the significance of the phenomena and divine the causes which lurk behind them. Therefore his characterizations are often extremely unconventional, and amid all their picturesque vigor of phrase hint at the kind of knowledge which could only be possessed by a family physician. In "Absalom's Hair" we have no mere agglomeration of half-digested scientific data, but a scientific view of life. The story moves, from beginning to end, with a beautiful epic calm and a grand inevitableness which remind one of Tolstoi, and reaches far toward the high-water mark of modern realism. Take, for instance, the characterization of Kirsten Ravn (pp. 11-15), and I wonder where in contemporary fiction so large and deep a comprehension is shown both of psychic and of physical forces. Emma, the heroine of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" is the only parallel I can recall, as regards the kind and method of portraiture, though there is no resemblance between the characters. In the development of the character of Rafael Kaas, there is the same beautiful respect for human nature, the same unshrinking statement of "shocking" facts, and the same undeviating adherence to the logic of reality. The hair by which Rafael, as his prototype, the son of David, is arrested and suspended in the midst of his triumphant race is sensuality. His life is on the point of being wrecked, and his splendid powers are dissipated by his inability to restrain his passions. The tragic fate which hovers over him from the moment of his birth is admirably hinted at, but not emphasized, in the sketch of his parents. The carnal overbalance, supplied by the blood of the Kurts, wellnigh neutralizes the mechanical genius which is hereditary in the blood of the Ravns.

It is reported that "Absalom's Hair" has aroused great indignation in Christiania, because it is claimed that the characters are drawn, with scarcely an attempt at disguise, from well-known persons in the Norwegian capital.

The remaining stories of the volume, "An Ugly Reminiscence of Childhood," "Mother's Hands," and "One Day" betray the same contempt for romantic standards, the same capacity for making acquaintance with life at first hand. The first-named is an account of a murder and execution, and extremely painful. The second is a bit of pathological psychology _à propos of intemperance. Tastes imprisoned, genius cramped and perverted, joy of life (joie de vivre) denied, will avenge themselves. They will break out in drunkenness. The hero of "One Day" is afflicted with the same vice, and apparently for the same reason. The cruel disillusion which in consequence overtakes the poor little soul-starved heroine rises almost to the height of tragedy. It is an every-day tale, full of "deep and blood-veined humanity," and deriving its interest and significance from the very fact of its commonness.

What distinguishes the Norsemen above other nations is, generally speaking, an indestructible self-respect and force of individuality. The old Norse sagas abound in illustrations of this untamable vigor and ruthless self-assertion. It was the looseness of the social structure, resulting from this sense of independence and consequent jealousy and internecine warfare, which destroyed the Icelandic republic and made Norway for four centuries a province of Denmark. In all the great men of Norway we recognize something of the rampant individualism of their Viking forefathers. Ibsen is the modern apostle par excellence of philosophic anarchism; and Björnson, too, has his full share of the national aggressiveness and pugnacity. For all that there is a radical difference between the two. The sense of social obligation which Ibsen lacks, Björnson possesses in a high degree. He fights, not as a daring guerilla, but as the spokesman and leader of thousands. He is the chieftain who looms a head above all the people. He wields a heavy sword, and he deals mighty blows. The wrath that possesses him is, however, born of love. He fights man in the name of humanity. It is not for himself, primarily, that he demands larger liberties, securer rights, more humanizing conditions of life; but it is for his fellow-men. The many, the small and down-trodden, the dumb millions, whom Ibsen despises, Björnson loves. As Dr. Brandes[11] has so happily said:

[11] Det Moderne Gjennembruds Maend, p. 60.

"Ibsen is a judge, stern as the old judges of Israel. Björnson is a prophet, the hopeful herald of a better day. Ibsen is, in the depth of his mind, a great revolutionist. In 'The Comedy of Love,' 'A Doll's House,' and 'Ghosts,' he scourges marriage; in 'Brand,' the State Church; in the 'Pillars of Society,' the dominant bourgeoisie. Whatever he attacks is shivered into splinters by his profound and superior criticism. Only the shattered ruins remain, and we are unable to espy the new social institutions beyond them. Björnson is a conciliatory spirit who wages war without bitterness. April sunshine glints and gleams through all his works, while those of Ibsen, with their sombre seriousness, lie in deep shadow. Ibsen loves the idea--the logical and psychological consistency which drives Brand out of the church and Nora out of the marital relation. To Ibsen's love of the idea corresponds Björnson's love of man."

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

As Björnson's works have been translated not only into English, French, and German, but also largely into Russian, Italian, Spanish, Bohemian, and even remoter tongues, a bibliography, including all translations, would demand a volume by itself. I shall therefore only enumerate the more important English translations; but would warn my readers not to judge Björnson's style by that of his translators. Arne: Translated by Augusta Plesner and S. R. Powers (Boston, 1872). The Happy Boy: Translated by H. R. G. (Boston, 1872). The Railroad and the Churchyard, The Eagle's Nest, and The Father are contained in the volume to which Goldschmidt's The Flying Mail gives the title (Sever, Francis & Co., Boston and Cambridge, 1870). The following volumes are translated by Professor R. B. Anderson, and published in a uniform edition by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. (Boston, 1881): Synnöve Solbakken, Arne, A Happy Boy, The Fisher Maiden, The Bridal March, Magnhild, Captain Mansana and other Stories. Sigurd Slembe: A Dramatic Trilogy: Translated by William Morton Payne (Boston and New York, 1888). Arne and The Fisher Lassie: Translated, with an Introduction, by W. H. Low (Bohn Library, London). Pastor Sang (Over Aevne): Translated by Wm. Wilson (London, 1893). In God's Way (Heinemann's International Library, London, 1891). The Heritage of the Kurts, 1892. A Gauntlet. A Play. London, 1894. A new translation of all Björnson's novels and tales has just been announced by Messrs. Macmillan & Co., and the first volume, Synnöve Solbakken (New York and London, 1895), has appeared. The translation is rather slipshod.

[The end]
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen's essay: Bjornstjerne Bjornson

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