Essays on Scandinavian Literature | Page 3

forced him to return to his father's parsonage.
After several years of steadily unsuccessful study, Bj?rnson 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 na?vet�� 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 d��but 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 Bj?rnson, 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. Bj?rnson, 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, Bj?rnson 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 Bj?rnson'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 na?ve 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 Bj?rnson 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 "Synn?ve Solbakken" (Synn?ve 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