Essays on Scandinavian Literature | Page 6

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