Fritofs Saga | Page 6

assistance, only to let the image she was warming by the fire fall into the flames. As the image had previously been anointed, the flames shot up at once and soon the whole house was wrapped in fire. Fritiof, however, got the ring before he went away. But as he walked out of the temple, said the people, he flung a firebrand at the roof, so that all the house was wrapped in flames. Of the violent feeling that, according to Tegnér, racked Fritiof's soul as he went into exile or of the deep sense of guilt that latter hung as a pall over his life there is no mention in the original. Here we touch upon the most thoroughgoing change that Tegnér made in the character of his hero. He invested him with a sentimentality, a disposition towards melancholy, an accusing voice of conscience that torments his soul until full atonement has been won, that are modern and Christian in essence and entirely foreign to the pagan story. On this point Tegnér: "Another peculiarity common to the people of the North is a certain disposition for melancholy and heaviness of spirit common to all deeper characters. Like some elegiac key-note, its sound pervades all our old national melodies, and generally whatever is expressive in our annals, for it is found in the depths of the nation's heart. I have somewhere or other said of Bellman, the most national of our poets:
'And work the touch of gloom his brow o'shading, A Northern minstrel-look, a grief in rosy red!'
For this melancholy, so far from opposing the fresh liveliness and cheering vigor common to the nation, only gives them yet more strength and elasticity. There is a certain kind of life-enjoying gladness (and of this, public opinion has accused the French) which finally reposes on frivolity; that of the North is built on seriousness. And therefore I have also endeavored to develop in Fritiof somewhat of this meditative gloom. His repentant regret at the unwilling temple fire, his scrupulous fear of Balder (Canto 15) who--
'Sits in the sky, cloudy thoughts sending down, Ever veiling my spirit in gloom',
and his longing for the final reconciliation and for calm within him, are proofs not only of a religious craving, but also and still more of a national tendency to sorrowfulness common to every serious mind, at least in the North of Europe." [Tegnér, Samlade Skrifter, II, p. 394.]
Tegnér thus found it easy to justify the sentimentality that characterizes Fritiof's love for Ingeborg, an element in Fritiofs Saga that has been most severely condemned by the critics. To the criticism that this love is too modern and Platonic, Tegnér correctly answers that reverence for the sex was from the earliest times a characteristic of the German people so that the light and coarse view that prevailed among the most cultivated nations of antiquity was a thing quite foreign to the habits of the North.
Ingeborg like Fritiof is idealized by the poet although here the departure from the original is not as wide. That delicacy of sentiment which is inseparable from Ingeborg and guides her right in the great crisis is not, he maintains, a trait merely of the woman of ancient Scandinavia but is inherent in each noble female, no matter when or where she lives. And Tegnér, who surely was no realist after the fashion of Strindberg, chooses to picture woman as she appears in her loveliest forms.
The brooding and melancholy spirit that Tegnér had infused into the soul of Fritiof had in a large measure come from his own life. The depression of mind that had cast its shadows over him in the years that saw the creation of Fritiofs Saga grew steadily worse. The period that followed immediately upon the completion of this work was filled with doubt and despair. The explanation for this must be found partly in the insidious progress of a physical disease, partly to a change of place and environment. Certain hereditary tendencies, which caused him to fear that the light of reason would desert him, also played a part in this.
In 1824 he gave up the Greek professorship at Lund to become bishop of the diocese of V?xi? in the province of Sm?land, but the duties of the new position were not congenial to him. The spiritual and intellectual life of the diocese was on a low plane and Tegnér threw himself with tremendous earnestness into the work of reform, but the prejudice and inertia of clergy and people stood constantly in the way. In his efforts to purge the church of some unworthy ecclesiastics he encountered bitter opposition and suffered some humiliations. He took a special interest in the schools of his diocese and his many pedagogical addresses are models in point of clearness and practical