Tales of Two Countries | Page 4

However, as his private activity is
not bounded by the precincts of St. Peter's Parish, within which the
society confines its remedial labors, the miserable creatures who might
need its aid are sent away uncomforted. The delicious joke of the thing
is that "St. Peter's" is a rich and exclusive parish, consisting of what is
called "the better classes," and has no "abandoned women." Whatever
wickedness there may be in St. Peter's is discreetly veiled, and makes
no claim upon public charity. The virtuous horror of the secretary when
she hears that the "abandoned woman" who calls upon her for aid has a
child, though she is unmarried, is both comic and pathetic. It is the
clean, "deserving poor," who understand the art of hypocritical
humility--it is these whom the society seeks in vain in St. Peter's Parish.

Still another problem of the most vital consequence Kielland has
attacked in his two novels, Poison and Fortuna (1884). It is, broadly
stated, the problem of education. The hero in both books is Abraham
Lövdahl, a well-endowed, healthy, and altogether promising boy who,
by the approved modern educational process, is mentally and morally
crippled, and the germs of what is great and good in him are
systematically smothered by that disrespect for individuality and
insistence upon uniformity, which are the curses of a small society. The
revolutionary discontent which vibrates in the deepest depth of
Kielland's nature; the profound and uncompromising radicalism which
smoulders under his polished exterior; the philosophical pessimism
which relentlessly condemns all the flimsy and superficial reformatory
movements of the day, have found expression in the history of the
childhood, youth, and manhood of Abraham Lvdahl. In the first place,
it is worthy of note that to Kielland the knowledge which is offered in
the guise of intellectual nourishment is poison. It is the dry and dusty
accumulation of antiquarian lore, which has little or no application to
modern life--it is this which the young man of the higher classes is
required to assimilate. Apropos of this, let me quote Dr. G. Brandes,
who has summed up the tendency of these two novels with great
felicity:
"The author has surveyed the generation to which he himself belongs,
and after having scanned these wide domains of emasculation, these
prairies of spiritual sterility, these vast plains of servility and
irresolution, he has addressed to himself the questions: How does a
whole generation become such? How was it possible to nip in the bud
all that was fertile and eminent? And he has painted a picture of the
history of the development of the present generation in the home-life
and school-life of Abraham Lövdahl, in order to show from what kind
of parentage those most fortunately situated and best endowed have
sprung, and what kind of education they received at home and in the
school. This is, indeed, a simple and an excellent theme.
"We first see the child led about upon the wide and withered common
of knowledge, with the same sort of meagre fodder for all; we see it
trained in mechanical memorizing, in barren knowledge concerning
things and forms that are dead and gone; in ignorance concerning the
life that is, in contempt for it, and in the consciousness of its privileged

position, by dint of its possession of this doubtful culture. We see pride
strengthened; the healthy curiosity, the desire to ask questions, killed."
We are apt to console ourselves on this side of the ocean with the idea
that these social problems appertain only to the effete monarchies of
Europe, and have no application with us. But, though I readily admit
that the keenest point of this satire is directed against the small States
which, by the tyranny of the dominant mediocrity, cripple much that is
good and great by denying it the conditions of growth and development,
there is yet a deep and abiding lesson in these two novels which applies
to modern civilization in general, exposing glaring defects which are no
less prevalent here than in the Old World.
Besides being the author of some minor comedies and a full-grown
drama ("The Professor"), Kielland has published two more novels, _St.
John's Eve_ (1887) and Snow. The latter is particularly directed against
the orthodox Lutheran clergy, of which the Rev. Daniel Jürges is an
excellent specimen. He is, in my opinion, not in the least caricatured;
but portrayed with a conscientious desire to do justice to his sincerity.
Mr. Jürges is a worthy type of the Norwegian country pope, proud and
secure in the feeling of his divine authority, passionately hostile to "the
age," because he believes it to be hostile to Christ; intolerant of dissent;
a guide and ruler of men, a shepherd of the people. The only trouble in
Norway, as elsewhere, is that the people