Part 1 (2/2)
”One day, I know, shall my soul free roam Over the lofty mountains
Oh, my God, fair is thy home, Ajar is the door for all who co grows stronger”
At the age of eleven Bjornson's school days began at Molde, and were continued at Christiania in a famous preparatory school, where he had Ibsen for a comrade He entered the university in his twentieth year, but his career was not brilliant from a scholastic point of view, and he was too much occupied with his own intellectual concerns to be a model student From his matriculation in 1852, to the appearance of his first book in 1857, he was occupied with ed in journalism The theatre, in particular, attracted him, for the theatre was one of the chief foci of the intellectual life of his country (as it should be in every country), and he plunged into draian ideals, holding hieland, Who had died about ten years earlier Before beco a dramatic critic, he had essayed dramatic authorshi+p, and the acceptance by the theatre of his juvenile play, ”Valborg,” had led to a soiven a free ticket of ad opened his eyes to the defects of his own accepted work, which he withdrew before it had been inflicted upon the public The full consciousness of his poetical calling ca at the university town of Upsala, whither he had gone as a special correspondent ”When I came home from the journey,” 'he says, ”I slept three whole days with a few brief intervals for eating and conversation Then I wrote down my impressions of the journey, but just because I had first lived and then written, the account got style and color; it attracted attention, and made me all the more certain that the hour had coht it all over, wrote and rewrote 'Between the Battles' in a fortnight, and travelled to Copenhagen with the completed piece in”Synnove Solbakken,”
published it in part as a newspaper serial, and then in book forood earnest
The next fifteen years of Bjornson's life were richly productive
Within a single year he had published ”Arne,” the second of his peasant idyls and perhaps the most remarkable of them all, and had also published two brief dramas, ”Halte-Hulda” and the one already mentioned as the achieve product of the fifteen years includes two more prose idyls, ”A Happy Boy” and ”The Fisher Maiden” (with a considerable number of small pieces similar in character); threeSverre,” ”Sigurd Sle of the story of ”Mary Stuart in Scotland”; a little social comedy, ”The Newly Married Couple,” which offers a foretaste of his later exclusive preoccupation withpoem, a wild narrative of the clash between heathendom and the Christian faith in the days of Olaf the Holy; and, last but by no s” Thus at the age of forty, Bjornson found himself with a dozen books to his credit books which had stirred his fellow country them to the full consciousness of their own nature and of its roots in their own heroic past He had become the voice of his people as no one had been before hiian aspiration, the syian Character He had, in short, created a national literature where none had before existed, and he was still in his early prime
The collected edition of Bjornson's ”Tales,” published in 1872, together with ”The Bridal March,” separately published in the following year, gives us a coenius which is best known to the world at large Here are five stories of considerable length, and a nuian peasant is portrayed with inti in European literature, for the na of many others, at once come to the mind In Scandinavian literature, its chief representative had been the Danish novelist, Blicher, who had written with insight and charm of the peasantry of Jutland But in the treatment of peasant life by most of Bjornson's predecessors there had been too much of the _de haut en bas_ attitude; the peasant had been drawn from the outside, viewed philosophically, and invested with artificial sentiment
Bjornson was too near to his own country folk to commit such faults as these; he was himself of peasant stock, and all his boyhood life had been spent in close association with rateful soil Although a poet by instinct, he was not afraid of realis the brutal aspects of peasant life a place upon his canvas In e the characteristics of reticence and _navete_ he really discovered the Norwegian peasant for literary purposes Beneath the words spoken by his characters we are constantlythat remain unexpressed; whether from native pride or from a sense of the inadequacy of mere words to set forth a critical uished by the most laconic utterance, yet their speech always has draer speaks of thewords:--
”It is as if the author purposely set in ht do their oork The greatest poet is he who understands how to awaken fancy and feeling to their highest degree of self-activity And this is Bjornson's greatness in his peasant novels, that he has poured from his horn of plenty a wealth of situations and motives that hold the reader's mind and burn themselves into it, that become his personal possession just because the author has kno to suggest so much in so feords”
In some respects, the little sketch called ”The Father” is the supreme example of Bjornson's artistry in this kind There are only a few pages in all, but they eedy of a lifetiem of the purest water, and it reveals the whole secret of the author's genius, as displayed in his early tales It is by these tales of peasant life that Bjornson is best known outside of his own country; one may almost say that it is by thelish readers A free translation of ”Synnove Solbakken” was made as early as 1858, by Mary Howitt, and published under the title of ”Trust and Trial” Translations of the other tales were inal appearance, and in some instances have been multiplied It is thus a noteworthy fact that Bjornson, although four years the junior of Ibsen, enjoyed a vogue a which the na of tilected older author has had more than the proportional share of our attention than is fairly his due
In his delineation of the Norwegian peasant character, Bjornson was greatly aided by the study of the sagas, which he had read with enthusiasely formed, and their vivid dramatic representation of the life of the early Norse both his ideals and the form of their expression The modern Scandinavian may well be envied for his literary inheritance fro to coor and wealth of romantic material The literature which blossomed in Iceland and flourished for two or three centuries wherever Norsemen made homes for the like their record remains to us from any other primitive people This
”Tale of the Northland of old And the undying glory of dreaenius, and, during the early period of his career, which is now under review, it made its influence felt alike in his tales, his draht of the sagas and the sagas in the light of the peasant” he declared to be the fundamental principle of his literarythe fifteen years which made Bjornson in so peculiar a sense the spokesa dramas The first two of these works, ”Between the Battles”
and ”Halte-Hulda,” are rather slight perforh a more extended work, is not particularly noteworthy
The gri, and the poet has not freed hiurd Sleenius, and produced one of the noblest ely planned and y ritten in Munich, and published in 1862 The la,” but the author has used the prerogative of the artist to siinative creation, rich in human interest, and powerful in dramatic presentation The story is concerned with the efforts of Sigurd, nicknamed ”Sle the first half of the twelfth century He was a son of King Magnus Barfod, and, although of illegitially make this claim The secret of his birth has been kept from him until he has come to manhood, and the revelation of this secret by his y, which is a single act, written in blank verse Recognizing the futility of urging his birthright at this time, he starts off to win faurd Jorsalfar, then king of Norway The remainder of the work is in prose, and was, in fact, written before this poetical prologue The second section, in three acts, deals with an episode in the Orkneys, five years later Sigurd has not even then journeyed to the Holy Land, but he has wandered elsewhere afar, thwarted a at his heart
He beco the rule of the islands Both parties seek to use hih leadershi+p is in his grasp, he tears himself away, appalled by the revelation of cris
In this section of the e have the subtly conceived and Haure of Earl Harald, in whose interest Frakark, a Norse Lady Macbeth, plots theupon Harald himself the terrible death that she has planned for his brother Here, also, we have the gracious ure of Audhild, perhaps the loveliest of all Bjornson's delineations of woure worthy to be ranked with the heroines of Shakespeare and Goethe, who rerant in our urd and Audhild comes the one hour of sunshi+ne in both their lives, but the love is destined to end in a noble renunciation and to leave only a hallowed memory in token of its brief existence
Ten more years as a crusader and a wanderer over the face of the earth pass by before we y But his resolution is taken He has returned to his native land, and will claim his own The land is now ruled by Harald Gille, who is, like Sigurd Sle the last senile years of Sigurd Jorsalfar's life, had won the recognition that Sigurd Sleht have won had he not 's brother When the king died, he left a son nanus, who should have been his successor, but whoht himself occupy the throne The five acts of this third section of the trilogy cover the last two years of Sigurd Sleain his end, first by conciliation, and afterwards,and his followers, by assassination and violence He has becoe, and however desperate his measures, he retains our sympathy to the end because we feel that circuer of his country, and that his underlyinghas not been ato serve his people, and to rule thee and soleurd is to be captured and put to death by his enemies The actual manner of his death was too horrible even for the purposes of tragedy; and the poet has chosen the better part in ending the play with a foreshadowing of the outcourd has made his last stand, his Danish allies have deserted him, and he well knoill be the next day's issue And here we have one of the noblest illustrations in all literature of that _Versohnung_ which is the last word of tragic art For in this supreht for so many years comes to him when least expected, and all the tempests of life are stilled That reconciliation which the hour of approaching death brings to ic pitch, has come to him also; he now sees that this was the inevitable end, and the recognition of the fitness hich events have shaped thes with it an exaltation of soul in which life is seen revealed in its true aspect No longer veiled in the aze, he takes note of what it really is, and casts it from him In this hour of passionless conte torn froht, of the proble blindly atteled to avert, his higher self, at last set free, calladly accepts
”What ranted! Peace, perfect peace! Then I will go to-morrow to my last battle as to the altar; peace shall at last be s reconciliation to ether, as in the thought of God all others; never yet has it seemed so fair to reatly I have done it ill! But how has it all so cos I saw thy s for Christave thee wound upon wound
”But now, in conte this fairest autu farewell”
The action of ”Sigurd Sle of which is herd translated in exact reproduction of the original forether with bated breath; 'Marry thee, sister, that I may stay, Stay, stay, In thy house,' quoth Death
”Death laughed aloud when Sin ed, Wed, wed, And danced on the bridal day: But bore that night froroom in a shroud away
”Death came to her sister at break of day, Day, day, And Sin dreeary breath; 'He whom thou lovest is mine for aye, Aye, aye, Mine he is,' quoth Death”
One urd Slereatest achieveurd Jorsalfar,” was not published until ten years later, and th or poetic inspiration The author called it a ”folkplay,” and announced the intention, which was never fulfilled, of as, ”which should appeal to every eye and every stage of culture, to each in its oay, and at the perfor, would experience the joy of fellow feeling” The experi, and is carried out without didacticisorous and well planned, but for the reader it has little of the dra drae
The two volureater part of Bjornson's poetry not dramatic in form were both published in 1870 One of thes,” the other was the epic cycle, ”Arnljot Gelline,” the only long poem that he has written The volume of lyrics includes ht value,--personal tributes and occasional productions,--but it includes also those national songs that every Norwegian knows by heart, that are sung upon all national occasions by the author's friends and foes alike, and that have reatest of Norway's lyric poets No translation can ever quite reproduce their cadence or their feeling; they illustrate the one aspect of Bjornson's enius that e A friend once asked hi a poet His reply was as follows:--