Part 2 (1/2)
The Merchant I have not been able to go to church very h And in the foul air
The King You go to sleep But are you a Christian?
The Merchant That goes without saying
The King (_to the Priest_) And you are naturally one?
The Priest By the grace of Jesus I hope that I am
The King That is the for to say Therefore, you are a Christian community, and it is no fault of mine if such a community will not deal seriously hat concerns Christianity Greet it from me, and say that it must have an eye to the institution ofto do with suchThat tone! I know it--it does not search the air in which the patient lives, but the lungs There you have it! Nevertheless, Christianity must have an eye to the monarchy--must pluck the lie from it--must not follow it to its coronation in the church, as an ape follows a peacock I knohat I felt in that situation I had gone through with a rehearsal the day before--ho, ho! Ask the Christianity in this land, if it be not time to concern itself with the er, it seems to me, let the monarchy play the part of the seductive wanton who turns the thoughts of all citizens to hich is e of Christianity--and to class distinctions, to luxury, to show and vanity The ht man to share in its falsehood”
The conversation that follows is in a vein of bitterness on the one side, and of obtuse srows deeper and deeper, until in the end the king, co room, and dies by his own hand, to the consternation of the ive utterance to a few polite phrases, charitably accounting for the deed by the easy attribution of insanity to the king, and the curtain falls
It ” made a stir in literary and social circles, and quite noticeably fluttered the dovecotes of conventionality and conservatis and such deadly earnestness of conviction were indeed far removed from the idyllic simplicity of the peasant tales and froht years later, Bjornson prefaced a new edition of this ith a series of reflections upon ”Intellectual Freedoorous and remarkable examples of his serious prose The central ideas of his political faith are e sentences from this preface:--
”Intellectual Freedoain to the fact that for the great peoples, who have sointerests, the free co many others; while for us, the small peoples, it is absolutely indispensable A people nuht and enterprise that no political censure can reduce to a minimum; but under narrower conditions it may easily come about that the whole people will fall asleep A powerful propaganda of enlightenment under the conditions of free speech is for us of the first and the last importance When I wrote this piece it was ht I have later ion and morals When my opponents seek to sum up my character in a feords, they are apt to say: 'He attacks the throne and the altar' It seems to me that I have served the freedo leave to reply (1) _Concerning the attack on Christianity_ It may be worth while in a country with a state church to recall now and then theof Christianity It is not an institution, still less a book, and least of all it is a house or a se to the precepts and exa Christianity when they investigate the historical origin or the ation can result only in growth Christianity, with or without its whole apparatus of dogma, will endure in its essence for thousands of years after us; there will always be spiritually-reat I honor all the noble I have friends a the Christians, who their Christianity I have no higher wish than to see them by its help transform certain aspects of our society into seriousness (2) _Concerning the attack on monarchy_ Monarchy is, on the other hand, an institution, here the circumstances are naturally different I have attacked monarchy, and I will attack it But--and to this 'but' I call the closest attention
Shortly before the July Revolution, when its first signs were declared, Chateaubriand was talking with the King, who asked what it all meant
'It is monarchy that is done with,' replied the royalist, for he was also a seer Certainly there have been in France both kingdom and empire since that day If there should be no more hereafter, they still exist in other lands, and will endure for generations after us
But 'done with' are they none the less; notice was given them by the French Revolution It does not concern them all sidodoms based upon conquest But the face of civilization is now turned toward the republic, and every people has reached the first, second, or third stage of the way ”If a work of the mind is born of Norse conditions and stands before the ethical judgment seat--let it have its full action; otherwise it will not produce its full reaction
If the faith that gave shape to the piece is not the strongest force in the society that gave it birth, it will evoke an opposing force of greater strength Thereby all will gain But to ignore it, or seek to crush it--that in a large society reatlyits place; but in a sht of its only eye”
In the clean-cut phrases and ia pro vita sua_, which deserves to be reproduced at greater length, we have the er poet alone, but poet and prophet at once, the chaurd Slembe of our own day, happier than his prototype in the consciousness that the aether thwarted, and that his beneficent activity is not made sterile even by the bitterest opposition
Only a rapid glanceupon the publication of ”The King” The story of ”Magnhild,”
planned several years earlier, represents Bjornson's return to fiction after a long dramatic interlude There are still peasants in this story, but they are different froures of the early tales, and the atmosphere of the work is modern It turns upon the question of the er unites them
The solution seems to lie in separation when union has thus become essentially immoral ”Captain Mansana” is a story of Italian life, based, so the author assures us, on actual characters and happenings that had co his stay abroad Its interest does not lie in any particular probleure, a strong and iests that of Ferdinand Lassalle, as the author himself points out to us in a prefatory note ”Dust” is a pathetic little story having for its central idea what seems like a pale reflection of the idea of Ibsen's ”Ghosts,” which had appeared a few months before It is the dust of the past that settles upon our souls, and clogs their free action The special application of this thought is to the religious training of children:--
”When you teach children that the life here below is nothing to the life above, that to be visible is nothing in co is nothing in co dead, that is not the way to teach thee, strength for work, and love of country”
In the play, ”Leonarda,” and again in the play, ”A Glove,” the author recurs to the woman question; in the one case, his theme is the attitude of society toward the woman of blemished reputation; in the other, its attitude toward the man who in his relation omen has violated the moral law ”Leonarda” is a somewhat inconclusive work, because the issue is not clearly defined, but in ”A Glove” (at least in the acting version of the play, which differs fro) there is no lack of definiteness This play inexorably demands the enforcement of the same standard of morality for both sexes, and declares the unchaste e as the unchaste wo and violent discussion raged; but if there be such a thing as an immutable moral law in this matter, it must be that upon which Bjornson has so squarely and unco work of this five-year period is the play called ”The New Systeeineer who de the eyes of the public He succeeds eventually, but not until he has encountered every sort of contemptible opposition and hypocritical evasion of the plain truth The social satire of the piece is subtle and sharp; what the author really aims at is to illustrate, by a specific example, the repressive forces that dominate the life of a small people, and make it almost impossible for any sort of truth to triumph over prejudice
Since the production of ”A Glove,” twenty years ago, eight more plays have come from Bjornson's prolific pen Of these by far the most important are the two that are linked by the coth” The translation of this title is hopelessly inadequate, because the original word th; it means talent, faculty, capability, the sum total of a man's endow this name are quite different in theme, but certain characters appear in both, and both express the saht that it is vain forthey lose sight of the actual possibilities of huoes to waste because it is devoted to the pursuit of ideals that are indeed beyond the strength of man to realize In the first of the two plays, this superhuious, it is that of the enthusiast who accepts literally the teaching that to faith all things are possible; in the second, the ideal is social, it is that of the refor deed of terror and self-immolation for the cause of the people will suffice to overthrow the selfish existing order, and create for the toiling edies have been conceived by Bjornson than these two, the tragedy of the saintlike Pastor Sang, who believes that the miracle of his wife's restoration to health has at last in very truth been wrought by his fervent prayer, and finds only that the ardor of his faith and hers has brought death instead of life to theedy of his son Elias, who dies like Samson with his foes for an equally impossible faith, and by the very violence of his fanaticisoal of socialist endeavor farther than ever into the di than these plays, with their twofold treatment of essentially the sa which offers a clearer revelation of his own rich personality, with its unfailing poetic vision, its deep tenderness, and its boundless love for all huraphy and Love,” which ca piece, in the vein of light and graceful co how he unconsciously coh absorption in his work The author was, in a way, taking genial aim at himself in this piece, a fact which his son Bjorn, who played the principal part, did not hesitate to e,” the next play, deals with the passions engendered by political controversy, and ian society because certain of the characters and situations were unmistakeably taken from real life
After these plays came ”Laboremus” and ”At Storhove,” both concerned with substantially the san influence exerted by an evil-minded and reckless woman upon the lives of others From a different point of viee may say that the subject of these plays is the consecration of the home This has always been a favorite theratitude than that which he has earned by his unfailing insistence upon the sanctity of family life, itsthe list, we have ”Daglannet,” another domestic drama of simple structure, and ”When the New Wine Bloo woement that too often creeps into s that proe to seek to renew the joys of youth
During the years that have passed since the publication of ”Dust,”
Bjornson has produced four volureat novels, a third novel of less didactic mission, and a second collection of short stories The first of the novels, ”Flags Are Flying in City and Harbor,” saw the light during the year following the publication of ”A Glove,” and the teaching of that play is again enforced with uncoic in the development of the story The work has two other main themes, and these are heredity and education So much didactic matter as this is a heavy burden for any novel to carry, and a lesser man than Bjornson would have found the task a hopeless one
That he should have succeeded even ina fairly readable book out of this material would have been remarkable, and it is a pronounced artistic triu interest
For absorbingly interesting it is, to any reader who is willing that a novel should provide so more than entertainment; and who is not afraid of a work of fiction that compels him to think as he reads The principal character is a man descended from a line of ancestors whose lives have been wild and lawless, and who have ed in alenerations of the race are depicted for us in a series of brief but masterly characterizations, in which every stroke tells, and itness the gradual weakening of the fa the orous strain of peasant blood, and the process of regeneration has begun It is this process that goes on before our eyes It does not becoht for the future, and the flags that fly over town and harbor in the closing chapter have a synificance, for they announce a victory of spirit over sense, not only in the cases of certain a the individual participants in the action, but also in the case of the whole co So much for the book as a study in heredity As an educational tract, it has the conspicuous virtue of re the spirit of y The hero of the book,--the last descendant of a race struggling for moral and physical rehabilitation,--throws hiy equal to that which his forbears had turned into various perverse channels He organizes a school, more than half of the book, in fact, is about this school and its work,--and seeks to introduce a syste which shall shape the whole character of the child, a school in which truth and clean living shall be inculcated with thoroughness and absolute sincerity, a school which shall be the microcosht to be Bjornson's interest in education has been life-long; for , but at the time when this book caht of reason If the future should cease to care for this work as a piece of literature, it will still look back to it as to a sort of nineteenth century ”Ee
”In God's Ways,” the second of the two great novels, is a work of which it is difficult to speak in terms of measured praise With its delicate and vital delineations of character, its rich syic pathos, its plea for the sacredness of huious and social prejudice by which life is so often misshapen, this book is an epito of the author's personality, and have received such manifold expression in his works It is a simple story, concerned mainly with four people, in no way outwardly conspicuous, yet here united by the poet's art into a relationshi+p from which issue some of the deepest of social questions, and which enforces in theof all the work of his mature years First of all, we have the boyhood of the two friends who are afterwards to grow apart in their syinative, open to every intellectual influence, also impetuous and hot-blooded; the other shy and intellectually stolid, but good to the very core, and est of altruistic impulses In accordance with their respective characters, the first of these youths becoyman Then we have the sister of the physician, who becoy to the in Then we have a wo, abnormally sensitive, a child when the years of childhood are over, and e to a crippled old man She it is whoal dissolution of her immoral union After some years, he makes her his wife, and their happiness would be coious prejudice aroused The clergyman, whootry, is officially, as it were, compelled to condemn the friend of his boyhood, and even the sister, for a tienerous nature, shares in the estrangement