Part 8 (2/2)

His inability to restrain his wit in this particular direction has done some injury to his memory. Not that his fancy had any taint of uncleanness. It was open and cheerful as the sunlight; and as the sunlight played brightly over all things without fastidious discrimination. There was a rich, and healthy humanity about him which manifested itself in an impartial, all-embracing delight in the glow and color of mere sensuous existence. There has scarcely ever been a great poet (Dante perhaps excepted) who has not had his share of this pagan joy in nudity. Goethe's ”Roman Elegies” are undisguisedly Anacreontic, and the most spiritual of modern poets, Robert Browning, is as deep and varied and bountiful in the expression he gives to life in its sensuous phases as in its highest ascetic transports.

Do not imagine, then, that I am apologizing for Tegner, I am merely trying to account for him. From his Homer, whom he loved above all other poets, he had in a measure derived that artistic paganism which perceptibly colored his personality. There was nothing of the scholarly prig or pedant about him. In his lectures he gave himself, his own view of life, and his own interpretation of his authors. And it was because of the greatness of the man, the unhackneyed vigor of his speech, and the power of his intellect that the students flocked to his lecture-hall and listened with enthusiasm to his teaching.

I am not by any means sure, however, that much of his popularity was also due to what, at this stage of his career, may without disrespect be called his immaturity. That wholesome robustness in his acceptance of life which finds utterance in his early songs must have established a quick bond of sympathy between him and his youthful hearers. The instincts of the predatory man were yet strong in him. The tribal feeling which we call patriotism, the juvenile defiance which carries a chip on its shoulder as a challenge to the world, the boastful self-a.s.sertion which is always ridiculous in every nation but our own--impart a splendid martial resonance to his first notable poem, ”War-Song for the Scanian Reserves” (1808). There was a charming, frank ferocity in this patriotic bugle-blast which found an echo in every Swedish heart. The rapid dactylic metres, with the captivating rhymes, alternating with the more contemplative trochees, were admirably adapted for conveying the ebullient indignation and wrath which hurls its gauntlet into the face of fate itself,[28] checked, as it were, and cooled by soberer reflection and retrospective regret. It is the sorrow for the yet recent loss of Finland which inspires the elegiac tones in Tegner's war-song; and it is his own ardent, youthful spirit, his own deep and sincere love of country, which awakes the martial melody with the throbbing of the drum and the rousing alarum of trumpets. What can be more delightfully--shall I say juvenile--than this reference to the numerical superiority of the Muscovites:

”Many, are they? Well, then, of the many Sweden shall drink the red blood and be free!

Many? We count not the warriors' numbers Only the fallen shall numbered be.”

[28]

”Vi Kaste var handske Mot Odet sjelf.”

It is with no desire to disparage Tegner that I say that this strain, which is that of all his early war-songs, is extremely becoming to him.

It is not a question of the legitimacy of the sentiment, but of the fulness and felicity of its expression. As long as we have wars we must have martial bards, and with the exception of the German, Theodor KOrner, I know none who can bear comparison with Tegner. English literature can certainly boast no war-poem which would not be drowned in the mighty music of Tegner's ”Svea,” ”The Scanian Reserves,” and that magnificent, dithyrambic declamation, ”King Charles, the Young Hero.”

Tennyson's ”Charge of the Light Brigade” is technically a finer poem than anything Tegner has written, but it lacks the deep virile ba.s.s, the tremendous volume of breath and voice, and the captivating martial lilt which makes the heart beat w.i.l.l.y nilly to the rhythm of the verse.

The popularity which Tegner gained by ”The Scanian Reserves” was the immediate cause of his appointment to a professors.h.i.+p at the University of Lund, and his next notable poem, ”Svea,” which won him the great prize of the Swedish Academy, raised him to a height of fame which naturally led to further promotion. According to the curious custom of Sweden, a professor may, even though he has never studied theology, take orders and accept the charge of a parish. He is regarded as being, by dint of his learning, in the regular line of clerical promotion; and the elevation from a professors.h.i.+p (though it be not a theological one) into a bishopric is no infrequent occurrence. There was therefore nothing anomalous in Tegner's appointment (February, 1812) as pastor of Stafvie and Lackalange, and his subsequent promotion (February, 1824) to the bishopric of WexiO. His pastorate he was permitted to combine with his professors.h.i.+p of Greek, to which he was simultaneously transferred from that of aesthetics, and the office was chiefly valuable to him on account of the addition which it procured him to his income. The nearness of his parish to Lund enabled him to preach in the country on Sundays as regularly as he lectured in the city on week-days. His other pastoral duties he could not very well discharge _in absentia_, and they probably remained in a measure undischarged. He had not sought the parish; it was the parish which had sought him; and he exerted himself to the utmost to fill the less congenial office as conscientiously as he did his academic chair. The peasants of Stafvie and Lackalange were always welcome at his hospitable board; he gave them freely his advice, and in order to recall and emphasize his own kins.h.i.+p with them, he invited a peasant woman to become the G.o.dmother of his youngest son, and selected all the sponsors from the same cla.s.s.

This was not the only occasion on which Tegner demonstrated his superiority to all sn.o.bbish pretensions. He was not only not ashamed of his peasant descent, but he was proud of it. Once (1811) during a visit to Ramen, he took it into his head that he desired to know, from actual experience, the kind of lives which his ancestors must have lived; and to that end he dressed himself in wadmal, loaded a dray with pig-iron, greased its axles, harnessed his team, and drove it to the nearest city, a distance of ten to twelve miles. He induced three of his brothers-in-law, two of whom were army officers and one a government clerk, to follow his example. Up hill and down hill they trudged, and arrived late in the afternoon, footsore and with blistered hands, in the town, where they reported at the office of a commission merchant, sold their iron and obtained their receipts. That of Tegner was made out to Esaias Esaia.s.son, which would have been his name, if his father had never risen from the soil. The four sham peasants now bought seed-corn with the money they had obtained for their iron, loaded again their wagons, and started for home. But they had forgotten to take into account the robustness of the rustic appet.i.te, and before they had proceeded far their bag of provisions was empty. To add to their discomfort the rain began to pour down, but they would not seek shelter. After midnight they arrived at Ramen, hungry and drenched, not having slept for two nights, but happy and proud of their feat of endurance.

It was in 1811 that Tegner's poem ”Svea” received the prize of the Swedish Academy; and the fact that it recalled (in single pa.s.sages at least) Oehlenschlager's ”The Golden Horns,” does not seem to have weighed in the verdict. It is not in any sense an imitation; but there is an audible reminiscence which is unmistakable in the metre and cadence of the short-lined verses, descriptive of the vision. Never, I fancy, had the Swedish language been made to soar with so strong a wing-beat, never before had it been made to sing so bold a melody. To me, I admit, ”Svea” is too rhetorical to make any deep impression. It has a certain stately academic form, which, as it were, impedes its respiration and freedom of movement. When, for all that, I speak of wing-beat and melody, it must be borne in mind that Sweden had produced no really great poet[29] before Tegner; and that thus, relatively considered, the statement is true. But Tegner seems himself to have been conscious of the strait-jacket in which the old academic rules confined him, for in the middle of the poem he suddenly discards the stilted Alexandrines with which he had commenced and breaks into a rapturous old-Norse chant, the abrupt metres of which recall the _fornyrdhalag_ of the Elder Edda. Soon after ”Svea” followed, in 1812, ”The Priestly Consecration,” the occasion of which was the poet's own ordination. Here the oratorical note and a certain clerical rotundity of utterance come very near spoiling the melody. ”At the Jubilee in Lund”

(1817) is very much in the same strain, and begins with the statement so characteristic of Tegner:

”Thou who didst the brave twin stars enkindle, Reason and Religion, guard the twain!

Each s.h.i.+nes by other; else they fade and dwindle.[30]

Fill with clearness every human brain: Faith and hope in every bosom reign!”

[29] Carl Michael Bellman, the Swedish Beranger (1740-1795), whose wanton music resounded through the latter half of the eighteenth century, would, no doubt, by many be called a great poet. But his Baccha.n.a.lian strain, though at times exquisite and captivating, lacks the universality of sentiment and that depth of resonance of which greatness can alone be predicated. Both his wild mirth and his sombre melancholy exhale the aroma of ardent spirits.

[30] This line reads literally: ”Guard them both; they are willingly reconciled.”

He was, in fact, never very orthodox; and if he had belonged to the American branch of his denomination would surely have been tried for heresy. Rarely has a deadlier foe of priestly obscurantism and mediaeval mysteries worn the episcopal robes. With doctrinal subtleties and ingenious hair-splitting he had no patience; conduct was with him the main, if not the only, thing to be considered. The Christian Church, as he conceived it, was primarily a civilizer, and the expression of the highest ethical sentiment of the age.

”The Church,” he writes, ”can surely not be re-established in its former religious significance, for the system upon which it rests has slept away three centuries of history; and it is of no use that this man or that man yet pretends to believe in the somnambulist. But the church has also a civic significance as an integral part of the social order of humanity. If you abandon that to the spirit of laxity and drowsiness, I can see no reason why the clergy and the whole religious apparatus should not be, and ought not to be, abolished and their costs covered into the treasury.”

These are not highly episcopal sentiments; but they are in keeping with Tegner's whole personality and his conception of his duty. His first concern was to purge his diocese of drunken clergymen, a task in which he encountered many unforeseen difficulties.

”It is nowadays less difficult,” he says, ”to get rid of a king than a drunken clergyman.”

He was, indeed, very moderate in his demands, stipulating only that no shepherd of souls should show himself drunk in public. But the bibulous parsons frequently had influential relatives, who exerted themselves with the government to thwart the bishop's reformatory schemes. If Tegner had not been the masterful, tireless, energetic prelate that he was, his ardor would have cooled; and he would have contented himself with drawing the revenues of his office, and left with the lukewarm government the responsibility for frustrating his purposes. But this was contrary to his nature. He could not calmly contemplate abuses which it was his duty to remedy; and no discouragement ever sufficed to dampen his n.o.ble zeal. The marked and fanatical pietism which then was much diffused among the Smland peasantry he fought with his cheerful gospel of reason and sanity. Just as poetry to him meant the highest bloom of life, and his radiant lyre resounded with n.o.ble music like the statue of Memnon, when touched by the rays of the dawn; so religion was, in its essence, perfect sanity of soul, a beautiful equilibrium of mind, and complete self-mastery. His Christ was not primarily the bleeding, the scourged, the crucified, but rather a benigner and lovelier Phoebus Apollo, the bringer of clearness and light, the dispeller of the unwholesome mists and barbaric gloom that yet brood over the human soul.

Like Goethe, he cherished a veritable abhorrence of the mystic symbolism of the mediaeval church; and was rather inclined to minimize the significance of Christ's death and pa.s.sion. He had undeniably imparted into his Christianity a great deal of sunny h.e.l.lenic paganism--a fact which in his familiar correspondence with Franzen he scarcely cares to disguise.

Having this conception of the episcopal office, he could not escape emphasizing his function as the supervisor of the schools of his diocese. If he was to be a civilizer on any great scale, the chance which was here afforded him to impress his ideals upon the rising generation was not one to be neglected. And, as a matter of fact, Tegner was indefatigable in his labors as an educator. His many speeches at school celebrations preached, as ever, a gospel derived from Greece rather than Judaea; and half-improvised though some of them appear to be, they contain pa.s.sages of lofty eloquence.

It was inevitable that a bishop of such commanding personality, who wielded his authority at times somewhat ruthlessly, should make enemies.

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