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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Björnstjerne Björnson, by William Morton Payne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Björnstjerne Björnson
+
+Author: William Morton Payne
+
+Posting Date: August 8, 2009 [EBook #4582]
+Release Date: October, 2003
+First Posted: February 11, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nicole Apostola.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Björnstjerne Björnson
+
+1832-1910
+
+
+by
+
+William Morton Payne, LL.D.
+
+
+Translator of Björnson's "Sigurd Slembe" and Jaeger's "Ibsen," Author
+of "Little Leaders," Etc.
+
+
+
+
+To Mary
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE
+
+When the date of Björnson's seventieth birthday drew near at the close
+of 1902, the present writer, who had been from boyhood a devoted
+admirer of the great Norwegian, wished to make an American contribution
+to the world-wide tribute of gratitude and affection which the then
+approaching anniversary was sure to evoke.  The outcome of that wish
+was an essay, summarizing Björnson's life and work, published in "The
+International Quarterly," March, 1903.  The essay then written forms
+the substance of the present publication, although several additions
+have been made in the way of translation, anecdote, and the
+consideration of Björnson's later productions.  So small a book as this
+is, of course, hopelessly inadequate to make more than the most
+superficial sort of survey of the life work of that masterful
+personality whose recent death is so heavy a loss to all mankind.
+
+W. M. P.
+  Chicago, May, 1910.
+
+
+
+
+BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
+
+1832-1910
+
+Eight years ago, taking a bird's-eye view of the mountain peaks of
+contemporary literature, and writing with particular reference to
+Björnson's seventieth birthday, it seemed proper to make the following
+remarks about the most famous European authors then numbered among
+living men.  If one were asked for the name of the greatest man of
+letters still living in the world, the possible claimants to the
+distinction would hardly be more than five in number.  If it were a
+question of poetry alone, Swinburne would have to be named first, with
+Carducci for a fairly close second.  But if we take literature in its
+larger sense, as including all the manifestations of creative activity
+in language, and if we insist, furthermore, that the man singled out
+for this preëminence shall stand in some vital relation to the
+intellectual life of his time, and exert a forceful influence upon the
+thought of the present day, the choice must rather be made among the
+three giants of the north of Europe, falling, as it may be, upon the
+great-hearted Russian emotionalist who has given us such deeply moving
+portrayals of the life of the modern world; or upon the passionate
+Norwegian idealist whose finger has so unerringly pointed out the
+diseased spots in the social organism, earning by his moral surgery the
+name of pessimist, despite his declared faith in the redemption of
+mankind through truth and freedom and love; or, perchance, upon that
+other great Norwegian, equally fervent in his devotion to the same
+ideals, and far more sympathetic in his manner of inculcating them upon
+his readers, who has just rounded out his scriptural tale of three
+score years and ten, and, in commemoration of the anniversary, is now
+made the recipient of such a tribute of grateful and whole-souled
+admiration as few men have ever won, and none have better deserved. It
+would be certainly invidious, and probably futile, to attempt a nice,
+comparative estimate of the services of these three men to the common
+cause of humanity; let us be content with the admission that
+Björnstjerne Björnson is _primus inter pares_, and make no attempt to
+exalt him at the expense of his great contemporaries.  Writing now
+eight years later, at the time when Björnson's death has plunged his
+country and the world in mourning, it is impressive to note that of the
+five men constituting the group above designated, Tolstoy alone
+survives to carry on the great literary tradition of the nineteenth
+century.
+
+It will be well, however, to make certain distinctions between the life
+work of Björnson and that of the two men whom a common age and common
+aims bring into inevitable association with him. These distinctions are
+chiefly two,--one of them is that while Tolstoy and Ibsen grew to be
+largely cosmopolitan in their outlook, Björnson has much more closely
+maintained throughout his career the national, or, at any rate, the
+racial standpoint.  The other is that while Tolstoy and Ibsen presently
+became, the one indifferent to artistic expression, and the other
+baldly prosaic where he was once deeply poetical, Björnson preserved
+the poetic impulse of his youth, and continued to give it play even in
+his envisagement of the most practical modern problems.  Let us enlarge
+a little upon these two themes.  Ernest Renan, speaking at the funeral
+of Tourguénieff, described the deceased novelist as "the incarnation of
+a whole people."  Even more fittingly might the phrase be applied to
+Björnson, for it would be difficult to find anywhere else in modern
+literature a figure so completely and profoundly representative of his
+race.  In the frequently quoted words of Dr. Brandes, to speak the name
+of Björnson in any assembly of his countrymen is like "hoisting the
+Norwegian flag."  It has been maliciously added that mention of his
+name is also like flaunting a red flag in the sight of a considerable
+proportion of the assembly, for Björnson has always been a fighter as
+well as an artist, and it has been his self-imposed mission to arouse
+his fellow countrymen from their mental sluggishness no less than to
+give creative embodiment to their types of character and their ideal
+aspirations.  But whatever the opposition aroused by his political and
+social radicalism, even his opponents have been constrained to feel
+that he was the mouthpiece of their race as no other Norwegian before
+him had been, and that he has voiced whatever is deepest and most
+enduring in the Norwegian temper.  Powerful as has been his appeal to
+the intellect and conscience of the modern world at large, it has
+always had a special note of admonition or of cheer for his own people.
+With reference to the second of our two themes, it is sufficient to say
+that, although the form of verse was almost wholly abandoned by him
+during the latter half of his life, the breath of poetry never ceased
+to exhale from his work, and the lyric exuberance of his later prose
+still recalls to us the singer of the sixties.
+
+Few productions of modern literature have proved as epoch-making as the
+modest little volume called "Synnöve Solbakken," which appeared in the
+book shops of Christiania and Copenhagen in 1857.  It was a simple tale
+of peasant life, an idyl of the love of a boy and a girl, but it was
+absolutely new in its style, and in its intimate revelation of the
+Norwegian character. It must be remembered that until the year 1814,
+Norway had for centuries been politically united with Denmark, and that
+Copenhagen had been the common literary centre of the two countries.
+To that city Norwegian writers had gravitated as naturally as French
+writers gravitate to Paris.  There had resulted from this condition of
+things a literature which, although it owed much to men of Norwegian
+birth, was essentially a Danish literature, and must properly be so
+styled.  That literature could boast, at the beginning of the
+nineteenth century, an interesting history comparable in its antiquity
+with the greater literatures of Europe, and a brilliant history for at
+least a hundred years past.  But old literatures are sure to become
+more or less sophisticated and trammelled by tradition, and to this
+rule Danish literature was no exception. When the constitution of
+Eidsvold, in 1814, separated Norway from Denmark, and made it into an
+independent kingdom (save for the forced Swedish partnership), the
+country had practically no literary tradition save that which centred
+about the Danish capital.  She might claim to have been the native
+country of many Danish writers, even of Ludvig Holberg, the greatest
+writer that the Scandinavian peoples have yet produced, but she could
+point to nothing that might fairly be called a Norwegian literature.
+The young men of the rising generation were naturally much concerned
+about this, and a sharp divergence of opinion arose as to the means
+whereby the interests of Norwegian literature might be furthered, and
+the aims which it should have in view.  One party urged that the
+literature should break loose from its traditional past, and aim at the
+cultivation of an exclusively national spirit.  The other party
+declared such a course to be folly, contending that literature must be
+a product of gradual development rather than of set volition, and that,
+despite the shifting of the political kaleidoscope, the national
+literature was so firmly rooted in its Danish past that its natural
+evolution must be an outgrowth from all that had gone before.
+
+Each of these parties found a vigorous leader, the cause of
+ultra-Norwegianism being championed by Wergeland, an erratic person in
+whom the spark of genius burned, but who never found himself,
+artistically speaking.  The champion of the conservatives was Welhaven,
+a polished writer of singular charm and much force, philosophical in
+temper, whose graceful verse and acute criticism upheld by both precept
+and practice the traditional standards of culture.  Each of these men
+had his followers, who proved in many cases more zealous than their
+leaders.  The period of the thirties and forties was dominated by this
+Wergeland-Welhaven controversy, which engendered much bitterness of
+feeling, and which constitutes the capital fact in Norwegian literary
+history before the appearance of Ibsen and Björnson upon the scene.  A
+sort of parallel might be drawn for American readers by taking two such
+men as Whitman and Longfellow, opposing them to one another in the most
+outspoken fashion, assuming for both a sharply polemic manner, and
+ranging among their respective followers all the other writers of their
+time.  Then imagine the issue between them to be drawn not only in the
+field of letters, but also in the pulpit, the theatre, and the
+political arena, and some slight notion may be obtained of the
+condition of affairs which preceded the advent of Björnson and the true
+birth of Norwegian literature with "Synnöve Solbakken."
+
+The work which was thus destined to mark the opening of a new era in
+Norwegian letters was written in the twenty-fifth year of its author's
+life.  The son of a country pastor, Björnstjerne Björnson was born at
+Kvikne, December 8, 1832.  At the age of six, his father was
+transferred to a new parish in the Romsdal, one of the most picturesque
+regions in Norway.  The impression made upon his sensitive nature by
+these surroundings was deep and enduring.  Looking back upon his
+boyhood he speaks with strong emotion of the evenings when "I stood and
+watched the sunlight play upon mountain and fiord, until I wept, as if
+I had done something wrong, and when, borne down upon my ski into one
+valley or another I could stand as if spellbound by a beauty, by a
+longing that I could not explain, but that was so great that along with
+the highest joy I had, also, the deepest sense of imprisonment and
+sorrow."  This is the mood which was to be given utterance in that
+wonderful lyric, "Over the Lofty Mountains," in which all the ardor and
+the longings of passionate and impatient youth find the most appealing
+expression. The song is found in "Arne," and may be thus reproduced,
+after a fashion, in the English language.
+
+  "Often I wonder what there may be
+    Over the lofty mountains.
+  Here the snow is all I see,
+  Spread at the foot of the dark green tree;
+    Sadly I often ponder,
+    Would I were over yonder.
+
+  "Strong of wing soars the eagle high
+    Over the lofty mountains,
+  Glad of the new day soars to the sky,
+  Wild in pursuit of his prey doth fly;
+    Pauses, and, fearless of danger,
+    Scans the far coasts of the stranger.
+
+  "The apple-tree, whose thoughts ne'er fly
+    Over the lofty mountains,
+  Leaves, when the summer days draw nigh,
+  Patiently waits for the time when high
+    The birds in its boughs shall be swinging,
+    Yet will know not what they are singing.
+
+  "He who has yearned so long to go
+    Over the lofty mountains--
+  He whose visions and fond hopes grow
+  Dim, with the years that so restless flow--
+    Knows what the birds are singing,
+    Glad in the tree-tops swinging.
+
+  "Why, oh bird, dost thou hither fare
+    Over the lofty mountains?
+  Surely it must be better there,
+  Broader the view and freer the air;
+    Com'st thou these longings to bring me;
+    These only, and nothing to wing me?
+
+  "Oh, shall I never, never go
+    Over the lofty mountains!
+  Must all my thoughts and wishes so
+  Held in these walls of ice and snow
+    Here be imprisoned forever?
+    Till death shall I flee them never?
+
+  "Hence!  I will hence!  Oh, so far from here,
+    Over the lofty mountains!
+  Here 't is so dull, so unspeakably drear;
+  Young is my heart and free from fear--
+    Better the walls to be scaling
+    Than here in my prison lie wailing.
+
+  "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 come;
+    Guard it for me yet longer,
+    Till my soul through striving grows stronger."
+
+At the age of eleven Björnson'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 many sorts of literary
+experiments, and became actively engaged 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 dramatic criticism as the avowed partisan
+of Norwegian ideals, holding himself, in some sort, the successor of
+Wergeland, Who had died about ten years earlier.  Before becoming a
+dramatic critic, he had essayed dramatic authorship, and the acceptance
+by the theatre of his juvenile play, "Valborg," had led to a somewhat
+unusual result.  He was given a free ticket of admission, and a few
+weeks of theatre-going 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 came to him
+upon his return from a student gathering 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 come. I packed up, went
+home, thought it all over, wrote and rewrote `Between the Battles' in a
+fortnight, and travelled to Copenhagen with the completed piece in my
+trunk; I would be a poet."  He then set to writing "Synnöve Solbakken,"
+published it in part as a newspaper serial, and then in book form, in
+the autumn of 1857.  He had "commenced author" in good earnest.
+
+The next fifteen years of Björnson'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 achievement of fourteen feverish days.  The remaining 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); three more plays drawn from the treasury of old Norse
+history, "King Sverre," "Sigurd Slembe," and "Sigurd Jorsalfar"; a
+dramatic setting 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 with modern life; "Arnljot Gelline,"
+his only long poem, a wild narrative of the clash between heathendom
+and the Christian faith in the days of Olaf the Holy; and, last but by
+no means least, the collection of his "Poems and Songs." Thus at the
+age of forty, Björnson found himself with a dozen books to his credit
+books which had stirred his fellow countrymen as no other books had
+ever stirred them, arousing 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 him, the singer of all
+that was noble in Norwegian aspiration, the sympathetic delineator of
+all that was essential in Norwegian 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 Björnson's "Tales," published in 1872,
+together with "The Bridal March," separately published in the following
+year, gives us a complete representation of that phase of his genius
+which is best known to the world at large.  Here are five stories of
+considerable length, and a number of slighter sketches, in which the
+Norwegian peasant is portrayed with intimate and loving knowledge.  The
+peasant tale was no new thing in European literature, for the names of
+Auerbach and George Sand, to say nothing 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 Björnson'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.
+Björnson 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 men who wrested a scanty living
+from an ungrateful soil.  Although a poet by instinct, he was not
+afraid of realism, and did not shrink from giving the brutal aspects of
+peasant life a place upon his canvas.  In emphasizing the
+characteristics of reticence and _naïveté_ he really discovered the
+Norwegian peasant for literary purposes. Beneath the words spoken by
+his characters we are constantly made to realize that there are depths
+of feeling that remain unexpressed; whether from native pride or from a
+sense of the inadequacy of mere words to set forth a critical moment of
+life, his men and women are distinguished by the most laconic
+utterance, yet their speech always has dramatic fitness and bears the
+stamp of sincerity.  Jaeger speaks of the manifold possibilities of
+this laconic method in the following words:--
+
+"It is as if the author purposely set in motion the reader's fancy and
+feeling that they might do their own work.  The greatest poet is he who
+understands how to awaken fancy and feeling to their highest degree of
+self-activity.  And this is Björnson'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 known how to
+suggest so much in so few words."
+
+In some respects, the little sketch called "The Father" is the supreme
+example of Björnson's artistry in this kind.  There are only a few
+pages in all, but they embody the tragedy of a lifetime.  The little
+work is a literary gem 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 Björnson is best known outside of
+his own country; one may almost say that it is by them alone that he is
+really familiar to English readers.  A free translation of "Synnöve
+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 made soon after their original appearance, and in some instances
+have been multiplied.  It is thus a noteworthy fact that Björnson,
+although four years the junior of Ibsen, enjoyed a vogue among English
+readers for a score of years during which the name of Ibsen was
+absolutely unknown to them.  The whirligig of time has brought in its
+revenges of late years, and the long neglected 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, Björnson was
+greatly aided by the study of the sagas, which he had read with
+enthusiasm from his earliest boyhood.  Upon them his style was largely
+formed, and their vivid dramatic representation of the life of the
+early Norsemen impressed him profoundly, shaping both his ideals and
+the form of their expression.  The modern Scandinavian may well be
+envied for his literary inheritance from the heroic past.  No other
+European has anything to compare with it for clean-cut vigor and wealth
+of romantic material.  The literature which blossomed in Iceland and
+flourished for two or three centuries wherever Norsemen made homes for
+themselves offers a unique intellectual phenomenon, for nothing like
+their record remains to us from any other primitive people. This
+
+     "Tale of the Northland of old
+   And the undying glory of dreams,"
+
+proved a lasting stimulus to Björnson's genius, and, during the early
+period of his career, which is now under review, it made its influence
+felt alike in his tales, his dramas, and his songs.  "To see the
+peasant in the light of the sagas and the sagas in the light of the
+peasant" he declared to be the fundamental principle of his literary
+method.
+
+It has been seen that during the fifteen years which made Björnson in
+so peculiar a sense the spokesman of his race, he wrote no less than
+five saga dramas.  The first two of these works, "Between the Battles"
+and "Halte-Hulda," are rather slight performances, and the third, "King
+Sverre," although a more extended work, is not particularly noteworthy.
+The grimness of the Viking life is softened by romantic coloring, and
+the poet has not freed himself from the influence of Oehlenschlaeger.
+But in "Sigurd Slembe" he found a subject entirely worthy of his
+genius, and produced one of the noblest masterpieces of all modern
+literature.  This largely planned and magnificently executed dramatic
+trilogy was written in Munich, and published in 1862.  The material is
+found in the "Heimskringla," but the author has used the prerogative of
+the artist to simplify the historical outline thus offered into a
+superb imaginative creation, rich in human interest, and powerful in
+dramatic presentation.  The story is concerned with the efforts of
+Sigurd, nicknamed "Slembe," to obtain the succession to the throne of
+Norway during the first half of the twelfth century.  He was a son of
+King Magnus Barfod, and, although of illegitimate birth, might legally
+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 mother
+is made in the first section of the trilogy, which is a single act,
+written in blank verse.  Recognizing the futility of urging his
+birthright at this time, he starts off to win fame as a crusader, the
+sort of fame that haloed Sigurd 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 ambition and the sense of injustice ever gnawing at his heart.
+He becomes entangled in a feudal quarrel concerning the rule of the
+islands.  Both parties seek to use him for their purposes, but in the
+end, although leadership is in his grasp, he tears himself away,
+appalled by the revelation of crime and treachery in his surroundings.
+In this section of the work we have the subtly conceived and
+Hamlet-like figure of Earl Harald, in whose interest Frakark, a Norse
+Lady Macbeth, plots the murder of Earl Paul, only to bring upon Harald
+himself the terrible death that she has planned for his brother.  Here,
+also, we have the gracious maiden figure of Audhild, perhaps the
+loveliest of all Björnson's delineations of womanhood, a figure worthy
+to be ranked with the heroines of Shakespeare and Goethe, who remains
+sweet and fragrant in our memory forever after. With the mutual love of
+Sigurd and Audhild comes the one hour of sunshine 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 meet with Sigurd again in the third section of the
+trilogy.  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 Slembe, an illegitimate son of Magnus Barfod, and
+who, during the last senile years of Sigurd Jorsalfar's life, had won
+the recognition that Sigurd Slembe might have won had he not missed the
+chance, and been acknowledged as the king's brother.  When the king
+died, he left a son named Magnus, who should have been his successor,
+but whom Harald Gille seized, blinded, and imprisoned that he might
+himself occupy the throne.  The five acts of this third section of the
+trilogy cover the last two years of Sigurd Slembe's life, years during
+which he seeks to gain his end, first by conciliation, and afterwards,
+maddened by the base treachery of the king and his followers, by
+assassination and violence.  He has become a hard man, but, however
+wild his schemes of revenge, and however desperate his measures, he
+retains our sympathy to the end because we feel that circumstances have
+made him the ravager of his country, and that his underlying motive all
+along has not been a merely personal ambition, but an immense longing
+to serve his people, and to rule them with justice and wisdom.  The
+final scene of all has a strange and solemn beauty.  It is on the eve
+of the battle in which Sigurd 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 outcome. Sigurd has made his last
+stand, his Danish allies have deserted him, and he well knows what will
+be the next day's issue. And here we have one of the noblest
+illustrations in all literature of that _Versöhnung_ which is the last
+word of tragic art.  For in this supreme hour the peace of mind which
+he has sought 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 men whose lives have been set at
+tragic pitch, has come to him also; he now sees that this was the
+inevitable end, and the recognition of the fitness with which events
+have shaped themselves brings with it an exaltation of soul in which
+life is seen revealed in its true aspect.  No longer veiled in the
+mists which have hitherto hidden it from his passionate gaze, he takes
+note of what it really is, and casts it from him.  In this hour of
+passionless contemplation such a renunciation is not a thing torn from
+the reluctant soul, but the clear solution, so long sought, of the
+problem so long blindly attempted.  That which his passion enslaved
+self has so struggled to avert, his higher self, at last set free,
+calmly and gladly accepts.
+
+"What miracle is this? for in the hour I prayed, the prayer was
+granted!  Peace, perfect peace!  Then I will go to-morrow to my last
+battle as to the altar; peace shall at last be mine for all my longings.
+
+"How this autumn evening brings reconciliation to my soul! Sun and wave
+and shore and sea flow all together, as in the thought of God all
+others; never yet has it seemed so fair to me.  But it is not mine to
+rule over this lovely land.  How greatly I have done it ill!  But how
+has it all so come to pass? for in my wanderings I saw thy mountains in
+every sky, I yearned for home as a child longs for Christmas, yet I
+came no sooner, and when at last I came, I gave thee wound upon wound.
+
+"But now, in contemplative mood, thou gazest upon me, and givest me at
+parting this fairest autumn night of thine; I will ascend yonder rock
+and take a long farewell."
+
+The action of "Sigurd Slembe," is interspersed with several lyrics, the
+most striking of which is herd translated in exact reproduction of the
+original form:
+
+  "Sin and Death, at break of day,
+  Day, day,
+  Spoke together with bated breath;
+  'Marry thee, sister, that I may stay,
+  Stay, stay,
+  In thy house,' quoth Death.
+  "Death laughed aloud when Sin was wed,
+  Wed, wed,
+  And danced on the bridal day:
+  But bore that night from the bridal bed,
+  Bed, bed,
+  The groom in a shroud away.
+  "Death came to her sister at break of day,
+  Day, day,
+  And Sin drew a weary breath;
+  'He whom thou lovest is mine for aye,
+  Aye, aye,
+  Mine he is,' quoth Death."
+
+One more saga drama was to be written by Björnson, but "Sigurd Slembe"
+remains his greatest achievement in this field of activity.  Its single
+successor, "Sigurd Jorsalfar," was not published until ten years later,
+and may not be compared with it for either strength or poetic
+inspiration. The author called it a "folkplay," and announced the
+intention, which was never fulfilled, of making several similar
+experiments with scenes from the sagas, "which should appeal to every
+eye and every stage of culture, to each in its own way, and at the
+performance of which all, for the time being, would experience the joy
+of fellow feeling."  The experiment proves interesting, and is carried
+out without didacticism or straining after sensational effects; the
+play is vigorous and well planned, but for the reader it has little of
+the dramatic impressiveness of its predecessor, although as an acting
+drama it is better fitted for the requirements of the stage.
+
+The two volumes which contain the greater part of Björnson's poetry not
+dramatic in form were both published in 1870.  One of them was the
+collection of his "Poems and Songs," the other was the epic cycle,
+"Arnljot Gelline," the only long poem that he has written.  The volume
+of lyrics includes many pieces of imperfect quality and slight
+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 made him the greatest of Norway's lyric poets. No
+translation can ever quite reproduce their cadence or their feeling;
+they illustrate the one aspect of Björnson's many-sided genius that
+must be taken on trust by those who cannot read his language.  A friend
+once asked him upon what occasion he had felt most fully the joy of
+being a poet. His reply was as follows:--
+
+"It was when a party from the Right in Christiania came to my house and
+smashed all my windows.  For when they had finished their assault, and
+were starting home again, they felt that they had to sing something,
+and so they began to sing, 'Yes, we love this land of ours'--they
+couldn't help it. They had to sing
+ the song of the man they had attacked."
+
+Into this collection were gathered the lyrics scattered through the
+peasant tales and the saga dramas, thus making it completely
+representative of his quality as a singer.  A revised and somewhat
+extended edition of this volume was published about ten years later.
+Björnson has had the rare fortune of having his lyrics set to music by
+three composers--Nordraak, Kjerulf, and Grieg--as intensely national in
+spirit as himself, and no festal occasion among Norwegians is
+celebrated without singing the national hymn, "Yes, We Love This Land
+of Ours," or the noble choral setting of "Olaf Trygvason."  The best
+folk-singer is he who stands in the whirling round of life, says the
+poet, and he reveals the very secret of his power when he tells us that
+life was ever more to him than song, and that existence, where it was
+worth while, in the thick of the human fray, always had for him a
+deeper meaning than anything he had written. The longest poem in
+Björnson's collection is called "Bergliot," and is a dramatic monologue
+in which the foul slaying of her husband Ejnar Tambarskelve and their
+son Ejndride is mourned by the bereaved wife and mother.  The story is
+from the saga of Harald Haardraada, and is treated with the deepest
+tragic impressiveness.
+
+  "Odin in Valhal I dare not seek
+  For him I forsook in my childhood.
+  And the new God in Gimle?
+  He took all that I had!
+    Revenge:--Who says revenge?--
+  Can revenge awaken my dead
+  Or shelter me from the cold?
+  Has it comfort for a widow's home
+  Or for a childless mother?
+    Away with your revenge: Let be!
+  Lay him on the litter, him and the son.
+  Come, we will follow them home.
+  The new God in Gimle, the terrible, who took all,
+  Let him also take revenge, for he understands it!
+  Drive slowly: Thus drove Ejnar ever;
+    --Soon enough shall we reach home."
+
+It was also to the "Heimskringla" that Björnson turned for the subject
+of his epic cycle, "Arnljot Gelline."  Here we read in various rhythms
+of Arnljot the outlaw, how the hands of all men are against him; how he
+offers to stay his wrath and end the blood feud if the fair Ingigerd,
+Trand's daughter, may be bestowed upon him; how, being refused, he sets
+fire to Trand's house and bears Ingigerd away captive; how her tears
+prevail upon him to release her, and how she seeks refuge in a southern
+cloister; how Arnljot wanders restless over sea and land until he comes
+to King Olaf, on the eve of the great battle, receives the Christian
+faith, fights fiercely in the vanguard against the hosts of the
+heathen, and, smiling, falls with his king on the field of Stiklestad.
+One song from this cycle, "The Cloister in the South" is here
+reproduced in an exact copy of the original metre, in the hope that
+even this imperfect representation of the poem may be better than none
+at all.
+
+  "Who would enter so late the cloister in?"
+    "A maid forlorn from the land of snow."
+  "What sorrow is thine, and what thy sin?"
+    "The deepest sorrow the heart can know.
+     I have nothing done
+       Yet must still endeavor,
+     Though my strength be none,
+       To wander ever.
+  Let me in, to seek for my pain surcease,
+       I can find no peace."
+
+  "From what far-off land hast thou taken flight?"
+    "From the land of the North, a weary way."
+  "What stayed thy feet at our gate this night?"
+    "The chant of the nuns, for I heard them pray,
+     And the song gave peace
+       To my soul, and blessed me;
+     It offered release
+       From the grief that oppressed me.
+     Let me in, so if peace to give be thine,
+       I may make it mine."
+
+  "Name me the grief that thy life hath crossed."
+    "Rest may I never, never know."
+  "Thy father, thy lover, thou hast then lost?"
+    "I lost them both at a single blow,
+     And all I held dear
+       In my deepest affection;
+     Aye, all that was near
+       To my heart's recollection.
+     Let me in, I am failing, I beg, I implore,
+       I can bear no more."
+
+  "How was it that thou thy father lost?"
+    "He was slain, and I saw the deed."
+  "How was it that thou thy lover lost?"
+    "My father he slew, and I saw the deed.
+     I wept so bitterly
+       When he roughly would woo me,
+     He at last set me free,
+       And forbore to pursue me.
+     Let me in, for the horror my soul doth fill.
+       That I love him still."
+
+  _Chorus of nuns within the Church._
+
+        "Come child, come bride,
+        To God's own side,
+        From grief find rest
+        On Jesus' breast.
+        Rest thy burden of sorrow.
+            On Horeb's height;
+        Like the lark, with to-morrow
+            Shall thy soul take flight.
+
+        Here stilled is all yearning,
+        No passion returning;
+        No terror come near thee
+        When the Saviour can hear thee.
+        For He, if in need be
+            Thy storm-beaten soul,
+        Though it bruised as a reed be,
+            Shall raise it up whole."
+
+Despite the power and beauty of an occasional manifestation of his
+genius during the late sixties and early seventies, the poetic impulse
+that had made Björnson the most famous of Norwegian authors seemed,
+toward the close of the fifteen-year period just now under review, to
+be well nigh exhausted.  Even among those who had followed his career
+most closely there were few who could anticipate the splendid new
+outburst of activity for which he was preparing.  These years seemed to
+be a dead time, not only in Björnson's life, but also in the general
+intellectual life of the Scandinavian countries.  Dr. Brandes thus
+describes the feelings of a thoughtful observer during that period of
+stagnation.  "In the North one had the feeling of being shut off from
+the intellectual life of the time. We were sitting with closed doors, a
+few brains struggling fruitlessly with the problem of how to get them
+opened... With whole schools of foreign literature the cultivated Dane
+had almost no acquaintance; and when, finally, as a consequence of
+political animosity, intellectual intercourse with Germany was broken
+off, the main channel was closed through which the intellectual
+developments of the day had been communicated to Norway as well as
+Denmark.  French influence was dreaded as immoral, and there was but
+little understanding of either the English language or spirit."  But an
+intellectual renaissance was at hand, an intellectual reawakening with
+a cosmopolitan outlook, and, Björnson was destined to become its
+leader, much as he had been the leader of the national movement of an
+earlier decade.  During these years of seeming inactivity,
+comparatively speaking, he had read and thought much, and the new
+thought of the age had fecundated his mind.  Historical and religious
+criticism, educational and social problems, had taken possession of his
+thought, and the philosophy of evolution had transformed the whole
+tenor of his ideas, shaping them to, deeper issues and more practical
+purposes than had hitherto engaged them.  He had read widely and
+variously in Darwin, Spencer, Mill, Müller, and Taine; he had, in
+short, scaled the "lofty mountains" that had so hemmed in his early
+view, and made his way into the intellectual kingdoms of the modern
+world that lay beyond.  The _Weltgeist_ had appealed to him with its
+irresistible behest, just as it appealed at about the same time to
+Ibsen and Tolstoy and Ruskin, and had made him a man of new interests
+and ideals.
+
+One might have found foreshadowings of this transformation in certain
+of his earlier works,--in "The Newly Married Couple," for example, with
+its delicate analysis, of a common domestic relation, or in "The Fisher
+Maiden," with its touch of modernity,--but from these suggestions one
+could hardly have prophesied the enthusiasm and the genial force with
+which Björnson was to project his personality into the controversial
+arena of modern life. The series of works which have come from his pen
+during the past thirty-five years have dealt with most of the graver
+problems which concern society as a whole,--politics, religion,
+education, the status of women, the license of the press, the demand of
+the socialist for a reconstruction of the old order.  They have also
+dealt with many of the delicate questions of individual ethics,--the
+relations of husband and wife, of parent and child, the responsibility
+of the merchant to his creditors and of the employer to his dependants,
+the double standard of morality for men and women, and the duty
+devolving upon both to transmit a vigorous strain to their offspring.
+These are some of the themes that have engaged the novelist and
+dramatist; they have also engaged the public speaker and lay preacher
+of enlightenment, as well as themes of a more strictly political
+character, such as the separation of Norway from the Dual Monarchy, the
+renewal of the ancient bond between Norway and Iceland, the free
+development of parliamentary government, the cause of Pangermanism, and
+the furtherance of peace between the nations.  An extensive programme,
+surely, even in this summary enumeration of its more salient features,
+but one to which his capacity has not proved unequal, and which he has
+carried out by the force of his immense energy and superabundant
+vitality.  The burden of all this tendencious matter has caused his art
+to suffer at times, no doubt, but his inspiration has retained throughout
+much of the marvellous freshness of the earlier years, and the genius of
+the poet still flashes upon us from a prosaic environment, sometimes in a
+lovely lyric, more frequently, however, in the turn of a phrase or the
+psychological envisagement of some supreme moment in the action of the
+story or the drama.
+
+The great transformation in Björnson's literary manner and choice of
+subjects was marked by his sending home from abroad, in the season of
+1874-75, two plays, "The Editor" and "A Bankruptcy."  It was two years
+later that Ibsen sent home from abroad "The Pillars of Society," which
+marked a similar turning point in his artistic career.  It is a curious
+coincidence that the plays of modern life produced during this second
+period by these two men are the same in number, an even dozen in each
+case. Besides the two above named, these modern plays of Björnson are,
+with their dates, the following: "The King" (1877), "Leonarda" (1879),
+"The New System" (1879), "A Glove" (1883), "Beyond the Strength I."
+(1883), "Geography and Love" (1885), "Beyond the Strength II." (1895),
+"Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg" (1898), "Laboremus" (1901), and "At
+Storhove" (1902).  Since the cessation of Ibsen's activity, Björnson
+has outrun him in the race, adding "Daglannet" (1904), and "When the
+New Wine Blooms" (1909) to the list above given.  Besides these
+fourteen plays, however, he has published seven important volumes of
+prose fiction during the last thirty-five years. The titles and dates
+are as follows: "Magnhild" (1877), "Captain Mansana" (1879), "Dust"
+(1882), "Flags Are Flying in City and Harbor" (1884), "In God's Ways,"
+(1889), "New Tales" (1894), (of which collection "Absalom's Hair" is
+the longest and most important), and "Mary" (1906).  The achievement
+represented by this list is all the more extraordinary when we consider
+the fact that for the greater part of the thirty-five years which these
+plays and novels cover, their author has been, both as a public speaker
+and as a writer for the periodical press, an active participant in the
+political and social life of his country.
+
+Most of these books must be dismissed with a few words in order that
+our remaining space may be given to the four or five that are of the
+greatest power and significance. "The Editor," the first of the modern
+plays, offers a fierce satire upon modern journalism, its dishonesty,
+its corrupt and malicious power, its personal and partisan prejudice.
+The character of the editor in this play was unmistakeably drawn, in
+its leading characteristics, from the figure of a well known
+conservative journalist in Christiania, although Björnson vigorously
+maintained that the protraiture was typical rather than personal.
+
+"In various other countries than my own, I have observed the type of
+journalist who is here depicted.  It is characterized by acting upon a
+basis of sheer egotism, passionate and boundless, and by terrorism in
+such fashion that it frightens honest people away from every liberal
+movement, and visits upon the individual an unscrupulous persecution."
+
+This play was not particularly successful upon the stage, but the book
+was widely read, and occasioned much excited personal controversy.  "A
+Bankruptcy," on the other hand, proved a brilliant stage success.  Its
+matter was less contentious, and its technical execution was effective
+and brilliant.  It was not in vain that Björnson had at different times
+been the director of three theatres.  This play has for its theme the
+ethics of business life, and more especially the question of the extent
+to which a man whose finances are embarrassed is justified in continued
+speculation for the ultimate protection of himself and his creditors.
+Despite its treatment of this serious problem, the play is lighter and
+more genial in vein than the author's plays are wont to be, and the
+element of humor is unusually conspicuous.  Jaeger remarks that "A
+Bankruptcy" did two new things for Norwegian dramatic literature. It
+made money affairs a legitimate subject for literary treatment, and it
+raised the curtain upon the Norwegian home. "It was with 'A Bankruptcy'
+that the home made its first appearance upon the stage, the home with
+its joys and sorrows, with its conflicts and its tenderness."
+
+Two years later appeared "The King, which is in many respects
+Björnson's greatest modern masterpiece in dramatic form.  He had by
+this time become a convinced republican, but he was also an
+evolutionist, and he knew that republics are not created by fiat.  He
+believed the tendency toward republicanism to be irresistible, but he
+believed also that there must be intermediate stages in the transition
+from monarchy.  Absolutism is succeeded by constitutionalism, and that
+by parliamentarism, and that in the end must be succeeded by a
+republicanism that will free itself from all the traditional forms of
+symbol and ceremonial.  He had also a special belief that the smaller
+peoples were better fitted for development in this direction than the
+larger and more complex societies, although, on the other hand, he
+thought that the process of growth into full self-government was likely
+to be slower among the Germanic than among the Latin races. In the
+deeply moving play now to be considered, we have, in the character of
+the titular king, an extraordinary piece of psychological analysis.
+The king, is young, physically delicate, and of highly sensitive
+organization.  When he comes to the throne he realizes the hollowness
+and the hypocrisy of the existence that prescription has marked out for
+him; he realizes also that the very ideal of monarchy, under the
+conditions of modern European civilization, is a gigantic falsehood.
+For a time after his accession, he leads a life of pleasure seeking and
+revelry, hoping that he may dull his sense of the sharp contrast that
+exists between his station and his ideals.  But his conscience will
+give him no peace, and he turns to deliberate contemplation of the
+thought, not indeed of abdicating his, false position, but of
+transforming it into something more consonant with truth and the
+demands of the age.  He will become a citizen king, and take for wife a
+daughter of the people; he will do away with the pomp and circumstance
+of his court, and attempt to lead a simple and natural life, in which
+the interests of the people shall be paramount in his attention.  But
+in this attempt he is thwarted at every step.  All the forces of
+selfishness and prejudice and ignorance combine against him; even the
+people whom he seeks to benefit are so wedded to their idols that their
+attitude is one of suspicion rather than of sympathy.  He loves a young
+woman of strong and noble character, and wins her love in return, but
+she dies on the very eve of their union.  His oldest and most
+confidential friend, the wealthiest man in the kingdom, but a
+republican, is murdered by a radical associate of the _intransigeant_
+type, and the king is left utterly bereaved by his twofold loss. This
+brings us to the closing scene of the drama, in which the king, his
+nerves strained to the breaking point, confronts the group of officials
+and others who bring to him the empty phrases of a conventional
+condolence:--
+
+The King.  Hush!  Have a little respect for the truth that should
+follow death!  Understand me rightly: I do not mean that any of you
+would lie.  But the very air about a king is infected.  It was of
+that-a word or two.  My time is short. But a testament. ...
+
+The Priest.  Testament.
+
+The King.  Neither the Old nor the New!  Greet what is called
+Christianity here in this land-greet it from me! I have thought much
+about Christian folk of late.
+
+The Priest.  That rejoices me.
+
+The King.  How your tone cuts me!  Greet it from me, what is called
+Christianity here in this land.  Nay, do not crane your necks and bend
+your backs as if the wisdom of the ages were now forthcoming. (_aside_)
+Can there be any use in saying something seriously? (_aloud_) You are
+Christians?
+
+The General.  God forbid the doubt!  Faith is exceedingly useful. ...
+
+The King.  For discipline. (_to the Sheriff_)  And you?
+
+The Sheriff.  From my blessed ancestors I received the faith.
+
+The King.  So _they_ are blessed also.  Why not?'
+
+The Sheriff.  They brought me strictly up to fear God, to honor the
+king.
+
+The King.  And love your fellowmen.  You are a State individual,
+sheriff.  And such are Christians nowadays. (_to the Merchant_)  And
+you?
+
+The Merchant.  I have not been able to go to church very much of late
+because of my cough.  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 formula, boys, that is the accepted thing to
+say.  Therefore, you are a Christian community, and it is no fault of
+mine if such a community will not deal seriously with what concerns
+Christianity. Greet it from me, and say that it must have an eye to the
+institution of monarchy.
+
+The Priest.  Christianity has nothing to do with such matters.  It
+searches _the inner man_.
+
+The King.  That 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 know what 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 monarchy.
+It should hardly any longer, it seems to me, let the monarchy play the
+part of the seductive wanton who turns the thoughts of all citizens to
+war--which is much against the message of Christianity--and to class
+distinctions, to luxury, to show and vanity. The monarchy is now so
+great a lie that it compels the most upright man to share in its
+falsehood."
+
+The conversation that follows is in a vein of bitterness on the one
+side, and of obtuse smugness on the other; the tragic irony of the
+action grows deeper and deeper, until in the end the king, completely
+disheartened and despairing, goes into an adjoining room, and dies by
+his own hand, to the consternation of the men from whom he has just
+parted.  They give 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 may well be imagined that "The King" made a stir in literary and
+social circles, and quite noticeably fluttered the dovecotes of
+conventionality and conservatism.  Such plain speaking and such deadly
+earnestness of conviction were indeed far removed from the idyllic
+simplicity of the peasant tales and from the poetical reconstructions
+of the legendary past. Eight years later, Björnson prefaced a new
+edition of this work with a series of reflections upon "Intellectual
+Freedom" that constitute one of the most vigorous and remarkable
+examples of his serious prose. The central ideas of his political faith
+are embodied in the following sentences from this preface:--
+
+"Intellectual Freedom. Why is not attention called over and over again
+to the fact that for the great peoples, who have so many compensating
+interests, the free commerce of ideas is one condition of life among
+many others; while for us, the small peoples, it is absolutely
+indispensable.  A people numerically large may attain to ways of
+thought 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 my chief
+aim to enlarge the bounds of free thought.  I have later made the same
+attempt in matters of religion and morals.  When my opponents seek to
+sum up my character in a few words, they are apt to say: 'He attacks
+the throne and the altar.'  It seems to me that I have served the
+freedom of the spirit, and in the interests of that cause I now beg
+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 the
+meaning of Christianity.  It is not an institution, still less a book,
+and least of all it is a house or a seminary. It is the godly life
+according to the precepts and example of Jesus.  There may be men who
+think they are attacking Christianity when they investigate the
+historical origin or the morality of some dogma; I do not think so.
+Honest investigation 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-minded
+people who will be ennobled by it, and some made great.  I honor all
+the noble.  I have friends among the Christians, whom I love, and never
+for a moment have I thought of attacking 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 simultaneously; it
+fixes terms, different for the different kingdoms, and far removed for
+the kingdoms 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 may not greatly matter, so rich are
+the possibilities of other work taking its place; but in a small
+society it may be equivalent to destroying the sight of its only eye."
+
+In the clean-cut phrases and moral earnestness of this _apologia pro
+vita sua_, which deserves to be reproduced at greater length, we have
+the modern Björnson, no longer poet alone, but poet and prophet at
+once, the champion of sincere thinking and worthy living, the Sigurd
+Slembe of our own day, happier than his prototype in the consciousness
+that the ambition to serve his people has not been; altogether
+thwarted, and that his beneficent activity is not made sterile even by
+the bitterest opposition.
+
+Only a rapid glance may be taken at the books of the five years
+following upon the publication of "The King."  The story of "Magnhild,"
+planned several years earlier, represents Björnson's return to fiction
+after a long dramatic interlude. There are still peasants in this
+story, but they are different from the figures of the early tales, and
+the atmosphere of the work is modern.  It turns upon the question of
+the mutual duties of husband and wife, when love no longer 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 come within the range of his observation during his stay
+abroad.  Its interest does not lie in any particular problem, but
+rather in the delineation of the titular figure, a strong and impetuous
+person whose character suggests 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 comparison with being
+invisible, that to be a human being is nothing in comparison with being
+dead, that is not the way to teach them to view life properly, or to
+love life, to gain courage, 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 with women 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 from the book in its
+ending) 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 man to be as unfit for honorable marriage as the
+unchaste woman.  Upon the theme thus presented a long 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 Björnson has so squarely
+and uncompromisingly planted his feet.  The other remaining work of
+this five-year period is the play called "The New System."  The new
+system in question is a system of railway management, and it is a
+wasteful one.  But the young engineer who demonstrates this fact has a
+hard time in opening 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 Björnson's prolific pen.  Of these by far the most
+important are the two that are linked by the common title, "Beyond the
+Strength."  The translation of this title is hopelessly inadequate,
+because the original word means much more than strength; it means
+talent, faculty, capability, the sum total of a man's endowment for
+some particular purpose.  The two pieces bearing this name are quite
+different in theme, but certain characters appear in both, and both
+express the same thought,--the thought that it is vain for men to
+strive after the unattainable, for in so doing they lose sight of the
+actual possibilities of human life; the thought that much of the best
+human energy goes 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 superhuman ideal is religious, 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 reformer who is deluded to believe that one resounding 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 masses
+a new heaven upon earth.  No deeper tragedies have been conceived by
+Björnson 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 them both,--the tragedy of his son Elias, who dies like Samson with
+his foes for an equally impossible faith, and by the very violence of
+his fanaticism removes the goal of socialist endeavor farther than ever
+into the dim future.  Björnson has written nothing more profoundly
+moving than these plays, with their twofold treatment of essentially
+the same theme, nor has he written anything which offers a clearer
+revelation of his own rich personality, with its unfailing poetic
+vision, its deep tenderness, and its boundless love for all humankind.
+The play, "Geography and Love," which came between the two just
+described, is an amusing piece, in the vein of light and graceful
+comedy, which satirizes the man with a hobby, showing how he
+unconsciously comes to neglect his wife and family through 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 emphasize. "Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg," the next
+play, deals with the passions engendered by political controversy, and
+made much unpleasant stir in Norwegian 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 same theme, which is that of the malign
+influence exerted by an evil-minded and reckless woman upon the lives
+of others. From a different point of view, we may say that the subject
+of these plays is the consecration of the home. This has always been a
+favorite theme with Björnson, and he has no clearer title to our
+gratitude than that which he has earned by his unfailing insistence
+upon the sanctity of family life, its mutual confidences, and its
+common joys.  Completing the list, we have "Daglannet," another
+domestic drama of simple structure, and "When the New Wine Blooms," a
+study of modernity as exemplified in the young woman of to-day, of the
+estrangement that too often creeps into married life, and of the
+stirrings that prompt men of middle age to seek to renew the joys of
+youth.
+
+During the years that have passed since the publication of "Dust,"
+Björnson has produced four volumes of fiction,--his two great 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
+uncompromising logic 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 Björnson would have found the task a hopeless one.
+That he should have succeeded even in making a fairly readable book out
+of this material would have been remarkable, and it is a pronounced
+artistic triumph that the book should prove of such absorbing interest.
+For absorbingly interesting it is, to any reader who is willing that a
+novel should provide something 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 wallowed in almost every
+form of brutality and vice. The four preceding generations of the race
+are depicted for us in a series of brief but masterly
+characterizations, in which every stroke tells, and we witness the
+gradual weakening of the family stock.  But with the generation just
+preceding the main action of the novel, there has been introduced a
+vigorous strain of peasant blood, and the process of regeneration has
+begun. It is this process that goes on before our eyes.  It does not
+become a completed process, but the prospect is bright for the future,
+and the flags that fly over town and harbor in the closing chapter have
+a symbolical significance, for they announce a victory of spirit over
+sense, not only in the cases of certain among the individual
+participants in the action, but also in the case of the whole community
+to which they belong.  So much for the book as a study in heredity.  As
+an educational tract, it has the conspicuous virtue of remaining in
+close touch with life while embodying the spirit of modern scientific
+pedagogy.  The hero of the book,--the last descendant of a race
+struggling for moral and physical rehabilitation,--throws himself into
+the work of education with an energy 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 system of training 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 microcosm of the world outside, or rather of what that
+world ought to be.  Björnson's interest in education has been
+life-long; for many years it had gone astray in a sort of Grundtvigian
+fog, but at the time when this book came to be written, it had worked
+its way out into the clear light 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 "Emile," and take renewed
+heart from its inspiring message.
+
+"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 sympathy and
+depth of tragic pathos, its plea for the sacredness of human life, and
+its protest against the religious and social prejudice by which life is
+so often misshapen, this book is an epitome of all the ideas and
+feelings that have gone to the making 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 relationship from
+which issue some of the deepest of social questions, and which enforces
+in the most appealing terms the fundamental teaching of 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 sympathies; the one alert of
+mind, imaginative, open to every intellectual influence, also impetuous
+and hot-blooded; the other shy and intellectually stolid, but good to
+the very core, and moved by the strongest of altruistic impulses.  In
+accordance with their respective characters, the first of these youths
+becomes a physician, and the other a clergyman.  Then we have the
+sister of the physician, who becomes the wife of the clergyman, a
+noble, proud, self-centred nature, finely strung to the inmost fibre of
+her being.  Then we have a woman of the other sort, clinging,
+abnormally sensitive, a child when the years of childhood are over, and
+made the victim of a shocking child-marriage to a crippled old man. She
+it is whom the physician loves, and persuades to a legal dissolution of
+her immoral union.  After some years, he makes her his wife, and their
+happiness would be complete were it not for the social and religious
+prejudice aroused. The clergyman, whom years of service in the state
+church have hardened into bigotry, is officially, as it were, compelled
+to condemn the friend of his boyhood, and even the sister, for a time
+grown untrue to her own generous nature, shares in the estrangement.
+In vain does the physician seek to shelter his wife from the chill of
+her environment.  She droops, pines away, and finally dies, gracious,
+lovable, and even forgiving to the last.  Then the death angel comes
+close to the clergyman and his wife, hovering over their only child,
+and at last the barrier of formalism and prejudice and religious
+bigotry is swept away from their minds.  Their natural sympathies, long
+repressed, resume full sway, and they realize how deeply they, have
+sinned toward the dead woman. The sister seeks a reconciliation with
+her brother, but he repulses her, and gives her his wife's private
+diary to read. In this _journal intime_ she finds the full revelation
+of the gentle spirit that has been done to death, and she feels that
+the very salvation of her life and soul depend upon winning her
+brother's forgiveness.  The closing chapter, in which the final
+reconciliation occurs, is one of the most wonderful in all fiction; its
+pathos is of the deepest and the most moving, and he must be callous of
+soul, indeed, who can read it with dry eyes.
+
+If we were to search the whole of Björnson's writings for the single
+passage which should most completely typify his message to his
+fellowmen,--not Norwegians alone, but all mankind,--the choice would
+have to rest upon the words spoken from the pulpit by the clergyman of
+this novel, on the Sunday following the certainty of his child's
+recovery.
+
+"To-day a man spoke from the pulpit of the church about what he had
+learned.
+
+"Namely, about what first concerns us all.
+
+"One forgets it in his strenuous endeavor, a second in his zeal for
+conflict, a third in his backward vision, a fourth in the conceit of
+his own wisdom, a fifth in his daily routine, and we have all learned
+it more or less ill.  For should I ask you who hear me now, you would
+all reply thoughtlessly, and just because I ask you from this place,
+'Faith is first.'
+
+"No, in very truth, it is not.  Watch over your child, as it struggles
+for breath on the outermost verge of life, or see your wife follow the
+child to that outermost verge, beside herself for anxiety and
+sleeplessness,--then love will teach you that _life comes first_.  And
+never from this day on will I seek God or God's will in any form of
+words, in any sacrament, or in any book or any place, as if He were
+first and foremost to be found there; no, life is first and
+foremost--life as we win it from the depths of despair, in the victory
+of the light, in the grace of self-devotion, in our intercourse with
+living human kind.  God's supreme word to us is life, our highest
+worship of Him is love for the living.  This lesson, self-evident as it
+is, was needed by me more than by most others.  This it is that in
+various ways and upon many grounds I have hitherto rejected,--and of
+late most of all.  But never more shall words be the highest for me,
+nor symbols, but the eternal revelation of life.  Never more will I
+freeze fast in doctrine, but let the warmth of life melt my will.
+Never will I condemn men by the dogmas of old time justice, unless they
+fit with our own time's gospel of love.  Never, for God's sake!  And
+this because I believe in Him, the God of Life, and His never ending
+revelation in life itself."
+
+Here is a gospel, indeed, one that needs no church for its
+promulgation, and no ceremonial for the enhancement of its
+impressiveness.  It is a gospel, moreover, that is based upon no
+foundation of precarious logic, but finds its premises in the healthy
+instincts of the natural man.  It is no small thing to have thus found
+the way, and to have helped others likewise to find the way, out of the
+mists of superstition, through the valleys of doubt and despondency,
+athwart the thickets of prejudice and bigotry with all their furtive
+foemen, up to these sunlit heights of serenity.
+
+"Mary" is less explicit in its teaching than the two great novels just
+summarized, but what it misses in didacticism it more than gains in
+art. The radiant creature who gives her name to the book is one of
+Björnson's most exquisite figures. She is the very embodiment of
+youthful womanhood, filled with the joy of life, and bringing sunshine
+wherever she goes.  Yet this temperament leads to her undoing, or what
+would be the undoing of any woman less splendid in character.  But the
+strength that impels her to the misstep that comes so near to having
+tragic consequences is also the strength that saves her when chastened
+by suffering.  In her the author "gives us the common stuff of life,"
+says an English critic, "gives it us simple and direct.  There is
+nothing here of Ibsen's pathology. We are in the sun.  Her most hideous
+blunder cannot undo a woman's soul.  Björnson knows that the deed is
+nothing at all. It is the soul behind the deed that he sees.  Not
+everything that cometh out of a man defileth a man.  At all events, so
+it is here: triumph and joy built upon an act that--as the Philistines
+would say--has defiled forever."  As a triumph of sheer creation, this
+figure is hardly overmatched anywhere in the author's portrait gallery
+of women.
+
+If Björnson's essential teaching may be found in a single page, as has
+above been suggested, his personality evades all such summarizing.  In
+the present essay, he has been considered as a writer merely,--poet,
+dramatist, novelist,--but the man is vastly more than that.  His other
+activities have been hinted at, indeed, but nothing adequate has been
+said about them.  The director of three theatres, the editor of three
+newspapers and the contributor to many others, the promoter of schools
+and patriotic organizations, the participant in many political
+campaigns, the lay preacher of private and public morals, the chosen
+orator of his nation for all great occasions,--these are some of the
+characters in which we must view him to form anything like a complete
+conception of his many-sided individuality.  Take the matter of oratory
+alone, and it is perhaps true that he has influenced as many people by
+the living word as he has by the printed page.  He has addressed
+hundreds of audiences in the three Scandinavian countries and in
+Finland, he has spoken to more than twenty thousand at a time, and his
+winged speech has gone straight home to his hearers.  All who ever
+heard him will agree that his oratory was of the most persuasive and
+vital impressiveness. Jaeger attempts to describe it in the following
+words:--
+
+"It is eloquence of a very distinctive type; its most characteristic
+quality is its wealth of color; it finds expression for every mood,
+from the lightest to the most serious, from the most vigorous to the
+most delicate and tender.  Now his words ring like the voice of doom,
+filled with thunder and lightning, now they become soft and persuasive
+with smiling mien. With a single cadence, or a play of the facial
+muscles, or a slight gesture, he can portray a person, a situation, or
+an object, so that it appears living in the sight of his hearers. And
+what the word alone cannot do, is accomplished in the most brilliant
+manner by the virtuosity of his delivery.  He does not speak his words,
+he presents them; they take bodily form and seem alive."
+
+In his more intimate relationships, on the other hand, in face to face
+conversation or in the home circle, the man takes on a quite different
+aspect; the prophet has become the friend, the impassioned preacher has
+become the genial story teller, and shares the gladsome or mirthful
+mood of the hour.  Such a personality as this may be analyzed; it
+defies any concise synthesis.  One resorts to figures of speech, and
+they were abundantly resorted to by those who paid him the tribute of
+their admiration and love upon the occasion of his seventieth
+anniversary.  Let us take an instance at random from one of these
+tributes.
+
+"The cataract that roars down to the free foaming sea. The mountain
+with its snowclad peaks towering up into the immensity of the starry
+heavens.  The rustling of the woodland above the blossom-spangled and
+smiling meadows, the steep uptowering, the widely growing, and the
+joyously smiling.  At once the soft melody that stirs the heart and the
+strong wind that sweeps over the Northern lands."
+
+This concourse of metaphors gives some slight idea of the way in which
+Björnson's personality affected those who came into contact with it.
+The description may be supplemented by a few bits of anecdote and
+reminiscence.  The composer Grieg contributes the following incident of
+the old days in Norway:--
+
+"It was Christmas eve of 1868 at the Björnsons in Christiania. They
+lived then in the Rosenkrantzgade.  My wife and I were, as far as I can
+remember, the only guests.  The children were very boisterous in their
+glee.  In the middle of the floor an immense Christmas tree was
+enthroned and brightly lighted. All the servant-folk came in, and
+Björnson spoke, beautifully and warmly, as he well knows how to do.
+'Now you shall play a hymn, Grieg,' he said, and although I did not
+quite like the notion of doing organist's work, I naturally complied
+without a murmur. It was one of Grundtvig's hymns in 32--thirty-two
+verses.  I resigned myself to my fate with stoicism.  At the beginning
+I kept myself awake, but the endless repetitions had a soporific
+effect.  Little by little I became as stupid as a medium.  When we had
+at last got through with all the verses, Björnson said: 'Isn't that
+fine.  Now I will read it for you!'  And so we got all thirty-two
+verses once more.  I was completely overawed."
+
+When the poet purchased his country estate which was his home from the
+late seventies to the end of his life, his coming was looked forward to
+with mingled feelings by the good country folk of the neighborhood.
+Kristofer Janson thus tells the story of his arrival:
+
+"His coming was anticipated with a certain anxiety and apprehension,
+for was he not a 'horrid radical'?  The dean in particular thought that
+he might be a menace to the safe spiritual slumber of the village.  As
+the dean one day was driving through the village in his carriole, just
+where the road turns sharply by the bridge below Aulestad, he met
+another carriole which was rapidly driving that way and in it a man
+who, without respect for the clerical vehicle, shouted with all the
+strength of his lungs: 'Half the road!'  The dean turned aside, saying
+with a sigh: 'Has Björnson come to the Gausdal at last?' "It was indeed
+so, and he showed his colors at the start. The same dean and Björnson
+became the best of friends afterwards, and found much sport in
+interchanging genial jests whenever they met."
+
+Frits Thaulow, the painter, thus wrote to Björnson reminding him of a
+festive gathering of students:
+
+"The manager came in and announced with a loud voice that it was past
+twelve.  Then you sprang up.
+
+"'Bring champagne!  Now I will speak of what comes after twelve
+o'clock! of all that lies beyond the respectable hour for retiring!
+For the hour when fancy awakens and fills us with longings for the
+world of wonderland; then the painter sees only the dim outline in the
+moonlight, then the musician hears the silence, then the poet after his
+thoughtful day feels sprouting the first shoots of the next.  After
+twelve freedom begins.  The day's tumult is stilled, and the voice
+within becomes audible.'
+
+"Thus you spoke, and 'after twelve' became a watchword with us.
+
+"Many a spark has been kindled in your soul by the quiet evening time.
+But later in life, when you become a chieftain in the battle, broad
+daylight also made its demands upon you.  Like the sun you shone upon
+us and made the best that was in us to grow, but I shall always keep a
+deep artistic affection for what comes 'after twelve.'"
+
+Henrik Cavling tells the following story of the poet in Paris:
+
+"It was one of Björnson's peculiarities to go out as a rule without any
+money in his pocket.  He neither owned a purse nor knew the French
+coins.  His personal expenditures were restricted to the books he
+bought, and now and then a theatre ticket.  One day he carne excitedly
+into the sitting-room, and asked:
+
+"'Who took my five franc piece?'  It was a five franc piece that he had
+got somewhere or other and had stuck in his pocket to buy a theatre
+ticket with.  It turned out that the maid had found it and given it to
+Fru Björnson.  For it seemed quite unthinkable to her that the master
+should have any money to take out with him.
+
+"This complete indifference of Björnson to small matters sometimes
+proved annoying.  In this connection I may tell of a little trip he
+once took with Jonas Lie.
+
+"The two poets, who did not live far apart, had long counted with
+pleasure upon a trip to Père Lachaise, where they wished to visit
+Alfred de Musset's grave.  At last the day came, and with big soft hats
+on their heads, and engaged earnestly in conversation, they drove away
+through Paris.
+
+"When they came to Père Lachaise, and wanted to enter the cemetery, the
+driver stopped them and asked for his pay. Then it appeared that
+neither had any money, which they smilingly explained, and asked him in
+bad French to wait and drive them home again.  But the two gentlemen
+with the big soft hats had not inspired the driver with any marked
+degree of confidence.  He made a scene, and attracted a great crowd of
+the boys, loafers, and well-dressed Frenchmen who always collect on
+critical occasions.  The end of the affair was that the poets had to
+get into their cab again and drive all the long way back without having
+had a glimpse of the grave.  When they reached Lie's lodgings, Lie went
+in to get some money, while Björnson sat in the cab as a hostage.
+Nevertheless, both poets maintained that they had had a pleasant
+expedition.  A Norwegian question, which had accidentally come up
+between them, had made them forget all about Alfred de Musset."
+
+Finally, a story may be given that is told by Björnson himself.
+
+"I had a pair of old boots that I wanted to give to a beggar. But just
+as I was going to give them to him, I began to wonder whether Karoline
+had not some use for them, since she usually gave such things to
+beggars.  So I took the boots in my hand, and went downstairs to ask
+her, but on the way I got a little worked up because I did not quite
+dare to give them to the beggar myself.  And the further I went down
+the steps, the more wrathful I got, until I stood over her.  And then I
+was so angry that I had to bluster at her as if she had done me a
+grievous wrong.  But she could not understand a word of what I said,
+and looked at me with such amazement, that I could not keep from
+bursting into laughter."
+
+From his early years, Björnson kept in touch with the modern
+intellectual movement by mingling with the people of other lands than
+his own.  Besides his visits to Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, he made
+many lengthy sojourns in the chief continental centres of civilization,
+in Munich, Rome, and Paris.  The longest of his foreign journeys was
+that which brought him to the United States in the winter of 1880-81,
+for the purpose of addressing his fellow countrymen in the Northwest.
+His home for the last thirty years and more has been his estate of
+Aulestad in the Gausdal, a region of Southern Norway.  Here he has been
+a model farmer, and here, surrounded by his family,--wife, children,
+and grandchildren,--his patriarchal presence has given dignity to the
+household, and united its members in a common bond of love.  Hither
+have come streams of guests, friends old and new, to enjoy his generous
+hospitality.  There has been provision for all, both bed and board, and
+the heartiest of welcomes from the host.  And the stranger from abroad
+has been greeted, as like as not, by the sight of his own country's
+flag streaming from a staff before the house, and foreshadowing the
+personal greeting that awaited him upon the threshold.
+
+Björnson died in Paris (where he had been spending the winter, as was
+his custom for many years past), April 26, 1910. He had been ill for
+several months, and only an extraordinarily robust constitution enabled
+him to make a partial recovery from the crisis of the preceding
+February, when his death had been hourly expected.  The news of his
+death occasioned demonstrations of grief not only in his own country,
+but also throughout the civilized world.  Every honor that a nation can
+bestow upon its illustrious dead was decreed him by King and Storthing;
+a warship was despatched to bear his remains to Christiania, and the
+pomp and circumstance of a state funeral acclaimed the sense of the
+nation's loss.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF WORKS.
+
+  SYNNÖVE SOLBAKKEN.  Fortaelling, 1857
+  MELLEM SLAGENE.  Drama, 1858
+  ARNE.  Fortaelling, 1858
+  HALTE-HULDA.  Drama, 1858
+  EN GLAD GUT.  Fortaelling, 1860
+  KONG SVERRE.  1861
+  SIGURD SLEMBE.  1862
+  MARIA STUART I SKOTLAND.  Skuespil, 1864
+  DE NYGIFTE.  Komedie, 1865
+  FISKERJENTEN.  Fortaelling, 1868
+  DIGTE OG SANGE.  1870
+  ARNLJOT GELLINE.  1870
+  SIGURD JORSALFAR.  Skuespil, 1872
+  FORTAELLINGER I-II,  1872
+  BRUDE-SLAATTEN.  Fortaelling, 1873
+  REDAKTÖREN.  Skuespil, 1874
+  EN FALLIT.  Skuespil, 1874
+  KONGEN.  1877
+  MAGNHILD.  Fortaelling, 1877
+  KAPTEJN MANSANA.  Fortaelling fra Italien, 1879
+  LEONARDA.  Skuespil, 1879
+  DET NY SYSTEM.  Skuespil, 1879
+  EN HANDSKE.  Skuespil, 1883
+  OVER AEVNE.  Förste Stykke, 1883
+  DET FLAGER I BYEN OG PAA HAVNEN,  1884
+  GEOGRAFI OG KJAERLIGHED.  1885
+  PAA GUDS VEJE.  1889
+  NYE FORTAELLINGER.  1894
+  LYSET.  En Universitetskantate, 1895
+  OVER AEVNE.  Andet Stykke, 1895
+  PAUL LANGE OG TORA PARSBERG.  1898
+  LABOREMUS.  1901
+  TO FORTAELLINGER.  1901
+  PAA STORHOVE.  Drama, 1904
+  DAGLANNET.  1904
+  TO TALER.  1906.
+  MARY.  Fortaelling, 1906
+  VORT SPROG.  1907
+  NAAR DEN NY VIN BLOMSTRER.  1909
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Björnstjerne Björnson, by William Morton Payne
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Björnstjerne Björnson, by William Morton Payne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Björnstjerne Björnson
+
+Author: William Morton Payne
+
+Posting Date: August 8, 2009 [EBook #4582]
+Release Date: October, 2003
+First Posted: February 11, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nicole Apostola.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+Björnstjerne Björnson
+</H1>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+1832-1910
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+by
+</H3>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+William Morton Payne, LL.D.
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+Translator of Björnson's "Sigurd Slembe" and Jaeger's "Ibsen," <BR>
+Author of "Little Leaders," Etc.
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+To Mary
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+When the date of Björnson's seventieth birthday drew near at the close
+of 1902, the present writer, who had been from boyhood a devoted
+admirer of the great Norwegian, wished to make an American contribution
+to the world-wide tribute of gratitude and affection which the then
+approaching anniversary was sure to evoke.  The outcome of that wish
+was an essay, summarizing Björnson's life and work, published in "The
+International Quarterly," March, 1903.  The essay then written forms
+the substance of the present publication, although several additions
+have been made in the way of translation, anecdote, and the
+consideration of Björnson's later productions.  So small a book as this
+is, of course, hopelessly inadequate to make more than the most
+superficial sort of survey of the life work of that masterful
+personality whose recent death is so heavy a loss to all mankind.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+W. M. P.<BR>
+  Chicago, May, 1910.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
+</H2>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+1832-1910
+</H4>
+
+<P>
+Eight years ago, taking a bird's-eye view of the mountain peaks of
+contemporary literature, and writing with particular reference to
+Björnson's seventieth birthday, it seemed proper to make the following
+remarks about the most famous European authors then numbered among
+living men.  If one were asked for the name of the greatest man of
+letters still living in the world, the possible claimants to the
+distinction would hardly be more than five in number.  If it were a
+question of poetry alone, Swinburne would have to be named first, with
+Carducci for a fairly close second.  But if we take literature in its
+larger sense, as including all the manifestations of creative activity
+in language, and if we insist, furthermore, that the man singled out
+for this preëminence shall stand in some vital relation to the
+intellectual life of his time, and exert a forceful influence upon the
+thought of the present day, the choice must rather be made among the
+three giants of the north of Europe, falling, as it may be, upon the
+great-hearted Russian emotionalist who has given us such deeply moving
+portrayals of the life of the modern world; or upon the passionate
+Norwegian idealist whose finger has so unerringly pointed out the
+diseased spots in the social organism, earning by his moral surgery the
+name of pessimist, despite his declared faith in the redemption of
+mankind through truth and freedom and love; or, perchance, upon that
+other great Norwegian, equally fervent in his devotion to the same
+ideals, and far more sympathetic in his manner of inculcating them upon
+his readers, who has just rounded out his scriptural tale of three
+score years and ten, and, in commemoration of the anniversary, is now
+made the recipient of such a tribute of grateful and whole-souled
+admiration as few men have ever won, and none have better deserved. It
+would be certainly invidious, and probably futile, to attempt a nice,
+comparative estimate of the services of these three men to the common
+cause of humanity; let us be content with the admission that
+Björnstjerne Björnson is <I>primus inter pares</I>, and make no attempt to
+exalt him at the expense of his great contemporaries.  Writing now
+eight years later, at the time when Björnson's death has plunged his
+country and the world in mourning, it is impressive to note that of the
+five men constituting the group above designated, Tolstoy alone
+survives to carry on the great literary tradition of the nineteenth
+century.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It will be well, however, to make certain distinctions between the life
+work of Björnson and that of the two men whom a common age and common
+aims bring into inevitable association with him. These distinctions are
+chiefly two,&mdash;one of them is that while Tolstoy and Ibsen grew to be
+largely cosmopolitan in their outlook, Björnson has much more closely
+maintained throughout his career the national, or, at any rate, the
+racial standpoint.  The other is that while Tolstoy and Ibsen presently
+became, the one indifferent to artistic expression, and the other
+baldly prosaic where he was once deeply poetical, Björnson preserved
+the poetic impulse of his youth, and continued to give it play even in
+his envisagement of the most practical modern problems.  Let us enlarge
+a little upon these two themes.  Ernest Renan, speaking at the funeral
+of Tourguénieff, described the deceased novelist as "the incarnation of
+a whole people."  Even more fittingly might the phrase be applied to
+Björnson, for it would be difficult to find anywhere else in modern
+literature a figure so completely and profoundly representative of his
+race.  In the frequently quoted words of Dr. Brandes, to speak the name
+of Björnson in any assembly of his countrymen is like "hoisting the
+Norwegian flag."  It has been maliciously added that mention of his
+name is also like flaunting a red flag in the sight of a considerable
+proportion of the assembly, for Björnson has always been a fighter as
+well as an artist, and it has been his self-imposed mission to arouse
+his fellow countrymen from their mental sluggishness no less than to
+give creative embodiment to their types of character and their ideal
+aspirations.  But whatever the opposition aroused by his political and
+social radicalism, even his opponents have been constrained to feel
+that he was the mouthpiece of their race as no other Norwegian before
+him had been, and that he has voiced whatever is deepest and most
+enduring in the Norwegian temper.  Powerful as has been his appeal to
+the intellect and conscience of the modern world at large, it has
+always had a special note of admonition or of cheer for his own people.
+With reference to the second of our two themes, it is sufficient to say
+that, although the form of verse was almost wholly abandoned by him
+during the latter half of his life, the breath of poetry never ceased
+to exhale from his work, and the lyric exuberance of his later prose
+still recalls to us the singer of the sixties.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Few productions of modern literature have proved as epoch-making as the
+modest little volume called "Synnöve Solbakken," which appeared in the
+book shops of Christiania and Copenhagen in 1857.  It was a simple tale
+of peasant life, an idyl of the love of a boy and a girl, but it was
+absolutely new in its style, and in its intimate revelation of the
+Norwegian character. It must be remembered that until the year 1814,
+Norway had for centuries been politically united with Denmark, and that
+Copenhagen had been the common literary centre of the two countries.
+To that city Norwegian writers had gravitated as naturally as French
+writers gravitate to Paris.  There had resulted from this condition of
+things a literature which, although it owed much to men of Norwegian
+birth, was essentially a Danish literature, and must properly be so
+styled.  That literature could boast, at the beginning of the
+nineteenth century, an interesting history comparable in its antiquity
+with the greater literatures of Europe, and a brilliant history for at
+least a hundred years past.  But old literatures are sure to become
+more or less sophisticated and trammelled by tradition, and to this
+rule Danish literature was no exception. When the constitution of
+Eidsvold, in 1814, separated Norway from Denmark, and made it into an
+independent kingdom (save for the forced Swedish partnership), the
+country had practically no literary tradition save that which centred
+about the Danish capital.  She might claim to have been the native
+country of many Danish writers, even of Ludvig Holberg, the greatest
+writer that the Scandinavian peoples have yet produced, but she could
+point to nothing that might fairly be called a Norwegian literature.
+The young men of the rising generation were naturally much concerned
+about this, and a sharp divergence of opinion arose as to the means
+whereby the interests of Norwegian literature might be furthered, and
+the aims which it should have in view.  One party urged that the
+literature should break loose from its traditional past, and aim at the
+cultivation of an exclusively national spirit.  The other party
+declared such a course to be folly, contending that literature must be
+a product of gradual development rather than of set volition, and that,
+despite the shifting of the political kaleidoscope, the national
+literature was so firmly rooted in its Danish past that its natural
+evolution must be an outgrowth from all that had gone before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Each of these parties found a vigorous leader, the cause of
+ultra-Norwegianism being championed by Wergeland, an erratic person in
+whom the spark of genius burned, but who never found himself,
+artistically speaking.  The champion of the conservatives was Welhaven,
+a polished writer of singular charm and much force, philosophical in
+temper, whose graceful verse and acute criticism upheld by both precept
+and practice the traditional standards of culture.  Each of these men
+had his followers, who proved in many cases more zealous than their
+leaders.  The period of the thirties and forties was dominated by this
+Wergeland-Welhaven controversy, which engendered much bitterness of
+feeling, and which constitutes the capital fact in Norwegian literary
+history before the appearance of Ibsen and Björnson upon the scene.  A
+sort of parallel might be drawn for American readers by taking two such
+men as Whitman and Longfellow, opposing them to one another in the most
+outspoken fashion, assuming for both a sharply polemic manner, and
+ranging among their respective followers all the other writers of their
+time.  Then imagine the issue between them to be drawn not only in the
+field of letters, but also in the pulpit, the theatre, and the
+political arena, and some slight notion may be obtained of the
+condition of affairs which preceded the advent of Björnson and the true
+birth of Norwegian literature with "Synnöve Solbakken."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The work which was thus destined to mark the opening of a new era in
+Norwegian letters was written in the twenty-fifth year of its author's
+life.  The son of a country pastor, Björnstjerne Björnson was born at
+Kvikne, December 8, 1832.  At the age of six, his father was
+transferred to a new parish in the Romsdal, one of the most picturesque
+regions in Norway.  The impression made upon his sensitive nature by
+these surroundings was deep and enduring.  Looking back upon his
+boyhood he speaks with strong emotion of the evenings when "I stood and
+watched the sunlight play upon mountain and fiord, until I wept, as if
+I had done something wrong, and when, borne down upon my ski into one
+valley or another I could stand as if spellbound by a beauty, by a
+longing that I could not explain, but that was so great that along with
+the highest joy I had, also, the deepest sense of imprisonment and
+sorrow."  This is the mood which was to be given utterance in that
+wonderful lyric, "Over the Lofty Mountains," in which all the ardor and
+the longings of passionate and impatient youth find the most appealing
+expression. The song is found in "Arne," and may be thus reproduced,
+after a fashion, in the English language.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "Often I wonder what there may be<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Over the lofty mountains.<BR>
+  Here the snow is all I see,<BR>
+  Spread at the foot of the dark green tree;<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Sadly I often ponder,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Would I were over yonder.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "Strong of wing soars the eagle high<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Over the lofty mountains,<BR>
+  Glad of the new day soars to the sky,<BR>
+  Wild in pursuit of his prey doth fly;<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Pauses, and, fearless of danger,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Scans the far coasts of the stranger.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "The apple-tree, whose thoughts ne'er fly<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Over the lofty mountains,<BR>
+  Leaves, when the summer days draw nigh,<BR>
+  Patiently waits for the time when high<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  The birds in its boughs shall be swinging,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Yet will know not what they are singing.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "He who has yearned so long to go<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Over the lofty mountains&mdash;<BR>
+  He whose visions and fond hopes grow<BR>
+  Dim, with the years that so restless flow&mdash;<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Knows what the birds are singing,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Glad in the tree-tops swinging.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "Why, oh bird, dost thou hither fare<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Over the lofty mountains?<BR>
+  Surely it must be better there,<BR>
+  Broader the view and freer the air;<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Com'st thou these longings to bring me;<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  These only, and nothing to wing me?<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "Oh, shall I never, never go<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Over the lofty mountains!<BR>
+  Must all my thoughts and wishes so<BR>
+  Held in these walls of ice and snow<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Here be imprisoned forever?<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Till death shall I flee them never?<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "Hence!  I will hence!  Oh, so far from here,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Over the lofty mountains!<BR>
+  Here 't is so dull, so unspeakably drear;<BR>
+  Young is my heart and free from fear&mdash;<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Better the walls to be scaling<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Than here in my prison lie wailing.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "One day, I know, shall my soul free roam<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Over the lofty mountains.<BR>
+  Oh, my God, fair is thy home,<BR>
+  Ajar is the door for all who come;<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Guard it for me yet longer,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Till my soul through striving grows stronger."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the age of eleven Björnson'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 many sorts of literary
+experiments, and became actively engaged 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 dramatic criticism as the avowed partisan
+of Norwegian ideals, holding himself, in some sort, the successor of
+Wergeland, Who had died about ten years earlier.  Before becoming a
+dramatic critic, he had essayed dramatic authorship, and the acceptance
+by the theatre of his juvenile play, "Valborg," had led to a somewhat
+unusual result.  He was given a free ticket of admission, and a few
+weeks of theatre-going 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 came to him
+upon his return from a student gathering 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 come. I packed up, went
+home, thought it all over, wrote and rewrote `Between the Battles' in a
+fortnight, and travelled to Copenhagen with the completed piece in my
+trunk; I would be a poet."  He then set to writing "Synnöve Solbakken,"
+published it in part as a newspaper serial, and then in book form, in
+the autumn of 1857.  He had "commenced author" in good earnest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next fifteen years of Björnson'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 achievement of fourteen feverish days.  The remaining 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); three more plays drawn from the treasury of old Norse
+history, "King Sverre," "Sigurd Slembe," and "Sigurd Jorsalfar"; a
+dramatic setting 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 with modern life; "Arnljot Gelline,"
+his only long poem, a wild narrative of the clash between heathendom
+and the Christian faith in the days of Olaf the Holy; and, last but by
+no means least, the collection of his "Poems and Songs." Thus at the
+age of forty, Björnson found himself with a dozen books to his credit
+books which had stirred his fellow countrymen as no other books had
+ever stirred them, arousing 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 him, the singer of all
+that was noble in Norwegian aspiration, the sympathetic delineator of
+all that was essential in Norwegian Character.  He had, in short,
+created a national literature where none had before existed, and he was
+still in his early prime.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The collected edition of Björnson's "Tales," published in 1872,
+together with "The Bridal March," separately published in the following
+year, gives us a complete representation of that phase of his genius
+which is best known to the world at large.  Here are five stories of
+considerable length, and a number of slighter sketches, in which the
+Norwegian peasant is portrayed with intimate and loving knowledge.  The
+peasant tale was no new thing in European literature, for the names of
+Auerbach and George Sand, to say nothing 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 Björnson's predecessors there had been too much of the
+<I>de haut en bas</I> attitude; the peasant had been drawn from the outside,
+viewed philosophically, and invested with artificial sentiment.
+Björnson 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 men who wrested a scanty living
+from an ungrateful soil.  Although a poet by instinct, he was not
+afraid of realism, and did not shrink from giving the brutal aspects of
+peasant life a place upon his canvas.  In emphasizing the
+characteristics of reticence and <I>naïveté</I> he really discovered the
+Norwegian peasant for literary purposes. Beneath the words spoken by
+his characters we are constantly made to realize that there are depths
+of feeling that remain unexpressed; whether from native pride or from a
+sense of the inadequacy of mere words to set forth a critical moment of
+life, his men and women are distinguished by the most laconic
+utterance, yet their speech always has dramatic fitness and bears the
+stamp of sincerity.  Jaeger speaks of the manifold possibilities of
+this laconic method in the following words:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is as if the author purposely set in motion the reader's fancy and
+feeling that they might do their own work.  The greatest poet is he who
+understands how to awaken fancy and feeling to their highest degree of
+self-activity.  And this is Björnson'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 known how to
+suggest so much in so few words."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In some respects, the little sketch called "The Father" is the supreme
+example of Björnson's artistry in this kind.  There are only a few
+pages in all, but they embody the tragedy of a lifetime.  The little
+work is a literary gem 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 Björnson is best known outside of
+his own country; one may almost say that it is by them alone that he is
+really familiar to English readers.  A free translation of "Synnöve
+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 made soon after their original appearance, and in some instances
+have been multiplied.  It is thus a noteworthy fact that Björnson,
+although four years the junior of Ibsen, enjoyed a vogue among English
+readers for a score of years during which the name of Ibsen was
+absolutely unknown to them.  The whirligig of time has brought in its
+revenges of late years, and the long neglected older author has had
+more than the proportional share of our attention than is fairly his
+due.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In his delineation of the Norwegian peasant character, Björnson was
+greatly aided by the study of the sagas, which he had read with
+enthusiasm from his earliest boyhood.  Upon them his style was largely
+formed, and their vivid dramatic representation of the life of the
+early Norsemen impressed him profoundly, shaping both his ideals and
+the form of their expression.  The modern Scandinavian may well be
+envied for his literary inheritance from the heroic past.  No other
+European has anything to compare with it for clean-cut vigor and wealth
+of romantic material.  The literature which blossomed in Iceland and
+flourished for two or three centuries wherever Norsemen made homes for
+themselves offers a unique intellectual phenomenon, for nothing like
+their record remains to us from any other primitive people. This
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  "Tale of the Northland of old<BR>
+  And the undying glory of dreams,"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+proved a lasting stimulus to Björnson's genius, and, during the early
+period of his career, which is now under review, it made its influence
+felt alike in his tales, his dramas, and his songs.  "To see the
+peasant in the light of the sagas and the sagas in the light of the
+peasant" he declared to be the fundamental principle of his literary
+method.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It has been seen that during the fifteen years which made Björnson in
+so peculiar a sense the spokesman of his race, he wrote no less than
+five saga dramas.  The first two of these works, "Between the Battles"
+and "Halte-Hulda," are rather slight performances, and the third, "King
+Sverre," although a more extended work, is not particularly noteworthy.
+The grimness of the Viking life is softened by romantic coloring, and
+the poet has not freed himself from the influence of Oehlenschlaeger.
+But in "Sigurd Slembe" he found a subject entirely worthy of his
+genius, and produced one of the noblest masterpieces of all modern
+literature.  This largely planned and magnificently executed dramatic
+trilogy was written in Munich, and published in 1862.  The material is
+found in the "Heimskringla," but the author has used the prerogative of
+the artist to simplify the historical outline thus offered into a
+superb imaginative creation, rich in human interest, and powerful in
+dramatic presentation.  The story is concerned with the efforts of
+Sigurd, nicknamed "Slembe," to obtain the succession to the throne of
+Norway during the first half of the twelfth century.  He was a son of
+King Magnus Barfod, and, although of illegitimate birth, might legally
+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 mother
+is made in the first section of the trilogy, which is a single act,
+written in blank verse.  Recognizing the futility of urging his
+birthright at this time, he starts off to win fame as a crusader, the
+sort of fame that haloed Sigurd 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 ambition and the sense of injustice ever gnawing at his heart.
+He becomes entangled in a feudal quarrel concerning the rule of the
+islands.  Both parties seek to use him for their purposes, but in the
+end, although leadership is in his grasp, he tears himself away,
+appalled by the revelation of crime and treachery in his surroundings.
+In this section of the work we have the subtly conceived and
+Hamlet-like figure of Earl Harald, in whose interest Frakark, a Norse
+Lady Macbeth, plots the murder of Earl Paul, only to bring upon Harald
+himself the terrible death that she has planned for his brother.  Here,
+also, we have the gracious maiden figure of Audhild, perhaps the
+loveliest of all Björnson's delineations of womanhood, a figure worthy
+to be ranked with the heroines of Shakespeare and Goethe, who remains
+sweet and fragrant in our memory forever after. With the mutual love of
+Sigurd and Audhild comes the one hour of sunshine 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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ten more years as a crusader and a wanderer over the face of the earth
+pass by before we meet with Sigurd again in the third section of the
+trilogy.  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 Slembe, an illegitimate son of Magnus Barfod, and
+who, during the last senile years of Sigurd Jorsalfar's life, had won
+the recognition that Sigurd Slembe might have won had he not missed the
+chance, and been acknowledged as the king's brother.  When the king
+died, he left a son named Magnus, who should have been his successor,
+but whom Harald Gille seized, blinded, and imprisoned that he might
+himself occupy the throne.  The five acts of this third section of the
+trilogy cover the last two years of Sigurd Slembe's life, years during
+which he seeks to gain his end, first by conciliation, and afterwards,
+maddened by the base treachery of the king and his followers, by
+assassination and violence.  He has become a hard man, but, however
+wild his schemes of revenge, and however desperate his measures, he
+retains our sympathy to the end because we feel that circumstances have
+made him the ravager of his country, and that his underlying motive all
+along has not been a merely personal ambition, but an immense longing
+to serve his people, and to rule them with justice and wisdom.  The
+final scene of all has a strange and solemn beauty.  It is on the eve
+of the battle in which Sigurd 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 outcome. Sigurd has made his last
+stand, his Danish allies have deserted him, and he well knows what will
+be the next day's issue. And here we have one of the noblest
+illustrations in all literature of that <I>Versöhnung</I> which is the last
+word of tragic art.  For in this supreme hour the peace of mind which
+he has sought 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 men whose lives have been set at
+tragic pitch, has come to him also; he now sees that this was the
+inevitable end, and the recognition of the fitness with which events
+have shaped themselves brings with it an exaltation of soul in which
+life is seen revealed in its true aspect.  No longer veiled in the
+mists which have hitherto hidden it from his passionate gaze, he takes
+note of what it really is, and casts it from him.  In this hour of
+passionless contemplation such a renunciation is not a thing torn from
+the reluctant soul, but the clear solution, so long sought, of the
+problem so long blindly attempted.  That which his passion enslaved
+self has so struggled to avert, his higher self, at last set free,
+calmly and gladly accepts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What miracle is this? for in the hour I prayed, the prayer was
+granted!  Peace, perfect peace!  Then I will go to-morrow to my last
+battle as to the altar; peace shall at last be mine for all my longings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How this autumn evening brings reconciliation to my soul! Sun and wave
+and shore and sea flow all together, as in the thought of God all
+others; never yet has it seemed so fair to me.  But it is not mine to
+rule over this lovely land.  How greatly I have done it ill!  But how
+has it all so come to pass? for in my wanderings I saw thy mountains in
+every sky, I yearned for home as a child longs for Christmas, yet I
+came no sooner, and when at last I came, I gave thee wound upon wound.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But now, in contemplative mood, thou gazest upon me, and givest me at
+parting this fairest autumn night of thine; I will ascend yonder rock
+and take a long farewell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The action of "Sigurd Slembe," is interspersed with several lyrics, the
+most striking of which is herd translated in exact reproduction of the
+original form:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "Sin and Death, at break of day,<BR>
+  Day, day,<BR>
+  Spoke together with bated breath;<BR>
+  'Marry thee, sister, that I may stay,<BR>
+  Stay, stay,<BR>
+  In thy house,' quoth Death.<BR>
+  "Death laughed aloud when Sin was wed,<BR>
+  Wed, wed,<BR>
+  And danced on the bridal day:<BR>
+  But bore that night from the bridal bed,<BR>
+  Bed, bed,<BR>
+  The groom in a shroud away.<BR>
+  "Death came to her sister at break of day,<BR>
+  Day, day,<BR>
+  And Sin drew a weary breath;<BR>
+  'He whom thou lovest is mine for aye,<BR>
+  Aye, aye,<BR>
+  Mine he is,' quoth Death."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One more saga drama was to be written by Björnson, but "Sigurd Slembe"
+remains his greatest achievement in this field of activity.  Its single
+successor, "Sigurd Jorsalfar," was not published until ten years later,
+and may not be compared with it for either strength or poetic
+inspiration. The author called it a "folkplay," and announced the
+intention, which was never fulfilled, of making several similar
+experiments with scenes from the sagas, "which should appeal to every
+eye and every stage of culture, to each in its own way, and at the
+performance of which all, for the time being, would experience the joy
+of fellow feeling."  The experiment proves interesting, and is carried
+out without didacticism or straining after sensational effects; the
+play is vigorous and well planned, but for the reader it has little of
+the dramatic impressiveness of its predecessor, although as an acting
+drama it is better fitted for the requirements of the stage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two volumes which contain the greater part of Björnson's poetry not
+dramatic in form were both published in 1870.  One of them was the
+collection of his "Poems and Songs," the other was the epic cycle,
+"Arnljot Gelline," the only long poem that he has written.  The volume
+of lyrics includes many pieces of imperfect quality and slight
+value,&mdash;personal tributes and occasional productions,&mdash;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 made him the greatest of Norway's lyric poets. No
+translation can ever quite reproduce their cadence or their feeling;
+they illustrate the one aspect of Björnson's many-sided genius that
+must be taken on trust by those who cannot read his language.  A friend
+once asked him upon what occasion he had felt most fully the joy of
+being a poet. His reply was as follows:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was when a party from the Right in Christiania came to my house and
+smashed all my windows.  For when they had finished their assault, and
+were starting home again, they felt that they had to sing something,
+and so they began to sing, 'Yes, we love this land of ours'&mdash;they
+couldn't help it. They had to sing
+ the song of the man they had attacked."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Into this collection were gathered the lyrics scattered through the
+peasant tales and the saga dramas, thus making it completely
+representative of his quality as a singer.  A revised and somewhat
+extended edition of this volume was published about ten years later.
+Björnson has had the rare fortune of having his lyrics set to music by
+three composers&mdash;Nordraak, Kjerulf, and Grieg&mdash;as intensely national in
+spirit as himself, and no festal occasion among Norwegians is
+celebrated without singing the national hymn, "Yes, We Love This Land
+of Ours," or the noble choral setting of "Olaf Trygvason."  The best
+folk-singer is he who stands in the whirling round of life, says the
+poet, and he reveals the very secret of his power when he tells us that
+life was ever more to him than song, and that existence, where it was
+worth while, in the thick of the human fray, always had for him a
+deeper meaning than anything he had written. The longest poem in
+Björnson's collection is called "Bergliot," and is a dramatic monologue
+in which the foul slaying of her husband Ejnar Tambarskelve and their
+son Ejndride is mourned by the bereaved wife and mother.  The story is
+from the saga of Harald Haardraada, and is treated with the deepest
+tragic impressiveness.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "Odin in Valhal I dare not seek<BR>
+  For him I forsook in my childhood.<BR>
+  And the new God in Gimle?<BR>
+  He took all that I had!<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Revenge:&mdash;Who says revenge?&mdash;<BR>
+  Can revenge awaken my dead<BR>
+  Or shelter me from the cold?<BR>
+  Has it comfort for a widow's home<BR>
+  Or for a childless mother?<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  Away with your revenge: Let be!<BR>
+  Lay him on the litter, him and the son.<BR>
+  Come, we will follow them home.<BR>
+  The new God in Gimle, the terrible, who took all,<BR>
+  Let him also take revenge, for he understands it!<BR>
+  Drive slowly: Thus drove Ejnar ever;<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  &mdash;Soon enough shall we reach home."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was also to the "Heimskringla" that Björnson turned for the subject
+of his epic cycle, "Arnljot Gelline."  Here we read in various rhythms
+of Arnljot the outlaw, how the hands of all men are against him; how he
+offers to stay his wrath and end the blood feud if the fair Ingigerd,
+Trand's daughter, may be bestowed upon him; how, being refused, he sets
+fire to Trand's house and bears Ingigerd away captive; how her tears
+prevail upon him to release her, and how she seeks refuge in a southern
+cloister; how Arnljot wanders restless over sea and land until he comes
+to King Olaf, on the eve of the great battle, receives the Christian
+faith, fights fiercely in the vanguard against the hosts of the
+heathen, and, smiling, falls with his king on the field of Stiklestad.
+One song from this cycle, "The Cloister in the South" is here
+reproduced in an exact copy of the original metre, in the hope that
+even this imperfect representation of the poem may be better than none
+at all.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "Who would enter so late the cloister in?"<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  "A maid forlorn from the land of snow."<BR>
+  "What sorrow is thine, and what thy sin?"<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  "The deepest sorrow the heart can know.<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   I have nothing done<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     Yet must still endeavor,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   Though my strength be none,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     To wander ever.<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let me in, to seek for my pain surcease,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     I can find no peace."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "From what far-off land hast thou taken flight?"<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  "From the land of the North, a weary way."<BR>
+  "What stayed thy feet at our gate this night?"<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  "The chant of the nuns, for I heard them pray,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   And the song gave peace<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     To my soul, and blessed me;<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   It offered release<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     From the grief that oppressed me.<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   Let me in, so if peace to give be thine,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     I may make it mine."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "Name me the grief that thy life hath crossed."<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  "Rest may I never, never know."<BR>
+  "Thy father, thy lover, thou hast then lost?"<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  "I lost them both at a single blow,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   And all I held dear<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     In my deepest affection;<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   Aye, all that was near<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     To my heart's recollection.<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   Let me in, I am failing, I beg, I implore,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     I can bear no more."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  "How was it that thou thy father lost?"<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  "He was slain, and I saw the deed."<BR>
+  "How was it that thou thy lover lost?"<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  "My father he slew, and I saw the deed.<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   I wept so bitterly<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     When he roughly would woo me,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   He at last set me free,<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     And forbore to pursue me.<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;   Let me in, for the horror my soul doth fill.<BR>
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;     That I love him still."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+  <I>Chorus of nuns within the Church.</I><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+        "Come child, come bride,<BR>
+        To God's own side,<BR>
+        From grief find rest<BR>
+        On Jesus' breast.<BR>
+        Rest thy burden of sorrow.<BR>
+        &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    On Horeb's height;<BR>
+        Like the lark, with to-morrow<BR>
+        &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    Shall thy soul take flight.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+        Here stilled is all yearning,<BR>
+        No passion returning;<BR>
+        No terror come near thee<BR>
+        When the Saviour can hear thee.<BR>
+        For He, if in need be<BR>
+        &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    Thy storm-beaten soul,<BR>
+        Though it bruised as a reed be,<BR>
+        &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;    Shall raise it up whole."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Despite the power and beauty of an occasional manifestation of his
+genius during the late sixties and early seventies, the poetic impulse
+that had made Björnson the most famous of Norwegian authors seemed,
+toward the close of the fifteen-year period just now under review, to
+be well nigh exhausted.  Even among those who had followed his career
+most closely there were few who could anticipate the splendid new
+outburst of activity for which he was preparing.  These years seemed to
+be a dead time, not only in Björnson's life, but also in the general
+intellectual life of the Scandinavian countries.  Dr. Brandes thus
+describes the feelings of a thoughtful observer during that period of
+stagnation.  "In the North one had the feeling of being shut off from
+the intellectual life of the time. We were sitting with closed doors, a
+few brains struggling fruitlessly with the problem of how to get them
+opened... With whole schools of foreign literature the cultivated Dane
+had almost no acquaintance; and when, finally, as a consequence of
+political animosity, intellectual intercourse with Germany was broken
+off, the main channel was closed through which the intellectual
+developments of the day had been communicated to Norway as well as
+Denmark.  French influence was dreaded as immoral, and there was but
+little understanding of either the English language or spirit."  But an
+intellectual renaissance was at hand, an intellectual reawakening with
+a cosmopolitan outlook, and, Björnson was destined to become its
+leader, much as he had been the leader of the national movement of an
+earlier decade.  During these years of seeming inactivity,
+comparatively speaking, he had read and thought much, and the new
+thought of the age had fecundated his mind.  Historical and religious
+criticism, educational and social problems, had taken possession of his
+thought, and the philosophy of evolution had transformed the whole
+tenor of his ideas, shaping them to, deeper issues and more practical
+purposes than had hitherto engaged them.  He had read widely and
+variously in Darwin, Spencer, Mill, Müller, and Taine; he had, in
+short, scaled the "lofty mountains" that had so hemmed in his early
+view, and made his way into the intellectual kingdoms of the modern
+world that lay beyond.  The <I>Weltgeist</I> had appealed to him with its
+irresistible behest, just as it appealed at about the same time to
+Ibsen and Tolstoy and Ruskin, and had made him a man of new interests
+and ideals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One might have found foreshadowings of this transformation in certain
+of his earlier works,&mdash;in "The Newly Married Couple," for example, with
+its delicate analysis, of a common domestic relation, or in "The Fisher
+Maiden," with its touch of modernity,&mdash;but from these suggestions one
+could hardly have prophesied the enthusiasm and the genial force with
+which Björnson was to project his personality into the controversial
+arena of modern life. The series of works which have come from his pen
+during the past thirty-five years have dealt with most of the graver
+problems which concern society as a whole,&mdash;politics, religion,
+education, the status of women, the license of the press, the demand of
+the socialist for a reconstruction of the old order.  They have also
+dealt with many of the delicate questions of individual ethics,&mdash;the
+relations of husband and wife, of parent and child, the responsibility
+of the merchant to his creditors and of the employer to his dependants,
+the double standard of morality for men and women, and the duty
+devolving upon both to transmit a vigorous strain to their offspring.
+These are some of the themes that have engaged the novelist and
+dramatist; they have also engaged the public speaker and lay preacher
+of enlightenment, as well as themes of a more strictly political
+character, such as the separation of Norway from the Dual Monarchy, the
+renewal of the ancient bond between Norway and Iceland, the free
+development of parliamentary government, the cause of Pangermanism, and
+the furtherance of peace between the nations.  An extensive programme,
+surely, even in this summary enumeration of its more salient features,
+but one to which his capacity has not proved unequal, and which he has
+carried out by the force of his immense energy and superabundant
+vitality.  The burden of all this tendencious matter has caused his art
+to suffer at times,
+no doubt, but his inspiration has retained throughout much
+of the marvellous freshness of the earlier years, and the genius of the
+poet still flashes upon us from a prosaic environment, sometimes in a
+lovely lyric, more frequently, however, in the turn of a phrase or the
+psychological envisagement of some supreme moment in the action of the
+story or the drama.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The great transformation in Björnson's literary manner and choice of
+subjects was marked by his sending home from abroad, in the season of
+1874-75, two plays, "The Editor" and "A Bankruptcy."  It was two years
+later that Ibsen sent home from abroad "The Pillars of Society," which
+marked a similar turning point in his artistic career.  It is a curious
+coincidence that the plays of modern life produced during this second
+period by these two men are the same in number, an even dozen in each
+case. Besides the two above named, these modern plays of Björnson are,
+with their dates, the following: "The King" (1877), "Leonarda" (1879),
+"The New System" (1879), "A Glove" (1883), "Beyond the Strength I."
+(1883), "Geography and Love" (1885), "Beyond the Strength II." (1895),
+"Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg" (1898), "Laboremus" (1901), and "At
+Storhove" (1902).  Since the cessation of Ibsen's activity, Björnson
+has outrun him in the race, adding "Daglannet" (1904), and "When the
+New Wine Blooms" (1909) to the list above given.  Besides these
+fourteen plays, however, he has published seven important volumes of
+prose fiction during the last thirty-five years. The titles and dates
+are as follows: "Magnhild" (1877), "Captain Mansana" (1879), "Dust"
+(1882), "Flags Are Flying in City and Harbor" (1884), "In God's Ways,"
+(1889), "New Tales" (1894), (of which collection "Absalom's Hair" is
+the longest and most important), and "Mary" (1906).  The achievement
+represented by this list is all the more extraordinary when we consider
+the fact that for the greater part of the thirty-five years which these
+plays and novels cover, their author has been, both as a public speaker
+and as a writer for the periodical press, an active participant in the
+political and social life of his country.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Most of these books must be dismissed with a few words in order that
+our remaining space may be given to the four or five that are of the
+greatest power and significance. "The Editor," the first of the modern
+plays, offers a fierce satire upon modern journalism, its dishonesty,
+its corrupt and malicious power, its personal and partisan prejudice.
+The character of the editor in this play was unmistakeably drawn, in
+its leading characteristics, from the figure of a well known
+conservative journalist in Christiania, although Björnson vigorously
+maintained that the protraiture was typical rather than personal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In various other countries than my own, I have observed the type of
+journalist who is here depicted.  It is characterized by acting upon a
+basis of sheer egotism, passionate and boundless, and by terrorism in
+such fashion that it frightens honest people away from every liberal
+movement, and visits upon the individual an unscrupulous persecution."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This play was not particularly successful upon the stage, but the book
+was widely read, and occasioned much excited personal controversy.  "A
+Bankruptcy," on the other hand, proved a brilliant stage success.  Its
+matter was less contentious, and its technical execution was effective
+and brilliant.  It was not in vain that Björnson had at different times
+been the director of three theatres.  This play has for its theme the
+ethics of business life, and more especially the question of the extent
+to which a man whose finances are embarrassed is justified in continued
+speculation for the ultimate protection of himself and his creditors.
+Despite its treatment of this serious problem, the play is lighter and
+more genial in vein than the author's plays are wont to be, and the
+element of humor is unusually conspicuous.  Jaeger remarks that "A
+Bankruptcy" did two new things for Norwegian dramatic literature. It
+made money affairs a legitimate subject for literary treatment, and it
+raised the curtain upon the Norwegian home. "It was with 'A Bankruptcy'
+that the home made its first appearance upon the stage, the home with
+its joys and sorrows, with its conflicts and its tenderness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Two years later appeared "The King, which is in many respects
+Björnson's greatest modern masterpiece in dramatic form.  He had by
+this time become a convinced republican, but he was also an
+evolutionist, and he knew that republics are not created by fiat.  He
+believed the tendency toward republicanism to be irresistible, but he
+believed also that there must be intermediate stages in the transition
+from monarchy.  Absolutism is succeeded by constitutionalism, and that
+by parliamentarism, and that in the end must be succeeded by a
+republicanism that will free itself from all the traditional forms of
+symbol and ceremonial.  He had also a special belief that the smaller
+peoples were better fitted for development in this direction than the
+larger and more complex societies, although, on the other hand, he
+thought that the process of growth into full self-government was likely
+to be slower among the Germanic than among the Latin races. In the
+deeply moving play now to be considered, we have, in the character of
+the titular king, an extraordinary piece of psychological analysis.
+The king, is young, physically delicate, and of highly sensitive
+organization.  When he comes to the throne he realizes the hollowness
+and the hypocrisy of the existence that prescription has marked out for
+him; he realizes also that the very ideal of monarchy, under the
+conditions of modern European civilization, is a gigantic falsehood.
+For a time after his accession, he leads a life of pleasure seeking and
+revelry, hoping that he may dull his sense of the sharp contrast that
+exists between his station and his ideals.  But his conscience will
+give him no peace, and he turns to deliberate contemplation of the
+thought, not indeed of abdicating his, false position, but of
+transforming it into something more consonant with truth and the
+demands of the age.  He will become a citizen king, and take for wife a
+daughter of the people; he will do away with the pomp and circumstance
+of his court, and attempt to lead a simple and natural life, in which
+the interests of the people shall be paramount in his attention.  But
+in this attempt he is thwarted at every step.  All the forces of
+selfishness and prejudice and ignorance combine against him; even the
+people whom he seeks to benefit are so wedded to their idols that their
+attitude is one of suspicion rather than of sympathy.  He loves a young
+woman of strong and noble character, and wins her love in return, but
+she dies on the very eve of their union.  His oldest and most
+confidential friend, the wealthiest man in the kingdom, but a
+republican, is murdered by a radical associate of the <I>intransigeant</I>
+type, and the king is left utterly bereaved by his twofold loss. This
+brings us to the closing scene of the drama, in which the king, his
+nerves strained to the breaking point, confronts the group of officials
+and others who bring to him the empty phrases of a conventional
+condolence:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The King.  Hush!  Have a little respect for the truth that should
+follow death!  Understand me rightly: I do not mean that any of you
+would lie.  But the very air about a king is infected.  It was of
+that-a word or two.  My time is short. But a testament. ...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Priest.  Testament.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The King.  Neither the Old nor the New!  Greet what is called
+Christianity here in this land-greet it from me! I have thought much
+about Christian folk of late.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Priest.  That rejoices me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The King.  How your tone cuts me!  Greet it from me, what is called
+Christianity here in this land.  Nay, do not crane your necks and bend
+your backs as if the wisdom of the ages were now forthcoming. (<I>aside</I>)
+Can there be any use in saying something seriously? (<I>aloud</I>) You are
+Christians?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The General.  God forbid the doubt!  Faith is exceedingly useful. ...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The King.  For discipline. (<I>to the Sheriff</I>)  And you?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Sheriff.  From my blessed ancestors I received the faith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The King.  So <I>they</I> are blessed also.  Why not?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Sheriff.  They brought me strictly up to fear God, to honor the
+king.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The King.  And love your fellowmen.  You are a State individual,
+sheriff.  And such are Christians nowadays. (<I>to the Merchant</I>)  And
+you?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Merchant.  I have not been able to go to church very much of late
+because of my cough.  And in the foul air. ...
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The King.  You go to sleep.  But are you a Christian?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The. Merchant.  That goes without saying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The King. (<I>to the Priest.</I>)  And you are naturally one?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Priest.  By the grace of Jesus I hope that I am.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The King.  That is the formula, boys, that is the accepted thing to
+say.  Therefore, you are a Christian community, and it is no fault of
+mine if such a community will not deal seriously with what concerns
+Christianity. Greet it from me, and say that it must have an eye to the
+institution of monarchy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Priest.  Christianity has nothing to do with such matters.  It
+searches <I>the inner man</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The King.  That tone!  I know it&mdash;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&mdash;must pluck the lie from
+it&mdash;must not follow it to its coronation in the church, as an ape
+follows a peacock.  I know what I felt in that situation.  I had gone
+through with a rehearsal the day before&mdash;ho, ho!  Ask the Christianity
+in this land, if it be not time to concern itself with the monarchy.
+It should hardly any longer, it seems to me, let the monarchy play the
+part of the seductive wanton who turns the thoughts of all citizens to
+war&mdash;which is much against the message of Christianity&mdash;and to class
+distinctions, to luxury, to show and vanity. The monarchy is now so
+great a lie that it compels the most upright man to share in its
+falsehood."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The conversation that follows is in a vein of bitterness on the one
+side, and of obtuse smugness on the other; the tragic irony of the
+action grows deeper and deeper, until in the end the king, completely
+disheartened and despairing, goes into an adjoining room, and dies by
+his own hand, to the consternation of the men from whom he has just
+parted.  They give utterance to a few polite phrases, charitably
+accounting for the deed by the easy attribution of insanity to the
+king, and the curtain falls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It may well be imagined that "The King" made a stir in literary and
+social circles, and quite noticeably fluttered the dovecotes of
+conventionality and conservatism.  Such plain speaking and such deadly
+earnestness of conviction were indeed far removed from the idyllic
+simplicity of the peasant tales and from the poetical reconstructions
+of the legendary past. Eight years later, Björnson prefaced a new
+edition of this work with a series of reflections upon "Intellectual
+Freedom" that constitute one of the most vigorous and remarkable
+examples of his serious prose. The central ideas of his political faith
+are embodied in the following sentences from this preface:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Intellectual Freedom. Why is not attention called over and over again
+to the fact that for the great peoples, who have so many compensating
+interests, the free commerce of ideas is one condition of life among
+many others; while for us, the small peoples, it is absolutely
+indispensable.  A people numerically large may attain to ways of
+thought 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 my chief
+aim to enlarge the bounds of free thought.  I have later made the same
+attempt in matters of religion and morals.  When my opponents seek to
+sum up my character in a few words, they are apt to say: 'He attacks
+the throne and the altar.'  It seems to me that I have served the
+freedom of the spirit, and in the interests of that cause I now beg
+leave to reply. (1) <I>Concerning the attack on Christianity.</I>  It may be
+worth while in a country with a state church to recall now and then the
+meaning of Christianity.  It is not an institution, still less a book,
+and least of all it is a house or a seminary. It is the godly life
+according to the precepts and example of Jesus.  There may be men who
+think they are attacking Christianity when they investigate the
+historical origin or the morality of some dogma; I do not think so.
+Honest investigation 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-minded
+people who will be ennobled by it, and some made great.  I honor all
+the noble.  I have friends among the Christians, whom I love, and never
+for a moment have I thought of attacking their Christianity.  I have no
+higher wish than to see them by its help transform certain aspects of
+our society into seriousness.  (2)  <I>Concerning the attack on
+monarchy.</I>  Monarchy is, on the other hand, an institution, here the
+circumstances are naturally different.  I have attacked monarchy, and I
+will attack it.  But&mdash;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 simultaneously; it
+fixes terms, different for the different kingdoms, and far removed for
+the kingdoms 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&mdash;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&mdash;that in a large society may not greatly matter, so rich are
+the possibilities of other work taking its place; but in a small
+society it may be equivalent to destroying the sight of its only eye."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the clean-cut phrases and moral earnestness of this <I>apologia pro
+vita sua</I>, which deserves to be reproduced at greater length, we have
+the modern Björnson, no longer poet alone, but poet and prophet at
+once, the champion of sincere thinking and worthy living, the Sigurd
+Slembe of our own day, happier than his prototype in the consciousness
+that the ambition to serve his people has not been; altogether
+thwarted, and that his beneficent activity is not made sterile even by
+the bitterest opposition.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Only a rapid glance may be taken at the books of the five years
+following upon the publication of "The King."  The story of "Magnhild,"
+planned several years earlier, represents Björnson's return to fiction
+after a long dramatic interlude. There are still peasants in this
+story, but they are different from the figures of the early tales, and
+the atmosphere of the work is modern.  It turns upon the question of
+the mutual duties of husband and wife, when love no longer 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 come within the range of his observation during his stay
+abroad.  Its interest does not lie in any particular problem, but
+rather in the delineation of the titular figure, a strong and impetuous
+person whose character suggests 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:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When you teach children that the life here below is nothing to the
+life above, that to be visible is nothing in comparison with being
+invisible, that to be a human being is nothing in comparison with being
+dead, that is not the way to teach them to view life properly, or to
+love life, to gain courage, strength for work, and love of country."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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 with women 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 from the book in its
+ending) 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 man to be as unfit for honorable marriage as the
+unchaste woman.  Upon the theme thus presented a long 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 Björnson has so squarely
+and uncompromisingly planted his feet.  The other remaining work of
+this five-year period is the play called "The New System."  The new
+system in question is a system of railway management, and it is a
+wasteful one.  But the young engineer who demonstrates this fact has a
+hard time in opening 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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Since the production of "A Glove," twenty years ago, eight more plays
+have come from Björnson's prolific pen.  Of these by far the most
+important are the two that are linked by the common title, "Beyond the
+Strength."  The translation of this title is hopelessly inadequate,
+because the original word means much more than strength; it means
+talent, faculty, capability, the sum total of a man's endowment for
+some particular purpose.  The two pieces bearing this name are quite
+different in theme, but certain characters appear in both, and both
+express the same thought,&mdash;the thought that it is vain for men to
+strive after the unattainable, for in so doing they lose sight of the
+actual possibilities of human life; the thought that much of the best
+human energy goes 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 superhuman ideal is religious, 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 reformer who is deluded to believe that one resounding 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 masses
+a new heaven upon earth.  No deeper tragedies have been conceived by
+Björnson 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 them both,&mdash;the tragedy of his son Elias, who dies like Samson with
+his foes for an equally impossible faith, and by the very violence of
+his fanaticism removes the goal of socialist endeavor farther than ever
+into the dim future.  Björnson has written nothing more profoundly
+moving than these plays, with their twofold treatment of essentially
+the same theme, nor has he written anything which offers a clearer
+revelation of his own rich personality, with its unfailing poetic
+vision, its deep tenderness, and its boundless love for all humankind.
+The play, "Geography and Love," which came between the two just
+described, is an amusing piece, in the vein of light and graceful
+comedy, which satirizes the man with a hobby, showing how he
+unconsciously comes to neglect his wife and family through 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 emphasize. "Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg," the next
+play, deals with the passions engendered by political controversy, and
+made much unpleasant stir in Norwegian 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 same theme, which is that of the malign
+influence exerted by an evil-minded and reckless woman upon the lives
+of others. From a different point of view, we may say that the subject
+of these plays is the consecration of the home. This has always been a
+favorite theme with Björnson, and he has no clearer title to our
+gratitude than that which he has earned by his unfailing insistence
+upon the sanctity of family life, its mutual confidences, and its
+common joys.  Completing the list, we have "Daglannet," another
+domestic drama of simple structure, and "When the New Wine Blooms," a
+study of modernity as exemplified in the young woman of to-day, of the
+estrangement that too often creeps into married life, and of the
+stirrings that prompt men of middle age to seek to renew the joys of
+youth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During the years that have passed since the publication of "Dust,"
+Björnson has produced four volumes of fiction,&mdash;his two great 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
+uncompromising logic 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 Björnson would have found the task a hopeless one.
+That he should have succeeded even in making a fairly readable book out
+of this material would have been remarkable, and it is a pronounced
+artistic triumph that the book should prove of such absorbing interest.
+For absorbingly interesting it is, to any reader who is willing that a
+novel should provide something 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 wallowed in almost every
+form of brutality and vice. The four preceding generations of the race
+are depicted for us in a series of brief but masterly
+characterizations, in which every stroke tells, and we witness the
+gradual weakening of the family stock.  But with the generation just
+preceding the main action of the novel, there has been introduced a
+vigorous strain of peasant blood, and the process of regeneration has
+begun. It is this process that goes on before our eyes.  It does not
+become a completed process, but the prospect is bright for the future,
+and the flags that fly over town and harbor in the closing chapter have
+a symbolical significance, for they announce a victory of spirit over
+sense, not only in the cases of certain among the individual
+participants in the action, but also in the case of the whole community
+to which they belong.  So much for the book as a study in heredity.  As
+an educational tract, it has the conspicuous virtue of remaining in
+close touch with life while embodying the spirit of modern scientific
+pedagogy.  The hero of the book,&mdash;the last descendant of a race
+struggling for moral and physical rehabilitation,&mdash;throws himself into
+the work of education with an energy 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,&mdash;and
+seeks to introduce a system of training 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 microcosm of the world outside, or rather of what that
+world ought to be.  Björnson's interest in education has been
+life-long; for many years it had gone astray in a sort of Grundtvigian
+fog, but at the time when this book came to be written, it had worked
+its way out into the clear light 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 "Emile," and take renewed
+heart from its inspiring message.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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 sympathy and
+depth of tragic pathos, its plea for the sacredness of human life, and
+its protest against the religious and social prejudice by which life is
+so often misshapen, this book is an epitome of all the ideas and
+feelings that have gone to the making 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 relationship from
+which issue some of the deepest of social questions, and which enforces
+in the most appealing terms the fundamental teaching of 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 sympathies; the one alert of
+mind, imaginative, open to every intellectual influence, also impetuous
+and hot-blooded; the other shy and intellectually stolid, but good to
+the very core, and moved by the strongest of altruistic impulses.  In
+accordance with their respective characters, the first of these youths
+becomes a physician, and the other a clergyman.  Then we have the
+sister of the physician, who becomes the wife of the clergyman, a
+noble, proud, self-centred nature, finely strung to the inmost fibre of
+her being.  Then we have a woman of the other sort, clinging,
+abnormally sensitive, a child when the years of childhood are over, and
+made the victim of a shocking child-marriage to a crippled old man. She
+it is whom the physician loves, and persuades to a legal dissolution of
+her immoral union.  After some years, he makes her his wife, and their
+happiness would be complete were it not for the social and religious
+prejudice aroused. The clergyman, whom years of service in the state
+church have hardened into bigotry, is officially, as it were, compelled
+to condemn the friend of his boyhood, and even the sister, for a time
+grown untrue to her own generous nature, shares in the estrangement.
+In vain does the physician seek to shelter his wife from the chill of
+her environment.  She droops, pines away, and finally dies, gracious,
+lovable, and even forgiving to the last.  Then the death angel comes
+close to the clergyman and his wife, hovering over their only child,
+and at last the barrier of formalism and prejudice and religious
+bigotry is swept away from their minds.  Their natural sympathies, long
+repressed, resume full sway, and they realize how deeply they, have
+sinned toward the dead woman. The sister seeks a reconciliation with
+her brother, but he repulses her, and gives her his wife's private
+diary to read. In this <I>journal intime</I> she finds the full revelation
+of the gentle spirit that has been done to death, and she feels that
+the very salvation of her life and soul depend upon winning her
+brother's forgiveness.  The closing chapter, in which the final
+reconciliation occurs, is one of the most wonderful in all fiction; its
+pathos is of the deepest and the most moving, and he must be callous of
+soul, indeed, who can read it with dry eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If we were to search the whole of Björnson's writings for the single
+passage which should most completely typify his message to his
+fellowmen,&mdash;not Norwegians alone, but all mankind,&mdash;the choice would
+have to rest upon the words spoken from the pulpit by the clergyman of
+this novel, on the Sunday following the certainty of his child's
+recovery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-day a man spoke from the pulpit of the church about what he had
+learned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Namely, about what first concerns us all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One forgets it in his strenuous endeavor, a second in his zeal for
+conflict, a third in his backward vision, a fourth in the conceit of
+his own wisdom, a fifth in his daily routine, and we have all learned
+it more or less ill.  For should I ask you who hear me now, you would
+all reply thoughtlessly, and just because I ask you from this place,
+'Faith is first.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, in very truth, it is not.  Watch over your child, as it struggles
+for breath on the outermost verge of life, or see your wife follow the
+child to that outermost verge, beside herself for anxiety and
+sleeplessness,&mdash;then love will teach you that <I>life comes first</I>.  And
+never from this day on will I seek God or God's will in any form of
+words, in any sacrament, or in any book or any place, as if He were
+first and foremost to be found there; no, life is first and
+foremost&mdash;life as we win it from the depths of despair, in the victory
+of the light, in the grace of self-devotion, in our intercourse with
+living human kind.  God's supreme word to us is life, our highest
+worship of Him is love for the living.  This lesson, self-evident as it
+is, was needed by me more than by most others.  This it is that in
+various ways and upon many grounds I have hitherto rejected,&mdash;and of
+late most of all.  But never more shall words be the highest for me,
+nor symbols, but the eternal revelation of life.  Never more will I
+freeze fast in doctrine, but let the warmth of life melt my will.
+Never will I condemn men by the dogmas of old time justice, unless they
+fit with our own time's gospel of love.  Never, for God's sake!  And
+this because I believe in Him, the God of Life, and His never ending
+revelation in life itself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here is a gospel, indeed, one that needs no church for its
+promulgation, and no ceremonial for the enhancement of its
+impressiveness.  It is a gospel, moreover, that is based upon no
+foundation of precarious logic, but finds its premises in the healthy
+instincts of the natural man.  It is no small thing to have thus found
+the way, and to have helped others likewise to find the way, out of the
+mists of superstition, through the valleys of doubt and despondency,
+athwart the thickets of prejudice and bigotry with all their furtive
+foemen, up to these sunlit heights of serenity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mary" is less explicit in its teaching than the two great novels just
+summarized, but what it misses in didacticism it more than gains in
+art. The radiant creature who gives her name to the book is one of
+Björnson's most exquisite figures. She is the very embodiment of
+youthful womanhood, filled with the joy of life, and bringing sunshine
+wherever she goes.  Yet this temperament leads to her undoing, or what
+would be the undoing of any woman less splendid in character.  But the
+strength that impels her to the misstep that comes so near to having
+tragic consequences is also the strength that saves her when chastened
+by suffering.  In her the author "gives us the common stuff of life,"
+says an English critic, "gives it us simple and direct.  There is
+nothing here of Ibsen's pathology. We are in the sun.  Her most hideous
+blunder cannot undo a woman's soul.  Björnson knows that the deed is
+nothing at all. It is the soul behind the deed that he sees.  Not
+everything that cometh out of a man defileth a man.  At all events, so
+it is here: triumph and joy built upon an act that&mdash;as the Philistines
+would say&mdash;has defiled forever."  As a triumph of sheer creation, this
+figure is hardly overmatched anywhere in the author's portrait gallery
+of women.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If Björnson's essential teaching may be found in a single page, as has
+above been suggested, his personality evades all such summarizing.  In
+the present essay, he has been considered as a writer merely,&mdash;poet,
+dramatist, novelist,&mdash;but the man is vastly more than that.  His other
+activities have been hinted at, indeed, but nothing adequate has been
+said about them.  The director of three theatres, the editor of three
+newspapers and the contributor to many others, the promoter of schools
+and patriotic organizations, the participant in many political
+campaigns, the lay preacher of private and public morals, the chosen
+orator of his nation for all great occasions,&mdash;these are some of the
+characters in which we must view him to form anything like a complete
+conception of his many-sided individuality.  Take the matter of oratory
+alone, and it is perhaps true that he has influenced as many people by
+the living word as he has by the printed page.  He has addressed
+hundreds of audiences in the three Scandinavian countries and in
+Finland, he has spoken to more than twenty thousand at a time, and his
+winged speech has gone straight home to his hearers.  All who ever
+heard him will agree that his oratory was of the most persuasive and
+vital impressiveness. Jaeger attempts to describe it in the following
+words:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is eloquence of a very distinctive type; its most characteristic
+quality is its wealth of color; it finds expression for every mood,
+from the lightest to the most serious, from the most vigorous to the
+most delicate and tender.  Now his words ring like the voice of doom,
+filled with thunder and lightning, now they become soft and persuasive
+with smiling mien. With a single cadence, or a play of the facial
+muscles, or a slight gesture, he can portray a person, a situation, or
+an object, so that it appears living in the sight of his hearers. And
+what the word alone cannot do, is accomplished in the most brilliant
+manner by the virtuosity of his delivery.  He does not speak his words,
+he presents them; they take bodily form and seem alive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In his more intimate relationships, on the other hand, in face to face
+conversation or in the home circle, the man takes on a quite different
+aspect; the prophet has become the friend, the impassioned preacher has
+become the genial story teller, and shares the gladsome or mirthful
+mood of the hour.  Such a personality as this may be analyzed; it
+defies any concise synthesis.  One resorts to figures of speech, and
+they were abundantly resorted to by those who paid him the tribute of
+their admiration and love upon the occasion of his seventieth
+anniversary.  Let us take an instance at random from one of these
+tributes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The cataract that roars down to the free foaming sea. The mountain
+with its snowclad peaks towering up into the immensity of the starry
+heavens.  The rustling of the woodland above the blossom-spangled and
+smiling meadows, the steep uptowering, the widely growing, and the
+joyously smiling.  At once the soft melody that stirs the heart and the
+strong wind that sweeps over the Northern lands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This concourse of metaphors gives some slight idea of the way in which
+Björnson's personality affected those who came into contact with it.
+The description may be supplemented by a few bits of anecdote and
+reminiscence.  The composer Grieg contributes the following incident of
+the old days in Norway:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was Christmas eve of 1868 at the Björnsons in Christiania. They
+lived then in the Rosenkrantzgade.  My wife and I were, as far as I can
+remember, the only guests.  The children were very boisterous in their
+glee.  In the middle of the floor an immense Christmas tree was
+enthroned and brightly lighted. All the servant-folk came in, and
+Björnson spoke, beautifully and warmly, as he well knows how to do.
+'Now you shall play a hymn, Grieg,' he said, and although I did not
+quite like the notion of doing organist's work, I naturally complied
+without a murmur. It was one of Grundtvig's hymns in 32&mdash;thirty-two
+verses.  I resigned myself to my fate with stoicism.  At the beginning
+I kept myself awake, but the endless repetitions had a soporific
+effect.  Little by little I became as stupid as a medium.  When we had
+at last got through with all the verses, Björnson said: 'Isn't that
+fine.  Now I will read it for you!'  And so we got all thirty-two
+verses once more.  I was completely overawed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the poet purchased his country estate which was his home from the
+late seventies to the end of his life, his coming was looked forward to
+with mingled feelings by the good country folk of the neighborhood.
+Kristofer Janson thus tells the story of his arrival:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His coming was anticipated with a certain anxiety and apprehension,
+for was he not a 'horrid radical'?  The dean in particular thought that
+he might be a menace to the safe spiritual slumber of the village.  As
+the dean one day was driving through the village in his carriole, just
+where the road turns sharply by the bridge below Aulestad, he met
+another carriole which was rapidly driving that way and in it a man
+who, without respect for the clerical vehicle, shouted with all the
+strength of his lungs: 'Half the road!'  The dean turned aside, saying
+with a sigh: 'Has Björnson come to the Gausdal at last?' "It was indeed
+so, and he showed his colors at the start. The same dean and Björnson
+became the best of friends afterwards, and found much sport in
+interchanging genial jests whenever they met."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Frits Thaulow, the painter, thus wrote to Björnson reminding him of a
+festive gathering of students:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The manager came in and announced with a loud voice that it was past
+twelve.  Then you sprang up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Bring champagne!  Now I will speak of what comes after twelve
+o'clock! of all that lies beyond the respectable hour for retiring!
+For the hour when fancy awakens and fills us with longings for the
+world of wonderland; then the painter sees only the dim outline in the
+moonlight, then the musician hears the silence, then the poet after his
+thoughtful day feels sprouting the first shoots of the next.  After
+twelve freedom begins.  The day's tumult is stilled, and the voice
+within becomes audible.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thus you spoke, and 'after twelve' became a watchword with us.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Many a spark has been kindled in your soul by the quiet evening time.
+But later in life, when you become a chieftain in the battle, broad
+daylight also made its demands upon you.  Like the sun you shone upon
+us and made the best that was in us to grow, but I shall always keep a
+deep artistic affection for what comes 'after twelve.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Henrik Cavling tells the following story of the poet in Paris:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was one of Björnson's peculiarities to go out as a rule without any
+money in his pocket.  He neither owned a purse nor knew the French
+coins.  His personal expenditures were restricted to the books he
+bought, and now and then a theatre ticket.  One day he carne excitedly
+into the sitting-room, and asked:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Who took my five franc piece?'  It was a five franc piece that he had
+got somewhere or other and had stuck in his pocket to buy a theatre
+ticket with.  It turned out that the maid had found it and given it to
+Fru Björnson.  For it seemed quite unthinkable to her that the master
+should have any money to take out with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This complete indifference of Björnson to small matters sometimes
+proved annoying.  In this connection I may tell of a little trip he
+once took with Jonas Lie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The two poets, who did not live far apart, had long counted with
+pleasure upon a trip to Père Lachaise, where they wished to visit
+Alfred de Musset's grave.  At last the day came, and with big soft hats
+on their heads, and engaged earnestly in conversation, they drove away
+through Paris.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When they came to Père Lachaise, and wanted to enter the cemetery, the
+driver stopped them and asked for his pay. Then it appeared that
+neither had any money, which they smilingly explained, and asked him in
+bad French to wait and drive them home again.  But the two gentlemen
+with the big soft hats had not inspired the driver with any marked
+degree of confidence.  He made a scene, and attracted a great crowd of
+the boys, loafers, and well-dressed Frenchmen who always collect on
+critical occasions.  The end of the affair was that the poets had to
+get into their cab again and drive all the long way back without having
+had a glimpse of the grave.  When they reached Lie's lodgings, Lie went
+in to get some money, while Björnson sat in the cab as a hostage.
+Nevertheless, both poets maintained that they had had a pleasant
+expedition.  A Norwegian question, which had accidentally come up
+between them, had made them forget all about Alfred de Musset."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Finally, a story may be given that is told by Björnson himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had a pair of old boots that I wanted to give to a beggar. But just
+as I was going to give them to him, I began to wonder whether Karoline
+had not some use for them, since she usually gave such things to
+beggars.  So I took the boots in my hand, and went downstairs to ask
+her, but on the way I got a little worked up because I did not quite
+dare to give them to the beggar myself.  And the further I went down
+the steps, the more wrathful I got, until I stood over her.  And then I
+was so angry that I had to bluster at her as if she had done me a
+grievous wrong.  But she could not understand a word of what I said,
+and looked at me with such amazement, that I could not keep from
+bursting into laughter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From his early years, Björnson kept in touch with the modern
+intellectual movement by mingling with the people of other lands than
+his own.  Besides his visits to Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, he made
+many lengthy sojourns in the chief continental centres of civilization,
+in Munich, Rome, and Paris.  The longest of his foreign journeys was
+that which brought him to the United States in the winter of 1880-81,
+for the purpose of addressing his fellow countrymen in the Northwest.
+His home for the last thirty years and more has been his estate of
+Aulestad in the Gausdal, a region of Southern Norway.  Here he has been
+a model farmer, and here, surrounded by his family,&mdash;wife, children,
+and grandchildren,&mdash;his patriarchal presence has given dignity to the
+household, and united its members in a common bond of love.  Hither
+have come streams of guests, friends old and new, to enjoy his generous
+hospitality.  There has been provision for all, both bed and board, and
+the heartiest of welcomes from the host.  And the stranger from abroad
+has been greeted, as like as not, by the sight of his own country's
+flag streaming from a staff before the house, and foreshadowing the
+personal greeting that awaited him upon the threshold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Björnson died in Paris (where he had been spending the winter, as was
+his custom for many years past), April 26, 1910. He had been ill for
+several months, and only an extraordinarily robust constitution enabled
+him to make a partial recovery from the crisis of the preceding
+February, when his death had been hourly expected.  The news of his
+death occasioned demonstrations of grief not only in his own country,
+but also throughout the civilized world.  Every honor that a nation can
+bestow upon its illustrious dead was decreed him by King and Storthing;
+a warship was despatched to bear his remains to Christiania, and the
+pomp and circumstance of a state funeral acclaimed the sense of the
+nation's loss.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H4>
+LIST OF WORKS.
+</H4>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+  SYNNÖVE SOLBAKKEN.  Fortaelling, 1857<BR>
+  MELLEM SLAGENE.  Drama, 1858<BR>
+  ARNE.  Fortaelling, 1858<BR>
+  HALTE-HULDA.  Drama, 1858<BR>
+  EN GLAD GUT.  Fortaelling, 1860<BR>
+  KONG SVERRE.  1861<BR>
+  SIGURD SLEMBE.  1862<BR>
+  MARIA STUART I SKOTLAND.  Skuespil, 1864<BR>
+  DE NYGIFTE.  Komedie, 1865<BR>
+  FISKERJENTEN.  Fortaelling, 1868<BR>
+  DIGTE OG SANGE.  1870<BR>
+  ARNLJOT GELLINE.  1870<BR>
+  SIGURD JORSALFAR.  Skuespil, 1872<BR>
+  FORTAELLINGER I-II,  1872<BR>
+  BRUDE-SLAATTEN.  Fortaelling, 1873<BR>
+  REDAKTÖREN.  Skuespil, 1874<BR>
+  EN FALLIT.  Skuespil, 1874<BR>
+  KONGEN.  1877<BR>
+  MAGNHILD.  Fortaelling, 1877<BR>
+  KAPTEJN MANSANA.  Fortaelling fra Italien, 1879<BR>
+  LEONARDA.  Skuespil, 1879<BR>
+  DET NY SYSTEM.  Skuespil, 1879<BR>
+  EN HANDSKE.  Skuespil, 1883<BR>
+  OVER AEVNE.  Förste Stykke, 1883<BR>
+  DET FLAGER I BYEN OG PAA HAVNEN,  1884<BR>
+  GEOGRAFI OG KJAERLIGHED.  1885<BR>
+  PAA GUDS VEJE.  1889<BR>
+  NYE FORTAELLINGER.  1894<BR>
+  LYSET.  En Universitetskantate, 1895<BR>
+  OVER AEVNE.  Andet Stykke, 1895<BR>
+  PAUL LANGE OG TORA PARSBERG.  1898<BR>
+  LABOREMUS.  1901<BR>
+  TO FORTAELLINGER.  1901<BR>
+  PAA STORHOVE.  Drama, 1904<BR>
+  DAGLANNET.  1904<BR>
+  TO TALER.  1906.<BR>
+  MARY.  Fortaelling, 1906<BR>
+  VORT SPROG.  1907<BR>
+  NAAR DEN NY VIN BLOMSTRER.  1909<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Björnstjerne Björnson, by William Morton Payne
+
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diff --git a/4582.txt b/4582.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..577c4e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/4582.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1930 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson, by William Morton Payne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
+
+Author: William Morton Payne
+
+Posting Date: August 8, 2009 [EBook #4582]
+Release Date: October, 2003
+First Posted: February 11, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BJOeRNSTJERNE BJOeRNSON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nicole Apostola.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
+
+1832-1910
+
+
+by
+
+William Morton Payne, LL.D.
+
+
+Translator of Bjoernson's "Sigurd Slembe" and Jaeger's "Ibsen," Author
+of "Little Leaders," Etc.
+
+
+
+
+To Mary
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE
+
+When the date of Bjoernson's seventieth birthday drew near at the close
+of 1902, the present writer, who had been from boyhood a devoted
+admirer of the great Norwegian, wished to make an American contribution
+to the world-wide tribute of gratitude and affection which the then
+approaching anniversary was sure to evoke.  The outcome of that wish
+was an essay, summarizing Bjoernson's life and work, published in "The
+International Quarterly," March, 1903.  The essay then written forms
+the substance of the present publication, although several additions
+have been made in the way of translation, anecdote, and the
+consideration of Bjoernson's later productions.  So small a book as this
+is, of course, hopelessly inadequate to make more than the most
+superficial sort of survey of the life work of that masterful
+personality whose recent death is so heavy a loss to all mankind.
+
+W. M. P.
+  Chicago, May, 1910.
+
+
+
+
+BJOeRNSTJERNE BJOeRNSON
+
+1832-1910
+
+Eight years ago, taking a bird's-eye view of the mountain peaks of
+contemporary literature, and writing with particular reference to
+Bjoernson's seventieth birthday, it seemed proper to make the following
+remarks about the most famous European authors then numbered among
+living men.  If one were asked for the name of the greatest man of
+letters still living in the world, the possible claimants to the
+distinction would hardly be more than five in number.  If it were a
+question of poetry alone, Swinburne would have to be named first, with
+Carducci for a fairly close second.  But if we take literature in its
+larger sense, as including all the manifestations of creative activity
+in language, and if we insist, furthermore, that the man singled out
+for this preeminence shall stand in some vital relation to the
+intellectual life of his time, and exert a forceful influence upon the
+thought of the present day, the choice must rather be made among the
+three giants of the north of Europe, falling, as it may be, upon the
+great-hearted Russian emotionalist who has given us such deeply moving
+portrayals of the life of the modern world; or upon the passionate
+Norwegian idealist whose finger has so unerringly pointed out the
+diseased spots in the social organism, earning by his moral surgery the
+name of pessimist, despite his declared faith in the redemption of
+mankind through truth and freedom and love; or, perchance, upon that
+other great Norwegian, equally fervent in his devotion to the same
+ideals, and far more sympathetic in his manner of inculcating them upon
+his readers, who has just rounded out his scriptural tale of three
+score years and ten, and, in commemoration of the anniversary, is now
+made the recipient of such a tribute of grateful and whole-souled
+admiration as few men have ever won, and none have better deserved. It
+would be certainly invidious, and probably futile, to attempt a nice,
+comparative estimate of the services of these three men to the common
+cause of humanity; let us be content with the admission that
+Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson is _primus inter pares_, and make no attempt to
+exalt him at the expense of his great contemporaries.  Writing now
+eight years later, at the time when Bjoernson's death has plunged his
+country and the world in mourning, it is impressive to note that of the
+five men constituting the group above designated, Tolstoy alone
+survives to carry on the great literary tradition of the nineteenth
+century.
+
+It will be well, however, to make certain distinctions between the life
+work of Bjoernson and that of the two men whom a common age and common
+aims bring into inevitable association with him. These distinctions are
+chiefly two,--one of them is that while Tolstoy and Ibsen grew to be
+largely cosmopolitan in their outlook, Bjoernson has much more closely
+maintained throughout his career the national, or, at any rate, the
+racial standpoint.  The other is that while Tolstoy and Ibsen presently
+became, the one indifferent to artistic expression, and the other
+baldly prosaic where he was once deeply poetical, Bjoernson preserved
+the poetic impulse of his youth, and continued to give it play even in
+his envisagement of the most practical modern problems.  Let us enlarge
+a little upon these two themes.  Ernest Renan, speaking at the funeral
+of Tourguenieff, described the deceased novelist as "the incarnation of
+a whole people."  Even more fittingly might the phrase be applied to
+Bjoernson, for it would be difficult to find anywhere else in modern
+literature a figure so completely and profoundly representative of his
+race.  In the frequently quoted words of Dr. Brandes, to speak the name
+of Bjoernson in any assembly of his countrymen is like "hoisting the
+Norwegian flag."  It has been maliciously added that mention of his
+name is also like flaunting a red flag in the sight of a considerable
+proportion of the assembly, for Bjoernson has always been a fighter as
+well as an artist, and it has been his self-imposed mission to arouse
+his fellow countrymen from their mental sluggishness no less than to
+give creative embodiment to their types of character and their ideal
+aspirations.  But whatever the opposition aroused by his political and
+social radicalism, even his opponents have been constrained to feel
+that he was the mouthpiece of their race as no other Norwegian before
+him had been, and that he has voiced whatever is deepest and most
+enduring in the Norwegian temper.  Powerful as has been his appeal to
+the intellect and conscience of the modern world at large, it has
+always had a special note of admonition or of cheer for his own people.
+With reference to the second of our two themes, it is sufficient to say
+that, although the form of verse was almost wholly abandoned by him
+during the latter half of his life, the breath of poetry never ceased
+to exhale from his work, and the lyric exuberance of his later prose
+still recalls to us the singer of the sixties.
+
+Few productions of modern literature have proved as epoch-making as the
+modest little volume called "Synnoeve Solbakken," which appeared in the
+book shops of Christiania and Copenhagen in 1857.  It was a simple tale
+of peasant life, an idyl of the love of a boy and a girl, but it was
+absolutely new in its style, and in its intimate revelation of the
+Norwegian character. It must be remembered that until the year 1814,
+Norway had for centuries been politically united with Denmark, and that
+Copenhagen had been the common literary centre of the two countries.
+To that city Norwegian writers had gravitated as naturally as French
+writers gravitate to Paris.  There had resulted from this condition of
+things a literature which, although it owed much to men of Norwegian
+birth, was essentially a Danish literature, and must properly be so
+styled.  That literature could boast, at the beginning of the
+nineteenth century, an interesting history comparable in its antiquity
+with the greater literatures of Europe, and a brilliant history for at
+least a hundred years past.  But old literatures are sure to become
+more or less sophisticated and trammelled by tradition, and to this
+rule Danish literature was no exception. When the constitution of
+Eidsvold, in 1814, separated Norway from Denmark, and made it into an
+independent kingdom (save for the forced Swedish partnership), the
+country had practically no literary tradition save that which centred
+about the Danish capital.  She might claim to have been the native
+country of many Danish writers, even of Ludvig Holberg, the greatest
+writer that the Scandinavian peoples have yet produced, but she could
+point to nothing that might fairly be called a Norwegian literature.
+The young men of the rising generation were naturally much concerned
+about this, and a sharp divergence of opinion arose as to the means
+whereby the interests of Norwegian literature might be furthered, and
+the aims which it should have in view.  One party urged that the
+literature should break loose from its traditional past, and aim at the
+cultivation of an exclusively national spirit.  The other party
+declared such a course to be folly, contending that literature must be
+a product of gradual development rather than of set volition, and that,
+despite the shifting of the political kaleidoscope, the national
+literature was so firmly rooted in its Danish past that its natural
+evolution must be an outgrowth from all that had gone before.
+
+Each of these parties found a vigorous leader, the cause of
+ultra-Norwegianism being championed by Wergeland, an erratic person in
+whom the spark of genius burned, but who never found himself,
+artistically speaking.  The champion of the conservatives was Welhaven,
+a polished writer of singular charm and much force, philosophical in
+temper, whose graceful verse and acute criticism upheld by both precept
+and practice the traditional standards of culture.  Each of these men
+had his followers, who proved in many cases more zealous than their
+leaders.  The period of the thirties and forties was dominated by this
+Wergeland-Welhaven controversy, which engendered much bitterness of
+feeling, and which constitutes the capital fact in Norwegian literary
+history before the appearance of Ibsen and Bjoernson upon the scene.  A
+sort of parallel might be drawn for American readers by taking two such
+men as Whitman and Longfellow, opposing them to one another in the most
+outspoken fashion, assuming for both a sharply polemic manner, and
+ranging among their respective followers all the other writers of their
+time.  Then imagine the issue between them to be drawn not only in the
+field of letters, but also in the pulpit, the theatre, and the
+political arena, and some slight notion may be obtained of the
+condition of affairs which preceded the advent of Bjoernson and the true
+birth of Norwegian literature with "Synnoeve Solbakken."
+
+The work which was thus destined to mark the opening of a new era in
+Norwegian letters was written in the twenty-fifth year of its author's
+life.  The son of a country pastor, Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson was born at
+Kvikne, December 8, 1832.  At the age of six, his father was
+transferred to a new parish in the Romsdal, one of the most picturesque
+regions in Norway.  The impression made upon his sensitive nature by
+these surroundings was deep and enduring.  Looking back upon his
+boyhood he speaks with strong emotion of the evenings when "I stood and
+watched the sunlight play upon mountain and fiord, until I wept, as if
+I had done something wrong, and when, borne down upon my ski into one
+valley or another I could stand as if spellbound by a beauty, by a
+longing that I could not explain, but that was so great that along with
+the highest joy I had, also, the deepest sense of imprisonment and
+sorrow."  This is the mood which was to be given utterance in that
+wonderful lyric, "Over the Lofty Mountains," in which all the ardor and
+the longings of passionate and impatient youth find the most appealing
+expression. The song is found in "Arne," and may be thus reproduced,
+after a fashion, in the English language.
+
+  "Often I wonder what there may be
+    Over the lofty mountains.
+  Here the snow is all I see,
+  Spread at the foot of the dark green tree;
+    Sadly I often ponder,
+    Would I were over yonder.
+
+  "Strong of wing soars the eagle high
+    Over the lofty mountains,
+  Glad of the new day soars to the sky,
+  Wild in pursuit of his prey doth fly;
+    Pauses, and, fearless of danger,
+    Scans the far coasts of the stranger.
+
+  "The apple-tree, whose thoughts ne'er fly
+    Over the lofty mountains,
+  Leaves, when the summer days draw nigh,
+  Patiently waits for the time when high
+    The birds in its boughs shall be swinging,
+    Yet will know not what they are singing.
+
+  "He who has yearned so long to go
+    Over the lofty mountains--
+  He whose visions and fond hopes grow
+  Dim, with the years that so restless flow--
+    Knows what the birds are singing,
+    Glad in the tree-tops swinging.
+
+  "Why, oh bird, dost thou hither fare
+    Over the lofty mountains?
+  Surely it must be better there,
+  Broader the view and freer the air;
+    Com'st thou these longings to bring me;
+    These only, and nothing to wing me?
+
+  "Oh, shall I never, never go
+    Over the lofty mountains!
+  Must all my thoughts and wishes so
+  Held in these walls of ice and snow
+    Here be imprisoned forever?
+    Till death shall I flee them never?
+
+  "Hence!  I will hence!  Oh, so far from here,
+    Over the lofty mountains!
+  Here 't is so dull, so unspeakably drear;
+  Young is my heart and free from fear--
+    Better the walls to be scaling
+    Than here in my prison lie wailing.
+
+  "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 come;
+    Guard it for me yet longer,
+    Till my soul through striving grows stronger."
+
+At the age of eleven Bjoernson'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 many sorts of literary
+experiments, and became actively engaged 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 dramatic criticism as the avowed partisan
+of Norwegian ideals, holding himself, in some sort, the successor of
+Wergeland, Who had died about ten years earlier.  Before becoming a
+dramatic critic, he had essayed dramatic authorship, and the acceptance
+by the theatre of his juvenile play, "Valborg," had led to a somewhat
+unusual result.  He was given a free ticket of admission, and a few
+weeks of theatre-going 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 came to him
+upon his return from a student gathering 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 come. I packed up, went
+home, thought it all over, wrote and rewrote `Between the Battles' in a
+fortnight, and travelled to Copenhagen with the completed piece in my
+trunk; I would be a poet."  He then set to writing "Synnoeve Solbakken,"
+published it in part as a newspaper serial, and then in book form, in
+the autumn of 1857.  He had "commenced author" in good earnest.
+
+The next fifteen years of Bjoernson'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 achievement of fourteen feverish days.  The remaining 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); three more plays drawn from the treasury of old Norse
+history, "King Sverre," "Sigurd Slembe," and "Sigurd Jorsalfar"; a
+dramatic setting 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 with modern life; "Arnljot Gelline,"
+his only long poem, a wild narrative of the clash between heathendom
+and the Christian faith in the days of Olaf the Holy; and, last but by
+no means least, the collection of his "Poems and Songs." Thus at the
+age of forty, Bjoernson found himself with a dozen books to his credit
+books which had stirred his fellow countrymen as no other books had
+ever stirred them, arousing 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 him, the singer of all
+that was noble in Norwegian aspiration, the sympathetic delineator of
+all that was essential in Norwegian 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 Bjoernson's "Tales," published in 1872,
+together with "The Bridal March," separately published in the following
+year, gives us a complete representation of that phase of his genius
+which is best known to the world at large.  Here are five stories of
+considerable length, and a number of slighter sketches, in which the
+Norwegian peasant is portrayed with intimate and loving knowledge.  The
+peasant tale was no new thing in European literature, for the names of
+Auerbach and George Sand, to say nothing 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 Bjoernson'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.
+Bjoernson 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 men who wrested a scanty living
+from an ungrateful soil.  Although a poet by instinct, he was not
+afraid of realism, and did not shrink from giving the brutal aspects of
+peasant life a place upon his canvas.  In emphasizing the
+characteristics of reticence and _naivete_ he really discovered the
+Norwegian peasant for literary purposes. Beneath the words spoken by
+his characters we are constantly made to realize that there are depths
+of feeling that remain unexpressed; whether from native pride or from a
+sense of the inadequacy of mere words to set forth a critical moment of
+life, his men and women are distinguished by the most laconic
+utterance, yet their speech always has dramatic fitness and bears the
+stamp of sincerity.  Jaeger speaks of the manifold possibilities of
+this laconic method in the following words:--
+
+"It is as if the author purposely set in motion the reader's fancy and
+feeling that they might do their own work.  The greatest poet is he who
+understands how to awaken fancy and feeling to their highest degree of
+self-activity.  And this is Bjoernson'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 known how to
+suggest so much in so few words."
+
+In some respects, the little sketch called "The Father" is the supreme
+example of Bjoernson's artistry in this kind.  There are only a few
+pages in all, but they embody the tragedy of a lifetime.  The little
+work is a literary gem 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 Bjoernson is best known outside of
+his own country; one may almost say that it is by them alone that he is
+really familiar to English readers.  A free translation of "Synnoeve
+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 made soon after their original appearance, and in some instances
+have been multiplied.  It is thus a noteworthy fact that Bjoernson,
+although four years the junior of Ibsen, enjoyed a vogue among English
+readers for a score of years during which the name of Ibsen was
+absolutely unknown to them.  The whirligig of time has brought in its
+revenges of late years, and the long neglected 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, Bjoernson was
+greatly aided by the study of the sagas, which he had read with
+enthusiasm from his earliest boyhood.  Upon them his style was largely
+formed, and their vivid dramatic representation of the life of the
+early Norsemen impressed him profoundly, shaping both his ideals and
+the form of their expression.  The modern Scandinavian may well be
+envied for his literary inheritance from the heroic past.  No other
+European has anything to compare with it for clean-cut vigor and wealth
+of romantic material.  The literature which blossomed in Iceland and
+flourished for two or three centuries wherever Norsemen made homes for
+themselves offers a unique intellectual phenomenon, for nothing like
+their record remains to us from any other primitive people. This
+
+     "Tale of the Northland of old
+   And the undying glory of dreams,"
+
+proved a lasting stimulus to Bjoernson's genius, and, during the early
+period of his career, which is now under review, it made its influence
+felt alike in his tales, his dramas, and his songs.  "To see the
+peasant in the light of the sagas and the sagas in the light of the
+peasant" he declared to be the fundamental principle of his literary
+method.
+
+It has been seen that during the fifteen years which made Bjoernson in
+so peculiar a sense the spokesman of his race, he wrote no less than
+five saga dramas.  The first two of these works, "Between the Battles"
+and "Halte-Hulda," are rather slight performances, and the third, "King
+Sverre," although a more extended work, is not particularly noteworthy.
+The grimness of the Viking life is softened by romantic coloring, and
+the poet has not freed himself from the influence of Oehlenschlaeger.
+But in "Sigurd Slembe" he found a subject entirely worthy of his
+genius, and produced one of the noblest masterpieces of all modern
+literature.  This largely planned and magnificently executed dramatic
+trilogy was written in Munich, and published in 1862.  The material is
+found in the "Heimskringla," but the author has used the prerogative of
+the artist to simplify the historical outline thus offered into a
+superb imaginative creation, rich in human interest, and powerful in
+dramatic presentation.  The story is concerned with the efforts of
+Sigurd, nicknamed "Slembe," to obtain the succession to the throne of
+Norway during the first half of the twelfth century.  He was a son of
+King Magnus Barfod, and, although of illegitimate birth, might legally
+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 mother
+is made in the first section of the trilogy, which is a single act,
+written in blank verse.  Recognizing the futility of urging his
+birthright at this time, he starts off to win fame as a crusader, the
+sort of fame that haloed Sigurd 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 ambition and the sense of injustice ever gnawing at his heart.
+He becomes entangled in a feudal quarrel concerning the rule of the
+islands.  Both parties seek to use him for their purposes, but in the
+end, although leadership is in his grasp, he tears himself away,
+appalled by the revelation of crime and treachery in his surroundings.
+In this section of the work we have the subtly conceived and
+Hamlet-like figure of Earl Harald, in whose interest Frakark, a Norse
+Lady Macbeth, plots the murder of Earl Paul, only to bring upon Harald
+himself the terrible death that she has planned for his brother.  Here,
+also, we have the gracious maiden figure of Audhild, perhaps the
+loveliest of all Bjoernson's delineations of womanhood, a figure worthy
+to be ranked with the heroines of Shakespeare and Goethe, who remains
+sweet and fragrant in our memory forever after. With the mutual love of
+Sigurd and Audhild comes the one hour of sunshine 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 meet with Sigurd again in the third section of the
+trilogy.  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 Slembe, an illegitimate son of Magnus Barfod, and
+who, during the last senile years of Sigurd Jorsalfar's life, had won
+the recognition that Sigurd Slembe might have won had he not missed the
+chance, and been acknowledged as the king's brother.  When the king
+died, he left a son named Magnus, who should have been his successor,
+but whom Harald Gille seized, blinded, and imprisoned that he might
+himself occupy the throne.  The five acts of this third section of the
+trilogy cover the last two years of Sigurd Slembe's life, years during
+which he seeks to gain his end, first by conciliation, and afterwards,
+maddened by the base treachery of the king and his followers, by
+assassination and violence.  He has become a hard man, but, however
+wild his schemes of revenge, and however desperate his measures, he
+retains our sympathy to the end because we feel that circumstances have
+made him the ravager of his country, and that his underlying motive all
+along has not been a merely personal ambition, but an immense longing
+to serve his people, and to rule them with justice and wisdom.  The
+final scene of all has a strange and solemn beauty.  It is on the eve
+of the battle in which Sigurd 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 outcome. Sigurd has made his last
+stand, his Danish allies have deserted him, and he well knows what will
+be the next day's issue. And here we have one of the noblest
+illustrations in all literature of that _Versoehnung_ which is the last
+word of tragic art.  For in this supreme hour the peace of mind which
+he has sought 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 men whose lives have been set at
+tragic pitch, has come to him also; he now sees that this was the
+inevitable end, and the recognition of the fitness with which events
+have shaped themselves brings with it an exaltation of soul in which
+life is seen revealed in its true aspect.  No longer veiled in the
+mists which have hitherto hidden it from his passionate gaze, he takes
+note of what it really is, and casts it from him.  In this hour of
+passionless contemplation such a renunciation is not a thing torn from
+the reluctant soul, but the clear solution, so long sought, of the
+problem so long blindly attempted.  That which his passion enslaved
+self has so struggled to avert, his higher self, at last set free,
+calmly and gladly accepts.
+
+"What miracle is this? for in the hour I prayed, the prayer was
+granted!  Peace, perfect peace!  Then I will go to-morrow to my last
+battle as to the altar; peace shall at last be mine for all my longings.
+
+"How this autumn evening brings reconciliation to my soul! Sun and wave
+and shore and sea flow all together, as in the thought of God all
+others; never yet has it seemed so fair to me.  But it is not mine to
+rule over this lovely land.  How greatly I have done it ill!  But how
+has it all so come to pass? for in my wanderings I saw thy mountains in
+every sky, I yearned for home as a child longs for Christmas, yet I
+came no sooner, and when at last I came, I gave thee wound upon wound.
+
+"But now, in contemplative mood, thou gazest upon me, and givest me at
+parting this fairest autumn night of thine; I will ascend yonder rock
+and take a long farewell."
+
+The action of "Sigurd Slembe," is interspersed with several lyrics, the
+most striking of which is herd translated in exact reproduction of the
+original form:
+
+  "Sin and Death, at break of day,
+  Day, day,
+  Spoke together with bated breath;
+  'Marry thee, sister, that I may stay,
+  Stay, stay,
+  In thy house,' quoth Death.
+  "Death laughed aloud when Sin was wed,
+  Wed, wed,
+  And danced on the bridal day:
+  But bore that night from the bridal bed,
+  Bed, bed,
+  The groom in a shroud away.
+  "Death came to her sister at break of day,
+  Day, day,
+  And Sin drew a weary breath;
+  'He whom thou lovest is mine for aye,
+  Aye, aye,
+  Mine he is,' quoth Death."
+
+One more saga drama was to be written by Bjoernson, but "Sigurd Slembe"
+remains his greatest achievement in this field of activity.  Its single
+successor, "Sigurd Jorsalfar," was not published until ten years later,
+and may not be compared with it for either strength or poetic
+inspiration. The author called it a "folkplay," and announced the
+intention, which was never fulfilled, of making several similar
+experiments with scenes from the sagas, "which should appeal to every
+eye and every stage of culture, to each in its own way, and at the
+performance of which all, for the time being, would experience the joy
+of fellow feeling."  The experiment proves interesting, and is carried
+out without didacticism or straining after sensational effects; the
+play is vigorous and well planned, but for the reader it has little of
+the dramatic impressiveness of its predecessor, although as an acting
+drama it is better fitted for the requirements of the stage.
+
+The two volumes which contain the greater part of Bjoernson's poetry not
+dramatic in form were both published in 1870.  One of them was the
+collection of his "Poems and Songs," the other was the epic cycle,
+"Arnljot Gelline," the only long poem that he has written.  The volume
+of lyrics includes many pieces of imperfect quality and slight
+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 made him the greatest of Norway's lyric poets. No
+translation can ever quite reproduce their cadence or their feeling;
+they illustrate the one aspect of Bjoernson's many-sided genius that
+must be taken on trust by those who cannot read his language.  A friend
+once asked him upon what occasion he had felt most fully the joy of
+being a poet. His reply was as follows:--
+
+"It was when a party from the Right in Christiania came to my house and
+smashed all my windows.  For when they had finished their assault, and
+were starting home again, they felt that they had to sing something,
+and so they began to sing, 'Yes, we love this land of ours'--they
+couldn't help it. They had to sing
+ the song of the man they had attacked."
+
+Into this collection were gathered the lyrics scattered through the
+peasant tales and the saga dramas, thus making it completely
+representative of his quality as a singer.  A revised and somewhat
+extended edition of this volume was published about ten years later.
+Bjoernson has had the rare fortune of having his lyrics set to music by
+three composers--Nordraak, Kjerulf, and Grieg--as intensely national in
+spirit as himself, and no festal occasion among Norwegians is
+celebrated without singing the national hymn, "Yes, We Love This Land
+of Ours," or the noble choral setting of "Olaf Trygvason."  The best
+folk-singer is he who stands in the whirling round of life, says the
+poet, and he reveals the very secret of his power when he tells us that
+life was ever more to him than song, and that existence, where it was
+worth while, in the thick of the human fray, always had for him a
+deeper meaning than anything he had written. The longest poem in
+Bjoernson's collection is called "Bergliot," and is a dramatic monologue
+in which the foul slaying of her husband Ejnar Tambarskelve and their
+son Ejndride is mourned by the bereaved wife and mother.  The story is
+from the saga of Harald Haardraada, and is treated with the deepest
+tragic impressiveness.
+
+  "Odin in Valhal I dare not seek
+  For him I forsook in my childhood.
+  And the new God in Gimle?
+  He took all that I had!
+    Revenge:--Who says revenge?--
+  Can revenge awaken my dead
+  Or shelter me from the cold?
+  Has it comfort for a widow's home
+  Or for a childless mother?
+    Away with your revenge: Let be!
+  Lay him on the litter, him and the son.
+  Come, we will follow them home.
+  The new God in Gimle, the terrible, who took all,
+  Let him also take revenge, for he understands it!
+  Drive slowly: Thus drove Ejnar ever;
+    --Soon enough shall we reach home."
+
+It was also to the "Heimskringla" that Bjoernson turned for the subject
+of his epic cycle, "Arnljot Gelline."  Here we read in various rhythms
+of Arnljot the outlaw, how the hands of all men are against him; how he
+offers to stay his wrath and end the blood feud if the fair Ingigerd,
+Trand's daughter, may be bestowed upon him; how, being refused, he sets
+fire to Trand's house and bears Ingigerd away captive; how her tears
+prevail upon him to release her, and how she seeks refuge in a southern
+cloister; how Arnljot wanders restless over sea and land until he comes
+to King Olaf, on the eve of the great battle, receives the Christian
+faith, fights fiercely in the vanguard against the hosts of the
+heathen, and, smiling, falls with his king on the field of Stiklestad.
+One song from this cycle, "The Cloister in the South" is here
+reproduced in an exact copy of the original metre, in the hope that
+even this imperfect representation of the poem may be better than none
+at all.
+
+  "Who would enter so late the cloister in?"
+    "A maid forlorn from the land of snow."
+  "What sorrow is thine, and what thy sin?"
+    "The deepest sorrow the heart can know.
+     I have nothing done
+       Yet must still endeavor,
+     Though my strength be none,
+       To wander ever.
+  Let me in, to seek for my pain surcease,
+       I can find no peace."
+
+  "From what far-off land hast thou taken flight?"
+    "From the land of the North, a weary way."
+  "What stayed thy feet at our gate this night?"
+    "The chant of the nuns, for I heard them pray,
+     And the song gave peace
+       To my soul, and blessed me;
+     It offered release
+       From the grief that oppressed me.
+     Let me in, so if peace to give be thine,
+       I may make it mine."
+
+  "Name me the grief that thy life hath crossed."
+    "Rest may I never, never know."
+  "Thy father, thy lover, thou hast then lost?"
+    "I lost them both at a single blow,
+     And all I held dear
+       In my deepest affection;
+     Aye, all that was near
+       To my heart's recollection.
+     Let me in, I am failing, I beg, I implore,
+       I can bear no more."
+
+  "How was it that thou thy father lost?"
+    "He was slain, and I saw the deed."
+  "How was it that thou thy lover lost?"
+    "My father he slew, and I saw the deed.
+     I wept so bitterly
+       When he roughly would woo me,
+     He at last set me free,
+       And forbore to pursue me.
+     Let me in, for the horror my soul doth fill.
+       That I love him still."
+
+  _Chorus of nuns within the Church._
+
+        "Come child, come bride,
+        To God's own side,
+        From grief find rest
+        On Jesus' breast.
+        Rest thy burden of sorrow.
+            On Horeb's height;
+        Like the lark, with to-morrow
+            Shall thy soul take flight.
+
+        Here stilled is all yearning,
+        No passion returning;
+        No terror come near thee
+        When the Saviour can hear thee.
+        For He, if in need be
+            Thy storm-beaten soul,
+        Though it bruised as a reed be,
+            Shall raise it up whole."
+
+Despite the power and beauty of an occasional manifestation of his
+genius during the late sixties and early seventies, the poetic impulse
+that had made Bjoernson the most famous of Norwegian authors seemed,
+toward the close of the fifteen-year period just now under review, to
+be well nigh exhausted.  Even among those who had followed his career
+most closely there were few who could anticipate the splendid new
+outburst of activity for which he was preparing.  These years seemed to
+be a dead time, not only in Bjoernson's life, but also in the general
+intellectual life of the Scandinavian countries.  Dr. Brandes thus
+describes the feelings of a thoughtful observer during that period of
+stagnation.  "In the North one had the feeling of being shut off from
+the intellectual life of the time. We were sitting with closed doors, a
+few brains struggling fruitlessly with the problem of how to get them
+opened... With whole schools of foreign literature the cultivated Dane
+had almost no acquaintance; and when, finally, as a consequence of
+political animosity, intellectual intercourse with Germany was broken
+off, the main channel was closed through which the intellectual
+developments of the day had been communicated to Norway as well as
+Denmark.  French influence was dreaded as immoral, and there was but
+little understanding of either the English language or spirit."  But an
+intellectual renaissance was at hand, an intellectual reawakening with
+a cosmopolitan outlook, and, Bjoernson was destined to become its
+leader, much as he had been the leader of the national movement of an
+earlier decade.  During these years of seeming inactivity,
+comparatively speaking, he had read and thought much, and the new
+thought of the age had fecundated his mind.  Historical and religious
+criticism, educational and social problems, had taken possession of his
+thought, and the philosophy of evolution had transformed the whole
+tenor of his ideas, shaping them to, deeper issues and more practical
+purposes than had hitherto engaged them.  He had read widely and
+variously in Darwin, Spencer, Mill, Mueller, and Taine; he had, in
+short, scaled the "lofty mountains" that had so hemmed in his early
+view, and made his way into the intellectual kingdoms of the modern
+world that lay beyond.  The _Weltgeist_ had appealed to him with its
+irresistible behest, just as it appealed at about the same time to
+Ibsen and Tolstoy and Ruskin, and had made him a man of new interests
+and ideals.
+
+One might have found foreshadowings of this transformation in certain
+of his earlier works,--in "The Newly Married Couple," for example, with
+its delicate analysis, of a common domestic relation, or in "The Fisher
+Maiden," with its touch of modernity,--but from these suggestions one
+could hardly have prophesied the enthusiasm and the genial force with
+which Bjoernson was to project his personality into the controversial
+arena of modern life. The series of works which have come from his pen
+during the past thirty-five years have dealt with most of the graver
+problems which concern society as a whole,--politics, religion,
+education, the status of women, the license of the press, the demand of
+the socialist for a reconstruction of the old order.  They have also
+dealt with many of the delicate questions of individual ethics,--the
+relations of husband and wife, of parent and child, the responsibility
+of the merchant to his creditors and of the employer to his dependants,
+the double standard of morality for men and women, and the duty
+devolving upon both to transmit a vigorous strain to their offspring.
+These are some of the themes that have engaged the novelist and
+dramatist; they have also engaged the public speaker and lay preacher
+of enlightenment, as well as themes of a more strictly political
+character, such as the separation of Norway from the Dual Monarchy, the
+renewal of the ancient bond between Norway and Iceland, the free
+development of parliamentary government, the cause of Pangermanism, and
+the furtherance of peace between the nations.  An extensive programme,
+surely, even in this summary enumeration of its more salient features,
+but one to which his capacity has not proved unequal, and which he has
+carried out by the force of his immense energy and superabundant
+vitality.  The burden of all this tendencious matter has caused his art
+to suffer at times, no doubt, but his inspiration has retained throughout
+much of the marvellous freshness of the earlier years, and the genius of
+the poet still flashes upon us from a prosaic environment, sometimes in a
+lovely lyric, more frequently, however, in the turn of a phrase or the
+psychological envisagement of some supreme moment in the action of the
+story or the drama.
+
+The great transformation in Bjoernson's literary manner and choice of
+subjects was marked by his sending home from abroad, in the season of
+1874-75, two plays, "The Editor" and "A Bankruptcy."  It was two years
+later that Ibsen sent home from abroad "The Pillars of Society," which
+marked a similar turning point in his artistic career.  It is a curious
+coincidence that the plays of modern life produced during this second
+period by these two men are the same in number, an even dozen in each
+case. Besides the two above named, these modern plays of Bjoernson are,
+with their dates, the following: "The King" (1877), "Leonarda" (1879),
+"The New System" (1879), "A Glove" (1883), "Beyond the Strength I."
+(1883), "Geography and Love" (1885), "Beyond the Strength II." (1895),
+"Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg" (1898), "Laboremus" (1901), and "At
+Storhove" (1902).  Since the cessation of Ibsen's activity, Bjoernson
+has outrun him in the race, adding "Daglannet" (1904), and "When the
+New Wine Blooms" (1909) to the list above given.  Besides these
+fourteen plays, however, he has published seven important volumes of
+prose fiction during the last thirty-five years. The titles and dates
+are as follows: "Magnhild" (1877), "Captain Mansana" (1879), "Dust"
+(1882), "Flags Are Flying in City and Harbor" (1884), "In God's Ways,"
+(1889), "New Tales" (1894), (of which collection "Absalom's Hair" is
+the longest and most important), and "Mary" (1906).  The achievement
+represented by this list is all the more extraordinary when we consider
+the fact that for the greater part of the thirty-five years which these
+plays and novels cover, their author has been, both as a public speaker
+and as a writer for the periodical press, an active participant in the
+political and social life of his country.
+
+Most of these books must be dismissed with a few words in order that
+our remaining space may be given to the four or five that are of the
+greatest power and significance. "The Editor," the first of the modern
+plays, offers a fierce satire upon modern journalism, its dishonesty,
+its corrupt and malicious power, its personal and partisan prejudice.
+The character of the editor in this play was unmistakeably drawn, in
+its leading characteristics, from the figure of a well known
+conservative journalist in Christiania, although Bjoernson vigorously
+maintained that the protraiture was typical rather than personal.
+
+"In various other countries than my own, I have observed the type of
+journalist who is here depicted.  It is characterized by acting upon a
+basis of sheer egotism, passionate and boundless, and by terrorism in
+such fashion that it frightens honest people away from every liberal
+movement, and visits upon the individual an unscrupulous persecution."
+
+This play was not particularly successful upon the stage, but the book
+was widely read, and occasioned much excited personal controversy.  "A
+Bankruptcy," on the other hand, proved a brilliant stage success.  Its
+matter was less contentious, and its technical execution was effective
+and brilliant.  It was not in vain that Bjoernson had at different times
+been the director of three theatres.  This play has for its theme the
+ethics of business life, and more especially the question of the extent
+to which a man whose finances are embarrassed is justified in continued
+speculation for the ultimate protection of himself and his creditors.
+Despite its treatment of this serious problem, the play is lighter and
+more genial in vein than the author's plays are wont to be, and the
+element of humor is unusually conspicuous.  Jaeger remarks that "A
+Bankruptcy" did two new things for Norwegian dramatic literature. It
+made money affairs a legitimate subject for literary treatment, and it
+raised the curtain upon the Norwegian home. "It was with 'A Bankruptcy'
+that the home made its first appearance upon the stage, the home with
+its joys and sorrows, with its conflicts and its tenderness."
+
+Two years later appeared "The King, which is in many respects
+Bjoernson's greatest modern masterpiece in dramatic form.  He had by
+this time become a convinced republican, but he was also an
+evolutionist, and he knew that republics are not created by fiat.  He
+believed the tendency toward republicanism to be irresistible, but he
+believed also that there must be intermediate stages in the transition
+from monarchy.  Absolutism is succeeded by constitutionalism, and that
+by parliamentarism, and that in the end must be succeeded by a
+republicanism that will free itself from all the traditional forms of
+symbol and ceremonial.  He had also a special belief that the smaller
+peoples were better fitted for development in this direction than the
+larger and more complex societies, although, on the other hand, he
+thought that the process of growth into full self-government was likely
+to be slower among the Germanic than among the Latin races. In the
+deeply moving play now to be considered, we have, in the character of
+the titular king, an extraordinary piece of psychological analysis.
+The king, is young, physically delicate, and of highly sensitive
+organization.  When he comes to the throne he realizes the hollowness
+and the hypocrisy of the existence that prescription has marked out for
+him; he realizes also that the very ideal of monarchy, under the
+conditions of modern European civilization, is a gigantic falsehood.
+For a time after his accession, he leads a life of pleasure seeking and
+revelry, hoping that he may dull his sense of the sharp contrast that
+exists between his station and his ideals.  But his conscience will
+give him no peace, and he turns to deliberate contemplation of the
+thought, not indeed of abdicating his, false position, but of
+transforming it into something more consonant with truth and the
+demands of the age.  He will become a citizen king, and take for wife a
+daughter of the people; he will do away with the pomp and circumstance
+of his court, and attempt to lead a simple and natural life, in which
+the interests of the people shall be paramount in his attention.  But
+in this attempt he is thwarted at every step.  All the forces of
+selfishness and prejudice and ignorance combine against him; even the
+people whom he seeks to benefit are so wedded to their idols that their
+attitude is one of suspicion rather than of sympathy.  He loves a young
+woman of strong and noble character, and wins her love in return, but
+she dies on the very eve of their union.  His oldest and most
+confidential friend, the wealthiest man in the kingdom, but a
+republican, is murdered by a radical associate of the _intransigeant_
+type, and the king is left utterly bereaved by his twofold loss. This
+brings us to the closing scene of the drama, in which the king, his
+nerves strained to the breaking point, confronts the group of officials
+and others who bring to him the empty phrases of a conventional
+condolence:--
+
+The King.  Hush!  Have a little respect for the truth that should
+follow death!  Understand me rightly: I do not mean that any of you
+would lie.  But the very air about a king is infected.  It was of
+that-a word or two.  My time is short. But a testament. ...
+
+The Priest.  Testament.
+
+The King.  Neither the Old nor the New!  Greet what is called
+Christianity here in this land-greet it from me! I have thought much
+about Christian folk of late.
+
+The Priest.  That rejoices me.
+
+The King.  How your tone cuts me!  Greet it from me, what is called
+Christianity here in this land.  Nay, do not crane your necks and bend
+your backs as if the wisdom of the ages were now forthcoming. (_aside_)
+Can there be any use in saying something seriously? (_aloud_) You are
+Christians?
+
+The General.  God forbid the doubt!  Faith is exceedingly useful. ...
+
+The King.  For discipline. (_to the Sheriff_)  And you?
+
+The Sheriff.  From my blessed ancestors I received the faith.
+
+The King.  So _they_ are blessed also.  Why not?'
+
+The Sheriff.  They brought me strictly up to fear God, to honor the
+king.
+
+The King.  And love your fellowmen.  You are a State individual,
+sheriff.  And such are Christians nowadays. (_to the Merchant_)  And
+you?
+
+The Merchant.  I have not been able to go to church very much of late
+because of my cough.  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 formula, boys, that is the accepted thing to
+say.  Therefore, you are a Christian community, and it is no fault of
+mine if such a community will not deal seriously with what concerns
+Christianity. Greet it from me, and say that it must have an eye to the
+institution of monarchy.
+
+The Priest.  Christianity has nothing to do with such matters.  It
+searches _the inner man_.
+
+The King.  That 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 know what 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 monarchy.
+It should hardly any longer, it seems to me, let the monarchy play the
+part of the seductive wanton who turns the thoughts of all citizens to
+war--which is much against the message of Christianity--and to class
+distinctions, to luxury, to show and vanity. The monarchy is now so
+great a lie that it compels the most upright man to share in its
+falsehood."
+
+The conversation that follows is in a vein of bitterness on the one
+side, and of obtuse smugness on the other; the tragic irony of the
+action grows deeper and deeper, until in the end the king, completely
+disheartened and despairing, goes into an adjoining room, and dies by
+his own hand, to the consternation of the men from whom he has just
+parted.  They give 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 may well be imagined that "The King" made a stir in literary and
+social circles, and quite noticeably fluttered the dovecotes of
+conventionality and conservatism.  Such plain speaking and such deadly
+earnestness of conviction were indeed far removed from the idyllic
+simplicity of the peasant tales and from the poetical reconstructions
+of the legendary past. Eight years later, Bjoernson prefaced a new
+edition of this work with a series of reflections upon "Intellectual
+Freedom" that constitute one of the most vigorous and remarkable
+examples of his serious prose. The central ideas of his political faith
+are embodied in the following sentences from this preface:--
+
+"Intellectual Freedom. Why is not attention called over and over again
+to the fact that for the great peoples, who have so many compensating
+interests, the free commerce of ideas is one condition of life among
+many others; while for us, the small peoples, it is absolutely
+indispensable.  A people numerically large may attain to ways of
+thought 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 my chief
+aim to enlarge the bounds of free thought.  I have later made the same
+attempt in matters of religion and morals.  When my opponents seek to
+sum up my character in a few words, they are apt to say: 'He attacks
+the throne and the altar.'  It seems to me that I have served the
+freedom of the spirit, and in the interests of that cause I now beg
+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 the
+meaning of Christianity.  It is not an institution, still less a book,
+and least of all it is a house or a seminary. It is the godly life
+according to the precepts and example of Jesus.  There may be men who
+think they are attacking Christianity when they investigate the
+historical origin or the morality of some dogma; I do not think so.
+Honest investigation 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-minded
+people who will be ennobled by it, and some made great.  I honor all
+the noble.  I have friends among the Christians, whom I love, and never
+for a moment have I thought of attacking 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 simultaneously; it
+fixes terms, different for the different kingdoms, and far removed for
+the kingdoms 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 may not greatly matter, so rich are
+the possibilities of other work taking its place; but in a small
+society it may be equivalent to destroying the sight of its only eye."
+
+In the clean-cut phrases and moral earnestness of this _apologia pro
+vita sua_, which deserves to be reproduced at greater length, we have
+the modern Bjoernson, no longer poet alone, but poet and prophet at
+once, the champion of sincere thinking and worthy living, the Sigurd
+Slembe of our own day, happier than his prototype in the consciousness
+that the ambition to serve his people has not been; altogether
+thwarted, and that his beneficent activity is not made sterile even by
+the bitterest opposition.
+
+Only a rapid glance may be taken at the books of the five years
+following upon the publication of "The King."  The story of "Magnhild,"
+planned several years earlier, represents Bjoernson's return to fiction
+after a long dramatic interlude. There are still peasants in this
+story, but they are different from the figures of the early tales, and
+the atmosphere of the work is modern.  It turns upon the question of
+the mutual duties of husband and wife, when love no longer 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 come within the range of his observation during his stay
+abroad.  Its interest does not lie in any particular problem, but
+rather in the delineation of the titular figure, a strong and impetuous
+person whose character suggests 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 comparison with being
+invisible, that to be a human being is nothing in comparison with being
+dead, that is not the way to teach them to view life properly, or to
+love life, to gain courage, 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 with women 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 from the book in its
+ending) 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 man to be as unfit for honorable marriage as the
+unchaste woman.  Upon the theme thus presented a long 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 Bjoernson has so squarely
+and uncompromisingly planted his feet.  The other remaining work of
+this five-year period is the play called "The New System."  The new
+system in question is a system of railway management, and it is a
+wasteful one.  But the young engineer who demonstrates this fact has a
+hard time in opening 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 Bjoernson's prolific pen.  Of these by far the most
+important are the two that are linked by the common title, "Beyond the
+Strength."  The translation of this title is hopelessly inadequate,
+because the original word means much more than strength; it means
+talent, faculty, capability, the sum total of a man's endowment for
+some particular purpose.  The two pieces bearing this name are quite
+different in theme, but certain characters appear in both, and both
+express the same thought,--the thought that it is vain for men to
+strive after the unattainable, for in so doing they lose sight of the
+actual possibilities of human life; the thought that much of the best
+human energy goes 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 superhuman ideal is religious, 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 reformer who is deluded to believe that one resounding 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 masses
+a new heaven upon earth.  No deeper tragedies have been conceived by
+Bjoernson 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 them both,--the tragedy of his son Elias, who dies like Samson with
+his foes for an equally impossible faith, and by the very violence of
+his fanaticism removes the goal of socialist endeavor farther than ever
+into the dim future.  Bjoernson has written nothing more profoundly
+moving than these plays, with their twofold treatment of essentially
+the same theme, nor has he written anything which offers a clearer
+revelation of his own rich personality, with its unfailing poetic
+vision, its deep tenderness, and its boundless love for all humankind.
+The play, "Geography and Love," which came between the two just
+described, is an amusing piece, in the vein of light and graceful
+comedy, which satirizes the man with a hobby, showing how he
+unconsciously comes to neglect his wife and family through 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 emphasize. "Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg," the next
+play, deals with the passions engendered by political controversy, and
+made much unpleasant stir in Norwegian 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 same theme, which is that of the malign
+influence exerted by an evil-minded and reckless woman upon the lives
+of others. From a different point of view, we may say that the subject
+of these plays is the consecration of the home. This has always been a
+favorite theme with Bjoernson, and he has no clearer title to our
+gratitude than that which he has earned by his unfailing insistence
+upon the sanctity of family life, its mutual confidences, and its
+common joys.  Completing the list, we have "Daglannet," another
+domestic drama of simple structure, and "When the New Wine Blooms," a
+study of modernity as exemplified in the young woman of to-day, of the
+estrangement that too often creeps into married life, and of the
+stirrings that prompt men of middle age to seek to renew the joys of
+youth.
+
+During the years that have passed since the publication of "Dust,"
+Bjoernson has produced four volumes of fiction,--his two great 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
+uncompromising logic 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 Bjoernson would have found the task a hopeless one.
+That he should have succeeded even in making a fairly readable book out
+of this material would have been remarkable, and it is a pronounced
+artistic triumph that the book should prove of such absorbing interest.
+For absorbingly interesting it is, to any reader who is willing that a
+novel should provide something 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 wallowed in almost every
+form of brutality and vice. The four preceding generations of the race
+are depicted for us in a series of brief but masterly
+characterizations, in which every stroke tells, and we witness the
+gradual weakening of the family stock.  But with the generation just
+preceding the main action of the novel, there has been introduced a
+vigorous strain of peasant blood, and the process of regeneration has
+begun. It is this process that goes on before our eyes.  It does not
+become a completed process, but the prospect is bright for the future,
+and the flags that fly over town and harbor in the closing chapter have
+a symbolical significance, for they announce a victory of spirit over
+sense, not only in the cases of certain among the individual
+participants in the action, but also in the case of the whole community
+to which they belong.  So much for the book as a study in heredity.  As
+an educational tract, it has the conspicuous virtue of remaining in
+close touch with life while embodying the spirit of modern scientific
+pedagogy.  The hero of the book,--the last descendant of a race
+struggling for moral and physical rehabilitation,--throws himself into
+the work of education with an energy 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 system of training 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 microcosm of the world outside, or rather of what that
+world ought to be.  Bjoernson's interest in education has been
+life-long; for many years it had gone astray in a sort of Grundtvigian
+fog, but at the time when this book came to be written, it had worked
+its way out into the clear light 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 "Emile," and take renewed
+heart from its inspiring message.
+
+"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 sympathy and
+depth of tragic pathos, its plea for the sacredness of human life, and
+its protest against the religious and social prejudice by which life is
+so often misshapen, this book is an epitome of all the ideas and
+feelings that have gone to the making 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 relationship from
+which issue some of the deepest of social questions, and which enforces
+in the most appealing terms the fundamental teaching of 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 sympathies; the one alert of
+mind, imaginative, open to every intellectual influence, also impetuous
+and hot-blooded; the other shy and intellectually stolid, but good to
+the very core, and moved by the strongest of altruistic impulses.  In
+accordance with their respective characters, the first of these youths
+becomes a physician, and the other a clergyman.  Then we have the
+sister of the physician, who becomes the wife of the clergyman, a
+noble, proud, self-centred nature, finely strung to the inmost fibre of
+her being.  Then we have a woman of the other sort, clinging,
+abnormally sensitive, a child when the years of childhood are over, and
+made the victim of a shocking child-marriage to a crippled old man. She
+it is whom the physician loves, and persuades to a legal dissolution of
+her immoral union.  After some years, he makes her his wife, and their
+happiness would be complete were it not for the social and religious
+prejudice aroused. The clergyman, whom years of service in the state
+church have hardened into bigotry, is officially, as it were, compelled
+to condemn the friend of his boyhood, and even the sister, for a time
+grown untrue to her own generous nature, shares in the estrangement.
+In vain does the physician seek to shelter his wife from the chill of
+her environment.  She droops, pines away, and finally dies, gracious,
+lovable, and even forgiving to the last.  Then the death angel comes
+close to the clergyman and his wife, hovering over their only child,
+and at last the barrier of formalism and prejudice and religious
+bigotry is swept away from their minds.  Their natural sympathies, long
+repressed, resume full sway, and they realize how deeply they, have
+sinned toward the dead woman. The sister seeks a reconciliation with
+her brother, but he repulses her, and gives her his wife's private
+diary to read. In this _journal intime_ she finds the full revelation
+of the gentle spirit that has been done to death, and she feels that
+the very salvation of her life and soul depend upon winning her
+brother's forgiveness.  The closing chapter, in which the final
+reconciliation occurs, is one of the most wonderful in all fiction; its
+pathos is of the deepest and the most moving, and he must be callous of
+soul, indeed, who can read it with dry eyes.
+
+If we were to search the whole of Bjoernson's writings for the single
+passage which should most completely typify his message to his
+fellowmen,--not Norwegians alone, but all mankind,--the choice would
+have to rest upon the words spoken from the pulpit by the clergyman of
+this novel, on the Sunday following the certainty of his child's
+recovery.
+
+"To-day a man spoke from the pulpit of the church about what he had
+learned.
+
+"Namely, about what first concerns us all.
+
+"One forgets it in his strenuous endeavor, a second in his zeal for
+conflict, a third in his backward vision, a fourth in the conceit of
+his own wisdom, a fifth in his daily routine, and we have all learned
+it more or less ill.  For should I ask you who hear me now, you would
+all reply thoughtlessly, and just because I ask you from this place,
+'Faith is first.'
+
+"No, in very truth, it is not.  Watch over your child, as it struggles
+for breath on the outermost verge of life, or see your wife follow the
+child to that outermost verge, beside herself for anxiety and
+sleeplessness,--then love will teach you that _life comes first_.  And
+never from this day on will I seek God or God's will in any form of
+words, in any sacrament, or in any book or any place, as if He were
+first and foremost to be found there; no, life is first and
+foremost--life as we win it from the depths of despair, in the victory
+of the light, in the grace of self-devotion, in our intercourse with
+living human kind.  God's supreme word to us is life, our highest
+worship of Him is love for the living.  This lesson, self-evident as it
+is, was needed by me more than by most others.  This it is that in
+various ways and upon many grounds I have hitherto rejected,--and of
+late most of all.  But never more shall words be the highest for me,
+nor symbols, but the eternal revelation of life.  Never more will I
+freeze fast in doctrine, but let the warmth of life melt my will.
+Never will I condemn men by the dogmas of old time justice, unless they
+fit with our own time's gospel of love.  Never, for God's sake!  And
+this because I believe in Him, the God of Life, and His never ending
+revelation in life itself."
+
+Here is a gospel, indeed, one that needs no church for its
+promulgation, and no ceremonial for the enhancement of its
+impressiveness.  It is a gospel, moreover, that is based upon no
+foundation of precarious logic, but finds its premises in the healthy
+instincts of the natural man.  It is no small thing to have thus found
+the way, and to have helped others likewise to find the way, out of the
+mists of superstition, through the valleys of doubt and despondency,
+athwart the thickets of prejudice and bigotry with all their furtive
+foemen, up to these sunlit heights of serenity.
+
+"Mary" is less explicit in its teaching than the two great novels just
+summarized, but what it misses in didacticism it more than gains in
+art. The radiant creature who gives her name to the book is one of
+Bjoernson's most exquisite figures. She is the very embodiment of
+youthful womanhood, filled with the joy of life, and bringing sunshine
+wherever she goes.  Yet this temperament leads to her undoing, or what
+would be the undoing of any woman less splendid in character.  But the
+strength that impels her to the misstep that comes so near to having
+tragic consequences is also the strength that saves her when chastened
+by suffering.  In her the author "gives us the common stuff of life,"
+says an English critic, "gives it us simple and direct.  There is
+nothing here of Ibsen's pathology. We are in the sun.  Her most hideous
+blunder cannot undo a woman's soul.  Bjoernson knows that the deed is
+nothing at all. It is the soul behind the deed that he sees.  Not
+everything that cometh out of a man defileth a man.  At all events, so
+it is here: triumph and joy built upon an act that--as the Philistines
+would say--has defiled forever."  As a triumph of sheer creation, this
+figure is hardly overmatched anywhere in the author's portrait gallery
+of women.
+
+If Bjoernson's essential teaching may be found in a single page, as has
+above been suggested, his personality evades all such summarizing.  In
+the present essay, he has been considered as a writer merely,--poet,
+dramatist, novelist,--but the man is vastly more than that.  His other
+activities have been hinted at, indeed, but nothing adequate has been
+said about them.  The director of three theatres, the editor of three
+newspapers and the contributor to many others, the promoter of schools
+and patriotic organizations, the participant in many political
+campaigns, the lay preacher of private and public morals, the chosen
+orator of his nation for all great occasions,--these are some of the
+characters in which we must view him to form anything like a complete
+conception of his many-sided individuality.  Take the matter of oratory
+alone, and it is perhaps true that he has influenced as many people by
+the living word as he has by the printed page.  He has addressed
+hundreds of audiences in the three Scandinavian countries and in
+Finland, he has spoken to more than twenty thousand at a time, and his
+winged speech has gone straight home to his hearers.  All who ever
+heard him will agree that his oratory was of the most persuasive and
+vital impressiveness. Jaeger attempts to describe it in the following
+words:--
+
+"It is eloquence of a very distinctive type; its most characteristic
+quality is its wealth of color; it finds expression for every mood,
+from the lightest to the most serious, from the most vigorous to the
+most delicate and tender.  Now his words ring like the voice of doom,
+filled with thunder and lightning, now they become soft and persuasive
+with smiling mien. With a single cadence, or a play of the facial
+muscles, or a slight gesture, he can portray a person, a situation, or
+an object, so that it appears living in the sight of his hearers. And
+what the word alone cannot do, is accomplished in the most brilliant
+manner by the virtuosity of his delivery.  He does not speak his words,
+he presents them; they take bodily form and seem alive."
+
+In his more intimate relationships, on the other hand, in face to face
+conversation or in the home circle, the man takes on a quite different
+aspect; the prophet has become the friend, the impassioned preacher has
+become the genial story teller, and shares the gladsome or mirthful
+mood of the hour.  Such a personality as this may be analyzed; it
+defies any concise synthesis.  One resorts to figures of speech, and
+they were abundantly resorted to by those who paid him the tribute of
+their admiration and love upon the occasion of his seventieth
+anniversary.  Let us take an instance at random from one of these
+tributes.
+
+"The cataract that roars down to the free foaming sea. The mountain
+with its snowclad peaks towering up into the immensity of the starry
+heavens.  The rustling of the woodland above the blossom-spangled and
+smiling meadows, the steep uptowering, the widely growing, and the
+joyously smiling.  At once the soft melody that stirs the heart and the
+strong wind that sweeps over the Northern lands."
+
+This concourse of metaphors gives some slight idea of the way in which
+Bjoernson's personality affected those who came into contact with it.
+The description may be supplemented by a few bits of anecdote and
+reminiscence.  The composer Grieg contributes the following incident of
+the old days in Norway:--
+
+"It was Christmas eve of 1868 at the Bjoernsons in Christiania. They
+lived then in the Rosenkrantzgade.  My wife and I were, as far as I can
+remember, the only guests.  The children were very boisterous in their
+glee.  In the middle of the floor an immense Christmas tree was
+enthroned and brightly lighted. All the servant-folk came in, and
+Bjoernson spoke, beautifully and warmly, as he well knows how to do.
+'Now you shall play a hymn, Grieg,' he said, and although I did not
+quite like the notion of doing organist's work, I naturally complied
+without a murmur. It was one of Grundtvig's hymns in 32--thirty-two
+verses.  I resigned myself to my fate with stoicism.  At the beginning
+I kept myself awake, but the endless repetitions had a soporific
+effect.  Little by little I became as stupid as a medium.  When we had
+at last got through with all the verses, Bjoernson said: 'Isn't that
+fine.  Now I will read it for you!'  And so we got all thirty-two
+verses once more.  I was completely overawed."
+
+When the poet purchased his country estate which was his home from the
+late seventies to the end of his life, his coming was looked forward to
+with mingled feelings by the good country folk of the neighborhood.
+Kristofer Janson thus tells the story of his arrival:
+
+"His coming was anticipated with a certain anxiety and apprehension,
+for was he not a 'horrid radical'?  The dean in particular thought that
+he might be a menace to the safe spiritual slumber of the village.  As
+the dean one day was driving through the village in his carriole, just
+where the road turns sharply by the bridge below Aulestad, he met
+another carriole which was rapidly driving that way and in it a man
+who, without respect for the clerical vehicle, shouted with all the
+strength of his lungs: 'Half the road!'  The dean turned aside, saying
+with a sigh: 'Has Bjoernson come to the Gausdal at last?' "It was indeed
+so, and he showed his colors at the start. The same dean and Bjoernson
+became the best of friends afterwards, and found much sport in
+interchanging genial jests whenever they met."
+
+Frits Thaulow, the painter, thus wrote to Bjoernson reminding him of a
+festive gathering of students:
+
+"The manager came in and announced with a loud voice that it was past
+twelve.  Then you sprang up.
+
+"'Bring champagne!  Now I will speak of what comes after twelve
+o'clock! of all that lies beyond the respectable hour for retiring!
+For the hour when fancy awakens and fills us with longings for the
+world of wonderland; then the painter sees only the dim outline in the
+moonlight, then the musician hears the silence, then the poet after his
+thoughtful day feels sprouting the first shoots of the next.  After
+twelve freedom begins.  The day's tumult is stilled, and the voice
+within becomes audible.'
+
+"Thus you spoke, and 'after twelve' became a watchword with us.
+
+"Many a spark has been kindled in your soul by the quiet evening time.
+But later in life, when you become a chieftain in the battle, broad
+daylight also made its demands upon you.  Like the sun you shone upon
+us and made the best that was in us to grow, but I shall always keep a
+deep artistic affection for what comes 'after twelve.'"
+
+Henrik Cavling tells the following story of the poet in Paris:
+
+"It was one of Bjoernson's peculiarities to go out as a rule without any
+money in his pocket.  He neither owned a purse nor knew the French
+coins.  His personal expenditures were restricted to the books he
+bought, and now and then a theatre ticket.  One day he carne excitedly
+into the sitting-room, and asked:
+
+"'Who took my five franc piece?'  It was a five franc piece that he had
+got somewhere or other and had stuck in his pocket to buy a theatre
+ticket with.  It turned out that the maid had found it and given it to
+Fru Bjoernson.  For it seemed quite unthinkable to her that the master
+should have any money to take out with him.
+
+"This complete indifference of Bjoernson to small matters sometimes
+proved annoying.  In this connection I may tell of a little trip he
+once took with Jonas Lie.
+
+"The two poets, who did not live far apart, had long counted with
+pleasure upon a trip to Pere Lachaise, where they wished to visit
+Alfred de Musset's grave.  At last the day came, and with big soft hats
+on their heads, and engaged earnestly in conversation, they drove away
+through Paris.
+
+"When they came to Pere Lachaise, and wanted to enter the cemetery, the
+driver stopped them and asked for his pay. Then it appeared that
+neither had any money, which they smilingly explained, and asked him in
+bad French to wait and drive them home again.  But the two gentlemen
+with the big soft hats had not inspired the driver with any marked
+degree of confidence.  He made a scene, and attracted a great crowd of
+the boys, loafers, and well-dressed Frenchmen who always collect on
+critical occasions.  The end of the affair was that the poets had to
+get into their cab again and drive all the long way back without having
+had a glimpse of the grave.  When they reached Lie's lodgings, Lie went
+in to get some money, while Bjoernson sat in the cab as a hostage.
+Nevertheless, both poets maintained that they had had a pleasant
+expedition.  A Norwegian question, which had accidentally come up
+between them, had made them forget all about Alfred de Musset."
+
+Finally, a story may be given that is told by Bjoernson himself.
+
+"I had a pair of old boots that I wanted to give to a beggar. But just
+as I was going to give them to him, I began to wonder whether Karoline
+had not some use for them, since she usually gave such things to
+beggars.  So I took the boots in my hand, and went downstairs to ask
+her, but on the way I got a little worked up because I did not quite
+dare to give them to the beggar myself.  And the further I went down
+the steps, the more wrathful I got, until I stood over her.  And then I
+was so angry that I had to bluster at her as if she had done me a
+grievous wrong.  But she could not understand a word of what I said,
+and looked at me with such amazement, that I could not keep from
+bursting into laughter."
+
+From his early years, Bjoernson kept in touch with the modern
+intellectual movement by mingling with the people of other lands than
+his own.  Besides his visits to Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, he made
+many lengthy sojourns in the chief continental centres of civilization,
+in Munich, Rome, and Paris.  The longest of his foreign journeys was
+that which brought him to the United States in the winter of 1880-81,
+for the purpose of addressing his fellow countrymen in the Northwest.
+His home for the last thirty years and more has been his estate of
+Aulestad in the Gausdal, a region of Southern Norway.  Here he has been
+a model farmer, and here, surrounded by his family,--wife, children,
+and grandchildren,--his patriarchal presence has given dignity to the
+household, and united its members in a common bond of love.  Hither
+have come streams of guests, friends old and new, to enjoy his generous
+hospitality.  There has been provision for all, both bed and board, and
+the heartiest of welcomes from the host.  And the stranger from abroad
+has been greeted, as like as not, by the sight of his own country's
+flag streaming from a staff before the house, and foreshadowing the
+personal greeting that awaited him upon the threshold.
+
+Bjoernson died in Paris (where he had been spending the winter, as was
+his custom for many years past), April 26, 1910. He had been ill for
+several months, and only an extraordinarily robust constitution enabled
+him to make a partial recovery from the crisis of the preceding
+February, when his death had been hourly expected.  The news of his
+death occasioned demonstrations of grief not only in his own country,
+but also throughout the civilized world.  Every honor that a nation can
+bestow upon its illustrious dead was decreed him by King and Storthing;
+a warship was despatched to bear his remains to Christiania, and the
+pomp and circumstance of a state funeral acclaimed the sense of the
+nation's loss.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF WORKS.
+
+  SYNNOeVE SOLBAKKEN.  Fortaelling, 1857
+  MELLEM SLAGENE.  Drama, 1858
+  ARNE.  Fortaelling, 1858
+  HALTE-HULDA.  Drama, 1858
+  EN GLAD GUT.  Fortaelling, 1860
+  KONG SVERRE.  1861
+  SIGURD SLEMBE.  1862
+  MARIA STUART I SKOTLAND.  Skuespil, 1864
+  DE NYGIFTE.  Komedie, 1865
+  FISKERJENTEN.  Fortaelling, 1868
+  DIGTE OG SANGE.  1870
+  ARNLJOT GELLINE.  1870
+  SIGURD JORSALFAR.  Skuespil, 1872
+  FORTAELLINGER I-II,  1872
+  BRUDE-SLAATTEN.  Fortaelling, 1873
+  REDAKTOeREN.  Skuespil, 1874
+  EN FALLIT.  Skuespil, 1874
+  KONGEN.  1877
+  MAGNHILD.  Fortaelling, 1877
+  KAPTEJN MANSANA.  Fortaelling fra Italien, 1879
+  LEONARDA.  Skuespil, 1879
+  DET NY SYSTEM.  Skuespil, 1879
+  EN HANDSKE.  Skuespil, 1883
+  OVER AEVNE.  Foerste Stykke, 1883
+  DET FLAGER I BYEN OG PAA HAVNEN,  1884
+  GEOGRAFI OG KJAERLIGHED.  1885
+  PAA GUDS VEJE.  1889
+  NYE FORTAELLINGER.  1894
+  LYSET.  En Universitetskantate, 1895
+  OVER AEVNE.  Andet Stykke, 1895
+  PAUL LANGE OG TORA PARSBERG.  1898
+  LABOREMUS.  1901
+  TO FORTAELLINGER.  1901
+  PAA STORHOVE.  Drama, 1904
+  DAGLANNET.  1904
+  TO TALER.  1906.
+  MARY.  Fortaelling, 1906
+  VORT SPROG.  1907
+  NAAR DEN NY VIN BLOMSTRER.  1909
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson, by William Morton Payne
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BJOeRNSTJERNE BJOeRNSON ***
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Bjornstjerne Bjornson
+by William Morton Payne
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
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+Title: Bjornstjerne Bjornson
+
+Author: William Morton Payne
+
+Release Date: October, 2003  [Etext #4582]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 11, 2002]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Bjornstjerne Bjornson
+by William Morton Payne
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+This etext was produced by Nicole Apostola.
+
+Bjornstjerne Bjornson
+1832-1910
+by William Morton Payne, LL.D.
+Translator of Bjornson's "Sigurd Slembe" and Jaeger's "Ibsen," Author of "Little Leaders," Etc.
+
+To Mary
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE
+
+When the date of Bjornson's seventieth birthday drew near 
+at the close of 1902, the present writer, who had been from 
+boyhood a devoted admirer of the great Norwegian, wished to 
+make an American contribution to the world-wide tribute of 
+gratitude and affection which the then approaching anniversary 
+was sure to evoke.  The outcome of that wish was an essay, 
+summarizing Bjornson's life and work, published in "The 
+International Quarterly," March, 1903.  The essay then written 
+forms the substance of the present publication, although several 
+additions have been made in the way of translation, anecdote, 
+and the consideration of Bjornson's later productions.  So 
+small a book as this is, of course, hopelessly inadequate to 
+make more than the most superficial sort of survey of the 
+life work of that masterful personality whose recent death is 
+so heavy a loss to all mankind.
+
+W. M. P. 
+Chicago, May, 1910.
+
+
+
+BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON
+1832-1910
+
+Eight years ago, taking a bird's-eye view of the mountain 
+peaks of contemporary literature, and writing with particular 
+reference to Bjornson's seventieth birthday, it seemed 
+proper to make the following remarks about the most famous 
+European authors then numbered among living men.  If one 
+were asked for the name of the greatest man of letters still 
+living in the world, the possible claimants to the distinction 
+would hardly be more than five in number.  If it were a 
+question of poetry alone, Swinburne would have to be named 
+first, with Carducci for a fairly close second.  But if we 
+take literature in its larger sense, as including all the 
+manifestations of creative activity in language, and if we 
+insist, furthermore, that the man singled out for this 
+preeminence shall stand in some vital relation to the 
+intellectual life of his time, and exert a forceful influence 
+upon the thought of the present day, the choice must rather 
+be made among the three giants of the north of Europe, falling, 
+as it may be, upon the great-hearted Russian emotionalist 
+who has given us such deeply moving portrayals of the life 
+of the modern world; or upon the passionate Norwegian idealist 
+whose finger has so unerringly pointed out the diseased spots 
+in the social organism, earning by his moral surgery the name 
+of pessimist, despite his declared faith in the redemption of 
+mankind through truth and freedom and love; or, perchance, 
+upon that other great Norwegian, equally fervent in his devotion 
+to the same ideals, and far more sympathetic in his manner of 
+inculcating them upon his readers, who has just rounded out 
+his scriptural tale of three score years and ten, and, in 
+commemoration of the anniversary, is now made the recipient 
+of such a tribute of grateful and whole-souled admiration 
+as few men have ever won, and none have better deserved.  
+It would be certainly invidious, and probably futile, to 
+attempt a nice, comparative estimate of the services of these 
+three men to the common cause of humanity; let us be content 
+with the admission that Bjornstjerne Bjornson is _primus inter 
+pares_, and make no attempt to exalt him at the expense of his 
+great contemporaries.  Writing now eight years later, at the 
+time when Bjornson's death has plunged his country and the 
+world in mourning, it is impressive to note that of the five men 
+constituting the group above designated, Tolstoy alone survives 
+to carry on the great literary tradition of the nineteenth century.
+
+It will be well, however, to make certain distinctions between 
+the life work of Bjornson and that of the two men whom a common 
+age and common aims bring into inevitable association with him.  
+These distinctions are chiefly two,--one of them is that while 
+Tolstoy and Ibsen grew to be largely cosmopolitan in their outlook, 
+Bjornson has much more closely maintained throughout his career the 
+national, or, at any rate, the racial standpoint.  The other is 
+that while Tolstoy and Ibsen presently became, the one indifferent 
+to artistic expression, and the other baldly prosaic where he was 
+once deeply poetical, Bjornson preserved the poetic impulse of his 
+youth, and continued to give it play even in his envisagement of 
+the most practical modern problems.  Let us enlarge a little upon 
+these two themes.  Ernest Renan, speaking at the funeral of 
+Tourguenieff, described the deceased novelist as "the incarnation 
+of a whole people."  Even more fittingly might the phrase be applied 
+to Bjornson, for it would be difficult to find anywhere else in 
+modern literature a figure so completely and profoundly representative 
+of his race.  In the frequently quoted words of Dr. Brandes, to speak 
+the name of Bjornson in any assembly of his countrymen is like 
+"hoisting the Norwegian flag."  It has been maliciously added that 
+mention of his name is also like flaunting a red flag in the sight 
+of a considerable proportion of the assembly, for Bjornson has always 
+been a fighter as well as an artist, and it has been his self-imposed 
+mission to arouse his fellow countrymen from their mental sluggishness 
+no less than to give creative embodiment to their types of character 
+and their ideal aspirations.  But whatever the opposition aroused by 
+his political and social radicalism, even his opponents have been 
+constrained to feel that he was the mouthpiece of their race as no 
+other Norwegian before him had been, and that he has voiced whatever 
+is deepest and most enduring in the Norwegian temper.  Powerful as 
+has been his appeal to the intellect and conscience of the modern 
+world at large, it has always had a special note of admonition or 
+of cheer for his own people.  With reference to the second of our 
+two themes, it is sufficient to say that, although the form of verse 
+was almost wholly abandoned by him during the latter half of his life, 
+the breath of poetry never ceased to exhale from his work, and the 
+lyric exuberance of his later prose still recalls to us the singer 
+of the sixties.
+
+Few productions of modern literature have proved as epoch-
+making as the modest little volume called "Synnove Solbakken," 
+which appeared in the book shops of Christiania and Copenhagen 
+in 1857.  It was a simple tale of peasant life, an idyl of the 
+love of a boy and a girl, but it was absolutely new in its 
+style, and in its intimate revelation of the Norwegian character.  
+It must be remembered that until the year 1814, Norway had 
+for centuries been politically united with Denmark, and that 
+Copenhagen had been the common literary centre of the two 
+countries.  To that city Norwegian writers had gravitated as 
+naturally as French writers gravitate to Paris.  There had 
+resulted from this condition of things a literature which, 
+although it owed much to men of Norwegian birth, was essentially 
+a Danish literature, and must properly be so styled.  That 
+literature could boast, at the beginning of the nineteenth 
+century, an interesting history comparable in its antiquity 
+with the greater literatures of Europe, and a brilliant history 
+for at least a hundred years past.  But old literatures are 
+sure to become more or less sophisticated and trammelled by 
+traditon, and to this rule Danish literature was no exception.  
+When the constitution of Eidsvold, in 1814, separated Norway 
+from Denmark, and made it into an independent kingdom (save for 
+the forced Swedish partnership), the country had practically 
+no literary tradition save that which centred about the Danish 
+capital.  She might claim to have been the native country of 
+many Danish writers, even of Ludvig Holberg, the greatest 
+writer that the Scandinavian peoples have yet produced, but she 
+could point to nothing that might fairly be called a Norwegian 
+literature.  The young men of the rising generation were 
+naturally much concerned about this, and a sharp divergence of 
+opinion arose as to the means whereby the interests of Norwegian 
+literature might be furthered, and the aims which it should have 
+in view.  One party urged that the literature should break loose 
+from its traditional past, and aim at the cultivation of an 
+exclusively national spirit.  The other party declared such a 
+course to be folly, contending that literature must be a 
+product of gradual development rather than of set volition, 
+and that, despite the shifting of the political kaleidoscope, 
+the national literature was so firmly rooted in its Danish past 
+that its natural evolution must be an outgrowth from all that 
+had gone before.
+
+Each of these parties found a vigorous leader, the cause of 
+ultra-Norwegianism being championed by Wergeland, an erratic 
+person in whom the spark of genius burned, but who never found 
+himself, artistically speaking.  The champion of the conservatives 
+was Welhaven, a polished writer of singular charm and much force, 
+philosophical in temper, whose graceful verse and acute criticism 
+upheld by both precept and practice the traditional standards 
+of culture.  Each of these men had his followers, who proved in 
+many cases more zealous than their leaders.  The period of the 
+thirties and forties was dominated by this Wergeland-Welhaven 
+controversy, which engendered much bitterness of feeling, and 
+which constitutes the capital fact in Norwegian literary history 
+before the appearance of Ibsen and Bjornson upon the scene.  A 
+sort of parallel might be drawn for American readers by taking 
+two such men as Whitman and Longfellow, opposing them to one 
+another in the most outspoken fashion, assuming for both a 
+sharply polemic manner, and ranging among their respective 
+followers all the other writers of their time.  Then imagine the 
+issue between them to be drawn not only in the field of letters, 
+but also in the pulpit, the theatre, and the political arena, and 
+some slight notion may be obtained of the condition of affairs 
+which preceded the advent of Bjornson and the true birth of 
+Norwegian literature with "Synnove Solbakken."
+
+The work which was thus destined to mark the opening of a new 
+era in Norwegian letters was written in the twenty-fifth year of 
+its author's life.  The son of a country pastor, Bjornstjerne 
+Bjornson was born at Kvikne, December 8, 1832.  At the age of 
+six, his father was transferred to a new parish in the Romsdal, 
+one of the most picturesque regions in Norway.  The impression 
+made upon his sensitive nature by these surroundings was deep 
+and enduring.  Looking back upon his boyhood he speaks with strong 
+emotion of the evenings when "I stood and watched the sunlight 
+play upon mountain and fiord, until I wept, as if I had done 
+something wrong, and when, borne down upon my ski into one valley 
+or another I could stand as if spellbound by a beauty, by a longing 
+that I could not explain, but that was so great that along with 
+the highest joy I had, also, the deepest sense of imprisonment 
+and sorrow."  This is the mood which was to be given utterance in 
+that wonderful lyric, "Over the Lofty Mountains," in which all the 
+ardor and the longings of passionate and impatient youth find the 
+most appealing expression. The song is found in "Arne," and may be 
+thus reproduced, after a fashion, in the English language.
+
+"Often I wonder what there may be
+  Over the lofty mountains.
+Here the snow is all I see,
+Spread at the foot of the dark green tree;
+  Sadly I often ponder,
+  Would I were over yonder.
+"Strong of wing soars the eagle high
+  Over the lofty mountains,
+Glad of the new day soars to the sky,
+Wild in pursuit of his prey doth fly;
+  Pauses, and, fearless of danger,
+  Scans the far coasts of the stranger.
+"The apple-tree, whose thoughts ne'er fly
+  Over the lofty mountains,
+Leaves, when the summer days draw nigh,
+Patiently waits for the time when high
+  The birds in its boughs shall be swinging,
+  Yet will know not what they are singing.
+"He who has yearned so long to go
+  Over the lofty mountains--
+He whose visions and fond hopes grow
+Dim, with the years that so restless flow--
+  Knows what the birds are singing,
+  Glad in the tree-tops swinging.
+"Why, oh bird, dost thou hither fare
+  Over the lofty mountains?
+Surely it must be better there,
+Broader the view and freer the air;
+  Com'st thou these longings to bring me;
+  These only, and nothing to wing me?
+"Oh, shall I never, never go
+  Over the lofty mountains!
+Must all my thoughts and wishes so
+Held in these walls of ice and snow
+  Here be imprisoned forever?
+  Till death shall I flee them never?
+"Hence!  I will hence!  Oh, so far from here,
+  Over the lofty mountains!
+Here 't is so dull, so unspeakably drear;
+Young is my heart and free from fear--
+  Better the walls to be scaling
+  Than here in my prison lie wailing.
+"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 come;
+  Guard it for me yet longer,
+  Till my soul through striving 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 many sorts of literary 
+experiments, and became actively engaged 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 dramatic 
+criticism as the avowed partisan of Norwegian ideals, holding 
+himself, in some sort, the successor of Wergeland, Who had died 
+about ten years earlier.  Before becoming a dramatic critic, he 
+had essayed dramatic authorship, and the acceptance by the theatre 
+of his juvenile play, "Valborg," had led to a somewhat unusual 
+result.  He was given a free ticket of admission, and a few 
+weeks of theatre-going 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 
+came to him upon his return from a student gathering 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 come. I packed up, went home, 
+thought it all over, wrote and rewrote `Between the Battles' in 
+a fortnight, and travelled to Copenhagen with the completed piece 
+in my trunk; I would be a poet."  He then set to writing "Synnove 
+Solbakken," published it in part as a newspaper serial, and then 
+in book form, in the autumn of 1857.  He had "commenced author" 
+in good 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 achievement of fourteen feverish days.  The 
+remaining 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); three more plays 
+drawn from the treasury of old Norse history, "King Sverre," 
+"Sigurd Slembe," and "Sigurd Jorsalfar"; a dramatic setting 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 with modern life; "Arnljot Gelline," his 
+only long poem, a wild narrative of the clash between heathendom 
+and the Christian faith in the days of Olaf the Holy; and, last 
+but by no means least, the collection of his "Poems and Songs."  
+Thus at the age of forty, Bjornson found himself with a dozen 
+books to his credit books which had stirred his fellow countrymen 
+as no other books had ever stirred them, arousing 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 him, the singer of all that was noble in 
+Norwegian aspiration, the sympathetic delineator of all that 
+was essential in Norwegian 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 complete representation of that phase 
+of his genius which is best known to the world at large.  Here 
+are five stories of considerable length, and a number of 
+slighter sketches, in which the Norwegian peasant is portrayed 
+with intimate and loving knowledge.  The peasant tale was no 
+new thing in European literature, for the names of Auerbach 
+and George Sand, to say nothing 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 men who wrested a scanty 
+living from an ungrateful soil.  Although a poet by instinct, 
+he was not afraid of realism, and did not shrink from giving 
+the brutal aspects of peasant life a place upon his canvas.  In 
+emphasizing the characteristics of reticence and _naivete_ he 
+really discovered the Norwegian peasant for literary purposes.  
+Beneath the words spoken by his characters we are constantly 
+made to realize that there are depths of feeling that remain 
+unexpressed; whether from native pride or from a sense of the 
+inadequacy of mere words to set forth a critical moment of 
+life, his men and women are distinguished by the most laconic 
+utterance, yet their speech always has dramatic fitness and 
+bears the stamp of sincerity.  Jaeger speaks of the manifold 
+possibilities of this laconic method in the following words:--
+
+"It is as if the author purposely set in motion the reader's 
+fancy and feeling that they might do their own work.  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 known how to suggest so much in so few words."
+
+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 embody the tragedy of a 
+lifetime.  The little work is a literary gem 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 them alone that he is really familiar 
+to English 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 made soon after their original 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 among English readers for a score of years during which 
+the name of Ibsen was absolutely unknown to them.  The whirligig 
+of time has brought in its revenges of late years, and the long 
+neglected 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 enthusiasm from his earliest boyhood.  Upon them his style 
+was largely formed, and their vivid dramatic representation 
+of the life of the early Norsemen impressed him profoundly, 
+shaping both his ideals and the form of their expression.  The 
+modern Scandinavian may well be envied for his literary 
+inheritance from the heroic past.  No other European has 
+anything to compare with it for clean-cut vigor and wealth of 
+romantic material.  The literature which blossomed in Iceland 
+and flourished for two or three centuries wherever Norsemen 
+made homes for themselves offers a unique intellectual phenomenon, 
+for nothing like their record remains to us from any other 
+primitive people. This
+
+     "Tale of the Northland of old
+   And the undying glory of dreams,"
+
+proved a lasting stimulus to Bjornson's genius, and, during the 
+early period of his career, which is now under review, it made 
+its influence felt alike in his tales, his dramas, and his 
+songs.  "To see the peasant in the light of the sagas and the 
+sagas in the light of the peasant" he declared to be the 
+fundamental principle of his literary method.
+
+It has been seen that during the fifteen years which made 
+Bjornson in so peculiar a sense the spokesman of his race, he 
+wrote no less than five saga dramas.  The first two of these 
+works, "Between the Battles" and "Halte-Hulda," are rather 
+slight performances, and the third, "King Sverre," although a 
+more extended work, is not particularly noteworthy.  The 
+grimness of the Viking life is softened by romantic coloring, 
+and the poet has not freed himself from the influence of 
+Oehlenschlaeger.  But in "Sigurd Slembe" he found a subject 
+entirely worthy of his genius, and produced one of the noblest 
+masterpieces of all modern literature.  This largely planned 
+and magnificently executed dramatic trilogy was written in 
+Munich, and published in 1862.  The material is found in the 
+"Heimskringla," but the author has used the prerogative of the 
+artist to simplify the historical outline thus offered into a 
+superb imaginative creation, rich in human interest, and 
+powerful in dramatic presentation.  The story is concerned 
+with the efforts of Sigurd, nicknamed "Slembe," to obtain 
+the succession to the throne of Norway during the first half 
+of the twelfth century.  He was a son of King Magnus Barfod, 
+and, although of illegitimate birth, might legally 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 mother is made in the first section of the trilogy, which 
+is a single act, written in blank verse.  Recognizing the futility 
+of urging his birthright at this time, he starts off to win 
+fame as a crusader, the sort of fame that haloed Sigurd 
+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 
+ambition and the sense of injustice ever gnawing at his heart.  
+He becomes entangled in a feudal quarrel concerning the rule of 
+the islands.  Both parties seek to use him for their purposes, 
+but in the end, although leadership is in his grasp, he tears 
+himself away, appalled by the revelation of crime and treachery 
+in his surroundings.  In this section of the work we have the 
+subtly conceived and Hamlet-like figure of Earl Harald, in 
+whose interest Frakark, a Norse Lady Macbeth, plots the murder 
+of Earl Paul, only to bring upon Harald himself the terrible 
+death that she has planned for his brother.  Here, also, we 
+have the gracious maiden figure of Audhild, perhaps the 
+loveliest of all Bjornson's delineations of womanhood, a figure
+worthy to be ranked with the heroines of Shakespeare and Goethe, 
+who remains sweet and fragrant in our memory forever after.  
+With the mutual love of Sigurd and Audhild comes the one hour 
+of sunshine 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 meet with Sigurd again in the 
+third section of the trilogy.  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 
+Slembe, an illegitimate son of Magnus Barfod, and who, during 
+the last senile years of Sigurd Jorsalfar's life, had won the 
+recognition that Sigurd Slembe might have won had he not missed 
+the chance, and been acknowledged as the king's brother.  When 
+the king died, he left a son named Magnus, who should have been 
+his successor, but whom Harald Gille seized, blinded, and 
+imprisoned that he might himself occupy the throne.  The five 
+acts of this third section of the trilogy cover the last two 
+years of Sigurd Slembe's life, years during which he seeks to 
+gain his end, first by conciliation, and afterwards, maddened 
+by the base treachery of the king and his followers, by 
+assassination and violence.  He has become a hard man, but, 
+however wild his schemes of revenge, and however desperate 
+his measures, he retains our sympathy to the end because we 
+feel that circumstances have made him the ravager of his country, 
+and that his underlying motive all along has not been a merely 
+personal ambition, but an immense longing to serve his people, 
+and to rule them with justice and wisdom.  The final scene 
+of all has a strange and solemn beauty.  It is on the eve of 
+the battle in which Sigurd 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 outcome.  
+Sigurd has made his last stand, his Danish allies have deserted 
+him, and he well knows what will 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 supreme hour the peace of mind which 
+he has sought 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 men whose lives 
+have been set at tragic pitch, has come to him also; he now 
+sees that this was the inevitable end, and the recognition 
+of the fitness with which events have shaped themselves brings 
+with it an exaltation of soul in which life is seen revealed 
+in its true aspect.  No longer veiled in the mists which have 
+hitherto hidden it from his passionate gaze, he takes note of 
+what it really is, and casts it from him.  In this hour of 
+passionless contemplation such a renunciation is not a thing 
+torn from the reluctant soul, but the clear solution, so long 
+sought, of the problem so long blindly attempted.  That which 
+his passion enslaved self has so struggled to avert, his 
+higher self, at last set free, calmly and gladly accepts.  
+
+"What miracle is this? for in the hour I prayed, the prayer 
+was granted!  Peace, perfect peace!  Then I will go to-morrow 
+to my last battle as to the altar; peace shall at last be mine 
+for all my longings.
+"How this autumn evening brings reconciliation to my soul!  
+Sun and wave and shore and sea flow all together, as in the 
+thought of God all others; never yet has it seemed so fair to 
+me.  But it is not mine to rule over this lovely land.  How 
+greatly I have done it ill!  But how has it all so come to 
+pass? for in my wanderings I saw thy mountains in every sky, 
+I yearned for home as a child longs for Christmas, yet I 
+came no sooner, and when at last I came, I gave thee wound 
+upon wound.
+"But now, in contemplative mood, thou gazest upon me, and 
+givest me at parting this fairest autumn night of thine; 
+I will ascend yonder rock and take a long farewell."
+
+The action of "Sigurd Slembe," is interspersed with several 
+lyrics, the most striking of which is herd translated in 
+exact reproduction of the original form:
+
+"Sin and Death, at break of day,
+Day, day,
+Spoke together with bated breath;
+'Marry thee, sister, that I may stay,
+Stay, stay,
+In thy house,' quoth Death.
+"Death laughed aloud when Sin was wed,
+Wed, wed,
+And danced on the bridal day:
+But bore that night from the bridal bed,
+Bed, bed,
+The groom in a shroud away.
+"Death came to her sister at break of day,
+Day, day,
+And Sin drew a weary breath;
+'He whom thou lovest is mine for aye,
+Aye, aye,
+Mine he is,' quoth Death."
+
+One more saga drama was to be written by Bjornson, but 
+"Sigurd Slembe" remains his greatest achievement in this 
+field of activity.  Its single successor, "Sigurd Jorsalfar," 
+was not published until ten years later, and may not be 
+compared with it for either strength or poetic inspiration.  
+The author called it a "folkplay," and announced the intention, 
+which was never fulfilled, of making several similar experiments 
+with scenes from the sagas, "which should appeal to every eye 
+and every stage of culture, to each in its own way, and at 
+the performance of which all, for the time being, would 
+experience the joy of fellow feeling."  The experiment proves 
+interesting, and is carried out without didacticism or straining 
+after sensational effects; the play is vigorous and well 
+planned, but for the reader it has little of the dramatic 
+impressiveness of its predecessor, although as an acting drama 
+it is better fitted for the requirements of the stage.
+
+The two volumes which contain the greater part of Bjornson's 
+poetry not dramatic in form were both published in 1870.  One 
+of them was the collection of his "Poems and Songs," the other 
+was the epic cycle, "Arnljot Gelline," the only long poem 
+that he has written.  The volume of lyrics includes many pieces 
+of imperfect quality and slight 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 made him the greatest of Norway's lyric poets.  
+No translation can ever quite reproduce their cadence or their 
+feeling; they illustrate the one aspect of Bjornson's many-sided 
+genius that must be taken on trust by those who cannot read his 
+language.  A friend once asked him upon what occasion he had 
+felt most fully the joy of being a poet. His reply was as follows:--
+
+"It was when a party from the Right in Christiania came to my 
+house and smashed all my windows.  For when they had finished 
+their assault, and were starting home again, they felt that 
+they had to sing something, and so they began to sing, 'Yes, we 
+love this land of ours'--they couldn't help it. They had to sing
+ the song of the man they had attacked."
+
+Into this collection were gathered the lyrics scattered through 
+the peasant tales and the saga dramas, thus making it completely 
+representative of his quality as a singer.  A revised and 
+somewhat extended edition of this volume was published about 
+ten years later.  Bjornson has had the rare fortune of having 
+his lyrics set to music by three composers--Nordraak, Kjerulf, 
+and Grieg--as intensely national in spirit as himself, and no 
+festal occasion among Norwegians is celebrated without singing 
+the national hymn, "Yes, We Love This Land of Ours," or the 
+noble choral setting of "Olaf Trygvason."  The best folk-singer 
+is he who stands in the whirling round of life, says the poet, 
+and he reveals the very secret of his power when he tells us 
+that life was ever more to him than song, and that existence, 
+where it was worth while, in the thick of the human fray, 
+always had for him a deeper meaning than anything he had written.  
+The longest poem in Bjornson's collection is called "Bergliot," 
+and is a dramatic monologue in which the foul slaying of her 
+husband Ejnar Tambarskelve and their son Ejndride is mourned 
+by the bereaved wife and mother.  The story is from the saga 
+of Harald Haardraada, and is treated with the deepest tragic 
+impressiveness.
+
+"Odin in Valhal I dare not seek
+For him I forsook in my childhood.
+And the new God in Gimle?
+He took all that I had!
+  Revenge:--Who says revenge?--
+Can revenge awaken my dead
+Or shelter me from the cold?
+Has it comfort for a widow's home
+Or for a childless mother?
+  Away with your revenge: Let be!
+Lay him on the litter, him and the son.
+Come, we will follow them home.
+The new God in Gimle, the terrible, who took all,
+Let him also take revenge, for he understands it!
+Drive slowly: Thus drove Ejnar ever;
+  --Soon enough shall we reach home."
+
+It was also to the "Heimskringla" that Bjornson turned for 
+the subject of his epic cycle, "Arnljot Gelline."  Here we 
+read in various rhythms of Arnljot the outlaw, how the hands 
+of all men are against him; how he offers to stay his wrath 
+and end the blood feud if the fair Ingigerd, Trand's daughter, 
+may be bestowed upon him; how, being refused, he sets fire 
+to Trand's house and bears Ingigerd away captive; how her 
+tears prevail upon him to release her, and how she seeks 
+refuge in a southern cloister; how Arnljot wanders restless 
+over sea and land until he comes to King Olaf, on the eve 
+of the great battle, receives the Christian faith, fights 
+fiercely in the vanguard against the hosts of the heathen, 
+and, smiling, falls with his king on the field of Stiklestad.  
+One song from this cycle, "The Cloister in the South" is 
+here reproduced in an exact copy of the original metre, in 
+the hope that even this imperfect representation of the poem 
+may be better than none at all.
+
+"Who would enter so late the cloister in?"
+  "A maid forlorn from the land of snow."
+"What sorrow is thine, and what thy sin?"
+  "The deepest sorrow the heart can know.
+   I have nothing done
+     Yet must still endeavor,
+   Though my strength be none,
+     To wander ever.
+Let me in, to seek for my pain surcease,
+     I can find no peace."
+
+"From what far-off land hast thou taken flight?"
+  "From the land of the North, a weary way."
+"What stayed thy feet at our gate this night?"
+  "The chant of the nuns, for I heard them pray,
+   And the song gave peace
+     To my soul, and blessed me;
+   It offered release
+     From the grief that oppressed me.
+   Let me in, so if peace to give be thine,
+     I may make it mine."
+
+"Name me the grief that thy life hath crossed."
+  "Rest may I never, never know."
+"Thy father, thy lover, thou hast then lost?"
+  "I lost them both at a single blow,
+   And all I held dear
+     In my deepest affection;
+   Aye, all that was near
+     To my heart's recollection.
+   Let me in, I am failing, I beg, I implore,
+     I can bear no more."
+
+"How was it that thou thy father lost?"
+  "He was slain, and I saw the deed."
+"How was it that thou thy lover lost?"
+  "My father he slew, and I saw the deed.
+   I wept so bitterly
+     When he roughly would woo me,
+   He at last set me free,
+     And forbore to pursue me.
+   Let me in, for the horror my soul doth fill.
+     That I love him still."
+
+_Chorus of nuns within the Church._
+      "Come child, come bride,
+      To God's own side,
+      From grief find rest
+      On Jesus' breast.
+      Rest thy burden of sorrow.
+          On Horeb's height;
+      Like the lark, with to-morrow
+          Shall thy soul take flight.
+
+      Here stilled is all yearning,
+      No passion returning;
+      No terror come near thee
+      When the Saviour can hear thee.
+      For He, if in need be
+          Thy storm-beaten soul,
+      Though it bruised as a reed be,
+          Shall raise it up whole."
+
+Despite the power and beauty of an occasional manifestation 
+of his genius during the late sixties and early seventies, 
+the poetic impulse that had made Bjornson the most famous of 
+Norwegian authors seemed, toward the close of the fifteen-year 
+period just now under review, to be well nigh exhausted.  Even 
+among those who had followed his career most closely there were 
+few who could anticipate the splendid new outburst of activity 
+for which he was preparing.  These years seemed to be a dead 
+time, not only in Bjornson's life, but also in the general 
+intellectual life of the Scandinavian countries.  Dr. Brandes 
+thus describes the feelings of a thoughtful observer during 
+that period of stagnation.  "In the North one had the feeling 
+of being shut off from the intellectual life of the time.  
+We were sitting with closed doors, a few brains struggling 
+fruitlessly with the problem of how to get them opened... With 
+whole schools of foreign literature the cultivated Dane had 
+almost no acquaintance; and when, finally, as a consequence 
+of political animosity, intellectual intercourse with Germany 
+was broken off, the main channel was closed through which 
+the intellectual developments of the day had been communicated 
+to Norway as well as Denmark.  French influence was dreaded 
+as immoral, and there was but little understanding of either 
+the English language or spirit."  But an intellectual renaissance 
+was at hand, an intellectual reawakening with a cosmopolitan 
+outlook, and, Bjornson was destined to become its leader, much 
+as he had been the leader of the national movement of an earlier 
+decade.  During these years of seeming inactivity, comparatively 
+speaking, he had read and thought much, and the new thought of 
+the age had fecundated his mind.  Historical and religious criticism, 
+educational and social problems, had taken possession of his 
+thought, and the philosophy of evolution had transformed the 
+whole tenor of his ideas, shaping them to, deeper issues and 
+more practical purposes than had hitherto engaged them.  He had 
+read widely and variously in Darwin, Spencer, Mill, Muller, and 
+Taine; he had, in short, scaled the "lofty mountains" that had so 
+hemmed in his early view, and made his way into the intellectual 
+kingdoms of the modern world that lay beyond.  The _Weltgeist_ 
+had appealed to him with its irresistible behest, just as it 
+appealed at about the same time to Ibsen and Tolstoy and Ruskin, 
+and had made him a man of new interests and ideals.
+
+One might have found foreshadowings of this transformation in 
+certain of his earlier works,--in "The Newly Married Couple," 
+for example, with its delicate analysis, of a common domestic 
+relation, or in "The Fisher Maiden," with its touch of modernity,
+--but from these suggestions one could hardly have prophesied 
+the enthusiasm and the genial force with which Bjornson was to 
+project his personality into the controversial arena of modern life.  
+The series of works which have come from his pen during the past 
+thirty-five years have dealt with most of the graver problems 
+which concern society as a whole,--politics, religion, education, 
+the status of women, the license of the press, the demand of the 
+socialist for a reconstruction of the old order.  They have also 
+dealt with many of the delicate questions of individual ethics,
+--the relations of husband and wife, of parent and child, the 
+responsibility of the merchant to his creditors and of the employer 
+to his dependants, the double standard of morality for men and 
+women, and the duty devolving upon both to transmit a vigorous 
+strain to their offspring.  These are some of the themes that 
+have engaged the novelist and dramatist; they have also engaged 
+the public speaker and lay preacher of enlightenment, as well 
+as themes of a more strictly political character, such as the 
+separation of Norway from the Dual Monarchy, the renewal of 
+the ancient bond between Norway and Iceland, the free development 
+of parliamentary government, the cause of Pangermanism, and the 
+furtherance of peace between the nations.  An extensive 
+programme, surely, even in this summary enumeration of its 
+more salient features, but one to which his capacity has not 
+proved unequal, and which he has carried out by the force of 
+his immense energy and superabundant vitality.  The burden of 
+all this tendencious matter has caused his art to suffer at times,
+ no doubt, but his inspiration has retained throughout much 
+of the marvellous freshness of the earlier years, and the 
+genius of the poet still flashes upon us from a prosaic 
+environment, sometimes in a lovely lyric, more frequently, 
+however, in the turn of a phrase or the psychological 
+envisagement of some supreme moment in the action of the story 
+or the drama.
+
+The great transformation in Bjornson's literary manner and 
+choice of subjects was marked by his sending home from abroad, 
+in the season of 1874-75, two plays, "The Editor" and "A 
+Bankruptcy."  It was two years later that Ibsen sent home from 
+abroad "The Pillars of Society," which marked a similar turning 
+point in his artistic career.  It is a curious coincidence that 
+the plays of modern life produced during this second period by 
+these two men are the same in number, an even dozen in each case.  
+Besides the two above named, these modern plays of Bjornson are, 
+with their dates, the following: "The King" (1877), "Leonarda" (1879), 
+"The New System" (1879), "A Glove" (1883), "Beyond the 
+Strength I." (1883), "Geography and Love" (1885), "Beyond the 
+Strength II." (1895), "Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg" (1898), 
+"Laboremus" (1901), and "At Storhove" (1902).  Since the 
+cessation of Ibsen's activity, Bjornson has outrun him in 
+the race, adding "Daglannet" (1904), and "When the New Wine 
+Blooms" (1909) to the list above given.  Besides these 
+fourteen plays, however, he has published seven important 
+volumes of prose fiction during the last thirty-five years.  
+The titles and dates are as follows: "Magnhild" (1877), 
+"Captain Mansana" (1879), "Dust" (1882), "Flags Are Flying 
+in City and Harbor" (1884), "In God's Ways," (1889), 
+"New Tales" (1894), (of which collection "Absalom's Hair" 
+is the longest and most important), and "Mary" (1906).  The 
+achievement represented by this list is all the more 
+extraordinary when we consider the fact that for the greater 
+part of the thirty-five years which these plays and novels 
+cover, their author has been, both as a public speaker and 
+as a writer for the periodical press, an active participant 
+in the political and social life of his country.
+
+Most of these books must be dismissed with a few words in 
+order that our remaining space may be given to the four or 
+five that are of the greatest power and significance. "The 
+Editor," the first of the modern plays, offers a fierce 
+satire upon modern journalism, its dishonesty, its corrupt 
+and malicious power, its personal and partisan prejudice.  
+The character of the editor in this play was unmistakeably 
+drawn, in its leading characteristics, from the figure of a 
+well known conservative journalist in Christiania, although 
+Bjornson vigorously maintained that the protraiture was typical 
+rather than personal.
+
+"In various other countries than my own, I have observed 
+the type of journalist who is here depicted.  It is characterized 
+by acting upon a basis of sheer egotism, passionate and 
+boundless, and by terrorism in such fashion that it frightens 
+honest people away from every liberal movement, and visits 
+upon the individual an unscrupulous persecution."
+
+This play was not particularly successful upon the stage, 
+but the book was widely read, and occasioned much excited 
+personal controversy.  "A Bankruptcy," on the other hand, 
+proved a brilliant stage success.  Its matter was less 
+contentious, and its technical execution was effective and 
+brilliant.  It was not in vain that Bjornson had at different 
+times been the director of three theatres.  This play has 
+for its theme the ethics of business life, and more 
+especially the question of the extent to which a man whose 
+finances are embarrassed is justified in continued speculation 
+for the ultimate protection of himself and his creditors.  
+Despite its treatment of this serious problem, the play is 
+lighter and more genial in vein than the author's plays 
+are wont to be, and the element of humor is unusually 
+conspicuous.  Jaeger remarks that "A Bankruptcy" did two 
+new things for Norwegian dramatic literature. It made money 
+affairs a legitimate subject for literary treatment, and 
+it raised the curtain upon the Norwegian home. "It was with 
+'A Bankruptcy' that the home made its first appearance upon 
+the stage, the home with its joys and sorrows, with its 
+conflicts and its tenderness."
+
+Two years later appeared "The King, which is in many 
+respects Bjornson's greatest modern masterpiece in dramatic 
+form.  He had by this time become a convinced republican, 
+but he was also an evolutionist, and he knew that republics 
+are not created by fiat.  He believed the tendency toward 
+republicanism to be irresistible, but he believed also that 
+there must be intermediate stages in the transition from 
+monarchy.  Absolutism is succeeded by constitutionalism, 
+and that by parliamentarism, and that in the end must 
+be succeeded by a republicanism that will free itself from 
+all the traditional forms of symbol and ceremonial.  He had 
+also a special belief that the smaller peoples were better 
+fitted for development in this direction than the larger and 
+more complex societies, although, on the other hand, he thought 
+that the process of growth into full self-government was likely 
+to be slower among the Germanic than among the Latin races.  
+In the deeply moving play now to be considered, we have, in 
+the character of the titular king, an extraordinary piece of 
+psychological analysis.  The king, is young, physically 
+delicate, and of highly sensitive organization.  When he 
+comes to the throne he realizes the hollowness and the 
+hypocrisy of the existence that prescription has marked 
+out for him; he realizes also that the very ideal of 
+monarchy, under the conditions of modern European 
+civilization, is a gigantic falsehood. For a time after his 
+accession, he leads a life of pleasure seeking and revelry,
+hoping that he may dull his sense of the sharp contrast that 
+exists between his station and his ideals.  But his conscience 
+will give him no peace, and he turns to deliberate contemplation 
+of the thought, not indeed of abdicating his, false position, 
+but of transforming it into something more consonant with 
+truth and the demands of the age.  He will become a citizen 
+king, and take for wife a daughter of the people; he will do 
+away with the pomp and circumstance of his court, and attempt 
+to lead a simple and natural life, in which the interests of 
+the people shall be paramount in his attention.  But in this 
+attempt he is thwarted at every step.  All the forces of 
+selfishness and prejudice and ignorance combine against him; 
+even the people whom he seeks to benefit are so wedded to their 
+idols that their attitude is one of suspicion rather than 
+of sympathy.  He loves a young woman of strong and noble 
+character, and wins her love in return, but she dies on the 
+very eve of their union.  His oldest and most confidential 
+friend, the wealthiest man in the kingdom, but a republican, 
+is murdered by a radical associate of the _intransigeant_ type, 
+and the king is left utterly bereaved by his twofold loss.  
+This brings us to the closing scene of the drama, in which the 
+king, his nerves strained to the breaking point, confronts the 
+group of officials and others who bring to him the empty phrases 
+of a conventional condolence:--
+
+The King.  Hush!  Have a little respect for the truth that 
+should follow death!  Understand me rightly: I do not mean 
+that any of you would lie.  But the very air about a king 
+is infected.  It was of that-a word or two.  My time is short.  
+But a testament. ...
+
+The Priest.  Testament.
+
+The King.  Neither the Old nor the New!  Greet what is 
+called Christianity here in this land-greet it from me!  
+I have thought much about Christian folk of late.
+
+The Priest.  That rejoices me.
+
+The King.  How your tone cuts me!  Greet it from me, 
+what is called Christianity here in this land.  Nay, 
+do not crane your necks and bend your backs as if the 
+wisdom of the ages were now forthcoming. (_aside_)  Can 
+there be any use in saying something seriously? (_aloud_)  
+You are Christians?
+
+The General.  God forbid the doubt!  Faith is exceedingly 
+useful. ...
+
+The King.  For discipline. (_to the Sheriff_)  And you?
+
+The Sheriff.  From my blessed ancestors I received the faith.
+
+The King.  So _they_ are blessed also.  Why not?'
+
+The Sheriff.  They brought me strictly up to fear 
+God, to honor the king.
+
+The King.  And love your fellowmen.  You are a State 
+individual, sheriff.  And such are Christians nowadays.  
+(_to the Merchant_)  And you?
+
+The Merchant.  I have not been able to go to church very 
+much of late because of my cough.  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 formula, boys, that is the 
+accepted thing to say.  Therefore, you are a Christian 
+community, and it is no fault of mine if such a community 
+will not deal seriously with what concerns Christianity.  
+Greet it from me, and say that it must have an eye to the 
+institution of monarchy.
+
+The Priest.  Christianity has nothing to do with such 
+matters.  It searches _the inner man_.
+
+The King.  That 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 know what 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 monarchy.  It should hardly any longer, it 
+seems to me, let the monarchy play the part of the 
+seductive wanton -who turns the thoughts of all citizens 
+to war--which is much against the message of Christianity
+--and to class distinctions, to luxury, to show and vanity.  
+The monarchy is now so great a lie that it compels the 
+most upright man to share in its falsehood."
+
+The conversation that follows is in a vein of bitterness on 
+the one side, and of obtuse smugness on the other; the tragic 
+irony of the action grows deeper and deeper, until in the end 
+the king, completely disheartened and despairing, goes into 
+an adjoining room, and dies by his own hand, to the 
+consternation of the men from whom he has just parted.  They 
+give 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 may well be imagined that "The King" made a stir in 
+literary and social circles, and quite noticeably fluttered the 
+dovecotes of conventionality and conservatism.  Such plain 
+speaking and such deadly earnestness of conviction were indeed 
+far removed from the idyllic simplicity of the peasant tales 
+and from the poetical reconstructions of the legendary past.  
+Eight years later, Bjornson prefaced a new edition of this 
+work with a series of reflections upon "Intellectual Freedom" 
+that constitute one of the most vigorous and remarkable examples 
+of his serious prose. The central ideas of his political faith 
+are embodied in the following sentences from this preface:--
+
+"Intellectual Freedom. Why is not attention called over and 
+over again to the fact that for the great peoples, who have so 
+many compensating interests, the free commerce of ideas is one 
+condition of life among many others; while for us, the small 
+peoples, it is absolutely indispensable.  A people numerically 
+large may attain to ways of thought 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 my chief aim to 
+enlarge the bounds of free thought.  I have later made the 
+same attempt in matters of religion and morals.  When my 
+opponents seek to sum up my character in a few words, they 
+are apt to say: 'He attacks the throne and the altar.'  It 
+seems to me that I have served the freedom of the spirit, 
+and in the interests of that cause I now beg 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 the meaning of Christianity.  It is not an institution, 
+still less a book, and least of all it is a house or a seminary.  
+It is the godly life according to the precepts and example of 
+Jesus.  There may be men who think they are attacking 
+Christianity when they investigate the historical origin or 
+the morality of some dogma; I do not think so.  Honest 
+investigation 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-minded people who will be ennobled by it, and 
+some made great.  I honor all the noble.  I have friends among 
+the Christians, whom I love, and never for a moment have I 
+thought of attacking 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 simultaneously; 
+it fixes terms, different for the different kingdoms, and far 
+removed for the kingdoms 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 may not greatly matter, 
+so rich are the possibilities of other work taking its place; 
+but in a small society it may be equivalent to destroying the 
+sight of its only eye."
+
+In the clean-cut phrases and moral earnestness of this _apologia 
+pro vita sua_, which deserves to be reproduced at greater length, 
+we have the modern Bjornson, no longer poet alone, but poet and 
+prophet at once, the champion of sincere thinking and worthy 
+living, the Sigurd Slembe of our own day, happier than his 
+prototype in the consciousness that the ambition to serve his 
+people has not been; altogether thwarted, and that his 
+beneficent activity is not made sterile even by the bitterest 
+opposition.
+
+Only a rapid glance may be taken at the books of the five 
+years following upon 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 
+from the figures of the early tales, and the atmosphere of the 
+work is modern.  It turns upon the question of the mutual duties 
+of husband and wife, when love no longer 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 come within the range of his observation during
+his stay abroad.  Its interest does not lie in any particular 
+problem, but rather in the delineation of the titular figure, 
+a strong and impetuous person whose character suggests 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 comparison with 
+being invisible, that to be a human being is nothing in comparison 
+with being dead, that is not the way to teach them to view life 
+properly, or to love life, to gain courage, 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 with women 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 from the book in its ending) 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 man to be as unfit for honorable marriage as the unchaste 
+woman.  Upon the theme thus presented a long 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 uncompromisingly planted his feet.  The other remaining work 
+of this five-year period is the play called "The New System."  The 
+new system in question is a system of railway management, and it is 
+a wasteful one.  But the young engineer who demonstrates this fact 
+has a hard time in opening 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 common 
+title, "Beyond the Strength."  The translation of this title is 
+hopelessly inadequate, because the original word means much more 
+than strength; it means talent, faculty, capability, the sum total 
+of a man's endowment for some particular purpose.  The two pieces 
+bearing this name are quite different in theme, but certain 
+characters appear in both, and both express the same thought,
+--the thought that it is vain for men to strive after the 
+unattainable, for in so doing they lose sight of the actual 
+possibilities of human life; the thought that much of the best 
+human energy goes 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 superhuman ideal is religious, 
+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 reformer who is deluded to believe that 
+one resounding 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 masses a new heaven upon earth.  No 
+deeper tragedies 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 them both,--the tragedy of his son Elias, who dies like Samson 
+with his foes for an equally impossible faith, and by the very 
+violence of his fanaticism removes the goal of socialist endeavor 
+farther than ever into the dim future.  Bjornson has written 
+nothing more profoundly moving than these plays, with their 
+twofold treatment of essentially the same theme, nor has he 
+written anything which offers a clearer revelation of his own 
+rich personality, with its unfailing poetic vision, its deep 
+tenderness, and its boundless love for all humankind. The play, 
+"Geography and Love," which came between the two just described, 
+is an amusing piece, in the vein of light and graceful comedy, 
+which satirizes the man with a hobby, showing how he unconsciously 
+comes to neglect his wife and family through 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 emphasize. "Paul Lange and Tora 
+Parsberg," the next play, deals with the passions engendered 
+by political controversy, and made much unpleasant stir in 
+Norwegian 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 same theme, which is that of the malign 
+influence exerted by an evil-minded and reckless woman upon the 
+lives of others. From a different point of view, we may say that 
+the subject of these plays is the consecration of the home.  
+This has always been a favorite theme with Bjornson, and he has 
+no clearer title to our gratitude than that which he has earned 
+by his unfailing insistence upon the sanctity of family life, 
+its mutual confidences, and its common joys.  Completing the 
+list, we have "Daglannet," another domestic drama of simple 
+structure, and "When the New Wine Blooms," a study of modernity 
+as exemplified in the young woman of to-day, of the estrangement 
+that too often creeps into married life, and of the stirrings 
+that prompt men of middle age to seek to renew the joys of youth.
+
+During the years that have passed since the publication of 
+"Dust," Bjornson has produced four volumes of fiction,--his two 
+great 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 uncompromising 
+logic 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 in 
+making a fairly readable book out of this material would have 
+been remarkable, and it is a pronounced artistic triumph that 
+the book should prove of such absorbing interest.  For 
+absorbingly interesting it is, to any reader who is willing 
+that a novel should provide something 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 wallowed in almost every form of brutality and vice.  
+The four preceding generations of the race are depicted for us 
+in a series of brief but masterly characterizations, in which 
+every stroke tells, and we witness the gradual weakening of the 
+family stock.  But with the generation just preceding the main 
+action of the novel, there has been introduced a vigorous strain 
+of peasant blood, and the process of regeneration has begun.  
+It is this process that goes on before our eyes.  It does not 
+become a completed process, but the prospect is bright for the 
+future, and the flags that fly over town and harbor in the closing 
+chapter have a symbolical significance, for they announce a victory 
+of spirit over sense, not only in the cases of certain among the 
+individual participants in the action, but also in the case of 
+the whole community to which they belong.  So much for the book 
+as a study in heredity.  As an educational tract, it has the 
+conspicuous virtue of remaining in close touch with life while 
+embodying the spirit of modern scientific pedagogy.  The hero 
+of the book,--the last descendant of a race struggling for 
+moral and physical rehabilitation,--throws himself into the 
+work of education with an energy 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 
+system of training 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 microcosm of the world outside, or rather 
+of what that world ought to be.  Bjornson's interest in 
+education has been life-long; for many years it had gone 
+astray in a sort of Grundtvigian fog, but at the time when 
+this book came to be written, it had worked its way out into 
+the clear light 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 "Emile," 
+and take renewed heart from its inspiring message.
+
+"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 sympathy and depth of tragic pathos, its plea for 
+the sacredness of human life, and its protest against the 
+religious and social prejudice by which life is so often 
+misshapen, this book is an epitome of all the ideas and 
+feelings that have gone to the making 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 relationship from which issue 
+some of the deepest of social questions, and which 
+enforces in the most appealing terms the fundamental 
+teaching of 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 sympathies; the one alert 
+of mind, imaginative, open to every intellectual influence, 
+also impetuous and hot-blooded; the other shy and 
+intellectually stolid, but good to the very core, and moved 
+by the strongest of altruistic impulses.  In accordance with 
+their respective characters, the first of these youths becomes 
+a physician, and the other a clergyman.  Then we have the 
+sister of the physician, who becomes the wife of the 
+clergyman, a noble, proud, self-centred nature, finely 
+strung to the inmost fibre of her being.  Then we have a 
+woman of the other sort, clinging, abnormally sensitive, a 
+child when the years of childhood are over, and made the 
+victim of a shocking child-marriage to a crippled old man.  
+She it is whom the physician loves, and persuades to a 
+legal dissolution of her immoral union.  After some years, 
+he makes her his wife, and their happiness would be complete 
+were it not for the social and religious prejudice aroused.  
+The clergyman, whom years of service in the state church 
+have hardened into bigotry, is officially, as it were, 
+compelled to condemn the friend of his boyhood, and even the 
+sister, for a time grown untrue to her own generous nature, 
+shares in the estrangement.  In vain does the physician seek 
+to shelter his wife from the chill of her environment.  She 
+droops, pines away, and finally dies, gracious, lovable, and 
+even forgiving to the last.  Then the death angel comes close 
+to the clergyman and his wife, hovering over their only child, 
+and at last the barrier of formalism and prejudice and 
+religious bigotry is swept away from their minds.  Their 
+natural sympathies, long repressed, resume full sway, and they 
+realize how deeply they, have sinned toward the dead woman.  
+The sister seeks a reconciliation with her brother, but he 
+repulses her, and gives her his wife's private diary to read.  
+In this _journal intime_ she finds the full revelation of the 
+gentle spirit that has been done to death, and she feels that 
+the very salvation of her life and soul depend upon winning her 
+brother's forgiveness.  The closing chapter, in which the final 
+reconciliation occurs, is one of the most wonderful in all 
+fiction; its pathos is of the deepest and the most moving, and 
+he must be callous of soul, indeed, who can read it with dry eyes.
+
+If we were to search the whole of Bjornson's writings for the 
+single passage which should most completely typify his message 
+to his fellowmen,--not Norwegians alone, but all mankind,--the 
+choice would have to rest upon the words spoken from the pulpit 
+by the clergyman of this novel, on the Sunday following the 
+certainty of his child's recovery.
+
+"To-day a man spoke from the pulpit of the church about what he 
+had learned.
+"Namely, about what first concerns us all.
+"One forgets it in his strenuous endeavor, a second in his zeal 
+for conflict, a third in his backward vision, a fourth in the 
+conceit of his own wisdom, a fifth in his daily routine, and we 
+have all learned it more or less ill.  For should I ask you who 
+hear me now, you would all reply thoughtlessly, and just because 
+I ask you from this place, 'Faith is first.'
+"No, in very truth, it is not.  Watch over your child, as it 
+struggles for breath on the outermost verge of life, or see 
+your wife follow the child to that outermost verge, beside 
+herself for anxiety and sleeplessness,--then love will teach 
+you that _life comes first_.  And never from this day on will 
+I seek God or God's will in any form of words, in any sacrament, 
+or in any book or any place, as if He were first and foremost to 
+be found there; no, life is first and foremost--life as we win 
+it from the depths of despair, in the victory of the light, in 
+the grace of self-devotion, in our intercourse with living 
+human kind.  God's supreme word to us is life, our highest 
+worship of Him is love for the living.  This lesson, self-evident 
+as it is, was needed by me more than by most others.  This it 
+is that in various ways and upon many grounds I have hitherto 
+rejected,--and of late most of all.  But never more shall 
+words be the highest for me, nor symbols, but the eternal 
+revelation of life.  Never more will I freeze fast in doctrine, 
+but let the warmth of life melt my will.  Never will I condemn 
+men by the dogmas of old time justice, unless they fit with our 
+own time's gospel of love.  Never, for God's sake!  And this 
+because I believe in Him, the God of Life, and His never 
+ending revelation in life itself."
+
+Here is a gospel, indeed, one that needs no church for its 
+promulgation, and no ceremonial for the enhancement of its 
+impressiveness.  It is a gospel, moreover, that is based upon no 
+foundation of precarious logic, but finds its premises in the 
+healthy instincts of the natural man.  It is no small thing to 
+have thus found the way, and to have helped others likewise to 
+find the way, out of the mists of superstition, through the 
+valleys of doubt and despondency, athwart the thickets of 
+prejudice and bigotry with all their furtive foemen, up to 
+these sunlit heights of serenity.
+
+"Mary" is less explicit in its teaching than the two great 
+novels just summarized, but what it misses in didacticism it 
+more than gains in art. The radiant creature who gives her 
+name to the book is one of Bjornson's most exquisite figures.  
+She is the very embodiment of youthful womanhood, filled with 
+the joy of life, and bringing sunshine wherever she goes.  Yet 
+this temperament leads to her undoing, or what would be the 
+undoing of any woman less splendid in character.  But the 
+strength that impels her to the misstep that comes so near to 
+having tragic consequences is also the strength that saves her 
+when chastened by suffering.  In her the author "gives us the 
+common stuff of life," says an English critic, "gives it us 
+simple and direct.  There is nothing here of Ibsen's pathology.  
+We are in the sun.  Her most hideous blunder cannot undo a 
+woman's soul.  Bjornson knows that the deed is nothing at all.  
+It is the soul behind the deed that he sees.  Not everything 
+that cometh out of a man defileth a man.  At all events, so it 
+is here: triumph and joy built upon an act that--as the 
+Philistines would say--has defiled forever."  As a triumph of 
+sheer creation, this figure is hardly overmatched anywhere in 
+the author's portrait gallery of women.
+
+If Bjornson's essential teaching may be found in a single 
+page, as has above been suggested, his personality evades all 
+such summarizing.  In the present essay, he has been considered 
+as a writer merely,--poet, dramatist, novelist,--but the man 
+is vastly more than that.  His other activities have been 
+hinted at, indeed, but nothing adequate has been said about 
+them.  The director of three theatres, the editor of three 
+newspapers and the contributor to many others, the promoter 
+of schools and patriotic organizations, the participant in 
+many political campaigns, the lay preacher of private and 
+public morals, the chosen orator of his nation for all great 
+occasions,--these are some of the characters in which we must 
+view him to form anything like a complete conception of his 
+many-sided individuality.  Take the matter of oratory alone, 
+and it is perhaps true that he has influenced as many people 
+by the living word as he has by the printed page.  He has 
+addressed hundreds of audiences in the three Scandinavian 
+countries and in Finland, he has spoken to more than twenty 
+thousand at a time, and his winged speech has gone straight 
+home to his hearers.  All who ever heard him will agree that 
+his oratory was of the most persuasive and vital impressiveness.  
+Jaeger attempts to describe it in the following words:--
+
+"It is eloquence of a very distinctive type; its most 
+characteristic quality is its wealth of color; it finds 
+expression for every mood, from the lightest to the most serious, 
+from the most vigorous to the most delicate and tender.  Now 
+his words ring like the voice of doom, filled with thunder and 
+lightning, now they become soft and persuasive with smiling mien.  
+With a single cadence, or a play of the facial muscles, or a 
+slight gesture, he can portray a person, a situation, or an 
+object, so that it appears living in the sight of his hearers.  
+And what the word alone cannot do, is accomplished in the most 
+brilliant manner by the virtuosity of his delivery.  He does 
+not speak his words, he presents them; they take bodily form 
+and seem alive."
+
+In his more intimate relationships, on the other hand, in 
+face to face conversation or in the home circle, the man 
+takes on a quite different aspect; the prophet has become 
+the friend, the impassioned preacher has become the genial 
+story teller, and shares the gladsome or mirthful mood of 
+the hour.  Such a personality as this may be analyzed; it 
+defies any concise synthesis.  One resorts to figures of 
+speech, and they were abundantly resorted to by those who 
+paid him the tribute of their admiration and love upon the 
+occasion of his seventieth anniversary.  Let us take an 
+instance at random from one of these tributes.
+
+"The cataract that roars down to the free foaming sea.  
+The mountain with its snowclad peaks towering up into the 
+immensity of the starry heavens.  The rustling of the 
+woodland above the blossom-spangled and smiling meadows, 
+the steep uptowering, the widely growing, and the joyously 
+smiling.  At once the soft melody that stirs the heart and 
+the strong wind that sweeps over the Northern lands."
+
+This concourse of metaphors gives some slight idea of the 
+way in which Bjornson's personality affected those who came 
+into contact with it.  The description may be supplemented 
+by a few bits of anecdote and reminiscence.  The composer 
+Grieg contributes the following incident of the old days 
+in Norway:--
+
+"It was Christmas eve of 1868 at the Bjornsons in Christiania.  
+They lived then in the Rosenkrantzgade.  My wife and I were, 
+as far as I can remember, the only guests.  The children were 
+very boisterous in their glee.  In the middle of the floor 
+an immense Christmas tree was enthroned and brightly lighted.  
+All the servant-folk came in, and Bjornson spoke, beautifully and 
+warmly, as he well knows how to do.  'Now you shall play a hymn, 
+Grieg,' he said, and although I did not quite like the notion 
+of doing organist's work, I naturally complied without a murmur.  
+It was one of Grundtvig's hymns in 32--thirty-two verses.  I 
+resigned myself to my fate with stoicism.  At the beginning I 
+kept myself awake, but the endless repetitions had a soporific 
+effect.  Little by little I became as stupid as a medium.  When 
+we had at last got through with all the verses, Bjornson said: 
+'Isn't that fine.  Now I will read it for you!'  And so we got 
+all thirty-two verses once more.  I was completely overawed."
+
+When the poet purchased his country estate which was his home 
+from the late seventies to the end of his life, his coming was 
+looked forward to with mingled feelings by the good country folk 
+of the neighborhood.  Kristofer Janson thus tells the story of 
+his arrival:
+
+"His coming was anticipated with a certain anxiety and 
+apprehension, for was he not a 'horrid radical'?  The dean in 
+particular thought that he might be a menace to the safe 
+spiritual slumber of the village.  As the dean one day was 
+driving through the village in his carriole, just where the 
+road turns sharply by the bridge below Aulestad, he met another 
+carriole which was rapidly driving that way and in it a man who, 
+without respect for the clerical vehicle, shouted with all the 
+strength of his lungs: 'Half the road!'  The dean turned aside, 
+saying with a sigh: 'Has Bjornson come to the Gausdal at last?'
+"It was indeed so, and he showed his colors at the start.  
+The same dean and Bjornson became the best of friends afterwards, 
+and found much sport in interchanging genial jests whenever they met."
+
+Frits Thaulow, the painter, thus wrote to Bjornson reminding him 
+of a festive gathering of students:
+
+"The manager came in and announced with a loud voice that it was 
+past twelve.  Then you sprang up.
+"'Bring champagne!  Now I will speak of what comes after twelve 
+o'clock! of all that lies beyond the respectable hour for 
+retiring!  For the hour when fancy awakens and fills us with 
+longings for the world of wonderland; then the painter sees only 
+the dim outline in the moonlight, then the musician hears the 
+silence, then the poet after his thoughtful day feels sprouting 
+the first shoots of the next.  After twelve freedom begins.  The 
+day's tumult is stilled, and the voice within becomes audible.'
+"Thus you spoke, and 'after twelve' became a watchword with us.
+"Many a spark has been kindled in your soul by the quiet evening 
+time.  But later in life, when you become a chieftain in the 
+battle, broad daylight also made its demands upon you.  Like 
+the sun you shone upon us and made the best that was in us 
+to grow, but I shall always keep a deep artistic affection for 
+what comes 'after twelve.'"
+
+Henrik Cavling tells the following story of the poet in Paris:
+
+"It was one of Bjornson's peculiarities to go out as a rule 
+without any money in his pocket.  He neither owned a purse 
+nor knew the French coins.  His personal expenditures were 
+restricted to the books he bought, and now and then a theatre 
+ticket.  One day he carne excitedly into the sitting-room, 
+and asked:
+"'Who took my five franc piece?'  It was a five franc piece 
+that he had got somewhere or other and had stuck in his pocket 
+to buy a theatre ticket with.  It turned out that the maid had 
+found it and given it to Fru Bjornson.  For it seemed quite 
+unthinkable to her that the master should have any money to 
+take out with him.
+"This complete indifference of Bjornson to small matters 
+sometimes proved annoying.  In this connection I may tell 
+of a little trip he once took with Jonas Lie.
+"The two poets, who did not live far apart, had long counted 
+with pleasure upon a trip to Pere Lachaise, where they wished 
+to visit Alfred de Musset's grave.  At last the day came, 
+and with big soft hats on their heads, and engaged earnestly 
+in conversation, they drove away through Paris.
+"When they came to Pere Lachaise, and wanted to enter the 
+cemetery, the driver stopped them and asked for his pay.  
+Then it appeared that neither had any money, which they 
+smilingly explained, and asked him in bad French to wait 
+and drive them home again.  But the two gentlemen with the big 
+soft hats had not inspired the driver with any marked degree 
+of confidence.  He made a scene, and attracted a great crowd 
+of the boys, loafers, and well-dressed Frenchmen who always 
+collect on critical occasions.  The end of the affair was that 
+the poets had to get into their cab again and drive all the long 
+way back without having had a glimpse of the grave.  When they 
+reached Lie's lodgings, Lie went in to get some money, while 
+Bjornson sat in the cab as a hostage.  Nevertheless, both poets 
+maintained that they had had a pleasant expedition.  A Norwegian 
+question, which had accidentally come up between them, had 
+made them forget all about Alfred de Musset."
+
+Finally, a story may be given that is told by Bjornson himself.
+
+"I had a pair of old boots that I wanted to give to a beggar.  
+But just as I was going to give them to him, I began to wonder 
+whether Karoline had not some use for them, since she usually 
+gave such things to beggars.  So I took the boots in my hand, 
+and went downstairs to ask her, but on the way I got a little 
+worked up because I did not quite dare to give them to the beggar 
+myself.  And the further I went down the steps, the more wrathful 
+I got, until I stood over her.  And then I was so angry that I had 
+to bluster at her as if she had done me a grievous wrong.  But 
+she could not understand a word of what I said, and looked at me 
+with such amazement, that I could not keep from bursting into laughter."
+
+From his early years, Bjornson kept in touch with the modern 
+intellectual movement by mingling with the people of other lands 
+than his own.  Besides his visits to Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, 
+he made many lengthy sojourns in the chief continental centres 
+of civilization, in Munich, Rome, and Paris.  The longest of 
+his foreign journeys was that which brought him to the United 
+States in the winter of 1880-81, for the purpose of addressing 
+his fellow countrymen in the Northwest.  His home for the last 
+thirty years and more has been his estate of Aulestad in the 
+Gausdal, a region of Southern Norway.  Here he has been a 
+model farmer, and here, surrounded by his family,--wife, 
+children, and grandchildren,--his patriarchal presence has 
+given dignity to the household, and united its members in a 
+common bond of love.  Hither have come streams of guests, 
+friends old and new, to enjoy his generous hospitality.  There 
+has been provision for all, both bed and board, and the heartiest 
+of welcomes from the host.  And the stranger from abroad has 
+been greeted, as like as not, by the sight of his own country's 
+flag streaming from a staff before the house, and foreshadowing 
+the personal greeting that awaited him upon the threshold.
+
+Bjornson died in Paris (where he had been spending the 
+winter, as was his custom for many years past), April 26, 1910.  
+He had been ill for several months, and only an extraordinarily 
+robust constitution enabled him to make a partial recovery from 
+the crisis of the preceding February, when his death had been 
+hourly expected.  The news of his death occasioned demonstrations 
+of grief not only in his own country, but also throughout the 
+civilized world.  Every honor that a nation can bestow upon 
+its illustrious dead was decreed him by King and Storthing; 
+a warship was despatched to bear his remains to Christiania, 
+and the pomp and circumstance of a state funeral acclaimed the 
+sense of the nation's loss.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF WORKS.
+
+SYNNOVE SOLBAKKEN.  Fortaelling, 1857 
+MELLEM SLAGENE.  Drama, 1858
+ARNE.  Fortaelling, 1858
+HALTE-HULDA.  Drama, 1858
+EN GLAD GUT.  Fortaelling, 1860
+KONG SVERRE.  1861
+SIGURD SLEMBE.  1862
+MARIA STUART I SKOTLAND.  Skuespil, 1864
+DE NYGIFTE.  Komedie, 1865
+FISKERJENTEN.  Fortaelling, 1868
+DIGTE OG SANGE.  1870
+ARNLJOT GELLINE.  1870
+SIGURD JORSALFAR.  Skuespil, 1872
+FORTAELLINGER I-II,  1872
+BRUDE-SLAATTEN.  Fortaelling, 1873
+REDAKTOREN.  Skuespil, 1874
+EN FALLIT.  Skuespil, 1874
+KONGEN.  1877
+MAGNHILD.  Fortaelling, 1877
+KAPTEJN MANSANA.  Fortaelling fra Italien, 1879
+LEONARDA.  Skuespil, 1879
+DET NY SYSTEM.  Skuespil, 1879
+EN HANDSKE.  Skuespil, 1883
+OVER AEVNE.  Forste Stykke, 1883
+DET FLAGER I BYEN OG PAA HAVNEN,  1884
+GEOGRAFI OG KJAERLIGHED.  1885
+PAA GUDS VEJE.  1889
+NYE FORTAELLINGER.  1894
+LYSET.  En Universitetskantate, 1895
+OVER AEVNE.  Andet Stykke, 1895
+PAUL LANGE OG TORA PARSBERG.  1898
+LABOREMUS.  1901
+TO FORTAELLINGER.  1901
+PAA STORHOVE.  Drama, 1904
+DAGLANNET.  1904
+TO TALER.  1906.
+MARY.  Fortaelling, 1906
+VORT SPROG.  1907
+NAAR DEN NY VIN BLOMSTRER.  1909
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Bjornstjerne Bjornson
+by William Morton Payne
+******This file should be named 7bjrn10.txt or 7bjrn10.zip******
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+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, 7bjrn11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7bjrn10a.txt
+
+This etext was produced by Nicole Apostola.
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+by William Morton Payne
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Björnstjerne Björnson
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+Title: Björnstjerne Björnson
+
+Author: William Morton Payne
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+
+Björnstjerne Björnson
+1832-1910
+by William Morton Payne, LL.D.
+Translator of Björnson's "Sigurd Slembe" and Jaeger's "Ibsen," Author of "Little Leaders," Etc.
+
+To Mary
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE
+
+When the date of Björnson's seventieth birthday drew near 
+at the close of 1902, the present writer, who had been from 
+boyhood a devoted admirer of the great Norwegian, wished to 
+make an American contribution to the world-wide tribute of 
+gratitude and affection which the then approaching anniversary 
+was sure to evoke.  The outcome of that wish was an essay, 
+summarizing Björnson's life and work, published in "The 
+International Quarterly," March, 1903.  The essay then written 
+forms the substance of the present publication, although several 
+additions have been made in the way of translation, anecdote, 
+and the consideration of Björnson's later productions.  So 
+small a book as this is, of course, hopelessly inadequate to 
+make more than the most superficial sort of survey of the 
+life work of that masterful personality whose recent death is 
+so heavy a loss to all mankind.
+
+W. M. P. 
+Chicago, May, 1910.
+
+
+
+BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
+1832-1910
+
+Eight years ago, taking a bird's-eye view of the mountain 
+peaks of contemporary literature, and writing with particular 
+reference to Björnson's seventieth birthday, it seemed 
+proper to make the following remarks about the most famous 
+European authors then numbered among living men.  If one 
+were asked for the name of the greatest man of letters still 
+living in the world, the possible claimants to the distinction 
+would hardly be more than five in number.  If it were a 
+question of poetry alone, Swinburne would have to be named 
+first, with Carducci for a fairly close second.  But if we 
+take literature in its larger sense, as including all the 
+manifestations of creative activity in language, and if we 
+insist, furthermore, that the man singled out for this 
+preëminence shall stand in some vital relation to the 
+intellectual life of his time, and exert a forceful influence 
+upon the thought of the present day, the choice must rather 
+be made among the three giants of the north of Europe, falling, 
+as it may be, upon the great-hearted Russian emotionalist 
+who has given us such deeply moving portrayals of the life 
+of the modern world; or upon the passionate Norwegian idealist 
+whose finger has so unerringly pointed out the diseased spots 
+in the social organism, earning by his moral surgery the name 
+of pessimist, despite his declared faith in the redemption of 
+mankind through truth and freedom and love; or, perchance, 
+upon that other great Norwegian, equally fervent in his devotion 
+to the same ideals, and far more sympathetic in his manner of 
+inculcating them upon his readers, who has just rounded out 
+his scriptural tale of three score years and ten, and, in 
+commemoration of the anniversary, is now made the recipient 
+of such a tribute of grateful and whole-souled admiration 
+as few men have ever won, and none have better deserved.  
+It would be certainly invidious, and probably futile, to 
+attempt a nice, comparative estimate of the services of these 
+three men to the common cause of humanity; let us be content 
+with the admission that Björnstjerne Björnson is _primus inter 
+pares_, and make no attempt to exalt him at the expense of his 
+great contemporaries.  Writing now eight years later, at the 
+time when Björnson's death has plunged his country and the 
+world in mourning, it is impressive to note that of the five men 
+constituting the group above designated, Tolstoy alone survives 
+to carry on the great literary tradition of the nineteenth century.
+
+It will be well, however, to make certain distinctions between 
+the life work of Björnson and that of the two men whom a common 
+age and common aims bring into inevitable association with him.  
+These distinctions are chiefly two,--one of them is that while 
+Tolstoy and Ibsen grew to be largely cosmopolitan in their outlook, 
+Björnson has much more closely maintained throughout his career the 
+national, or, at any rate, the racial standpoint.  The other is 
+that while Tolstoy and Ibsen presently became, the one indifferent 
+to artistic expression, and the other baldly prosaic where he was 
+once deeply poetical, Björnson preserved the poetic impulse of his 
+youth, and continued to give it play even in his envisagement of 
+the most practical modern problems.  Let us enlarge a little upon 
+these two themes.  Ernest Renan, speaking at the funeral of 
+Tourguénieff, described the deceased novelist as "the incarnation 
+of a whole people."  Even more fittingly might the phrase be applied 
+to Björnson, for it would be difficult to find anywhere else in 
+modern literature a figure so completely and profoundly representative 
+of his race.  In the frequently quoted words of Dr. Brandes, to speak 
+the name of Björnson in any assembly of his countrymen is like 
+"hoisting the Norwegian flag."  It has been maliciously added that 
+mention of his name is also like flaunting a red flag in the sight 
+of a considerable proportion of the assembly, for Björnson has always 
+been a fighter as well as an artist, and it has been his self-imposed 
+mission to arouse his fellow countrymen from their mental sluggishness 
+no less than to give creative embodiment to their types of character 
+and their ideal aspirations.  But whatever the opposition aroused by 
+his political and social radicalism, even his opponents have been 
+constrained to feel that he was the mouthpiece of their race as no 
+other Norwegian before him had been, and that he has voiced whatever 
+is deepest and most enduring in the Norwegian temper.  Powerful as 
+has been his appeal to the intellect and conscience of the modern 
+world at large, it has always had a special note of admonition or 
+of cheer for his own people.  With reference to the second of our 
+two themes, it is sufficient to say that, although the form of verse 
+was almost wholly abandoned by him during the latter half of his life, 
+the breath of poetry never ceased to exhale from his work, and the 
+lyric exuberance of his later prose still recalls to us the singer 
+of the sixties.
+
+Few productions of modern literature have proved as epoch-
+making as the modest little volume called "Synnöve Solbakken," 
+which appeared in the book shops of Christiania and Copenhagen 
+in 1857.  It was a simple tale of peasant life, an idyl of the 
+love of a boy and a girl, but it was absolutely new in its 
+style, and in its intimate revelation of the Norwegian character.  
+It must be remembered that until the year 1814, Norway had 
+for centuries been politically united with Denmark, and that 
+Copenhagen had been the common literary centre of the two 
+countries.  To that city Norwegian writers had gravitated as 
+naturally as French writers gravitate to Paris.  There had 
+resulted from this condition of things a literature which, 
+although it owed much to men of Norwegian birth, was essentially 
+a Danish literature, and must properly be so styled.  That 
+literature could boast, at the beginning of the nineteenth 
+century, an interesting history comparable in its antiquity 
+with the greater literatures of Europe, and a brilliant history 
+for at least a hundred years past.  But old literatures are 
+sure to become more or less sophisticated and trammelled by 
+traditon, and to this rule Danish literature was no exception.  
+When the constitution of Eidsvold, in 1814, separated Norway 
+from Denmark, and made it into an independent kingdom (save for 
+the forced Swedish partnership), the country had practically 
+no literary tradition save that which centred about the Danish 
+capital.  She might claim to have been the native country of 
+many Danish writers, even of Ludvig Holberg, the greatest 
+writer that the Scandinavian peoples have yet produced, but she 
+could point to nothing that might fairly be called a Norwegian 
+literature.  The young men of the rising generation were 
+naturally much concerned about this, and a sharp divergence of 
+opinion arose as to the means whereby the interests of Norwegian 
+literature might be furthered, and the aims which it should have 
+in view.  One party urged that the literature should break loose 
+from its traditional past, and aim at the cultivation of an 
+exclusively national spirit.  The other party declared such a 
+course to be folly, contending that literature must be a 
+product of gradual development rather than of set volition, 
+and that, despite the shifting of the political kaleidoscope, 
+the national literature was so firmly rooted in its Danish past 
+that its natural evolution must be an outgrowth from all that 
+had gone before.
+
+Each of these parties found a vigorous leader, the cause of 
+ultra-Norwegianism being championed by Wergeland, an erratic 
+person in whom the spark of genius burned, but who never found 
+himself, artistically speaking.  The champion of the conservatives 
+was Welhaven, a polished writer of singular charm and much force, 
+philosophical in temper, whose graceful verse and acute criticism 
+upheld by both precept and practice the traditional standards 
+of culture.  Each of these men had his followers, who proved in 
+many cases more zealous than their leaders.  The period of the 
+thirties and forties was dominated by this Wergeland-Welhaven 
+controversy, which engendered much bitterness of feeling, and 
+which constitutes the capital fact in Norwegian literary history 
+before the appearance of Ibsen and Björnson upon the scene.  A 
+sort of parallel might be drawn for American readers by taking 
+two such men as Whitman and Longfellow, opposing them to one 
+another in the most outspoken fashion, assuming for both a 
+sharply polemic manner, and ranging among their respective 
+followers all the other writers of their time.  Then imagine the 
+issue between them to be drawn not only in the field of letters, 
+but also in the pulpit, the theatre, and the political arena, and 
+some slight notion may be obtained of the condition of affairs 
+which preceded the advent of Björnson and the true birth of 
+Norwegian literature with "Synnöve Solbakken."
+
+The work which was thus destined to mark the opening of a new 
+era in Norwegian letters was written in the twenty-fifth year of 
+its author's life.  The son of a country pastor, Björnstjerne 
+Björnson was born at Kvikne, December 8, 1832.  At the age of 
+six, his father was transferred to a new parish in the Romsdal, 
+one of the most picturesque regions in Norway.  The impression 
+made upon his sensitive nature by these surroundings was deep 
+and enduring.  Looking back upon his boyhood he speaks with strong 
+emotion of the evenings when "I stood and watched the sunlight 
+play upon mountain and fiord, until I wept, as if I had done 
+something wrong, and when, borne down upon my ski into one valley 
+or another I could stand as if spellbound by a beauty, by a longing 
+that I could not explain, but that was so great that along with 
+the highest joy I had, also, the deepest sense of imprisonment 
+and sorrow."  This is the mood which was to be given utterance in 
+that wonderful lyric, "Over the Lofty Mountains," in which all the 
+ardor and the longings of passionate and impatient youth find the 
+most appealing expression. The song is found in "Arne," and may be 
+thus reproduced, after a fashion, in the English language.
+
+"Often I wonder what there may be
+  Over the lofty mountains.
+Here the snow is all I see,
+Spread at the foot of the dark green tree;
+  Sadly I often ponder,
+  Would I were over yonder.
+"Strong of wing soars the eagle high
+  Over the lofty mountains,
+Glad of the new day soars to the sky,
+Wild in pursuit of his prey doth fly;
+  Pauses, and, fearless of danger,
+  Scans the far coasts of the stranger.
+"The apple-tree, whose thoughts ne'er fly
+  Over the lofty mountains,
+Leaves, when the summer days draw nigh,
+Patiently waits for the time when high
+  The birds in its boughs shall be swinging,
+  Yet will know not what they are singing.
+"He who has yearned so long to go
+  Over the lofty mountains--
+He whose visions and fond hopes grow
+Dim, with the years that so restless flow--
+  Knows what the birds are singing,
+  Glad in the tree-tops swinging.
+"Why, oh bird, dost thou hither fare
+  Over the lofty mountains?
+Surely it must be better there,
+Broader the view and freer the air;
+  Com'st thou these longings to bring me;
+  These only, and nothing to wing me?
+"Oh, shall I never, never go
+  Over the lofty mountains!
+Must all my thoughts and wishes so
+Held in these walls of ice and snow
+  Here be imprisoned forever?
+  Till death shall I flee them never?
+"Hence!  I will hence!  Oh, so far from here,
+  Over the lofty mountains!
+Here 't is so dull, so unspeakably drear;
+Young is my heart and free from fear--
+  Better the walls to be scaling
+  Than here in my prison lie wailing.
+"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 come;
+  Guard it for me yet longer,
+  Till my soul through striving grows stronger."
+
+At the age of eleven Björnson'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 many sorts of literary 
+experiments, and became actively engaged 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 dramatic 
+criticism as the avowed partisan of Norwegian ideals, holding 
+himself, in some sort, the successor of Wergeland, Who had died 
+about ten years earlier.  Before becoming a dramatic critic, he 
+had essayed dramatic authorship, and the acceptance by the theatre 
+of his juvenile play, "Valborg," had led to a somewhat unusual 
+result.  He was given a free ticket of admission, and a few 
+weeks of theatre-going 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 
+came to him upon his return from a student gathering 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 come. I packed up, went home, 
+thought it all over, wrote and rewrote `Between the Battles' in 
+a fortnight, and travelled to Copenhagen with the completed piece 
+in my trunk; I would be a poet."  He then set to writing "Synnöve 
+Solbakken," published it in part as a newspaper serial, and then 
+in book form, in the autumn of 1857.  He had "commenced author" 
+in good earnest.
+
+The next fifteen years of Björnson'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 achievement of fourteen feverish days.  The 
+remaining 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); three more plays 
+drawn from the treasury of old Norse history, "King Sverre," 
+"Sigurd Slembe," and "Sigurd Jorsalfar"; a dramatic setting 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 with modern life; "Arnljot Gelline," his 
+only long poem, a wild narrative of the clash between heathendom 
+and the Christian faith in the days of Olaf the Holy; and, last 
+but by no means least, the collection of his "Poems and Songs."  
+Thus at the age of forty, Björnson found himself with a dozen 
+books to his credit books which had stirred his fellow countrymen 
+as no other books had ever stirred them, arousing 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 him, the singer of all that was noble in 
+Norwegian aspiration, the sympathetic delineator of all that 
+was essential in Norwegian 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 Björnson's "Tales," published in 1872, 
+together with "The Bridal March," separately published in the 
+following year, gives us a complete representation of that phase 
+of his genius which is best known to the world at large.  Here 
+are five stories of considerable length, and a number of 
+slighter sketches, in which the Norwegian peasant is portrayed 
+with intimate and loving knowledge.  The peasant tale was no 
+new thing in European literature, for the names of Auerbach 
+and George Sand, to say nothing 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 Björnson'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.  Björnson 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 men who wrested a scanty 
+living from an ungrateful soil.  Although a poet by instinct, 
+he was not afraid of realism, and did not shrink from giving 
+the brutal aspects of peasant life a place upon his canvas.  In 
+emphasizing the characteristics of reticence and _naïveté_ he 
+really discovered the Norwegian peasant for literary purposes.  
+Beneath the words spoken by his characters we are constantly 
+made to realize that there are depths of feeling that remain 
+unexpressed; whether from native pride or from a sense of the 
+inadequacy of mere words to set forth a critical moment of 
+life, his men and women are distinguished by the most laconic 
+utterance, yet their speech always has dramatic fitness and 
+bears the stamp of sincerity.  Jaeger speaks of the manifold 
+possibilities of this laconic method in the following words:--
+
+"It is as if the author purposely set in motion the reader's 
+fancy and feeling that they might do their own work.  The 
+greatest poet is he who understands how to awaken fancy and 
+feeling to their highest degree of self-activity.  And this 
+is Björnson'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 known how to suggest so much in so few words."
+
+In some respects, the little sketch called "The Father" is 
+the supreme example of Björnson's artistry in this kind.  There 
+are only a few pages in all, but they embody the tragedy of a 
+lifetime.  The little work is a literary gem 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 Björnson is best known outside of his own country; one 
+may almost say that it is by them alone that he is really familiar 
+to English readers.  A free translation of "Synnöve 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 made soon after their original appearance, and in some 
+instances have been multiplied.  It is thus a noteworthy fact 
+that Björnson, although four years the junior of Ibsen, enjoyed 
+a vogue among English readers for a score of years during which 
+the name of Ibsen was absolutely unknown to them.  The whirligig 
+of time has brought in its revenges of late years, and the long 
+neglected 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, Björnson 
+was greatly aided by the study of the sagas, which he had read 
+with enthusiasm from his earliest boyhood.  Upon them his style 
+was largely formed, and their vivid dramatic representation 
+of the life of the early Norsemen impressed him profoundly, 
+shaping both his ideals and the form of their expression.  The 
+modern Scandinavian may well be envied for his literary 
+inheritance from the heroic past.  No other European has 
+anything to compare with it for clean-cut vigor and wealth of 
+romantic material.  The literature which blossomed in Iceland 
+and flourished for two or three centuries wherever Norsemen 
+made homes for themselves offers a unique intellectual phenomenon, 
+for nothing like their record remains to us from any other 
+primitive people. This
+
+     "Tale of the Northland of old
+   And the undying glory of dreams,"
+
+proved a lasting stimulus to Björnson's genius, and, during the 
+early period of his career, which is now under review, it made 
+its influence felt alike in his tales, his dramas, and his 
+songs.  "To see the peasant in the light of the sagas and the 
+sagas in the light of the peasant" he declared to be the 
+fundamental principle of his literary method.
+
+It has been seen that during the fifteen years which made 
+Björnson in so peculiar a sense the spokesman of his race, he 
+wrote no less than five saga dramas.  The first two of these 
+works, "Between the Battles" and "Halte-Hulda," are rather 
+slight performances, and the third, "King Sverre," although a 
+more extended work, is not particularly noteworthy.  The 
+grimness of the Viking life is softened by romantic coloring, 
+and the poet has not freed himself from the influence of 
+Oehlenschlaeger.  But in "Sigurd Slembe" he found a subject 
+entirely worthy of his genius, and produced one of the noblest 
+masterpieces of all modern literature.  This largely planned 
+and magnificently executed dramatic trilogy was written in 
+Munich, and published in 1862.  The material is found in the 
+"Heimskringla," but the author has used the prerogative of the 
+artist to simplify the historical outline thus offered into a 
+superb imaginative creation, rich in human interest, and 
+powerful in dramatic presentation.  The story is concerned 
+with the efforts of Sigurd, nicknamed "Slembe," to obtain 
+the succession to the throne of Norway during the first half 
+of the twelfth century.  He was a son of King Magnus Barfod, 
+and, although of illegitimate birth, might legally 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 mother is made in the first section of the trilogy, which 
+is a single act, written in blank verse.  Recognizing the futility 
+of urging his birthright at this time, he starts off to win 
+fame as a crusader, the sort of fame that haloed Sigurd 
+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 
+ambition and the sense of injustice ever gnawing at his heart.  
+He becomes entangled in a feudal quarrel concerning the rule of 
+the islands.  Both parties seek to use him for their purposes, 
+but in the end, although leadership is in his grasp, he tears 
+himself away, appalled by the revelation of crime and treachery 
+in his surroundings.  In this section of the work we have the 
+subtly conceived and Hamlet-like figure of Earl Harald, in 
+whose interest Frakark, a Norse Lady Macbeth, plots the murder 
+of Earl Paul, only to bring upon Harald himself the terrible 
+death that she has planned for his brother.  Here, also, we 
+have the gracious maiden figure of Audhild, perhaps the 
+loveliest of all Björnson's delineations of womanhood, a figure
+worthy to be ranked with the heroines of Shakespeare and Goethe, 
+who remains sweet and fragrant in our memory forever after.  
+With the mutual love of Sigurd and Audhild comes the one hour 
+of sunshine 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 meet with Sigurd again in the 
+third section of the trilogy.  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 
+Slembe, an illegitimate son of Magnus Barfod, and who, during 
+the last senile years of Sigurd Jorsalfar's life, had won the 
+recognition that Sigurd Slembe might have won had he not missed 
+the chance, and been acknowledged as the king's brother.  When 
+the king died, he left a son named Magnus, who should have been 
+his successor, but whom Harald Gille seized, blinded, and 
+imprisoned that he might himself occupy the throne.  The five 
+acts of this third section of the trilogy cover the last two 
+years of Sigurd Slembe's life, years during which he seeks to 
+gain his end, first by conciliation, and afterwards, maddened 
+by the base treachery of the king and his followers, by 
+assassination and violence.  He has become a hard man, but, 
+however wild his schemes of revenge, and however desperate 
+his measures, he retains our sympathy to the end because we 
+feel that circumstances have made him the ravager of his country, 
+and that his underlying motive all along has not been a merely 
+personal ambition, but an immense longing to serve his people, 
+and to rule them with justice and wisdom.  The final scene 
+of all has a strange and solemn beauty.  It is on the eve of 
+the battle in which Sigurd 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 outcome.  
+Sigurd has made his last stand, his Danish allies have deserted 
+him, and he well knows what will be the next day's issue.  
+And here we have one of the noblest illustrations in all 
+literature of that _Versöhnung_ which is the last word of 
+tragic art.  For in this supreme hour the peace of mind which 
+he has sought 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 men whose lives 
+have been set at tragic pitch, has come to him also; he now 
+sees that this was the inevitable end, and the recognition 
+of the fitness with which events have shaped themselves brings 
+with it an exaltation of soul in which life is seen revealed 
+in its true aspect.  No longer veiled in the mists which have 
+hitherto hidden it from his passionate gaze, he takes note of 
+what it really is, and casts it from him.  In this hour of 
+passionless contemplation such a renunciation is not a thing 
+torn from the reluctant soul, but the clear solution, so long 
+sought, of the problem so long blindly attempted.  That which 
+his passion enslaved self has so struggled to avert, his 
+higher self, at last set free, calmly and gladly accepts.  
+
+"What miracle is this? for in the hour I prayed, the prayer 
+was granted!  Peace, perfect peace!  Then I will go to-morrow 
+to my last battle as to the altar; peace shall at last be mine 
+for all my longings.
+"How this autumn evening brings reconciliation to my soul!  
+Sun and wave and shore and sea flow all together, as in the 
+thought of God all others; never yet has it seemed so fair to 
+me.  But it is not mine to rule over this lovely land.  How 
+greatly I have done it ill!  But how has it all so come to 
+pass? for in my wanderings I saw thy mountains in every sky, 
+I yearned for home as a child longs for Christmas, yet I 
+came no sooner, and when at last I came, I gave thee wound 
+upon wound.
+"But now, in contemplative mood, thou gazest upon me, and 
+givest me at parting this fairest autumn night of thine; 
+I will ascend yonder rock and take a long farewell."
+
+The action of "Sigurd Slembe," is interspersed with several 
+lyrics, the most striking of which is herd translated in 
+exact reproduction of the original form:
+
+"Sin and Death, at break of day,
+Day, day,
+Spoke together with bated breath;
+'Marry thee, sister, that I may stay,
+Stay, stay,
+In thy house,' quoth Death.
+"Death laughed aloud when Sin was wed,
+Wed, wed,
+And danced on the bridal day:
+But bore that night from the bridal bed,
+Bed, bed,
+The groom in a shroud away.
+"Death came to her sister at break of day,
+Day, day,
+And Sin drew a weary breath;
+'He whom thou lovest is mine for aye,
+Aye, aye,
+Mine he is,' quoth Death."
+
+One more saga drama was to be written by Björnson, but 
+"Sigurd Slembe" remains his greatest achievement in this 
+field of activity.  Its single successor, "Sigurd Jorsalfar," 
+was not published until ten years later, and may not be 
+compared with it for either strength or poetic inspiration.  
+The author called it a "folkplay," and announced the intention, 
+which was never fulfilled, of making several similar experiments 
+with scenes from the sagas, "which should appeal to every eye 
+and every stage of culture, to each in its own way, and at 
+the performance of which all, for the time being, would 
+experience the joy of fellow feeling."  The experiment proves 
+interesting, and is carried out without didacticism or straining 
+after sensational effects; the play is vigorous and well 
+planned, but for the reader it has little of the dramatic 
+impressiveness of its predecessor, although as an acting drama 
+it is better fitted for the requirements of the stage.
+
+The two volumes which contain the greater part of Björnson's 
+poetry not dramatic in form were both published in 1870.  One 
+of them was the collection of his "Poems and Songs," the other 
+was the epic cycle, "Arnljot Gelline," the only long poem 
+that he has written.  The volume of lyrics includes many pieces 
+of imperfect quality and slight 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 made him the greatest of Norway's lyric poets.  
+No translation can ever quite reproduce their cadence or their 
+feeling; they illustrate the one aspect of Björnson's many-sided 
+genius that must be taken on trust by those who cannot read his 
+language.  A friend once asked him upon what occasion he had 
+felt most fully the joy of being a poet. His reply was as follows:--
+
+"It was when a party from the Right in Christiania came to my 
+house and smashed all my windows.  For when they had finished 
+their assault, and were starting home again, they felt that 
+they had to sing something, and so they began to sing, 'Yes, we 
+love this land of ours'--they couldn't help it. They had to sing
+ the song of the man they had attacked."
+
+Into this collection were gathered the lyrics scattered through 
+the peasant tales and the saga dramas, thus making it completely 
+representative of his quality as a singer.  A revised and 
+somewhat extended edition of this volume was published about 
+ten years later.  Björnson has had the rare fortune of having 
+his lyrics set to music by three composers--Nordraak, Kjerulf, 
+and Grieg--as intensely national in spirit as himself, and no 
+festal occasion among Norwegians is celebrated without singing 
+the national hymn, "Yes, We Love This Land of Ours," or the 
+noble choral setting of "Olaf Trygvason."  The best folk-singer 
+is he who stands in the whirling round of life, says the poet, 
+and he reveals the very secret of his power when he tells us 
+that life was ever more to him than song, and that existence, 
+where it was worth while, in the thick of the human fray, 
+always had for him a deeper meaning than anything he had written.  
+The longest poem in Björnson's collection is called "Bergliot," 
+and is a dramatic monologue in which the foul slaying of her 
+husband Ejnar Tambarskelve and their son Ejndride is mourned 
+by the bereaved wife and mother.  The story is from the saga 
+of Harald Haardraada, and is treated with the deepest tragic 
+impressiveness.
+
+"Odin in Valhal I dare not seek
+For him I forsook in my childhood.
+And the new God in Gimle?
+He took all that I had!
+  Revenge:--Who says revenge?--
+Can revenge awaken my dead
+Or shelter me from the cold?
+Has it comfort for a widow's home
+Or for a childless mother?
+  Away with your revenge: Let be!
+Lay him on the litter, him and the son.
+Come, we will follow them home.
+The new God in Gimle, the terrible, who took all,
+Let him also take revenge, for he understands it!
+Drive slowly: Thus drove Ejnar ever;
+  --Soon enough shall we reach home."
+
+It was also to the "Heimskringla" that Björnson turned for 
+the subject of his epic cycle, "Arnljot Gelline."  Here we 
+read in various rhythms of Arnljot the outlaw, how the hands 
+of all men are against him; how he offers to stay his wrath 
+and end the blood feud if the fair Ingigerd, Trand's daughter, 
+may be bestowed upon him; how, being refused, he sets fire 
+to Trand's house and bears Ingigerd away captive; how her 
+tears prevail upon him to release her, and how she seeks 
+refuge in a southern cloister; how Arnljot wanders restless 
+over sea and land until he comes to King Olaf, on the eve 
+of the great battle, receives the Christian faith, fights 
+fiercely in the vanguard against the hosts of the heathen, 
+and, smiling, falls with his king on the field of Stiklestad.  
+One song from this cycle, "The Cloister in the South" is 
+here reproduced in an exact copy of the original metre, in 
+the hope that even this imperfect representation of the poem 
+may be better than none at all.
+
+"Who would enter so late the cloister in?"
+  "A maid forlorn from the land of snow."
+"What sorrow is thine, and what thy sin?"
+  "The deepest sorrow the heart can know.
+   I have nothing done
+     Yet must still endeavor,
+   Though my strength be none,
+     To wander ever.
+Let me in, to seek for my pain surcease,
+     I can find no peace."
+
+"From what far-off land hast thou taken flight?"
+  "From the land of the North, a weary way."
+"What stayed thy feet at our gate this night?"
+  "The chant of the nuns, for I heard them pray,
+   And the song gave peace
+     To my soul, and blessed me;
+   It offered release
+     From the grief that oppressed me.
+   Let me in, so if peace to give be thine,
+     I may make it mine."
+
+"Name me the grief that thy life hath crossed."
+  "Rest may I never, never know."
+"Thy father, thy lover, thou hast then lost?"
+  "I lost them both at a single blow,
+   And all I held dear
+     In my deepest affection;
+   Aye, all that was near
+     To my heart's recollection.
+   Let me in, I am failing, I beg, I implore,
+     I can bear no more."
+
+"How was it that thou thy father lost?"
+  "He was slain, and I saw the deed."
+"How was it that thou thy lover lost?"
+  "My father he slew, and I saw the deed.
+   I wept so bitterly
+     When he roughly would woo me,
+   He at last set me free,
+     And forbore to pursue me.
+   Let me in, for the horror my soul doth fill.
+     That I love him still."
+
+_Chorus of nuns within the Church._
+      "Come child, come bride,
+      To God's own side,
+      From grief find rest
+      On Jesus' breast.
+      Rest thy burden of sorrow.
+          On Horeb's height;
+      Like the lark, with to-morrow
+          Shall thy soul take flight.
+
+      Here stilled is all yearning,
+      No passion returning;
+      No terror come near thee
+      When the Saviour can hear thee.
+      For He, if in need be
+          Thy storm-beaten soul,
+      Though it bruised as a reed be,
+          Shall raise it up whole."
+
+Despite the power and beauty of an occasional manifestation 
+of his genius during the late sixties and early seventies, 
+the poetic impulse that had made Björnson the most famous of 
+Norwegian authors seemed, toward the close of the fifteen-year 
+period just now under review, to be well nigh exhausted.  Even 
+among those who had followed his career most closely there were 
+few who could anticipate the splendid new outburst of activity 
+for which he was preparing.  These years seemed to be a dead 
+time, not only in Björnson's life, but also in the general 
+intellectual life of the Scandinavian countries.  Dr. Brandes 
+thus describes the feelings of a thoughtful observer during 
+that period of stagnation.  "In the North one had the feeling 
+of being shut off from the intellectual life of the time.  
+We were sitting with closed doors, a few brains struggling 
+fruitlessly with the problem of how to get them opened... With 
+whole schools of foreign literature the cultivated Dane had 
+almost no acquaintance; and when, finally, as a consequence 
+of political animosity, intellectual intercourse with Germany 
+was broken off, the main channel was closed through which 
+the intellectual developments of the day had been communicated 
+to Norway as well as Denmark.  French influence was dreaded 
+as immoral, and there was but little understanding of either 
+the English language or spirit."  But an intellectual renaissance 
+was at hand, an intellectual reawakening with a cosmopolitan 
+outlook, and, Björnson was destined to become its leader, much 
+as he had been the leader of the national movement of an earlier 
+decade.  During these years of seeming inactivity, comparatively 
+speaking, he had read and thought much, and the new thought of 
+the age had fecundated his mind.  Historical and religious criticism, 
+educational and social problems, had taken possession of his 
+thought, and the philosophy of evolution had transformed the 
+whole tenor of his ideas, shaping them to, deeper issues and 
+more practical purposes than had hitherto engaged them.  He had 
+read widely and variously in Darwin, Spencer, Mill, Müller, and 
+Taine; he had, in short, scaled the "lofty mountains" that had so 
+hemmed in his early view, and made his way into the intellectual 
+kingdoms of the modern world that lay beyond.  The _Weltgeist_ 
+had appealed to him with its irresistible behest, just as it 
+appealed at about the same time to Ibsen and Tolstoy and Ruskin, 
+and had made him a man of new interests and ideals.
+
+One might have found foreshadowings of this transformation in 
+certain of his earlier works,--in "The Newly Married Couple," 
+for example, with its delicate analysis, of a common domestic 
+relation, or in "The Fisher Maiden," with its touch of modernity,
+--but from these suggestions one could hardly have prophesied 
+the enthusiasm and the genial force with which Björnson was to 
+project his personality into the controversial arena of modern life.  
+The series of works which have come from his pen during the past 
+thirty-five years have dealt with most of the graver problems 
+which concern society as a whole,--politics, religion, education, 
+the status of women, the license of the press, the demand of the 
+socialist for a reconstruction of the old order.  They have also 
+dealt with many of the delicate questions of individual ethics,
+--the relations of husband and wife, of parent and child, the 
+responsibility of the merchant to his creditors and of the employer 
+to his dependants, the double standard of morality for men and 
+women, and the duty devolving upon both to transmit a vigorous 
+strain to their offspring.  These are some of the themes that 
+have engaged the novelist and dramatist; they have also engaged 
+the public speaker and lay preacher of enlightenment, as well 
+as themes of a more strictly political character, such as the 
+separation of Norway from the Dual Monarchy, the renewal of 
+the ancient bond between Norway and Iceland, the free development 
+of parliamentary government, the cause of Pangermanism, and the 
+furtherance of peace between the nations.  An extensive 
+programme, surely, even in this summary enumeration of its 
+more salient features, but one to which his capacity has not 
+proved unequal, and which he has carried out by the force of 
+his immense energy and superabundant vitality.  The burden of 
+all this tendencious matter has caused his art to suffer at times,
+ no doubt, but his inspiration has retained throughout much 
+of the marvellous freshness of the earlier years, and the 
+genius of the poet still flashes upon us from a prosaic 
+environment, sometimes in a lovely lyric, more frequently, 
+however, in the turn of a phrase or the psychological 
+envisagement of some supreme moment in the action of the story 
+or the drama.
+
+The great transformation in Björnson's literary manner and 
+choice of subjects was marked by his sending home from abroad, 
+in the season of 1874-75, two plays, "The Editor" and "A 
+Bankruptcy."  It was two years later that Ibsen sent home from 
+abroad "The Pillars of Society," which marked a similar turning 
+point in his artistic career.  It is a curious coincidence that 
+the plays of modern life produced during this second period by 
+these two men are the same in number, an even dozen in each case.  
+Besides the two above named, these modern plays of Björnson are, 
+with their dates, the following: "The King" (1877), "Leonarda" (1879), 
+"The New System" (1879), "A Glove" (1883), "Beyond the 
+Strength I." (1883), "Geography and Love" (1885), "Beyond the 
+Strength II." (1895), "Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg" (1898), 
+"Laboremus" (1901), and "At Storhove" (1902).  Since the 
+cessation of Ibsen's activity, Björnson has outrun him in 
+the race, adding "Daglannet" (1904), and "When the New Wine 
+Blooms" (1909) to the list above given.  Besides these 
+fourteen plays, however, he has published seven important 
+volumes of prose fiction during the last thirty-five years.  
+The titles and dates are as follows: "Magnhild" (1877), 
+"Captain Mansana" (1879), "Dust" (1882), "Flags Are Flying 
+in City and Harbor" (1884), "In God's Ways," (1889), 
+"New Tales" (1894), (of which collection "Absalom's Hair" 
+is the longest and most important), and "Mary" (1906).  The 
+achievement represented by this list is all the more 
+extraordinary when we consider the fact that for the greater 
+part of the thirty-five years which these plays and novels 
+cover, their author has been, both as a public speaker and 
+as a writer for the periodical press, an active participant 
+in the political and social life of his country.
+
+Most of these books must be dismissed with a few words in 
+order that our remaining space may be given to the four or 
+five that are of the greatest power and significance. "The 
+Editor," the first of the modern plays, offers a fierce 
+satire upon modern journalism, its dishonesty, its corrupt 
+and malicious power, its personal and partisan prejudice.  
+The character of the editor in this play was unmistakeably 
+drawn, in its leading characteristics, from the figure of a 
+well known conservative journalist in Christiania, although 
+Björnson vigorously maintained that the protraiture was typical 
+rather than personal.
+
+"In various other countries than my own, I have observed 
+the type of journalist who is here depicted.  It is characterized 
+by acting upon a basis of sheer egotism, passionate and 
+boundless, and by terrorism in such fashion that it frightens 
+honest people away from every liberal movement, and visits 
+upon the individual an unscrupulous persecution."
+
+This play was not particularly successful upon the stage, 
+but the book was widely read, and occasioned much excited 
+personal controversy.  "A Bankruptcy," on the other hand, 
+proved a brilliant stage success.  Its matter was less 
+contentious, and its technical execution was effective and 
+brilliant.  It was not in vain that Björnson had at different 
+times been the director of three theatres.  This play has 
+for its theme the ethics of business life, and more 
+especially the question of the extent to which a man whose 
+finances are embarrassed is justified in continued speculation 
+for the ultimate protection of himself and his creditors.  
+Despite its treatment of this serious problem, the play is 
+lighter and more genial in vein than the author's plays 
+are wont to be, and the element of humor is unusually 
+conspicuous.  Jaeger remarks that "A Bankruptcy" did two 
+new things for Norwegian dramatic literature. It made money 
+affairs a legitimate subject for literary treatment, and 
+it raised the curtain upon the Norwegian home. "It was with 
+'A Bankruptcy' that the home made its first appearance upon 
+the stage, the home with its joys and sorrows, with its 
+conflicts and its tenderness."
+
+Two years later appeared "The King, which is in many 
+respects Björnson's greatest modern masterpiece in dramatic 
+form.  He had by this time become a convinced republican, 
+but he was also an evolutionist, and he knew that republics 
+are not created by fiat.  He believed the tendency toward 
+republicanism to be irresistible, but he believed also that 
+there must be intermediate stages in the transition from 
+monarchy.  Absolutism is succeeded by constitutionalism, 
+and that by parliamentarism, and that in the end must 
+be succeeded by a republicanism that will free itself from 
+all the traditional forms of symbol and ceremonial.  He had 
+also a special belief that the smaller peoples were better 
+fitted for development in this direction than the larger and 
+more complex societies, although, on the other hand, he thought 
+that the process of growth into full self-government was likely 
+to be slower among the Germanic than among the Latin races.  
+In the deeply moving play now to be considered, we have, in 
+the character of the titular king, an extraordinary piece of 
+psychological analysis.  The king, is young, physically 
+delicate, and of highly sensitive organization.  When he 
+comes to the throne he realizes the hollowness and the 
+hypocrisy of the existence that prescription has marked 
+out for him; he realizes also that the very ideal of 
+monarchy, under the conditions of modern European 
+civilization, is a gigantic falsehood. For a time after his 
+accession, he leads a life of pleasure seeking and revelry,
+hoping that he may dull his sense of the sharp contrast that 
+exists between his station and his ideals.  But his conscience 
+will give him no peace, and he turns to deliberate contemplation 
+of the thought, not indeed of abdicating his, false position, 
+but of transforming it into something more consonant with 
+truth and the demands of the age.  He will become a citizen 
+king, and take for wife a daughter of the people; he will do 
+away with the pomp and circumstance of his court, and attempt 
+to lead a simple and natural life, in which the interests of 
+the people shall be paramount in his attention.  But in this 
+attempt he is thwarted at every step.  All the forces of 
+selfishness and prejudice and ignorance combine against him; 
+even the people whom he seeks to benefit are so wedded to their 
+idols that their attitude is one of suspicion rather than 
+of sympathy.  He loves a young woman of strong and noble 
+character, and wins her love in return, but she dies on the 
+very eve of their union.  His oldest and most confidential 
+friend, the wealthiest man in the kingdom, but a republican, 
+is murdered by a radical associate of the _intransigeant_ type, 
+and the king is left utterly bereaved by his twofold loss.  
+This brings us to the closing scene of the drama, in which the 
+king, his nerves strained to the breaking point, confronts the 
+group of officials and others who bring to him the empty phrases 
+of a conventional condolence:--
+
+The King.  Hush!  Have a little respect for the truth that 
+should follow death!  Understand me rightly: I do not mean 
+that any of you would lie.  But the very air about a king 
+is infected.  It was of that-a word or two.  My time is short.  
+But a testament. ...
+
+The Priest.  Testament.
+
+The King.  Neither the Old nor the New!  Greet what is 
+called Christianity here in this land-greet it from me!  
+I have thought much about Christian folk of late.
+
+The Priest.  That rejoices me.
+
+The King.  How your tone cuts me!  Greet it from me, 
+what is called Christianity here in this land.  Nay, 
+do not crane your necks and bend your backs as if the 
+wisdom of the ages were now forthcoming. (_aside_)  Can 
+there be any use in saying something seriously? (_aloud_)  
+You are Christians?
+
+The General.  God forbid the doubt!  Faith is exceedingly 
+useful. ...
+
+The King.  For discipline. (_to the Sheriff_)  And you?
+
+The Sheriff.  From my blessed ancestors I received the faith.
+
+The King.  So _they_ are blessed also.  Why not?'
+
+The Sheriff.  They brought me strictly up to fear 
+God, to honor the king.
+
+The King.  And love your fellowmen.  You are a State 
+individual, sheriff.  And such are Christians nowadays.  
+(_to the Merchant_)  And you?
+
+The Merchant.  I have not been able to go to church very 
+much of late because of my cough.  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 formula, boys, that is the 
+accepted thing to say.  Therefore, you are a Christian 
+community, and it is no fault of mine if such a community 
+will not deal seriously with what concerns Christianity.  
+Greet it from me, and say that it must have an eye to the 
+institution of monarchy.
+
+The Priest.  Christianity has nothing to do with such 
+matters.  It searches _the inner man_.
+
+The King.  That 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 know what 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 monarchy.  It should hardly any longer, it 
+seems to me, let the monarchy play the part of the 
+seductive wanton -who turns the thoughts of all citizens 
+to war--which is much against the message of Christianity
+--and to class distinctions, to luxury, to show and vanity.  
+The monarchy is now so great a lie that it compels the 
+most upright man to share in its falsehood."
+
+The conversation that follows is in a vein of bitterness on 
+the one side, and of obtuse smugness on the other; the tragic 
+irony of the action grows deeper and deeper, until in the end 
+the king, completely disheartened and despairing, goes into 
+an adjoining room, and dies by his own hand, to the 
+consternation of the men from whom he has just parted.  They 
+give 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 may well be imagined that "The King" made a stir in 
+literary and social circles, and quite noticeably fluttered the 
+dovecotes of conventionality and conservatism.  Such plain 
+speaking and such deadly earnestness of conviction were indeed 
+far removed from the idyllic simplicity of the peasant tales 
+and from the poetical reconstructions of the legendary past.  
+Eight years later, Björnson prefaced a new edition of this 
+work with a series of reflections upon "Intellectual Freedom" 
+that constitute one of the most vigorous and remarkable examples 
+of his serious prose. The central ideas of his political faith 
+are embodied in the following sentences from this preface:--
+
+"Intellectual Freedom. Why is not attention called over and 
+over again to the fact that for the great peoples, who have so 
+many compensating interests, the free commerce of ideas is one 
+condition of life among many others; while for us, the small 
+peoples, it is absolutely indispensable.  A people numerically 
+large may attain to ways of thought 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 my chief aim to 
+enlarge the bounds of free thought.  I have later made the 
+same attempt in matters of religion and morals.  When my 
+opponents seek to sum up my character in a few words, they 
+are apt to say: 'He attacks the throne and the altar.'  It 
+seems to me that I have served the freedom of the spirit, 
+and in the interests of that cause I now beg 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 the meaning of Christianity.  It is not an institution, 
+still less a book, and least of all it is a house or a seminary.  
+It is the godly life according to the precepts and example of 
+Jesus.  There may be men who think they are attacking 
+Christianity when they investigate the historical origin or 
+the morality of some dogma; I do not think so.  Honest 
+investigation 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-minded people who will be ennobled by it, and 
+some made great.  I honor all the noble.  I have friends among 
+the Christians, whom I love, and never for a moment have I 
+thought of attacking 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 simultaneously; 
+it fixes terms, different for the different kingdoms, and far 
+removed for the kingdoms 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 may not greatly matter, 
+so rich are the possibilities of other work taking its place; 
+but in a small society it may be equivalent to destroying the 
+sight of its only eye."
+
+In the clean-cut phrases and moral earnestness of this _apologia 
+pro vita sua_, which deserves to be reproduced at greater length, 
+we have the modern Björnson, no longer poet alone, but poet and 
+prophet at once, the champion of sincere thinking and worthy 
+living, the Sigurd Slembe of our own day, happier than his 
+prototype in the consciousness that the ambition to serve his 
+people has not been; altogether thwarted, and that his 
+beneficent activity is not made sterile even by the bitterest 
+opposition.
+
+Only a rapid glance may be taken at the books of the five 
+years following upon the publication of "The King."  The 
+story of "Magnhild," planned several years earlier, represents 
+Björnson's return to fiction after a long dramatic interlude.  
+There are still peasants in this story, but they are different 
+from the figures of the early tales, and the atmosphere of the 
+work is modern.  It turns upon the question of the mutual duties 
+of husband and wife, when love no longer 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 come within the range of his observation during
+his stay abroad.  Its interest does not lie in any particular 
+problem, but rather in the delineation of the titular figure, 
+a strong and impetuous person whose character suggests 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 comparison with 
+being invisible, that to be a human being is nothing in comparison 
+with being dead, that is not the way to teach them to view life 
+properly, or to love life, to gain courage, 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 with women 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 from the book in its ending) 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 man to be as unfit for honorable marriage as the unchaste 
+woman.  Upon the theme thus presented a long 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 Björnson has so squarely 
+and uncompromisingly planted his feet.  The other remaining work 
+of this five-year period is the play called "The New System."  The 
+new system in question is a system of railway management, and it is 
+a wasteful one.  But the young engineer who demonstrates this fact 
+has a hard time in opening 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 Björnson's prolific pen.  Of these by far 
+the most important are the two that are linked by the common 
+title, "Beyond the Strength."  The translation of this title is 
+hopelessly inadequate, because the original word means much more 
+than strength; it means talent, faculty, capability, the sum total 
+of a man's endowment for some particular purpose.  The two pieces 
+bearing this name are quite different in theme, but certain 
+characters appear in both, and both express the same thought,
+--the thought that it is vain for men to strive after the 
+unattainable, for in so doing they lose sight of the actual 
+possibilities of human life; the thought that much of the best 
+human energy goes 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 superhuman ideal is religious, 
+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 reformer who is deluded to believe that 
+one resounding 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 masses a new heaven upon earth.  No 
+deeper tragedies have been conceived by Björnson 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 them both,--the tragedy of his son Elias, who dies like Samson 
+with his foes for an equally impossible faith, and by the very 
+violence of his fanaticism removes the goal of socialist endeavor 
+farther than ever into the dim future.  Björnson has written 
+nothing more profoundly moving than these plays, with their 
+twofold treatment of essentially the same theme, nor has he 
+written anything which offers a clearer revelation of his own 
+rich personality, with its unfailing poetic vision, its deep 
+tenderness, and its boundless love for all humankind. The play, 
+"Geography and Love," which came between the two just described, 
+is an amusing piece, in the vein of light and graceful comedy, 
+which satirizes the man with a hobby, showing how he unconsciously 
+comes to neglect his wife and family through 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 emphasize. "Paul Lange and Tora 
+Parsberg," the next play, deals with the passions engendered 
+by political controversy, and made much unpleasant stir in 
+Norwegian 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 same theme, which is that of the malign 
+influence exerted by an evil-minded and reckless woman upon the 
+lives of others. From a different point of view, we may say that 
+the subject of these plays is the consecration of the home.  
+This has always been a favorite theme with Björnson, and he has 
+no clearer title to our gratitude than that which he has earned 
+by his unfailing insistence upon the sanctity of family life, 
+its mutual confidences, and its common joys.  Completing the 
+list, we have "Daglannet," another domestic drama of simple 
+structure, and "When the New Wine Blooms," a study of modernity 
+as exemplified in the young woman of to-day, of the estrangement 
+that too often creeps into married life, and of the stirrings 
+that prompt men of middle age to seek to renew the joys of youth.
+
+During the years that have passed since the publication of 
+"Dust," Björnson has produced four volumes of fiction,--his two 
+great 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 uncompromising 
+logic 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 Björnson would have found the 
+task a hopeless one.  That he should have succeeded even in 
+making a fairly readable book out of this material would have 
+been remarkable, and it is a pronounced artistic triumph that 
+the book should prove of such absorbing interest.  For 
+absorbingly interesting it is, to any reader who is willing 
+that a novel should provide something 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 wallowed in almost every form of brutality and vice.  
+The four preceding generations of the race are depicted for us 
+in a series of brief but masterly characterizations, in which 
+every stroke tells, and we witness the gradual weakening of the 
+family stock.  But with the generation just preceding the main 
+action of the novel, there has been introduced a vigorous strain 
+of peasant blood, and the process of regeneration has begun.  
+It is this process that goes on before our eyes.  It does not 
+become a completed process, but the prospect is bright for the 
+future, and the flags that fly over town and harbor in the closing 
+chapter have a symbolical significance, for they announce a victory 
+of spirit over sense, not only in the cases of certain among the 
+individual participants in the action, but also in the case of 
+the whole community to which they belong.  So much for the book 
+as a study in heredity.  As an educational tract, it has the 
+conspicuous virtue of remaining in close touch with life while 
+embodying the spirit of modern scientific pedagogy.  The hero 
+of the book,--the last descendant of a race struggling for 
+moral and physical rehabilitation,--throws himself into the 
+work of education with an energy 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 
+system of training 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 microcosm of the world outside, or rather 
+of what that world ought to be.  Björnson's interest in 
+education has been life-long; for many years it had gone 
+astray in a sort of Grundtvigian fog, but at the time when 
+this book came to be written, it had worked its way out into 
+the clear light 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 "Emile," 
+and take renewed heart from its inspiring message.
+
+"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 sympathy and depth of tragic pathos, its plea for 
+the sacredness of human life, and its protest against the 
+religious and social prejudice by which life is so often 
+misshapen, this book is an epitome of all the ideas and 
+feelings that have gone to the making 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 relationship from which issue 
+some of the deepest of social questions, and which 
+enforces in the most appealing terms the fundamental 
+teaching of 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 sympathies; the one alert 
+of mind, imaginative, open to every intellectual influence, 
+also impetuous and hot-blooded; the other shy and 
+intellectually stolid, but good to the very core, and moved 
+by the strongest of altruistic impulses.  In accordance with 
+their respective characters, the first of these youths becomes 
+a physician, and the other a clergyman.  Then we have the 
+sister of the physician, who becomes the wife of the 
+clergyman, a noble, proud, self-centred nature, finely 
+strung to the inmost fibre of her being.  Then we have a 
+woman of the other sort, clinging, abnormally sensitive, a 
+child when the years of childhood are over, and made the 
+victim of a shocking child-marriage to a crippled old man.  
+She it is whom the physician loves, and persuades to a 
+legal dissolution of her immoral union.  After some years, 
+he makes her his wife, and their happiness would be complete 
+were it not for the social and religious prejudice aroused.  
+The clergyman, whom years of service in the state church 
+have hardened into bigotry, is officially, as it were, 
+compelled to condemn the friend of his boyhood, and even the 
+sister, for a time grown untrue to her own generous nature, 
+shares in the estrangement.  In vain does the physician seek 
+to shelter his wife from the chill of her environment.  She 
+droops, pines away, and finally dies, gracious, lovable, and 
+even forgiving to the last.  Then the death angel comes close 
+to the clergyman and his wife, hovering over their only child, 
+and at last the barrier of formalism and prejudice and 
+religious bigotry is swept away from their minds.  Their 
+natural sympathies, long repressed, resume full sway, and they 
+realize how deeply they, have sinned toward the dead woman.  
+The sister seeks a reconciliation with her brother, but he 
+repulses her, and gives her his wife's private diary to read.  
+In this _journal intime_ she finds the full revelation of the 
+gentle spirit that has been done to death, and she feels that 
+the very salvation of her life and soul depend upon winning her 
+brother's forgiveness.  The closing chapter, in which the final 
+reconciliation occurs, is one of the most wonderful in all 
+fiction; its pathos is of the deepest and the most moving, and 
+he must be callous of soul, indeed, who can read it with dry eyes.
+
+If we were to search the whole of Björnson's writings for the 
+single passage which should most completely typify his message 
+to his fellowmen,--not Norwegians alone, but all mankind,--the 
+choice would have to rest upon the words spoken from the pulpit 
+by the clergyman of this novel, on the Sunday following the 
+certainty of his child's recovery.
+
+"To-day a man spoke from the pulpit of the church about what he 
+had learned.
+"Namely, about what first concerns us all.
+"One forgets it in his strenuous endeavor, a second in his zeal 
+for conflict, a third in his backward vision, a fourth in the 
+conceit of his own wisdom, a fifth in his daily routine, and we 
+have all learned it more or less ill.  For should I ask you who 
+hear me now, you would all reply thoughtlessly, and just because 
+I ask you from this place, 'Faith is first.'
+"No, in very truth, it is not.  Watch over your child, as it 
+struggles for breath on the outermost verge of life, or see 
+your wife follow the child to that outermost verge, beside 
+herself for anxiety and sleeplessness,--then love will teach 
+you that _life comes first_.  And never from this day on will 
+I seek God or God's will in any form of words, in any sacrament, 
+or in any book or any place, as if He were first and foremost to 
+be found there; no, life is first and foremost--life as we win 
+it from the depths of despair, in the victory of the light, in 
+the grace of self-devotion, in our intercourse with living 
+human kind.  God's supreme word to us is life, our highest 
+worship of Him is love for the living.  This lesson, self-evident 
+as it is, was needed by me more than by most others.  This it 
+is that in various ways and upon many grounds I have hitherto 
+rejected,--and of late most of all.  But never more shall 
+words be the highest for me, nor symbols, but the eternal 
+revelation of life.  Never more will I freeze fast in doctrine, 
+but let the warmth of life melt my will.  Never will I condemn 
+men by the dogmas of old time justice, unless they fit with our 
+own time's gospel of love.  Never, for God's sake!  And this 
+because I believe in Him, the God of Life, and His never 
+ending revelation in life itself."
+
+Here is a gospel, indeed, one that needs no church for its 
+promulgation, and no ceremonial for the enhancement of its 
+impressiveness.  It is a gospel, moreover, that is based upon no 
+foundation of precarious logic, but finds its premises in the 
+healthy instincts of the natural man.  It is no small thing to 
+have thus found the way, and to have helped others likewise to 
+find the way, out of the mists of superstition, through the 
+valleys of doubt and despondency, athwart the thickets of 
+prejudice and bigotry with all their furtive foemen, up to 
+these sunlit heights of serenity.
+
+"Mary" is less explicit in its teaching than the two great 
+novels just summarized, but what it misses in didacticism it 
+more than gains in art. The radiant creature who gives her 
+name to the book is one of Björnson's most exquisite figures.  
+She is the very embodiment of youthful womanhood, filled with 
+the joy of life, and bringing sunshine wherever she goes.  Yet 
+this temperament leads to her undoing, or what would be the 
+undoing of any woman less splendid in character.  But the 
+strength that impels her to the misstep that comes so near to 
+having tragic consequences is also the strength that saves her 
+when chastened by suffering.  In her the author "gives us the 
+common stuff of life," says an English critic, "gives it us 
+simple and direct.  There is nothing here of Ibsen's pathology.  
+We are in the sun.  Her most hideous blunder cannot undo a 
+woman's soul.  Björnson knows that the deed is nothing at all.  
+It is the soul behind the deed that he sees.  Not everything 
+that cometh out of a man defileth a man.  At all events, so it 
+is here: triumph and joy built upon an act that--as the 
+Philistines would say--has defiled forever."  As a triumph of 
+sheer creation, this figure is hardly overmatched anywhere in 
+the author's portrait gallery of women.
+
+If Björnson's essential teaching may be found in a single 
+page, as has above been suggested, his personality evades all 
+such summarizing.  In the present essay, he has been considered 
+as a writer merely,--poet, dramatist, novelist,--but the man 
+is vastly more than that.  His other activities have been 
+hinted at, indeed, but nothing adequate has been said about 
+them.  The director of three theatres, the editor of three 
+newspapers and the contributor to many others, the promoter 
+of schools and patriotic organizations, the participant in 
+many political campaigns, the lay preacher of private and 
+public morals, the chosen orator of his nation for all great 
+occasions,--these are some of the characters in which we must 
+view him to form anything like a complete conception of his 
+many-sided individuality.  Take the matter of oratory alone, 
+and it is perhaps true that he has influenced as many people 
+by the living word as he has by the printed page.  He has 
+addressed hundreds of audiences in the three Scandinavian 
+countries and in Finland, he has spoken to more than twenty 
+thousand at a time, and his winged speech has gone straight 
+home to his hearers.  All who ever heard him will agree that 
+his oratory was of the most persuasive and vital impressiveness.  
+Jaeger attempts to describe it in the following words:--
+
+"It is eloquence of a very distinctive type; its most 
+characteristic quality is its wealth of color; it finds 
+expression for every mood, from the lightest to the most serious, 
+from the most vigorous to the most delicate and tender.  Now 
+his words ring like the voice of doom, filled with thunder and 
+lightning, now they become soft and persuasive with smiling mien.  
+With a single cadence, or a play of the facial muscles, or a 
+slight gesture, he can portray a person, a situation, or an 
+object, so that it appears living in the sight of his hearers.  
+And what the word alone cannot do, is accomplished in the most 
+brilliant manner by the virtuosity of his delivery.  He does 
+not speak his words, he presents them; they take bodily form 
+and seem alive."
+
+In his more intimate relationships, on the other hand, in 
+face to face conversation or in the home circle, the man 
+takes on a quite different aspect; the prophet has become 
+the friend, the impassioned preacher has become the genial 
+story teller, and shares the gladsome or mirthful mood of 
+the hour.  Such a personality as this may be analyzed; it 
+defies any concise synthesis.  One resorts to figures of 
+speech, and they were abundantly resorted to by those who 
+paid him the tribute of their admiration and love upon the 
+occasion of his seventieth anniversary.  Let us take an 
+instance at random from one of these tributes.
+
+"The cataract that roars down to the free foaming sea.  
+The mountain with its snowclad peaks towering up into the 
+immensity of the starry heavens.  The rustling of the 
+woodland above the blossom-spangled and smiling meadows, 
+the steep uptowering, the widely growing, and the joyously 
+smiling.  At once the soft melody that stirs the heart and 
+the strong wind that sweeps over the Northern lands."
+
+This concourse of metaphors gives some slight idea of the 
+way in which Björnson's personality affected those who came 
+into contact with it.  The description may be supplemented 
+by a few bits of anecdote and reminiscence.  The composer 
+Grieg contributes the following incident of the old days 
+in Norway:--
+
+"It was Christmas eve of 1868 at the Björnsons in Christiania.  
+They lived then in the Rosenkrantzgade.  My wife and I were, 
+as far as I can remember, the only guests.  The children were 
+very boisterous in their glee.  In the middle of the floor 
+an immense Christmas tree was enthroned and brightly lighted.  
+All the servant-folk came in, and Björnson spoke, beautifully and 
+warmly, as he well knows how to do.  'Now you shall play a hymn, 
+Grieg,' he said, and although I did not quite like the notion 
+of doing organist's work, I naturally complied without a murmur.  
+It was one of Grundtvig's hymns in 32--thirty-two verses.  I 
+resigned myself to my fate with stoicism.  At the beginning I 
+kept myself awake, but the endless repetitions had a soporific 
+effect.  Little by little I became as stupid as a medium.  When 
+we had at last got through with all the verses, Björnson said: 
+'Isn't that fine.  Now I will read it for you!'  And so we got 
+all thirty-two verses once more.  I was completely overawed."
+
+When the poet purchased his country estate which was his home 
+from the late seventies to the end of his life, his coming was 
+looked forward to with mingled feelings by the good country folk 
+of the neighborhood.  Kristofer Janson thus tells the story of 
+his arrival:
+
+"His coming was anticipated with a certain anxiety and 
+apprehension, for was he not a 'horrid radical'?  The dean in 
+particular thought that he might be a menace to the safe 
+spiritual slumber of the village.  As the dean one day was 
+driving through the village in his carriole, just where the 
+road turns sharply by the bridge below Aulestad, he met another 
+carriole which was rapidly driving that way and in it a man who, 
+without respect for the clerical vehicle, shouted with all the 
+strength of his lungs: 'Half the road!'  The dean turned aside, 
+saying with a sigh: 'Has Björnson come to the Gausdal at last?'
+"It was indeed so, and he showed his colors at the start.  
+The same dean and Björnson became the best of friends afterwards, 
+and found much sport in interchanging genial jests whenever they met."
+
+Frits Thaulow, the painter, thus wrote to Björnson reminding him 
+of a festive gathering of students:
+
+"The manager came in and announced with a loud voice that it was 
+past twelve.  Then you sprang up.
+"'Bring champagne!  Now I will speak of what comes after twelve 
+o'clock! of all that lies beyond the respectable hour for 
+retiring!  For the hour when fancy awakens and fills us with 
+longings for the world of wonderland; then the painter sees only 
+the dim outline in the moonlight, then the musician hears the 
+silence, then the poet after his thoughtful day feels sprouting 
+the first shoots of the next.  After twelve freedom begins.  The 
+day's tumult is stilled, and the voice within becomes audible.'
+"Thus you spoke, and 'after twelve' became a watchword with us.
+"Many a spark has been kindled in your soul by the quiet evening 
+time.  But later in life, when you become a chieftain in the 
+battle, broad daylight also made its demands upon you.  Like 
+the sun you shone upon us and made the best that was in us 
+to grow, but I shall always keep a deep artistic affection for 
+what comes 'after twelve.'"
+
+Henrik Cavling tells the following story of the poet in Paris:
+
+"It was one of Björnson's peculiarities to go out as a rule 
+without any money in his pocket.  He neither owned a purse 
+nor knew the French coins.  His personal expenditures were 
+restricted to the books he bought, and now and then a theatre 
+ticket.  One day he carne excitedly into the sitting-room, 
+and asked:
+"'Who took my five franc piece?'  It was a five franc piece 
+that he had got somewhere or other and had stuck in his pocket 
+to buy a theatre ticket with.  It turned out that the maid had 
+found it and given it to Fru Björnson.  For it seemed quite 
+unthinkable to her that the master should have any money to 
+take out with him.
+"This complete indifference of Björnson to small matters 
+sometimes proved annoying.  In this connection I may tell 
+of a little trip he once took with Jonas Lie.
+"The two poets, who did not live far apart, had long counted 
+with pleasure upon a trip to Père Lachaise, where they wished 
+to visit Alfred de Musset's grave.  At last the day came, 
+and with big soft hats on their heads, and engaged earnestly 
+in conversation, they drove away through Paris.
+"When they came to Père Lachaise, and wanted to enter the 
+cemetery, the driver stopped them and asked for his pay.  
+Then it appeared that neither had any money, which they 
+smilingly explained, and asked him in bad French to wait 
+and drive them home again.  But the two gentlemen with the big 
+soft hats had not inspired the driver with any marked degree 
+of confidence.  He made a scene, and attracted a great crowd 
+of the boys, loafers, and well-dressed Frenchmen who always 
+collect on critical occasions.  The end of the affair was that 
+the poets had to get into their cab again and drive all the long 
+way back without having had a glimpse of the grave.  When they 
+reached Lie's lodgings, Lie went in to get some money, while 
+Björnson sat in the cab as a hostage.  Nevertheless, both poets 
+maintained that they had had a pleasant expedition.  A Norwegian 
+question, which had accidentally come up between them, had 
+made them forget all about Alfred de Musset."
+
+Finally, a story may be given that is told by Björnson himself.
+
+"I had a pair of old boots that I wanted to give to a beggar.  
+But just as I was going to give them to him, I began to wonder 
+whether Karoline had not some use for them, since she usually 
+gave such things to beggars.  So I took the boots in my hand, 
+and went downstairs to ask her, but on the way I got a little 
+worked up because I did not quite dare to give them to the beggar 
+myself.  And the further I went down the steps, the more wrathful 
+I got, until I stood over her.  And then I was so angry that I had 
+to bluster at her as if she had done me a grievous wrong.  But 
+she could not understand a word of what I said, and looked at me 
+with such amazement, that I could not keep from bursting into laughter."
+
+From his early years, Björnson kept in touch with the modern 
+intellectual movement by mingling with the people of other lands 
+than his own.  Besides his visits to Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, 
+he made many lengthy sojourns in the chief continental centres 
+of civilization, in Munich, Rome, and Paris.  The longest of 
+his foreign journeys was that which brought him to the United 
+States in the winter of 1880-81, for the purpose of addressing 
+his fellow countrymen in the Northwest.  His home for the last 
+thirty years and more has been his estate of Aulestad in the 
+Gausdal, a region of Southern Norway.  Here he has been a 
+model farmer, and here, surrounded by his family,--wife, 
+children, and grandchildren,--his patriarchal presence has 
+given dignity to the household, and united its members in a 
+common bond of love.  Hither have come streams of guests, 
+friends old and new, to enjoy his generous hospitality.  There 
+has been provision for all, both bed and board, and the heartiest 
+of welcomes from the host.  And the stranger from abroad has 
+been greeted, as like as not, by the sight of his own country's 
+flag streaming from a staff before the house, and foreshadowing 
+the personal greeting that awaited him upon the threshold.
+
+Björnson died in Paris (where he had been spending the 
+winter, as was his custom for many years past), April 26, 1910.  
+He had been ill for several months, and only an extraordinarily 
+robust constitution enabled him to make a partial recovery from 
+the crisis of the preceding February, when his death had been 
+hourly expected.  The news of his death occasioned demonstrations 
+of grief not only in his own country, but also throughout the 
+civilized world.  Every honor that a nation can bestow upon 
+its illustrious dead was decreed him by King and Storthing; 
+a warship was despatched to bear his remains to Christiania, 
+and the pomp and circumstance of a state funeral acclaimed the 
+sense of the nation's loss.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF WORKS.
+
+SYNNÖVE SOLBAKKEN.  Fortaelling, 1857 
+MELLEM SLAGENE.  Drama, 1858
+ARNE.  Fortaelling, 1858
+HALTE-HULDA.  Drama, 1858
+EN GLAD GUT.  Fortaelling, 1860
+KONG SVERRE.  1861
+SIGURD SLEMBE.  1862
+MARIA STUART I SKOTLAND.  Skuespil, 1864
+DE NYGIFTE.  Komedie, 1865
+FISKERJENTEN.  Fortaelling, 1868
+DIGTE OG SANGE.  1870
+ARNLJOT GELLINE.  1870
+SIGURD JORSALFAR.  Skuespil, 1872
+FORTAELLINGER I-II,  1872
+BRUDE-SLAATTEN.  Fortaelling, 1873
+REDAKTÖREN.  Skuespil, 1874
+EN FALLIT.  Skuespil, 1874
+KONGEN.  1877
+MAGNHILD.  Fortaelling, 1877
+KAPTEJN MANSANA.  Fortaelling fra Italien, 1879
+LEONARDA.  Skuespil, 1879
+DET NY SYSTEM.  Skuespil, 1879
+EN HANDSKE.  Skuespil, 1883
+OVER AEVNE.  Förste Stykke, 1883
+DET FLAGER I BYEN OG PAA HAVNEN,  1884
+GEOGRAFI OG KJAERLIGHED.  1885
+PAA GUDS VEJE.  1889
+NYE FORTAELLINGER.  1894
+LYSET.  En Universitetskantate, 1895
+OVER AEVNE.  Andet Stykke, 1895
+PAUL LANGE OG TORA PARSBERG.  1898
+LABOREMUS.  1901
+TO FORTAELLINGER.  1901
+PAA STORHOVE.  Drama, 1904
+DAGLANNET.  1904
+TO TALER.  1906.
+MARY.  Fortaelling, 1906
+VORT SPROG.  1907
+NAAR DEN NY VIN BLOMSTRER.  1909
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Björnstjerne Björnson
+by William Morton Payne
+******This file should be named 8bjrn10.txt or 8bjrn10.zip******
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+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, 8bjrn11.txt
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