Essays on Scandinavian Literature Part 10

This was certainly an attractive doctrine, and it did not fail to command public approval. But it suffers from exactly the same limitation as Tegner's gospel of joy. It is only relatively (I might almost say temperamentally) true; and the opposite might be maintained with equal force, and in fact was so maintained by Atterbom, who declared (in the "Poetical Calendar for 1821") that there can be no such a conception as light without darkness. Darkness, he says, is the condition of all color and form. You distinguish the light and all things in it only by the contrasting effect of shadow--all of which, I fancy, Tegner would not have denied. More to the point would have been the query whether in poetry darkness and indistinctness are synonymous terms. It is only the most commonplace truths which can be made intelligible to all. Much of the best and highest thinking of humanity lies above the plane of the ordinary untrained intellect. What is light to me may be twilight or darkness to you. What to you is clear as the daylight, may to me be as densely impenetrable as the Cimmerian night. Christ himself recognized this fact when he said to his disciples: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now."

For all that, Tegner's doctrine was in its effect wholesome. It discouraged the writers of the Romantic School, who under the guise of profundity gave publicity to much immature and confused thinking. He was no doubt right in saying that "a poetry which commences with whooping-cough is likely to end in consumption." His frequently repeated maxim, that poetry is nothing but the health of life, "occasioned by an abounding intellectual vigor, a joyous leap over the barriers of everyday life," applied, however, to his own poetry only so long as his vigor was unimpaired. His terrible poem "Hypochondria" (_Mjeltsjukan_) is to me no less poetical because it is not "a petrified drop of heavenly light," and mocks all the cheerful theories of its author's prime.

Tegner had yet a few years in which to rejoice in this "health of life"

in which he found the inspiration for his song; and these last years were the most fruitful in his entire career. He was about forty years of age when, in 1820, he began to compose the first cantos of "Frithjof's Saga." He was living in modest comfort, happy in his marital relation, and surrounded by a family of children to whom he was a most affectionate father. He could romp and play with his curly-headed boys and girls without any loss of dignity; and they loved nothing better than to invade his study. Next to them in his regard was a black-nosed pug, named Atis, who invariably accompanied him to his lectures and remained sitting at his feet listening with intelligent gravity to his explanations of the Greek poets. If by chance his master, in his zeal for his own poetry, forgot the lecture-hour, Atis would respectfully pull him by the tails of his coat. No man at the University of Lund was more generally beloved than Tegner, and all honors which the University could bestow had been offered to him. The office of Rector Magnificus he had, however, persisted in declining.

There was at that time a general revival of interest in the so-called saga-age. The Danish poet, Oehlenschlager, had published his old-Norse cycle of poems, "Helge," which aroused a sympathetic reverberation in Tegner's mind. The idea took possession of him that here was a theme which lay well within the range of his own voice, and full of alluring possibilities. Accordingly he chose the ancient "Saga of Frithjof the Bold," and resolved to embody in it all the characteristic features of the old heroic life. And what Oehlenschlager had attempted to do, and partly succeeded in doing, he accomplished with a completeness of success which was a surprise to himself. No sooner had "Iduna," the organ of the Gothic League, published the first nine cantos (1821), than all Sweden resounded with enthusiastic applause; and even from beyond the boundaries of the fatherland came voices of praise. When the completed poem appeared in book-form, it was translated into all civilized languages, and everywhere, in spite of the translators'

shortcomings, it was hailed with delight. Not only England, France, and Germany hastened to appropriate it, but even in Spain, Greece, and Russia tears were shed over "Ingeborg's Lament," and tender bosoms palpitated with sympathy for Frithjof's sorrows. I know a dozen English translations of "Frithjof's Saga" (a friend of mine, who is a bibliophile, a.s.sures me that the exact number is at present twenty-one), and of German versions the number is not very much less. A Norwegian (or rather Danish) rendering was presented to me on my twelfth birthday; and the sentiment which then most forcibly appealed to me was, as I vividly remember, embodied in the following verse, in which BjOrn chides his friend's grief for the loss of his beloved:

"Frithjof, 'tis time for your folly's abating; Sigh and lament for a woman's loss: Earth is, alas, too full of such dross; One may be lost, still a thousand are waiting.

Say but the word, of such goods I will bring Quickly a cargo--the Southland can spare them, Bed as the rose, mild as lambs in the spring; Then we'll cast lots, or as brothers we'll share them."[37]

[37] Holcomb's translation.

It was not the unconscious humor of this proposition which struck me the most in those days; but it was the bluff frankness of the gruff old viking which then seemed truly admirable. In fact, I am not sure but that BjOrn appeared to me a more sympathetic figure than Frithjof. But a little later it dawned upon me that his utter lack of chivalry was rather revolting; and I began to marvel at my former admiration. At fourteen the following verse (which at twelve was charmingly heroic) caused me to revise my opinion of BjOrn:

"Good! to King Ring it shall be my glad duty Something to teach of a wronged viking's power; Fire we his palace at midnight's still hour, Scorch the old graybeard and bear off the beauty."

For all that, BjOrn with his rough speech and hearty delight in fighting and drinking, is far truer to the spirit of the old heroic age than is Frithjof with his sentimentality and lovesick reveries. This verse, for instance, is replete with the briny breath of the northern main. The north wind blows through it:

"Good is the sea, your complaining you squander, Freedom and joy on the sea flourish best.

He never knoweth effeminate rest Who on the billows delighteth to wander.

When I am old, to the green-growing land I, too, will cling, with the gra.s.s for my pillow.

Now I will drink and will fight with free hand, Now I'll enjoy my own sorrow-free billow."

I might continue in the autobiographical vein; but must forbear. For there is a period in the life of every young Norseman when, untroubled by its anachronism, he glories in Frithjof's melancholy mooning, his praise of Ingeborg, his misanthropy, and all the manifold moods of love so enchantingly expressed in Tegner's melodious verse.

When a book acquires this significance as an expression of the typical experience in the lives of thousands, the critical muse can but join in the general chorus, and find profound reasons for the universal praise.

In the case of "Frithjof's Saga" this is not a difficult matter. From beginning to end the poem has a lyrical intensity which sets the mind vibrating with a responsive emotion. It is not a coldly impersonal epic, recounting remote heroic events; but there is a deeply personal note in it, which has that nameless moving quality--_la note emue_, as the French call it--which brings the tear to your eye, and sends a delicious breeze through your nerves. All that, to be sure, or nearly all of it, evaporates in translation; for no more than you can transfer the exquisite dewy intactness of the lily to canvas can you transfer the rapturous melody of n.o.ble verse into an alien tongue. The subtlest harmonies--those upon which the thrill depends--are invariably lost. If Longfellow, instead of giving us two cantos, had translated the whole poem, we should, at least, have possessed an English version which would have afforded us some conception of the charm of the renowned original.

The objections to "Frithjof's Saga" which have been urged by numerous critics may all be admitted as more or less valid; yet something remains which will account for its astounding popularity. Tegner at the time when he was singing of Frithjof's and Ingeborg's love was himself suffering from a consuming but unrequited pa.s.sion. The strong, warm pulse of life which throbs in Frithjof's wrath, defiance, and scorn, and in his deep and manly tenderness is the poet's own. It marks but the rhythm of his own tumultuous heart-beat. It is altogether an unhappy chapter, which his biographer has vainly striven to suppress. There was among his acquaintance in Lund a certain Mrs. Palm, toward whom he felt drawn with an irresistible half-demonic force. Beyond this fact we know nothing of the lady, except that she was handsome, cultivated, and well-connected. Whatever approaches Tegner may have made toward her (and it is not known of what nature they were) she appears to have repelled; and the poet, though fighting desperately against his growing infatuation, wore out his splendid vitality in the conflict of emotions which the unhappy relation occasioned. He became a prey to the most terrible melancholy, and a misanthropy of the deepest hue spread its sombre veil over the world which hitherto had given to him its brightest smile. The dread of insanity became an _idee fixe_ with him; and the pathetic cry, "G.o.d preserve my reason," rings again and again through his private correspondence. One of his brothers was insane; and he fancied that there must be a taint in his blood which menaced him with the same tragic doom.

Happily, he could as yet conjure the storm. It hung threateningly on the horizon of his mind, with mutterings of thunder and stray flashes of lightning. But his poetic bark still sped along with full sails, bravely breasting the waves.

"Und wenn der Mensch in seiner Qual verstummt Gab mir ein Gott zu sagen was ich leide,"

says Goethe. And this divine gift of saying, or, better still, of singing, what he suffered made Tegner, during this period, master of his sufferings. They did not overwhelm him and ruin his usefulness. On the contrary, these were the most active and fruitful years of his life. But it was the deep agitation which possessed him--it was the suppressed tumult of his strong soul which vibrated through "Frithjof" and which imparted to it that vital quality, that moving ring which arouses the deeper feelings in the human heart.

Archaeologically the poem was not correct, and was not meant to be.

Tegner distinctly disclaimed the intention of producing a historically accurate picture of the saga age; and all criticism censuring the modernness of Frithjofs and Ingeborg's sentiments is, therefore, according to his idea, wide of the mark. I do not quite agree with his point of view, but will state his argument. For the historical Frithjof, as he is represented in the ancient Norse saga bearing his name, Tegner cared but little. What he wished to do was to give a poetic presentation of the old heroic life, and he chose Frithjof as his representative of this age because he united in himself so many of its characteristics:

"In the saga much occurs which is very grand and heroic, and hence valid for all times, which both might and ought to be retained; but, on the other hand, a great deal occurs which is rough, savage, barbarous; and this had either to be entirely eliminated, or at least materially softened. Up to a certain degree it therefore became necessary to modernize; but the difficulty was to find the golden mean. On the one hand, the poem ought not to offend too much our more refined manners and gentler modes of thought; but, on the other hand, the natural quality, the freshness, the truth to nature ought not to be sacrificed."

Tegner fancies he has solved this problem by retaining in Frithjof the fundamental traits of all heroism, viz., n.o.bility, magnanimity, courage; but at the same time nationalizing them by giving them a distinctly Scandinavian tinge. And this he has done by making his hero almost wantonly defiant, stubborn, pugnacious. As Ingeborg, lamenting his fierce pugnacity, and yet glorying in it, says:

"How glad, how stubborn, and how full of hope!

The point he setteth of his trusty sword Against the breast of Fate and crieth, Thou must yield."

"Another peculiarity of the Norseman's character is a certain tendency to sadness and melancholy which is habitual with all deeper natures. An elegiac tone pervades all our old national melodies, and, generally speaking, all that is of significance in our history; for it rises from the very bottom of the nation's heart. There is a certain joyousness (commonly attributed to the French) which in the last instance is only levity. But the joyousness of the North is fundamentally serious; for which reason I have in Frithjof endeavored to give a hint of this brooding melancholy in his repentance of the unintentional burning of the temple, his brooding fear of Balder,

"Who sits in the sky, and the thoughts he sends down, Which forever are clouding my mind."

It will be seen from this that Tegner was fully conscious of what he was doing. He civilized Frithjof, because he was addressing a civilized audience which would have taken little interest in the rude viking of the eighth century, if he had been presented to them in all his savage unrestraint. He did exactly what Tennyson did, when he made King Arthur the model of a modern English gentleman and (by implication) a Protestant a thousand years before Protestantism existed. Ingeborg, too, had to be a trifle modified and disembarra.s.sed of a few somewhat too naturalistic traits with which the saga endows her, before she became the lovely type that she is of the faithful, loving, long-suffering, womanhood of the North, with trustful blue eyes, golden hair, and a heart full of sweet and beautiful sentiment. It was because Oehlenschlager had neglected to make sufficient concessions to modern demands that his "Helge" (though in some respects a greater poem than "Frithjof's Saga") never crossed the boundary of Scandinavia, and even there made no deep impression upon the general public.

Though the story of "Frithjof" is familiar to most readers, I may be pardoned for presenting a brief _resume_. The general plot, in Tegner's version, coincides in its main outlines with that of the saga. Frithjof, the son of the free yeoman Thorstein Vikingson, is fostered in the house of the peasant Hilding, with Ingeborg, the daughter of King Bele of Sogn. The King and the yeoman have been life-long friends, and each has a most cordial regard for the other.

"By sword upheld, King Bele in King's-hall stood, Beside him Thorstein Vikingson, that yeoman good, His battle-friend with almost a century h.o.a.ry, And deep-marked like a rune-stone with scars of glory."

The yeoman's son and the king's daughter, thrown into daily companionship in their foster-father's hall, love each other; and Frithjof, after the death of their fathers, goes to Ingeborg's brothers, Helge and Halfdan, and asks her hand in marriage. His suit is scornfully rejected, and he departs in wrath vowing vengeance. The ancient King Ring, of Ringerike, having heard of Ingeborg's beauty, sends also amba.s.sadors to woo her. Her brothers make sacrifices in order to ascertain the will of the G.o.ds. The omens are inauspicious, and they accordingly feel compelled to decline the King's offer.

Ingeborg is shut up in Balder's Grove, where the sanct.i.ty of the temple would make it sacrilege for any one to approach her. Frithjof, however, braves the wrath of the G.o.d, and sails every night across the fjord to a stolen rendezvous with his beloved. The canto called "Frithjof's Happiness," which is br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with a swelling redundance of sentiment, is so cloyingly sweet that the reader must himself be in love in order to enjoy it. It is written in the key of the watch-songs of the German minnesingers and the aubades of Provencal troubadours. The Norse note is not only wanting, but would never fit into that key:

"'Hush! 'tis the lark.' Nay, those soft numbers Of doves' faith tell that knows no rest.

The lark yet on the hillside slumbers Beside his mate in gra.s.sy nest.

To them no king seals his dominions When morning breaks in eastern air; Their life is free as are their pinions Which bear aloft the gladsome pair.

"'See day is breaking!' Nay, some tower Far eastward sendeth forth that light; We yet may spend another hour, Not yet shall end the precious night.

May sleep, thou sun, thee long enc.u.mber, And waking may'st thou linger still, For Frithjof's sake may'st freely slumber Till RagnarOk, be such thy will.

"Vain hope! The day its gray discloses, Already morning breezes blow, Already bend the eastern roses, As fresh as Ingeborg's can glow; The winged songsters mount and twitter (The thoughtless throng!) along the sky, And life starts forth, and billows glitter, And far the shades and lover fly.

"Farewell, beloved: till some longer And fairer eve we meet again.

By one kiss on thy brow the stronger Let me depart--thy lips, once, then!

Sleep now and dream of me, and waken When mid-day comes, and faithful tell The hours as I yearn forsaken, And sigh as I! Farewell, farewell!"[38]

[38] Translation of L. A. Sherman, Ph.D. Boston, 1878.

The two following cantos, ent.i.tled "The Parting" and "Ingeborg's Lament," though liable to the same criticism as their predecessor, are, with all their sentimental effusiveness, beautiful. No lover, I fancy, ever found them redundant, overstrained, spoiled by the lavish splendor of their imagery. Tegner has accomplished the remarkable feat of interveining, as it were, his academic rhetoric with a blood-red humanity, and making the warm pulse of experience throb through the stately phrases.

King Ring, incensed at the rejection of his suit, declares war against Helge and Halfdan, who in their dire need ask Frithjof's aid, which is promptly refused. In order to be rid of him they then send him on an expedition to the Orkneys, to collect a tribute which is due to them from Earl Angantyr. He entreats Ingeborg to flee with him; but she refuses. She sees from Balder's Grove his good ship Ellida breasting the waves and weeps bitter tears at his loss:

"Swell not so high, Billows of blue with your deafening cry!

Stars, lend a.s.sistance, a shining Pathway defining!

"With the spring doves Frithjof will come, but the maiden he loves Cannot in hall or dell meet him, Lovingly greet him.

Buried she sleeps Dead for love's sake, or bleeding she weeps Heart-broken, given by her brother Unto another."

It is perfectly in keeping with the character of Norse womanhood in the saga age that Ingeborg should refuse to defy her brother's authority by fleeing with Frithjof and yet deeply mourn his departure without her.

The family feeling, the bond of blood, was exceptionally strong; and submission to the social code which made the male head of the house the arbiter of his sister's fate was bred in the bone. It is, therefore, perfectly natural that, when King Ring has beaten her brothers in battle, and exacted Ingeborg as the prize of victory, she yields unmurmuringly to their decree.

Frithjof, in the meanwhile, distinguishes himself greatly in the Orkneys by his strength and prowess, gains Earl Angantyr's friendship, and returns with the tribute. As he sails into the fjord, a sight greets him which makes his heart quail. Framnaes, his paternal estate, is burnt to the ground, and the charred beams lie in a ruined heap under the smiling sky. The kings, though they had pledged their honor that they would not harm his property, had broken faith with him; and Ingeborg, in the hope of gaining whom he had undertaken the perilous voyage, was wedded to King Ring. In a white-heat of wrath and sorrow Frithjof starts out to call her perjured brothers to account. He finds them in the temple in Balder's Grove, preparing for the sacrifice. There he flings the bag containing the tribute into King Helge's face, knocking out his front teeth, and observing on his wife's arm the ring with which he had once pledged Ingeborg, he rushes at her to recover it. The woman, who had been warming the wooden image of Balder before the fire, drops, in her fright, the idol into the flame. Frithjof seizes her by the arm and s.n.a.t.c.hes the ring from her. In the general confusion that follows the temple takes fire, and all attempts to quench the flames are futile. In consequence of this sacrilege Frithjof is outlawed at the _Thing_ as a _vargr-i-veum_, _i.e._, wolf in the sanctuary, and is forced to go into exile. His farewell to his native land strikes one as being altogether out of tune. The old Norse viking is made to antic.i.p.ate sentiments which are of far later growth; but for all that the verses are quite stirring:

"Brow of creation, Thou North sublime!

I have no station Within thy clime.

Proud, hence descended My race I tell; Of heroes splendid, Fond nurse, farewell!