Essays on Scandinavian Literature - Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen (best books to read non fiction txt) 📗

perfectly natural, and reciprocates it. She ardently believes that he brings her as fresh a heart as she brings him; that his past is as free from contaminating experience as is her own. When, therefore, she obtains proof to the contrary, in an indignant revulsion of feeling, she hurls her glove in his face and breaks the engagement. This act is, I fancy, intended to be half symbolic. The young girl expresses not only her personal sense of outrage; but she flings a challenge in the face of the whole community, which by its indulgence made his transgression easy. She discovers that what in her would have been a crime is in him a lapse, readily forgiven. Her whole soul revolts against this inequality of conditions; and in terminating their relation, which has lost all its beauty, she wishes to cut off all chance of its future resumption.

In order to determine whether this sentiment of passionate virginity (which in effect makes the marriage vow of fidelity retroactive) is not, in the present condition of the world, a trifle overstrained, I have submitted the question to two refined women for whom I have a high regard. To my surprise they both declared that Svava, whatever she may have said to the contrary, did not love her _fiancé_; that her sorrow and even her indignation were just and natural; but that her somewhat over-conscious purity--her _virginité savante_, as Balzac phrases it in "Modeste Mignon," and her inability to give due weight to ameliorating circumstances were unwomanly. I confess I am not without sympathy with this criticism. Svava, though she is right in her vehement protest against masculine immorality, is not charming--that is, according to our present notion of what constitutes womanly charm. It is not unlikely, however, that like Leonarda she is meant to anticipate a new type of womanhood, co-ordinate and coequal with man, whose charm shall be of a wholly different order. The coquetry, the sweet hypocrisy, nay, all the frivolous arts which exercise such a potent sway over the heart of man have their roots in the prehistoric capture and thraldom; and from the point of view of the woman suffragists, are so many reminiscences of degradation. I fancy that Björnson, sharing this view, has with full deliberation made Svava boldly and inexorably truthful, frank as a boy and as uncompromisingly honest as a man.

She has sufficient use for this masculine equipment (I am speaking in accordance with the effete standards) in the battle which is before her. Dr. Nordan, the family physician, her parents, and those of her _fiancé_, take her to task and endeavor to demonstrate to her the consequences of her unprecedented demand. She learns in the course of this prolonged debate that she has been living in a fool's paradise. She has been purposely (and with the most benevolent intention) deceived in regard to this question from the very cradle. Her father, whom she has believed to be a model husband, proves to have been unworthy of her trust. The elder Christensen has also had a compromising intrigue of the same kind; and it becomes obvious that each male creature is so indulgent in this chapter toward every other male creature, because each knows himself to be equally vulnerable. There is a sort of tacit freemasonry among them, which takes its revenge upon him who tells tales out of school. It is a consciousness of this which makes Christensen, after having declared war to the knife against the Riises, withdraw his challenge and become doubly cordial toward his enemy. Alf, who in the second act has expressed the opinion that a man is responsible to his wife for his future, but not for his past, retracts, and does penance. Svava, in consideration of his penitence, gives him a vague hope of future reconciliation.[9]


[9] In the later acting version of the play, which ends with the throwing of the glove, this hope of reconciliation is definitely cut off. The author has evidently come to the conclusion that his argument is weakened by Svava's conciliatory attitude, and he enforces his moral by making the sin appear unpardonable. The acting version, which is more dramatically concise, differs in several other respects from the version here presented; but the other changes seem to be dictated by a stricter regard for the exigencies of theatrical representation. The play has been translated into English under the title, "A Gauntlet," London, 1894.


It will be observed by every reader of "A Glove" that it is not a drama, according to our American notion. It has very little dramatic action. It might be styled a series of brilliant and searching debates concerning a theme of great moment. The same definition applies, though in a lesser degree, to "The New System" (1879), a five-act play of great power and beauty. By power I do not mean noise, but convincing impressiveness and concentration of interest. One could scarcely imagine anything farther removed from the ha! and ho! style of melodrama.

"The New System" is primarily social satire. It is a psychological analysis of the effect of the "small state" upon its citizens. It is an expansion and exemplification of the proposition (Act I., 1) that "while the great states cannot subsist without sacrificing their small people by the thousands, small states cannot subsist without the sacrifice of many of their great men, nay of the very greatest." The smooth, crafty man, "who can smile ingratiatingly like a woman," rises to the higher heights; while the bold, strong, capable man, who is unversed in the arts of humility and intrigue, struggles hopelessly, and perhaps in the end goes to the dogs, because he is denied the proper field for his energy. Never has Björnson written anything more convincing, penetrating, subtly satirical. He cuts deep; every incision draws blood. A Norwegian who reads the play cannot well rid himself of a startled sense of exposure that is at first wounding to his patriotism. It is mortifying to have to admit that things are thus in Norway. And the worst of it is that there appears to be no remedy. The condition is, according to Björnson, inherent in all small states which cripple the souls of men, stunt their growth, and contract their horizon.

The first act opens with a conversation between the civil engineers Kampe and Ravn, and the former's son Hans, who has just returned from a prolonged sojourn abroad. The keynote is struck in the sarcastic remark of Ravn, that in a small society only small truths can be tolerated--of the kind that takes twenty to the inch; but great truths are apt to be explosive and should therefore be avoided, for they might burst the whole society. This is _à propos_ of a book which Hans Kampe has written, exposing the wastefulness and antiquated condition of the so-called "new system" of railway management introduced, or supposed to have been introduced, by Kampe's and Ravn's brother-in-law, the supervisor-general Riis. The way for Hans to make a career, declares the worldly wise Ravn, is not to oppose the source of promotion and power, but to be silent and marry the supervisor-general's daughter. Ravn has learned this lesson by bitter experience, and hopes that his nephew will profit by it. All talk about duty to the state and society he pretends to regard as pure moonshine, and he professes not to see the connection between the elder Kampe's drunkenness and the artificial bottling up to which he has been subjected, the curbing and jailing of Titanic powers which once sought outlet in significant action. The same mighty force which in its repression drives the men to the brandy-bottle makes the women intoxicate themselves with fictitious narratives of high courage, daring rescues, and all kinds of melodramatic heroism. Extremely amusing is the scene in which Karen Riis (who loves Hans and is beloved by him) goes rowing with her friends Nora and Lisa, taking with her a stock of high-strung novels, and when a drowning man cries to them for help they row away posthaste, because the man is naked.

The second act shows us the type of the successful man of compromise, who takes the world as he finds it, and cleverly utilizes the foibles of his fellow-men. The supervisor-general is a sort of personification of public opinion. He is always correct, professes to believe what others believe, and conforms from prudent calculation to the religious customs of the community. He demands of his son Frederic that he shall abandon a young girl whom he loves and has seduced, and he requires of his daughter Karen that she shall, out of regard for her family, renounce her lover. He feigns all proper sentiments and emotions, while under the smooth, agreeable mask lurk malice and cunning. When Hans Kampe's book reaches him, it never occurs to him to examine it on its merits; his only thought is to make it harmless by inventing a scandalous motive. The elder Kampe has just resigned from the railway service; the supervisor-general (with infamous shrewdness) demands an official inquiry into the state of his accounts. Then all the world will say that Hans Kampe has been used as a cat's-paw by his father, who, knowing that an investigation is inevitable, wishes to throw dust in the eyes of the public and save his own reputation by attacking that of his superior. It is needless to say that he has not a shadow of suspicion regarding Kampe's honesty, but merely chooses for his own defence the weapon which he knows to be the most effective.

In order to fortify his position and sound the sentiment of the profession, Riis gives a grand dinner to the engineers of the city, to which Kampe and his son are also invited. The chairman of the committee on railways (of the national diet) is present, and when it appears that Hans Kampe makes a favorable impression upon him, the friends of Riis concoct a scheme to injure him. They inform his father that he is suspected of embezzlement, and get him drunk, whereupon the old man scandalizes the company by a burst of uncomplimentary candor. When Hans arrives the mischief is done; though the pathetic scene between father and son convinces the chairman that, whatever their failings, these men are true and genuine. Simply delicious is the satire in the scene where the ladies discuss the question at issue between Riis and Kampe. But this satire is deprived of much of its force by the subsequent development of the plot. The logical ending would seem to be the triumph of the supervisor-general's defensive tactics and the discomfiture of his critics. That would have given point to the criticism of the small state and invested the victims of progress with an almost tragic dignity. Björnson chooses, however, to let neither the one party nor the other triumph. In a small state, he says, no one is victorious; everything ends in compromise. If two parties championed two different plans of railway construction, the one of which was demonstrated to be superior in economy and safety to the other, such a demonstration would not be likely to result in its adoption. No, the two parties would come together, dicker and compromise, and in the end the diet would agree to build one road according to the one plan, and one according to the other. Agreeably to this principle Björnson leaves the honors between the combatants about easy; but Riis, deserted by his children, undergoes a partial change of heart and is seized with doubt as to the excellence of his philosophy of life.

That the satire of "The New System" struck home is obvious from the fierceness and virulence of the criticism with which it was hailed. It has never become fairly domesticated on the Scandinavian stages, and probably never will be. In Germany, France, and