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

sense of the word, the history of a marriage among common folk. And yet so true is it, so permeated with a warm and rich humanity, that it holds the reader's attention from beginning to end. Then, to add to its interest, it has some bearing upon the woman question. Lie maintains that no true marriage can exist where the wife sacrifices her personality, and submits without a protest to neglect and ill-treatment. Happily we are not particularly in need of that admonition on our side of the ocean. The wife of the pilot, Salve Christensen, had once broken her engagement with him, having become enamored of the handsome naval lieutenant, Beck; but she recovers her senses and marries Christensen, whom she really loves. After her marriage she tries to do penance for the wrong she has done him by being, as she fancies, a model wife. But by submission and self-extinction, so alien to her character, she arouses his suspicion that she has something on her conscience; and, in his feeling of outrage, he begins to neglect and abuse her. When, at last, his maltreatment reaches a climax, she arises in all the dignity of her womanhood, and asserts her true self. Then comes reconciliation, followed by a united life of true equality and loving comradeship.

Such a mere skeleton of a plot can, of course, give no conception of the wealth of vivid details with which the book abounds. There is, however, a certain air of effort about it, of a strenuous seriousness, which is, I fancy, the temperamental note of this author.

"The Pilot and his Wife" besides reviving Lie's popularity also served to define his position in Norwegian literature. He had at first been assigned a definite corner as the "poet of Nordland," but his ambition was not satisfied with so narrow a province. In all his tales, so far, he has surpassed all predecessors in his descriptions of the sea; and the critics, when favorably disposed, fell into the habit of referring to him as "the novelist of the sea," "the poet of the ocean," etc. The Norwegian sailor, whom he may be said to have revealed in "The Pilot," came to be considered more and more as his property; and no one can read such tales as "Press On" (_Gaa Paa_) and "Rutland" without agreeing that the title is well merited. I know of no English novelist since Smollett, who produces so deep a sense of reality in his descriptions of maritime life. Mr. Clark Russell, who knows his ship from masthead to keel as thoroughly as Jonas Lie, and writes fully as clever a story, seems to me to have a lower aim, in so far as the novel of adventure, _cæteris paribus_, belongs on a lower level than the novel of character.

In the year 1874 the Norwegian Storthing conferred upon Jonas Lie an annual "poet's salary" of about six hundred dollars. This is supposed to supply a warranty deed to a lot on Parnassus. It removes any possible flaw in the title to immortality. Lie was now lifted into the illustrious triumvirate in which Björnson and Ibsen were his predecessors. Great expectations were entertained of his literary future. But, oddly enough, this official recognition did not have a favorable effect upon Lie. He felt himself almost oppressed by a sense of obligation to yield full returns for what he consumed of the public revenues. In 1875 he published a versified tale, "Faustina Strozzi," dealing with the struggle for Italian liberty. In spite of many excellences it fell rather flat, and was roughly handled by the critics. Even a worse fate befell its successor, "Thomas Ross" (1878), a novel of contemporary life in the Norwegian capital. It is a pale, and rather labored story, in which a young girl, of the Rosamond Vincy type, is held up to scorn, and the atrocity of flirtation is demonstrated by the most tragic consequences. There is likewise an air of triviality about "Adam Schrader" (1879); and Lie became seriously alarmed about himself when he had to register a third failure. Like its predecessor, this book is full of keen observations, and the sketches of the social futilities and the typical characters at a summer watering-place are surely good enough to pass muster. But, somehow, the material fails to combine into a sufficiently coherent and impressive picture; and the total effect remains rather feeble. In a drama, "Grabow's Cat" (1880), he suffered shipwreck once more, though he saved something from the waves. The play was performed in Christiania and Stockholm, and aroused interest, but not enough to keep it afloat.

It has been said of Browning that he succeeded by a series of failures, which meant, in his case, that his books failed to command instant attention, but were gradually discovered by the thoughtful few who by their appreciation spread the poet's fame among the thoughtless many. It was not in this way that Jonas Lie's failures conduced to his final success. "Thomas Ross," "Adam Schrader," and "Grabow's Cat" have not grown perceptibly in the estimation either of the critics or of the public since their first appearance. But they supplied their author a hard but needed discipline. They warned him against over-confidence and routine work. He had passed through a soul-trying experience, in its effect not unlike the one which Keats describes _à propos_ of "Endymion:"

"In 'Endymion' I leaped headlong into the sea and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks than if I had stayed upon the green shore, took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure--would rather fail than not be among the greatest."

Jonas Lie reconquered at one stroke all that he had lost, by the delightful sea-novel "Rutland" (1881), and reinstated himself still more securely in the hearts of an admiring public by the breezy tale, "Press On" (1882). But after so protracted a sea-voyage he began to long for the shore, where, up to date he had suffered all his reverses. It could not be that he who had lived all his life on _terra firma_, and was so profoundly interested in the problems of modern society, should be banished forever, like "The Man Without a Country," to the briny deep, and be debarred from describing the things which he had most at heart. One more attempt he was bound to make, even at the risk of another failure. Accordingly in 1883 appeared "The Life Prisoner" (_Livsslaven_), which deserved a better fate than befell it. The critics found it depressing, compared it to Zola, and at the same time scolded the author because he lacked indignation and neglected to denounce the terrible conditions which he described. He replied to their arraignments in an angry but very effective letter. But that did not save the book. Truth to tell, "The Life Prisoner" is a dismal tale. It was, in fact, the irruption of modern naturalism into Norwegian literature. It reminds one in its tone more of Dostoyevski's "Crime and Punishment" than of "L'Assommoir." For to my mind Dostoyevski is a greater exponent of naturalism than Zola, whom Lemaitre not inaptly styles "an epic poet." The pleasing and well-bred truths or lies, to the expounding of which _belles lettres_ had hitherto been confined, were here discarded or ignored. The author had taken a plunge into the great dumb deep of the nethermost social strata, which he has explored with admirable conscientiousness and artistic perception. Few men of letters would object to being the father of so creditable a failure. Lie, being convinced that his book was a good one, no matter what the wielders of critical tomahawks might say to the contrary, resolved to persevere in the line he had chosen and to pluck victory from the heels of defeat. And the victory came even the same year (1883), when he published what, to my mind, is the most charming of all his novels, "The Family at Gilje." That is a book which is taken, warm and quivering, out of the very heart of Norway. The humor which had been cropping out tentatively in Lie's earlier tales comes here to its full right, and his shy, beautiful pathos gleams like hidden tears behind his genial smile. It is close wrought cloth of gold. No loosely woven spots--no shoddy woof of cheaper material. Captain Jaeger and his wife, Inger-Johanna, Jörgen, Grip, nay, the whole company of sober, everyday mortals that come trooping through its chapters are so delightfully human that you feel the blood pulse under their skin at the first touch. It is a triumph indeed, to have written a book like "The Family at Gilje."

From this time forth Jonas Lie's career presents an unbroken series of successes. "A Maelstrom" (1884), "Eight Stories," "Married Life" (_Et Samliv_), (1887), "Maisa Jons" (1888), "The Commodore's Daughters" and "Evil Powers" (1890), which deal with interesting phases of contemporary life, are all extremely modern in feeling and show the same effort to discard all tinsel and sham and get at the very heart of reality.

He had by this series of novels established his reputation as a relentless realist, when, in 1892, he surprised his admirers by the publication of two volumes of the most wildly fantastic tales, entitled "Trold." It was as if a volcano, with writhing torrents of flame and smoke, had burst forth from under a sidewalk in Broadway. It was the suppressed Finn who, for once, was going to have his fling, even though he were doomed henceforth to silence. It was the "queer thoughts" (which had accumulated in the author and which he had scrupulously imprisoned) returning to take vengeance upon him unless he released them. The most grotesque, weird, and uncanny imaginings (such as Stevenson would delight in) are crowded together in these tales, some of which are derived from folk-lore and legends, while others are free fantasies.

Before taking leave of Jonas Lie, a word about his style is in order. Style, as such, counts for very little with him. Yet he has a distinctly individual and vigorous manner of utterance, though a trifle rough, perhaps, abrupt, elliptic, and conversational. Mere decorative adjectives and clever felicities of phrase he scorns. All scientific and social phenomena--all that we include under the term modern progress--command his most intense and absorbed attention. Having since 1882 been a resident of Paris (except during his annual summer excursions to Norway or the mountains of Bavaria) he has had the advantage of seeing the society which he describes at that distance which, if it does not lend enchantment, at all events unifies the scattered impressions, and furnishes a convenient critical outpost. He does not permit himself, however, like so many foreigners in the French capital, to lapse into that supercilious cosmopolitanism which deprives a man of his own country without giving him any other in exchange. No; Jonas Lie is and remains a Norseman--a fact which he demonstrated (to the gratification of his countrymen) on a recent occasion. At the funeral of the late Professor O. J. Broch--a famous Norwegian who died in Paris--the chaplain of the Swedish legation made an oration in which he praised the departed statesman and scientist, referring to him constantly as "our countryman." When he had finished, Jonas Lie, without anybody's invitation, stepped quietly up to the coffin and in the name of Norway bade _his_ countryman a last farewell. "The spirit came over Lie," says his biographer, "and he spoke with ravishing eloquence."

But why did he do such an uncalled-for thing, you will ask? Because there is a systematic effort on the part of Sweden to suppress the very name of Norway, and to give the impression, throughout the world, that there is no such nationality as the Norwegian. Therefore every Norseman (unless he chooses to be a party to this suppression) is obliged to assert his