I gazed long into his deep, blue eyes, before I could prevail upon myself to bid him a final farewell. It was my earnest desire to imprint upon my mind this so earnest and so stem, yet at the same time so bold, countenance, with all its youthful freshness. I wished to render it impossible to me to forget the peculiar greatness stamped on the man's form and on his every word. It is of considerable importance in grasping the character of an author to learn in what relation the impression of his human disposition stands to that of his disposition as an author. I have never known a great man in whom these two impressions were so thoroughly harmonious as in Mill. I have never discovered any quality in him as an author that I have not rediscovered in my personal intercourse with him, and I have found his different characteristics in both spheres exalted above and subordinated to one another in precisely the same order and manner. There are authors in whose writings some definite quality—for instance, philanthropy, or wit, or dignity—plays a more prominent rôle than in their lives; others whose writings display not a trace of those qualities, such as humor or free humanity, which render them amiable in their private lives. Most authors are far inferior to their books. In Stuart Mill no such inequality existed, for he was the very incarnation of truthfulness. There occurs in Mill's "Autobiography" a situation which affords an opportunity of measuring the degree of this truthfulness. I have in mind his position when he, the social reformer, who was so far removed from all demagogism, at a meeting of electors, comprised chiefly of the working class, was asked if he had written and made public the statement that the working classes of England were, as a rule, liars. He answered at once, and briefly, "I did." "Scarcely," he adds, "were these two words out of my mouth, when vehement applause resounded through the whole meeting. It was evident that the working people were so accustomed to expect equivocation and evasion from those who sought their suffrages, that when they found, instead of that, a direct avowal of what was likely to be disagreeable to them, instead of being affronted, they concluded at once that this was a person whom they could trust."
Mill gives the most modest interpretation of the proceeding, but the reader surmises what a halo of truthfulness must at that moment have hovered about him whose accusation of pervading falsehood was met with storms of applause from men spoiled by the flatteries of demagogues. In daily life, too, Mill bore that invisible nimbus of exalted love of truth. His whole being radiated with purity of character. It is needful to look back to the most sublime philosophic characters of antiquity, to Marcus Aurelius and his peers, if peers he has, to find a parallel to Mill. He was equally true and equally great, whether he addressed his maturely considered thought in some renowned work to a circle of readers spread over the whole globe, or whether, in his own home, without any assumption of superiority, he dropped an accidental remark to a chance visitor.
ERNEST RENAN.
ERNEST RENAN.
It was not my intention to call on Renan during my stay in Paris from April to September, 1870, for I have always had an absolute horror of robbing celebrated men of their time under pretext of paying tribute to them. When, however, Taine—Renan's most intimate friend—repeatedly urged me to look up his "friend, the philologist," I gathered up my courage, and one day, provided with a letter of introduction from Taine, found myself on the third floor of a house in Rue de Vannes, where Renan lived. His surroundings were exceedingly simple. Since he had been deprived of the chair of Hebrew in the "Collège de France," he was without any fixed income, and his first popular publication was the only one of his books that had been at all remunerative.
Judging from his works and portrait, I had imagined Renan to be a refined reproduction of Jules Simon, philanthropic, gentle, with his head slightly inclined to one side; I found him decided, terse, and bold in his utterances, firm in his convictions, with somewhat of the modesty of the savant, but still more of the confidence and air of superiority of the man of the world. Renan was at the time forty-seven years of age. He was sitting at his writing-table when I entered his room, a little, broad-shouldered man, with a slight stoop, and a large, heavy head; his features were coarsely moulded, his complexion poor; he had blue eyes that displayed a wondrous power of penetration, and a mouth that, even in repose, was eloquent and indicative of shrewdness. His far from beautiful yet unquestionably attractive face, with its expression of lofty understanding and excessive industry, was framed in a mass of long brown hair that over the temples gradually shaded into white. In looking at him I was reminded of one of his own sentences, "La science est roturière".
In early youth I had been repelled by the works of Renan, who is by no means the author for youth. Moreover, his "Life of Jesus," the first of his writings that fell into my hands, is perhaps his weakest work; the trace of sentimentality, the occasional appearance of unction, that last remnant of a priestly education, all that to a young person must seem either unduly effeminate, or lacking in genuineness, prevented me from arriving at a correct estimation of his literary qualities. That first impression had later been lost; the noble collection, "Etudes d'histoire religieuse," had opened my eyes to the almost feminine delicacy of feeling that could only seem unmanly to very youthful and inexperienced minds, and I found it quite natural that he who had justly been called "the most gentle of the bold" should be unable to speak without melancholy of his exceptional position. "The worst penalty a man who has fought his way to a life of reflection is compelled to pay for the independent stand he has taken, is to see himself excluded from the great religious family to which belong the best souls on earth, and regarded by the very beings with whom he would most gladly live in spiritual harmony, as a corrupt man. One must be very sure of one's position not to be shaken when women and children clasp their hands and cry, Oh, believe as we do!"
I had, however, erred in my supposition that any reminder of this elegiac tone would ring through Renan's every-day mode of expression. The main characteristic of his conversation was a thorough intellectual freedom, the magnificent repose of a genial child of the world. The nerve and sinew of his words was an unbounded contempt for the majority and for the masses, such as I had never before encountered in any one who displayed neither misanthropy nor bitterness. The first time I saw him he led the conversation to human stupidity. He said, evidently in view of inspiring his younger fellow-laborer with tranquillity of mind for the coming storms of life, "Most men are not human beings at all, but apes"; but he said it without anger. The words of Géruzez occurred to my mind, "L'âge mûr méprise avec tolérance." Traces of this calm contempt may be found in the prefaces to his works; many years later it received poetic expression in his translation of Shakespeare's "Tempest"; but in his essay on Lamennais he has plainly defined it. He says: "There is found in Lamennais quite too much anger and not sufficient contempt. The literary consequences of this fault are very serious. Anger leads to declamation, bluntness, often coarse insults; while contempt, on the contrary, almost always produces a refined and dignified style. Anger bears within itself a need of being shared. Contempt is a subtile, penetrating delight which does not require the sympathy of others. It is discreet and all-sufficient to itself."
Renan's manner of speaking has a certain upward-soaring flight, a certain sprightly and redundant grace, without which no one ever gains the praise in Paris accorded to Renan, that in social intercourse and conversation he was "charmant." Of the solemnity which his style often displays there was not a trace in its oral form. There was nothing priestlike about him, and he was wholly devoid of the pathos of a martyr of free thought. It was his wont to introduce a turn in the discourse with his favorite expression, "Diable!" and he was so far removed from striking the bitter and elegiac tone, that his equanimity had rather a touch of Olympian cheerfulness. Whoever knew anything of the childishly odious attacks with which he was daily assailed from the orthodox ranks, and whoever, like myself, had observed in Veuillot's journalistic circles how opinions wavered between whether the right punishment for his heresy was hanging or shooting, could not but feel interested to inquire of Renan if he had not suffered a great deal for his convictions. "I!" was the answer; "not the least! I hold no intercourse with Catholics; I am only acquainted with one of them; we have one in the 'Academic des Inscriptions,' and we are very good friends. The sermons preached against me I do not hear; the pamphlets written against me I do not read. What possible harm could they do me?" According to Renan's opinion, the devout Catholics of France constitute about one-fifth of the population; and he thought they were far more fanatical than the orthodox Catholics of other places, because Catholicism in Spain and Italy is viewed almost as a matter of custom, while in France it is stimulated by intelligent opposition.
I found Renan, in June, 1870, very much exhilarated by the events in Rome. "A statue should be erected to Pius IX.," said he. "He is an extraordinary man. Since Luther no one has rendered such great service to religious freedom as he. He has advanced the cause about three hundred years. Without him Catholicism might very well have remained unchanged for three hundred years, shut up in a closed room with its spider's web and its thick dust. Now we are airing the room, and every one can see for himself that it is empty, and that nothing lies concealed within it." He had entertained a fear that during the negotiations concerning the infallibility of the Pope, even at the last moment, some compromise or other would be effected, through which everything would practically remain in the former channels; but this possibility had just vanished, and it could readily be foreseen that the bishops would shun no consequence, not even the result anticipated by Renan, which was, that a dismemberment would take place within Catholicism similar to that existing in Protestantism. It has been proved that the policy of the Catholic Church was wiser than its opponents at the first moment supposed. The division that took place was neither deep nor important, and there is not the slightest prospect of a dismemberment that can in any way be compared with the nature of the sects of Protestantism. Renan, who thought chiefly of France, hoped that time might open the eyes of the French bourgeoisie, which had thrown itself completely into the arms of the Church since the February Revolution, and was watching with profound anxiety the position so inimical to civilization assumed by the papal power.
In his interesting novel "Ladislaus Bolski," Victor Cherbuliez has turned into mild ridicule certain pet theories of Renan, by putting into the mouth of the good-natured yet thoroughly unpractical mentor of the hero, Renan's doctrine concerning the delicate nature of truth, and the consequent necessity of approaching it with the utmost deliberation and caution. George Richardet believes with Renan, that everything depends on some shade of meaning; that truth is not simply white or black, but is one shade of these colors, and he is wrecked because we cannot act in shades, but must act totally or not at all. In fact, Richardet aims at an actual realization of the idea expressed by Renan in one of many passages on the subject, as follows: "We might as well attempt to hit a winged insect with a club, as to grasp the truth in a moral science with the coarse claws of syllogism. Logic cannot grasp delicate shades of meaning, yet truths that are of a moral nature depend solely and entirely upon these shades. It is, therefore, of no avail to pounce on truth with the clumsy violence of a wild boar, for fleet and nimble truth will escape the ruthless attack, and all the pains taken to capture it will be in vain."
Whoever is familiar with Renan's literary activity knows how closely he adheres to this thought when he writes. How different is the fate of his beloved shades of meaning when he speaks! While Taine, whose writings are filled with such bold utterances, is ever moderate and subdued in conversation, only allowing himself to be guided by the strictest considerations of justice and fairness, Renan, when he speaks, goes to extremes, and is by no means the knight of the delicate shades of thought. In one point alone were the two men equally decided in their expressions. This was when the discourse turned on that spiritualistic philosophy of France which strove to gain strength in its tender alliance with the Church, that system of philosophy which originally won the hearts of fathers of families, by bearing on its shield dogmas and virtue, and that in the place of discoveries of new truths, promised to furnish the entire land with good morals as the fruits of its scientific research. It had at that time control of all the professorships of France. In Sorbonne it was represented by Janet and Caro. Janet, the more refined, more elegant spirit, endeavored to understand his opponents and set them right, while Caro, a specimen of genuine mediocrity, won the applause of the audiences he addressed, by flinging out his arms and vigorously beating his broad chest, and by his appeals to the freedom of the will. To Renan, who, nevertheless, has treated of Cousin as an orator and an author in so elegant an essay, the entire eclectic philosophy was orally mere "official soup," "children's pap," "product of mediocrity, calculated for mediocrity." Indeed, so obstinate was he on this point, that he, the advocate of fine shadings, could never be persuaded that spiritualism was not absolutely false. For Taine, on the other hand, he cherished an admiration that was almost passionate, "Taine, c'est l'homme du vrai, l'amour de la vérité même." In spite of the strikingly apparent difference of their natures,—Taine's style has the strength of a fountain, Renan's style flows as much like a stream as does the verse of Lamartine,—Renan declared himself to be in accord with his friend on all essentials. And when one day I led the conversation to the so frequently discussed question, namely, how much justice there was in the universal tendency to bewail the intellectual decadence of France, Renan immediately referred to Taine. "Decadence, what do you mean by that?" he exclaimed. "Everything is relative. Is not Taine, for instance, of vastly more importance than Cousin and Villemain put together? There is yet much intellect in France." Several times he repeated the words, "Il y a beaucoup d'esprit en France."
In common with nearly all cultivated Frenchmen, Renan was a reverential admirer of George Sand. This remarkable woman had been able to extend her dominion over the younger generation of France, without being in the least untrue to her youthful ideals. An idealist like Renan, she had won through her idealism; a naturalist like Taine, through the mysterious endowments that testified of her nearness to nature; the younger Dumas, to whom we might believe the heroes and heroines of George Sand, concerning whom his dramas often make bitter criticisms, would be especially odious, was perhaps the one among the post-romantic authors who stood personally nearest to her. The enthusiasm of Dumas for George Sand was, upon the whole, only a consequence of his literary susceptibility; the enthusiasm of Renan was of a deeper character. As strong as must necessarily be his hatred for Béranger, in whom he sees the personification of all that is frivolous and prosaic in the French national character, and whose narrow "Dieu des bonnes gens" is a thorn in the eye of the follower of Herder, the pantheistic thinker and dreamer, quite as lively must naturally be his sympathy for the authoress of "Lélia," "Spiridion," and so many other dreamily enthusiastic writings.
Notwithstanding his wide range of vision, Renan is not without national limitations in his literary sympathies. In a conversation about England, he had nothing whatever that was good to say of Dickens; he was not even inclined to be fair. "The pretentious style of Dickens," said he, "makes the same impression on me as the style of a provincial newspaper." His well-known unjust article on Feuerbach fills us with less astonishment, when we learn in how marked a degree the defects of Dickens caused him to overlook the merits. It is the same morbidly developed taste for a classic and well-tempered mode of expression which gives Renan an antipathy to the humorous peculiarities in the style of Dickens and to the passionate form of Feuerbach's style; the genial mannerism of the English seemed to him provincial; the violence of the German appeared to him to savor of a tobacco-like after-taste of the pedantry of German-student atheism.
In the spring of 1870 Renan was on the point of making a trip to Spitzbergen, in company with Prince Napoleon. Shortly before starting he was discussing politics with me one day. "You can become thoroughly acquainted with the Emperor," said he, "through his writings. He is a journalist on the throne, a publicist who takes pains to inquire into popular opinion. Since his whole power depends upon the latter, he has occasion to employ more art, notwithstanding his inferiority, than Bismarck, who can afford to disregard everything. Until now he has been merely physically, not intellectually, enfeebled, but he has been extremely cautious (extrêmement cauteleux), and he entertains a profound distrust of himself hitherto unknown to him." Renan's estimate of Napoleon was very similar to that expressed by Sainte-Beuve, in the well-known fragment on "The Life of Cæsar." Ollivier, whom he had known for a long time, he criticised severely. "He and the Emperor are admirably suited to each other," said he; "they have the same kind of ambitious mysticism; they are, as it were, allied through their chimeras." As early as the year 1851 Ollivier had often said to Renan, "As soon as I am at the helm, as soon as I become premier—"
When I, with my simple political principles, urged the necessity of obligatory education, a thought I constantly had occasion to advocate, and which was everywhere treated as an absurdity or as a long since abandoned whim, Renan was, in my estimation, so paradoxical that I could scarcely believe him to be in earnest. His arguments, however, are interesting, especially because similar ones were continually presented at that time by the most prominent men of France, although perhaps in a different form. Renan maintained, first of all, that enforced education was tyranny. "I have myself," said he, "a little child that is in feeble health. How despotic it would be to take that child from me in order to educate it!" I replied that there would be exceptions made by the law. "Then no one would send children to school," he answered. "You do not know our French peasants. They would gain nothing from such legislation. Let them till the soil and pay their taxes, or give them a musket in their hand, and a knapsack on their back, and they are the best soldiers in the world. But what is well adapted to one race does not always suit another. France is not like Scotland or the Scandinavian countries; Puritanic and Teutonic customs cannot take root in our soil. France is not a religious country, and every attempt to make it so would prove abortive. Ours is a land that produces two things,—what is great and what is fine (du grand et du fin). Respectable mediocrity will never thrive here. These two words express the ideal needs of the population; as for the rest, there is but one thing they want, and that is to amuse themselves, to experience through pleasure that they are living. And finally, believe me, it is my firm conviction that elementary education is a downright evil. What is a human being that can read and write—I mean a human being that can do nothing but read and write? An animal, a stupid and conceited animal. Give human beings an education of from fifteen to twenty years' duration, if you can; otherwise, nothing! Anything less, so far from making them any wiser, only destroys their natural amiability, their instinct, their innate sound reason, and renders them positively unendurable. Is there anything worse than to be governed by a seminarist? The sole reason why we are forced to occupy ourselves with this question is because this mass of street boys (ce tas de gamins) gained the upper hand and wrung from us the right of universal suffrage. No, let us agree that culture is only a good in the case of highly-cultivated people, and that the half-cultivated are to be regarded as useless, arrogant apes." I spoke of decentralization, of elevating the condition of the provincial cities, Lyons, for instance. "Lyons!" he burst out, in absolute earnest, "why, it would never occur to any one to transform the metropolitan cities of the provinces into intellectual focuses, for they would at once come under the control of the bishops. No," he added with droll conviction, "in such cities nothing but absurdities will ever be accomplished." After such utterances from the man of all others in France who fought most vigorously for a reform in the higher schools and universities, it is perhaps easier to understand why it was that the indifference of the liberals in that country went hand in hand with the zeal of the Catholic priesthood, whenever there arose a question of remedying that ignorance of the lower classes which later proved so dangerous for the outer and inner security of the land. Old Philarète Chasles, who was really no Chauvinist, made himself very merry one evening in May, 1870, over my faith in the efficacious power of compulsory education; he called it myRevalenta arabica,and facetiously declared that I hoped through it to make the human race happy through all eternity. He asked me, too, if I did not think the peasants made sufficiently good fathers of families and good soldiers, without the aid of the schoolmaster. The war soon taught these men that the soldier who can read and write has a power in his hands never before adequately appreciated. It was, indeed, remarkable to see how ideas we are apt to ascribe wholly to the Catholic priesthood—as, for instance, this idea of the absolute harmfulness of imperfect knowledge—had gradually gained such authority in a land saturated with Catholicism that, with a slight alteration of form, they even swayed the opponents of the Catholic faith.
Another equally interesting application of the Renan theory, that what was good in Germany or in the North was not necessarily suitable for France, I heard one day at Renan's country villa in Sèvres when he himself was absent. The conversation fell on Frenchconvenancemarriages. A lady, closely allied to Renan, a German-born lady, who was thoroughly imbued with his ideas, defended the French custom of founding marriages on an agreement between the suitor and the parents, and of permitting the wedding to take place after a fewobligatovisits. "This manner of forming a matrimonial alliance," said she, "would not exist without very good reasons. Although brought up in France, I who am German by birth did not marry in this way. As often as it was proposed to me to take a suitor into consideration, I declared that I would not see him; the mere fact that he came as a suitor sufficed to make him odious in my eyes. I was acquainted with my husband several years before our marriage." Who can offer any protest against the French custom, however, that has seen, as I have in the case of so many of our friends—and she mentioned one and another—who were introduced but one week before their wedding-day, and yet whose union proved so happy and satisfactory to both parties.
While I was viewing these words, partly as a subterfuge employed to escape passing judgment on the relations of near friends, partly as a symptom of the French characteristic desire to represent every national peculiarity, however unfortunate it may be, as an unalterable quality of the race, a gentleman who was present, one of the most unprejudiced of French authors, laid his hand on the head of his little daughter, a child of two years old, and said: "Do you think it would be right for me to give my little girl to the first man that might appear on the scene, and without appealing to us, her parents, manage to steal away her heart? Remember how great is the inexperience of a young girl, and do not forget the conditions of the actual world, nor what scoundrels there are abroad, nor what a past, what diseases, what bestial appetites a young man may have, which a father's eye may detect, but whose existence the innocent mind of a young maiden neither can nor should deem possible. The world is an enemy. Should not I with all my might defend my little daughter against this enemy? If, some day fifteen years hence, suitors for her hand announce themselves, we parents, if we are then living, will act as follows: we will discard those who cannot suitably be taken into consideration, either because of their social position, or because of moral or physical weaknesses; we will make a choice selection, and from this permit the young girl to choose as she pleases." To account for this mode of contemplation, the secluded education of young girls in convents, or in boarding-schools, should be borne in mind. Viewed in this light, even when consideration is taken of the greater ardor and sensuality of the Latin races, the conclusion arrived at is perhaps not unreasonable.
I was in London when the Franco-German war broke out, and being so fortunate as to have intercourse with some wholly unbiased men of great political insight, I foresaw sooner than my French acquaintances all the disasters the war must inevitably bring upon France. On my return to Paris, I found the people full of hope and confidence; indeed, there was, as is well known, a manifestation of arrogance that could not but affect every stranger unpleasantly. This arrogance, however, was by no means shared by men of science. As yet there had been no battle; but already the news of the suicide of Prévost Paradol in North America had filled with the most painful forebodings every one who knew him and was aware how thoroughly posted he was in the preparations and resources of France. The terrible event occurred immediately after an attack of fever, yet no one doubted that Paradol had laid hands on himself with a full consciousness of what he was doing, and with a plain design. That he had not merely sent in his resignation was because—so it would seem—he was altogether too proud to admit that he had in any way been in error; he was not even willing to make such an admission in an argument, and now he had been guilty of a triple error: believing in the justice of the constitutional tendency of the emperor; seeking the post of ambassador to Washington; and finally not giving up his post at once, when the odious comedy of universal suffrage in May had shown what the constitutional temper of the emperor indicated. The declaration of war, in his eyes identical with the downfall of France, caused him to prefer death to a position in which he could not consistently remain, and from which he was unable to withdraw without a humiliation far worse to him than death. This solitary pistol-shot, resounding across the ocean as the signal of many hundred thousand terrible volleys, deeply affected the friends and companions of Prévost Paradol's youth. Taine, who had been making a brief trip to Germany, where he went to collect materials for an essay on Schiller, which had been interrupted by the war, was profoundly moved by the thought of the impending crisis. "I have just come from Germany," said he, "and have conversed with so many industrious and excellent men. When I consider how much trouble it costs to bring a human child into the world, to tend it, bring it up, educate it, establish it in life; when I, furthermore, consider how many struggles and hardships this child must itself undergo in order to gain preparation for life, and then reflect that all this must now be cast into a ditch as a mass of bloody flesh, I can do nothing but mourn! With two regents of the nature of Louis Philippe, we might have succeeded in escaping the war; with two chieftains like Bismarck and Louis Napoleon, it became a necessity." He was at that time the first Frenchman whom I heard take into consideration the possibility of German superiority.
Then came a series of shocks in the first tidings of great defeats, only varied by false rumors of victory directly after the battle at Weissenburg. Dejected and sorrowful was the prevailing mood in the city in those days, when the proclamations at the street comers told of armies put to rout and lost battles; but more fearful still was the mood on that 6th of August, when the first half of the day was passed in the mad intoxication of triumph over victory, the last half in mortified despondency. How great would have been the humiliation had there been the slightest foreboding of the battle of Wörth, whose fate was at the same moment sealed! When, early in the morning, the news of great victories spread through the city, all Paris covered itself with banners; the citizens walked the streets with little flags in their hats; all the horses had little flags on their heads. I sat in front of a café, opposite the "Hôtel de Ville," gazing at the houses about the public square that were decked with hundreds of small flags, when suddenly there appeared, at the window of a house near me, a hand that hastily drew in the flag there floating in the breeze. Never shall I forget that hand, or that act. Trifling as was the occurrence, it startled me; for there was something so sorrowful about the movement of the hand; something in its appearance testifying so plainly of disappointment, that the thought immediately flashed through my mind: "The news of victory must be false!" Soon hands were seen at all the surrounding windows; the flags quickly disappeared, and in quarter of an hour the whole banner decoration seemed as though it had been blown away by the wind. A proclamation from the government had declared that nothing at all was reported that day from the scene of war, and that the police were on the track of the promulgators of false news, in order to punish them severely. The promulgators of false news! As though the hungering imaginations and the languishing yearning of the great city were not the only guilty ones!
About a week later, on the 12th of August, I met Renan. He had returned from the far North before the appointed time. I have never seen him so deeply moved. He was desperate; this trivial word is the only appropriate one. He was beside himself with exasperation. "Never," said he, "was an unhappy people so governed by imbeciles as we are. One might have supposed that the emperor had had an attack of insanity. But the fact is, he is surrounded by the most contemptible flatterers. I know officers of high rank, who were well aware that the Prussian cannons far surpassed our much-laudedmitrailleuses,but; who dared not tell him so, because he had taken an active part in the preparation of these machine-guns himself, had done a little drawing on the design, which is expressed in official language by the statement that he is the inventor of themitrailleuse. Never was there so great a lack of brains (si peu de tête) in an imperial ministry; he was himself sensible of it. I am acquainted with a person to whom he said so, and yet he undertook a war with such a ministry. Was ever such folly known? Is it not heart-rending? As a people, we are vanquished for a long time to come. And to think that all that we men of science have been striving to build up for the past fifty years—sympathy between nations, mutual understanding, fruitful co-operation—is overthrown with one blow. How such a war destroys the love of truth! What lies, what calumnies, will not for the next fifty years be eagerly believed by one people of the other, and separate them from one another for immeasurable time! What a delay of European progress! We cannot raise up again in a hundred years what these people have tom down in a day."
No one could have been more grieved at the rupture between the two great neighbors than Renan, who had so long stood in France as the representative of German culture. Nor could any one have spoken with greater gratitude than he, of German thought. One of his favorite remarks was: "There is nothing that can hold so much as a German head." He seemed to have little liking for the Germans personally, but he spoke with respect of their noble intelligence. To the South German, however, in every other respect than in a capacity for the affairs of government, he ascribed a far higher endowment than to the North German, an opinion shared by the majority of cultivated Frenchmen.
In speaking of his journey, Renan said: "We were in Bergen when the first ambiguous tidings of the threatened war reached us from France. None of us could deem it possible. The prince and I looked at each other. He who possesses so rare and so keen an intellect merely said, 'It cannot be,' and gave orders to continue our journey. We sailed to Tromsöe. When we reached that place two despatches awaited the prince, one from his secretary in Paris, and another from Emile Ollivier with these words: 'Guerre inévitable!'We held a brief council, but so irrational did the affair appear to us, since Leopold von Hohenzollern had withdrawn his candidacy; so impossible did it seem that this pretext could incite all Europe, and especially all Germany, against us; and, finally, so great was our desire to sail to Spitzbergen and see 'the great icebergs,' that we resolved to depart the next morning. We went to bed. My room was situated next to that of the prince's adjutant. Early in the morning I heard the valet awaken the adjutant with a despatch. I rose, we went on board, the ship set sail, and you may fancy my astonishment when I saw that we were taking a southward course. The prince sat in despair, staring fixedly before him. The first words he uttered were: 'Voilà leur dernière folie, il n'en feront pas d'autres.' He was a true prophet; this will be their last folly." "I myself," added Renan, "was of the same opinion. I knew how badly we were prepared, but who could have dreamed that the crisis would come so soon! Do not say that we may yet be victorious. We will never be victorious again; we have never, under this emperor, conquered, in a definite way, any tribes whose subjugation could serve as a happy omen, when Prussia was in question. The Arabs are the poorest tacticians in the world." More than once he broke out with the words: "Was such a thing ever heard of before! Poor prince! Poor France!" He was so vehement that he exhausted himself in imprecations on all the leading men; according to his words, at this time uttered with little regard to shades of meaning, they were all weak-minded creatures, or villains. "What is this Palikao?" he cried. "A thief, a pronounced thief, to whom our best houses are closed; and does not every one know that one of his colleagues is a criminal, a murderer, who has only escaped capital punishment by flight! And in the hands of such men lies our fate!"
I saw tears in his eyes, and I bade him adieu. I have never seen him since that day. He quickly regained his composure and the control of his grief; but in that sorrowful outburst Renan was another man than when he wrote, "The savant is a spectator in the universe. He knows that the world belongs to him only as an object for study; and even if he could reform it, he would perhaps find it so curious an object that he would lose all desire to do so." It is scarcely likely that Renan was altogether in earnest when he uttered these audacious and aristocratic words; but even if he was, the emotions he experienced in the year 1870 would have inclined him to repudiate them.
It is difficult to estimate how demoralizing an influence, during the second empire, life under the dominion and pressure of the "fait accompli" exercised on the French savant. A tendency to quietism and fatalism, to the approval of everything that had once been accomplished, characterized beyond all else French moral science under Napoleon III. Traces of its influence could be observed everywhere in social life and in conversation. Entire freedom from enthusiasm was looked upon as almost equivalent to culture and ripe scholarship. A young foreigner had daily opportunity to marvel over the reserve and the passiveness of even the best of these people, as soon as there arose any question of a practical reform; and I remember well coming home one evening in May, 1870, very much out of humor, and writing in my note-book: "There was once another France." Once, indeed, there had been a wide-awake, enthusiastic, poetic France, keenly alive to the needs of humanity. It seems as though such a France must gradually arise from the debasement, which, even if it brought with it no other good, at least has given all aspiring souls a new impetus toward the truth.
With changeful emotions Renan has watched the development of republican France. Although the republicans almost immediately restored to him his professorship, their demeanor toward him, as well as toward the other friends of Prince Napoleon, was rather cool and reserved. Thoroughly aristocratic in his views as he is, he gave the democrats to understand in his "Caliban" how exceedingly little he esteemed them; yet in a letter written shortly afterward to a German friend, in explanation of his speech on entering the French Academy, he said: "What now, if, while your statesmen are absorbed in this thankless task of chastising and trampling under foot, the French peasant, with his rude understanding, his unvarnished politics, his labor, and his savings, should happily found an order-loving and enduring republic! Would it not be droll?" He is patriot and philosopher enough to become friendly, in the course of time, to any form of government which satisfied the majority of his fellow-countrymen, and corresponded to their intellectual standpoint.
Renan, as it is well known, is a native of Brittany, and has all the peculiarities of his race. The Bretons, in modern French literature, are distinguished by a common trait. Like Chateaubriand and Lamennais, Renan hates the commonplace, the easy-going, frivolous tone; and although a victim of doubt, he has the most ardent need of a faith and an ideal. For his narrow fatherland he cherishes a most profound attachment. In a hopeful moment he has even apostrophized his race with the words: "O simple clan of farmers and seamen, to whom, in an extinguished land, I owe the strength to preserve my soul alive!" We must not place too literal an interpretation on this outburst of feeling. No one realized more profoundly than Renan how far from being extinguished was that France of which he wrote to Strauss, that it was essential to Europe as "a lasting protest against pedantry and dogmatism." But the remark is characteristic of the at once obstinate and restless, enthusiastic and sceptical child of Brittany. If he renounce his faith in any one particular, as he here lost faith in France, it is only to adhere elsewhere with all the warmer enthusiasm to an ideal. In religion, too, he has a Brittany in which he believes.
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
ESAIAS TEGNÉR
Literary fame in the Scandinavian countries is for the most part a matter of mere local importance. Works written in languages which are spoken by a few million people only, and which in no portion of the world are studied or read as polite languages, are likely to have every chance of European and American renown against them. As a general thing, but few poetic productions are translated into other tongues; and, indeed, to a work that appeals to the sense of beauty, above all to a metrical work, the outer form of language is what the enamel is to the teeth: it invests it at the same time with durability and brilliancy.
Nevertheless, it is a well-known fact that certain northern authors have succeeded in finding more recognition in foreign countries than at home; they represent, as it were, to the entire reading-world, the poetic life of their fatherland, and their names are blended in the public consciousness with the name of their native land. Such fame has been attained by but one of the poets of Sweden,—Esaias Tegnér.
He is not the greatest among those who have contributed to the poetry of the Swedish language; before him and after him another greater poet produced in this tongue creations superior to his in clearness of style and fidelity to life. With Bellman and Runeberg, however, he must be classed; and, while inferior to them in poetic fancy, he may be said to surpass both in intellectual vigor.
Three times in the course of history, the Swedish people has succeeded in combining the classic and the popular in its poetry. The first time was when Bellman, during the reign of Gustavus III., selected his types from life among the people and in the inns of Stockholm, and sang "The Songs of Fredman" to a zither accompaniment, with a mimic display of masterly skill. The second time was when Tegnér, fifty years later, turned back to the heroic life of the ancient North, found in an old saga materials for a romance cycle, and gave Sweden a picture of Viking life and Viking love in the North, as his contemporaries conceived it. Finally this combination of the classic and the popular occurred about a generation ago, when—forty years after Finland had been tom from her old mother country—the greatest of Finland's sons, inspired by recollections of his childhood, depicted the honorable struggle of his fatherland against Russian supremacy, and thereby the national characteristics of the Finnish people, in a more realistic style than any one else had yet ventured to employ. Runeberg, in his soul-stirring bivouac poetry, has compressed into the smallest limits war idyls and tragedies of the battlefield.
Neither in a drama nor in an epic poem, therefore, has one of these three Swedish poets found the possibility of presenting to the world the best fruits of his genius. All three, however widely they may otherwise differ, have triumphed in the same species of art, one that is lyric in form, and whose contents compose an epic cycle of short poems. The first of these poets has produced burlesque dithyrambs; the second, old Norse heroic lays; the third, anecdotes of modern warfare; but each one has arranged his choicest poems in a connected series, and these three groups of songs alone invest Swedish poetry with cosmopolitan rank.
The most celebrated of these three cycles is the "Fridthjof's Saga," and when Tegnér is mentioned outside of Sweden, it is exclusively as its author. This work has become the national poem of the Swedish people, and translations into all European tongues—among others, eighteen different German, and twenty-two different English translations—have spread it broadcast over the earth. Sweden has not been lacking in gratitude to the man to whom she owes so much. Such noble and eloquent words have been spoken, written, and sung throughout Sweden, in honor of Tegnér, that no one could bestow on him greater praise than has already been accorded him by the children of his native land. Sweden has exalted the glorified form of the poet, in supernatural size, upon a mighty pedestal, proved by closer scrutiny to be a miniature mountain of massive eulogies, biographies, and festal songs, while at the base incense without stint has been burned. What then remains for the critic? Nothing, unless perchance to cleanse from the beautiful face, with tender hand, the blinding fumes of the incense, in order that the delicate features may stand out clearly, and seem more human, more lifelike. Perchance, too, it may devolve on him to compare the statue carefully with the original, and draw a pen-and-ink sketch of the latter, in which it is plainly indicated where the statue lacks precision or has a too abstract conception. The writer of these pages, at all events, enters on his task with the innate sympathy of the Scandinavian, the impartiality of one who is not a Swede, and the honest purpose of the critic, to represent the form in the sharp sun-light of truth.
The ancestors of Esaias Tegnér, both on his father's and on his mother's side, were Swedish peasants. As in so many other instances of the prominent talent of the north, his descent may be traced from the peasant class through the ranks of the priesthood. This generally comes to pass in the following way: the grandfather plows his fields with his own hand, the son displays a thirst for knowledge, and through many sacrifices on the part of his parents, and the support of kindly disposed people, progresses far enough in his studies to enter on a theological course; for during many centuries the priest was the absolute representative among the peasants of the learned class. In this son, the vigorous, untutored peasant-nature becomes subjected to its first rude polish; the preacher no longer plows his own fields, although he may supervise their cultivation; the preacher begins to think, although the final result of his studies is not the consequence of his thought. In the grandson, or great grandson, the original fundamental nature finally becomes so refined, that it produces scientific, technical, or poetic talent. Thus it was in the case before us. The father of Tegnér was a priest, the mother a priest's daughter, and these clerical progenitors were the children of peasants. The aristocratic sounding name was formed when the father, Esaias Lucasson, from the little village Tegna (Tegnaby), was entered in the Latin register of the gymnasium as Esaias Tegnerus.
The parsonage was early blessed with sons and daughters, and at Kyrkerud, on the 13th of November, 1782, was born the fifth son of the house, the eventually so celebrated Esaias. He was only nine years old when the home was broken up by the death of his father. The latter left his family without means of support, and his widow, whose heart was filled with anxiety for the future of her six fatherless children, joyfully seized the opportunity offered her to place her youngest son as clerk with a highly esteemed state official living in the vicinity. In the office of Assessor Bran ting, through tasks in penmanship and keeping accounts, the boy acquired habits of industry which lasted through life; and of even greater value to the little clerk was the opportunity afforded him, at the early age when all impressions are the most profound, of making the acquaintance, from the travelling carriage, of the picturesque, natural beauties of the home region, during the extensive trips he was permitted to share with his worthy chief, whose duties as assessor compelled him to traverse every portion of Wermland. Although active and industrious when at work, young Esaias was inclined to be forgetful and absent-minded at times, to become wholly absorbed in his book, or waking dreams, and he would often be found wandering along some solitary road soliloquizing in a low tone. He read poetry, works of history, above all else northern sagas; and in a collection of the latter, Björner's "Kämpadater," he discovered "The Saga of Fridthjof the Bold," which lingered twenty-five years in his fancy before it began to germinate.
These two impressions, that of Sweden's nature and of the old Norse myths and sagas, were inseparable; they mingled together, gliding softly one into the other in the young soul. Often, when perched on the back seat of Branting's carriage, the future poet was driven between forest-decked mountains, through deep ravines, along the banks of those mighty waters that stream through the land, it seemed to him as though Nature were vieing with him in freaks of fancy. Romantic indeed were the landscapes presented to his view in the long summer days, when twilight and dawn flowed gently together, and the roseate glow never vanished from the horizon, while an old northern landscape charmed him in winter, when the snow was piled in high banks, when the brooks hung in long icicles from the rocks, and the youth felt as though he actually saw, in the moonlight playing on the snow, winter personified, in the colossal form of a god, with a snow-storm in his beard, and a wreath of fir upon his head.
"Swedish poetry;" says Tegnér somewhere, "is, and ever will be, a poetry of nature in the strictest sense of the word; for it centres in our glorious natural scenery, in our lakes, rocks, and waterfalls;" and when, shortly after the completion of "Fridthjof," he wishes to explain the origin of the poem, he himself mentions, in addition to his early, familiar acquaintance with the old Norse sagas, the fact that he was born and brought up in a remote mountain parish, "where Nature herself makes poetry in weird and gigantic forms, and where the ancient gods still wander about in the flesh, of winter nights." "In such surroundings," he continues, "left wholly to myself, it was not singular that I acquired a certain predilection for the untamed and the colossal that has never left me."
And not only the contents, but also the fundamental form of his own as well as of all other Swedish poetry, Tegnér, in his riper years, strove to trace to impressions of the peculiar nature of Sweden. He is astonished at the exclusive preference of his people for the lyric, at the tendency of this people to crowd the entire world of poetry into a few strophes, and he inquires into the reason of this characteristic. "Does it not lie for the most part in the nature itself which surrounds us? Are not the mountains, with their valleys and torrents, the lyric of Nature, while the gentler plains, with their calm rivers, are Nature's epos? Many of our mountain regions are true dithyrambs of nature, and man delights in making poetry in the same key as that of the nature about him." And then boldly endeavoring to draw the utmost inference of his thought, he bursts into the query, "Does not a lyric vein permeate all Swedish poetry? Are not the most prominent representatives of our national traits in ancient as well as in modern times, rather lyric than epic characters?" He was evidently thinking of such minds as Sweden's greatest kings and greatest generals, and perhaps not least of all of himself.
It is an undoubted fact that the nature about him attracted him, as a poet, far more through its phantastic than through its utilitarian element. I say designedly "as a poet," for as a man he cherished a healthy, practical interest in the means of subsistence and sources of industry of his people. He has, however, never depicted this people in its struggles with material nature. There cannot be found in his works a single scene representing the great mining operations through which Swedish iron is brought to the light of day; he has never presented a picture of the hardy miner or the sturdy smith; never vouchsafed a view of the blazing, steaming, glowing furnace in the midst of the snow. These realistic impressions rebounded from his romantic fancy, inclined as it was to view everything in the abstract, to symbolize. Sweden did not present herself to his mind's eye as the workshop of the nation; his Svea was a shield-bearing maiden, and her dower of iron was in his eyes less the source of the natural wealth of the land than the broad girdle about her waist and the once so mighty sword within her hand.
Very early it was discovered that the gifted boy possessed talents which made it seem desirable to furnish him with higher opportunities for education than those afforded in the office of Assessor Branting. A conversation that took place one evening, during a long country drive, when young Esse, as the boy was called, replied to the religious reflections of his pious chief, concerning the signs of God's omnipotence in the bright starry firmament, with an exposition of the laws governing the heavenly bodies, that he had derived from a popular work on philosophy, gave the first impetus to the step of entering Esaias on a learned career. An instinct, to which the future bishop ever remained true, led him to grasp with both hands the rational explanation of the workings of the universe, and to cast aside the theological in all cases where the latter seemed to him superfluous.
Under the guidance of his elder brother, he was now initiated into the study of Latin, Greek, and French, and he taught himself sufficient English to be able to read the poems of Ossian, at that time in the height of their glory. Like a foal trotting at its mother's side, he accompanied his brother to the various homes where the latter officiated as tutor; and in the last family in which his brother taught, Esaias, when but fourteen years of age, found in the youngest daughter of the house his future wife. Like so many other precocious youths, he avoided the boisterous sports of his comrades; his greatest delight was to sit alone in his chamber, absorbed in Homer; and he had to be dragged by main force to sleighing parties and skating matches, although he was by no means an unskilful skater. In the year 1799 he entered the university of Lund, devoted himself to the ancient languages, philosophy, and æsthetics; and in 1802, according to the pathetic custom of the land, was crowned with laurels as master (magister) of philosophy. From 1802 to 1810 he lived in Lund as a young instructor (docent) of good renown; from 1810 to 1825 he gave lectures on Grecian literature that were very popular and well attended. In the year 1812, in accordance with a very poor Swedish custom, he was at the same time presented with a professor's chair, and appointed pastor of several parishes in the vicinity of Lund; in 1826, finally, he left the little university town in order to retire as a bishop to the rural solitude of Vexiö.
Let us bestow a glance upon the young magister of Lund. He is pleasing to behold,—blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, with yellow, curly hair, vigorously built, and with a tendency to corpulency. As long as he remained a bachelor he was a retired dreamer, who brooded over his own fancies in solitude; but so soon as he had placed foot beneath his own table, his intellectual powers unfolded, and he proved himself to possess a light-hearted nature that was social in the highest degree, and bubbling over with merriment. A child of the world, who knew how to do honor to a good table and noble wine; an easily inflamed and by no means seraphic Apollino; an adorer of all female beauty; a genius that emitted brilliant flashes of well-considered and sparkling wit, rather than the glowing flames of a deep-seated fire; an individual who was tolerably unconcerned about his conventional dignity, but who was none the less thoroughly well prepared to maintain the proud sovereignty of his own personality; such is the phase of character Tegnér presented to the outside world. Beneath this exterior are concealed his deeper traits. These are partly of a poetic, partly of an oratorical, nature; a lyric inspiration and a glowing style that are peculiarly his own.
The lyric inspiration of Tegnér early reveals itself as an innate tendency to enthusiasm for everything that stands out in bold relief from the gray and prosaic background of everyday life. All deeds of heroic valor; all brilliant honors, let them be gained as they may, attract him by their radiance, and he revels even in their tinsel. A strong respect for the great names of history, a decided disinclination to apply discriminating criticism to fame once established, form one of the deepest and most unchangeable traits of his character. It is the unusual climax attained by this fundamental tendency which impels him to write poetry. Indeed, it is this which makes him a poet. In order, however, the better to understand this tendency, we must go back to the sources of his inspiration, investigate what ideal he seeks, discovers, or creates, see in what sort of inner images he objectizes the natural peculiarities or intellectual attributes which correspond to the best of his native powers. He does not dream of Oehlenschläger's Aladdin form; he is neither unsophisticated enough nor bold enough to do so. Just as little is he inclined to mirror himself in a Hamlet or a Faust. The heroes of scepticism and of thought are far too abstract for his vigorous, boyish imagination; it dreams of sturdier ideals. Still less do his conceptions concentrate about a Manfred type. Guilt does not allure him, and the mysterious has for his frank nature no charm. Brought up and developed amid idyllic conditions, and surrounded by universal good-will in the little town which he himself named "an academic village," he could not possibly give way to the cosmopolitan prose pathos of the long repressed Schiller. The ideal which slowly shapes itself in his mind is a national and northern romantic ideal.
It is a luminous image of stormily progressive and remodelling power, partly of a warlike, partly of a civilizing nature. All of the forms which Tegnér, in the course of years, has shown marked preference for delineating, have been invested with it. In one of his university addresses, for instance, he undertook to give a characterization of Luther. In order to accomplish this he places his hero in the point of view from which it is his wont to consider men of action. First he emphatically declares that every word and action of Luther bore the stamp of "overwhelming vigor."
"There was something chivalrous, in fact, I might almost say, romantic, in his character, his every undertaking.... His action was like a battle completed, his word like one just begun. He was one of those mighty souls who, like certain trees, flourish only amid storms. His grand, adventurous life always seemed to me like a heroic poem, with its struggles and its final victory."
We are all the more strongly impressed with the character of the orator from this very one-sided treatment of a many-sided theme when we note that Tegnér has therein presented determining qualities which, with slightly altered attributes, he can apply a few years later, almost word for word, to King Gustavus III. of Sweden, whose personality differs as widely as possible from that of Luther. Scarcely any proof is needed to show that between the sturdy Saxon reformer and the theatrical, Gallicized, and skeptical monarch there was no other bond of union than that which Tegnér's admiration created for both. Tegnér said of Gustavus, "In his nature there was not only something grand, but at the same time something chivalrous; lofty heroic power was displayed in him, not with shield and sword, but with the lightest drapery of grace. He was a grand, romantic, heroic poem, with all its adventures and fascinations, but at the same time with the tenderest effusions of the heart and the most wanton gambols of joy."
Grandeur, strength, and adventurous romance, then, are the common fundamental qualities for both Luther and Gustavus; both are knights of chivalry, and the lives of both appear to Tegnér like a romantic epic poem. What else and what more could he say about Fridthjof? What else, in truth, has he said, when in his own characterization he called attention to the fresh life, the bold defiance, and the haughtiness of this hero and this heroic poem!
In this tendency we have the deepest, firmest foundation on which his conceptions of heroic ideals gradually came to rest.
There are some youthful, innocent odes dating from the period of Tegnér's sixteenth year, written on the occasion of the rumor of Bonaparte's death in Egypt. In them the poet glorifies Bonaparte as the hero of freedom, whose honor is not purchased through blood and tears, yet who will bring enlightenment and joy to the whole world. It is an echo from the refrain of the humanitarian period which rings from these childish lips. They hail Napoleon with a categorical "Live for humanity or perish!" The mature man views the subject differently. In the great religious, political, and literary reaction against the period of enlightenment, the anti-Gallican current which won Sir Walter Scott and Oehlenschläger, was wholly obnoxious to Tegnér. The reaction, however, struck an æsthetic chord which harmonized with his temperament. This was its contempt for utility as a measure for the worth of a deed. The fact was, ultra-utilitarianism, and the species of philanthropy interlinked with it, had opposed itself to the conception of the chivalrous and the romantic.
"The old chivalrous dream," says Tegnér, "of the honor of nations, was either declared point-blank to be a freak of the imagination, or else to be synonymous with their domestic welfare. Everything in history was estimated, as in a counting-house, according to its practical results; and no higher estimate placed on a house of correction, or a threshing-machine, than on Alexander's adventurous expedition to India, or the fruitless victory of Charles XII."
He does not exaggerate; poor Alexander the Great was ranked in Sweden, by an inspired enlightener of the people, as far inferior to that benefactor of mankind who invented the cheap and nutritious Brunswick mum.[1]Tegnér's youthful conceptions of virtuous, useful heroes now become modified by the prevailing controversies, and are brought into harmony with the protest of the entire romantic bent of his mind against the narrow-minded care for the welfare of humanity as a main essential. Moral considerations give way before the romantic-metaphysical adoration of the hero of fate.
"Wherefore scorn me thus forever,Legions frail and transitory,Shorn of will, devoid of might?Catch the butterfly, but neverStay the eagle, crown'd with glory,As it seeks its mountain height.* * * * * * *"Ask the storm, amid its wailing,Ask the sky's majestic thunder,When earth quails 'neath its alarms,If the lily 'tis assailing;Tho' the grove be thrilled with wonder,If a loving pair it harms."
Thus he expresses himself in the poem entitled "Hjelten" (The Hero), 1813. These sentiments, to be sure, are far from being Tegnér's final views. Accustomed as he was to gaze upward to individual personality as the highest form of existence, he was only likely to be moved on some special occasion and in a half defiant way to give vent to such pantheistic notions as those in this poem. And, as a consciously reflecting spirit, he was much rather inclined not to believe in the unconscious than to overestimate it, making, for instance, a large number of polemic attacks on the doctrine of a blind poetic inspiration; yet his preference for the warlike stormy march of progress was so deeply rooted in his heart that he did not recoil from giving such bold expression to it as in the poem just cited.
Still more strongly than in the various lays to the honor of Napoleon, does he express his contempt for material gain as the result of deeds of heroism in his poem, "Alexander on the Hydaspes." The poet has chosen the moment when the exhausted and dispirited troops implore the great Alexander not to conduct them farther into Asia, but to lead his army homeward. The king replies scornfully: "Do you think that I, as a youth, came down from the Macedonian mountains to furnish you with gold and purple raiment? I seek honor; honor alone and nothing else!"—a reply which, in point of sharpness and precision, leaves nothing to be desired. The disregard of human life and human happiness evinced by the highly endowed and intrepid despot is represented as unconditionally justifiable.
It is therefore very easy to understand how Charles XII., whom the Swedish people, with justice, have never ceased to admire, could become a hero without reproach to Tegnér. He scarcely even deems it a stain upon Charles that, with all his brilliant qualities, he plunged Sweden into such depths that it has never since been able to regain its place among the great powers of Europe. It was no mere chance that it was Tegnér, among all the poets of Sweden, who wrote the glorious poem on this king, which, although composed merely as a poem for a special occasion, became the national song of Sweden. An impractical rushing into danger always fired his imagination; the stubbornness that, with gaze fixed upon a self-written code of honor, despised prudent actions, was in his eyes scarcely a fault, and consequently an indifference as to whether a deed would lead to victory or destruction, if it were only brilliant and noisy, was, in his estimation, a virtue.
"Northland's strength defies and neverDeath can conquest from us sever,For e'en should we fall at last,Life in battle's sport was past,"[2]
are the words his "Gerda," in the epos of the same name, addresses to Bishop Absalom.
The circumspection of the statesman and the lawgiver had no power to rouse his enthusiasm; but he loved the royal youth "before whose word the meshes of the statesman's wiles are rent asunder" (Tegnér's "Charles XII."). The long-considered plans of the military commander did not seem to him the true evidence of warlike genius; but he admired beyond measure instantaneous inspiration on the battlefield, and the courageous impetuosity which followed it.
This is apparent when Tegnér describes a hero so different from, and so vastly superior to, Charles XII., as the Deliverer of Protestantism, Gustavus Adolphus. What he commends in him is not so much his merits as a political leader and warlike commander-in-chief, as it is the qualities which place him, as much as possible, on a parallel with a soldier-general like Charles XII. He lingers with enthusiasm over the "sudden, lightning flashes of thought on the battlefield," which characterized him, as "every other warrior-like genius." He extols Gustavus because he loved danger for danger's sake, and delighted in toying with death. In short, he holds fast to the narrow old Norse measure of manliness, and endeavors to apply it even in cases where it is far surpassed by genuine greatness. For instance, he considers it almost ignominious in Wallenstein to have (for good reasons) declined the battle that Gustavus, "his chivalrous opponent," offered him at Nuremberg.
What gives this ideal of Tegnér its finalretoucheis the candor he demands of his heroes. His own honest and sturdy nature mirrors itself therein. Of Wallenstein he says that he might have been called a great man "had he been noble and candid." Magnanimity will not suffice; candor is equally essential. The old Norse berserkers, in their martial fervor, flung their shields on their backs, and this mode of action found so much favor in Tegnér's eyes that he would gladly have seen it transported to the intellectual battle-field. Indeed, frankness seemed to him even a sort of guaranty for nobility of thought, and he regards the former with more warmth than the latter; for in his derogatory characterization of Wallenstein, he lays especial stress on his gloomy, reserved nature, without charging him with a single really ignoble trait. With him he contrasts Gustavus Adolphus, as the luminous, frank nature, endowed with a candor which was less doubtful in Tegnér himself than in the king who was, as a rule, retiring and little accessible.
Thus every form with which Tegnér's muse is occupied, receives a gentle pressure which moulds it into the form of the ideal hero, ever hovering before the poet's own mind.
Closely allied to the lyric inspiration with Tegnér is the supplemental faculty which makes him witty in social intercourse, happy in epigram and impromptu, prominent as a professor, remarkable as a letter writer, orator and preacher, and beyond all else great in his metrical flow of poetically constructed language; a faculty which cannot be called outright a talent for rhetoric, but which provisionally, although perhaps rather vaguely, might be designated, in his case, as the intellectual faculty. His intellect was not the Frenchesprit. The latter, in its most characteristic form, as with Voltaire, is pure understanding unadorned by imagery. Theespritof Tegnér, on the contrary, ran continually into imagery. He thought in figures, consequently he spoke in figures. The gift of abstract thought was lacking in him, indeed he was so wholly devoid of it that he did not even believe in its results in others: metaphysics was to him an abomination as a phantom of the brain, woven of threads which he could not discern; dogmatics were his terror, as a tissue of absurdities, to which his understanding could find no outlet. And he had a good, healthy, self-reliant understanding which instinctively abhorred all obscurity of thought and of speech. He had so lively an impulse to render perceptible all that he thought and felt, that figure after figure crowded upon him. It was this that gave his language those electric flashes of sparkling light which so captivated his contemporaries; it was this that rendered his epistolary style so entertaining, and caused exasperated critics to compare his poetry to gorgeous-colored empty soap-bubbles; it was this finally that made him witty, for there is a certain kind of wit that depends on the surprising succession of swiftly-dissolving images. This intellectuality might be called the fruitfulness of form. The mood into which he was transported by intellectual productiveness sprouted and blossomed incessantly; it was only by way of exception that it could project grand, wholly-completed images, or simple figures, formed of a few main outlines, but it produced a continuous flow of miniature figures which stood antithetically or contrastingly opposed to one another, which glided one over the other, were united and transmitted onward. His mind was loaded, revolver-like, with fancies, and they followed one another in swift succession, shot after shot, all aimed at the same point, striking surely, but each thrusting aside the one that had preceded it. Idea and figure were not separated in his mind, nor were their relations far-fetched, as Tegnér's opponents believed and asserted; and yet they were not purely one and the same.
In his imagination, thought and figure were related in about the same degree as the initial letters in the old monastic manuscripts were related to the miniature paintings with which they were interwoven and illuminated. If we call up before our mind's eye a manuscript in which the overwhelming majority of characters, not single ones alone, are thus illuminated, we can form a certain conception of the series of harmonious associations of ideas and figures which Tegnér's brain incessantly produced. Or if we recall one of those marble designs from the early days of the Italian Renaissance, in which the artist has executed at his pleasure small images on the larger statue, where he has chiselled, for instance, on the helm fallen from the head of Goliath, and lying at David's feet, a little bas-relief of a quadriga in full galop, which forms, it is true, a part of the whole, but which, owing to its loose connection with it, as well as to its independent claims to consideration, dissipates the interest. If we think of a poetic mind calculated to conceive such bas-reliefs, and of a diction inclined to color these, we can form an approximately correct idea of Tegnér's manner of treating his poetic motive. His style is a sort of chromatic architecture and sculpture, and possesses the attractive and the repellent qualities of both. Colored sculpture is generally looked upon in our day as a species of barbarism; and yet the Greeks have employed it, nor was it ever wholly discarded by them. It cannot be called un-Grecian, and yet to most people in our day, it appears tasteless and antiquated. Those poems and speeches in which Tegnér's most characteristic manner stands forth with its utmost strength and distinctness, may be compared to those Grecian and Roman statues that produce quite as much effect through their exterior splendor as through their ideal beauty. The goddesses had golden chains about their necks, wore beautiful long veils, and ear-rings; they possessed a complete wardrobe, and an entire casket of jewels. Precisely in the same way have the jeweller and the artist worked together in Tegnér. In many instances the result has been a successful and attractive whole, which could be rejected by a pedant or a doctrinist alone. Not rarely, however, the result has been an excessive exaggeration. A pamphleteer of Tegnér's time (the witty Palmär), once censured this tendency in words which suit the comparison just used. "Greet your muse," said he, "and beg it not to overburden itself with metaphors, as is its wont. These jewels, even when they are genuine, must be worn with moderation. Let these trinkets be placed about the neck, in the ears, and on the fingers, if you will, but—on the toes—fie, for shame!"
I can more accurately explain my meaning through examples. Mary, in "Axel," resolves to follow the Russian army as a soldier.
"Beneath a soldier's capShe hides away her ringlets, dark as night;In a buff vest her slender form is laced;Alas, for such fair form in such array!O'er shoulder, known by Grecian poet's song,Death's spy-glass, the dread carabine, is hung."[3]
The expression, "death's spy-glass," for the dread carabine, is picturesque, and so far not bad; but none the less must it be said that the figure is not altogether appropriate. Not only has it nothing whatever to do with Mary's form, but it answers only to a gun in general, not to the particular weapon on her shoulder; for this would scarcely kill a Swede. Upon me this figure produces the same effect as if I were to see on the margin of the text, a carefully executed miniature of the dismal skeleton, with the scythe in one hand, and holding the carabine to its eye with the other, in order to take aim.
In the "Children of the Lord's Supper," the old priest beseeches the children he is about to confirm, to choose prayer and innocence as the guides of their lives. Both are personified with a few strokes, and then the figure is engraved in a small biblical relief, of the kind that is seen in Italy on the bronze doors of churches and baptisteries.
"Innocence, child beloved, is a guest from the world of the blessed;Beautiful, and in her hand a lily; on life's roaring billowsSwings she in safety; she heedeth them not, in the ship she is sleeping."[4]
Or an example may be taken from Tegnér's epistolary style. He waxes eloquent (1817) against the European reaction. "Gaze at the signs of the times from the North, and from the South! Do you know any vulgarity, any barbarism, any insane prejudice their regeneration does not promise? The serpent of time often sheds its skin; but more perverse than at this precise moment, it has never been, as far as history extends, even though it hissed nothing but hymns, and though its back were as completely covered with biblical texts as a tombstone." Is there not in this energetic but thoroughly unaffected effort at clear perception, something that reminds us of chromatic sculpture. Do we not see before us, in due form, the serpent of time, with its red outlines; and does not its back, all covered with peculiar ciphers, look like the image of a god, in the shape of a beast, covered with hieroglyphics, or tile inscriptions, on some ancient Assyrian or Egyptian wall? And when finally the similitudes are read with which Tegnér, in "Fridthjof," endeavors to paint female beauty, can it not readily be comprehended why attention should be called to the hard metallic glow of the coloring of an antique idol?