Tales of Two Countries
attempts of his mother-in-law to convert him, are described, not with
the merely superficial drollery to which the subject invites, but with a
sweet and delicate humor, which trembles on the verge of pathos.
The beautiful story _Elsie_, which, though published separately, is
scarcely a full-grown novel, is intended to impress society with a sense
of responsibility for its outcasts. While Björnstjerne Björnson is fond
of emphasizing the responsibility of the individual to society, Kielland
chooses by preference to reverse the relation. The former (in his
remarkable novel _Flags are Flying in City and Harbor_) selects a
hero with vicious inherited tendencies, redeemed by wise education and
favorable environment; the latter portrays in Elsie a heroine with no
corrupt predisposition, destroyed by the corrupting environment which
society forces upon those who are born in her circumstances. Elsie could
not be good, because the world is so constituted that girls of her kind
are not expected to be good. Temptations, perpetually thronging in her
way, break down the moral bulwarks of her nature. Resistance seems in
vain. In the end there is scarcely one who, having read her story, will
have the heart to condemn her.
Incomparably clever is the satire on the benevolent societies, which
appear to exist as a sort of moral poultice to tender consciences, and
to furnish an officious sense of virtue to its prosperous members. “The
Society for the Redemption of the Abandoned Women of St. Peter’s Parish”
is presided over by a gentleman who privately furnishes subjects for his
public benevolence. However, as his private activity is not bounded by
the precincts of St. Peter’s Parish, within which the society confines
its remedial labors, the miserable creatures who might need its aid
are sent away uncomforted. The delicious joke of the thing is that “St.
Peter’s” is a rich and exclusive parish, consisting of what is called
“the better classes,” and has no “abandoned women.” Whatever wickedness
there may be in St. Peter’s is discreetly veiled, and makes no claim
upon public charity. The virtuous horror of the secretary when she
hears that the “abandoned woman” who calls upon her for aid has a child,
though she is unmarried, is both comic and pathetic. It is the clean,
“deserving poor,” who understand the art of hypocritical humility--it is
these whom the society seeks in vain in St. Peter’s Parish.
Still another problem of the most vital consequence Kielland has
attacked in his two novels, _Poison_ and _Fortuna_ (1884). It is,
broadly stated, the problem of education. The hero in both books is
Abraham Lövdahl, a well-endowed, healthy, and altogether promising boy
who, by the approved modern educational process, is mentally and
morally crippled, and the germs of what is great and good in him are
systematically smothered by that disrespect for individuality and
insistence upon uniformity, which are the curses of a small society.
The revolutionary discontent which vibrates in the deepest depth of
Kielland’s nature; the profound and uncompromising radicalism which
smoulders under his polished exterior; the philosophical pessimism
which relentlessly condemns all the flimsy and superficial reformatory
movements of the day, have found expression in the history of the
childhood, youth, and manhood of Abraham Lvdahl. In the first place, it
is worthy of note that to Kielland the knowledge which is offered in
the guise of intellectual nourishment is poison. It is the dry and dusty
accumulation of antiquarian lore, which has little or no application
to modern life--it is this which the young man of the higher classes is
required to assimilate. Apropos of this, let me quote Dr. G. Brandes,
who has summed up the tendency of these two novels with great felicity:
“The author has surveyed the generation to which he himself belongs, and
after having scanned these wide domains of emasculation, these prairies
of spiritual sterility, these vast plains of servility and irresolution,
he has addressed to himself the questions: How does a whole generation
become such? How was it possible to nip in the bud all that was
fertile and eminent? And he has painted a picture of the history of the
development of the present generation in the home-life and school-life
of Abraham Lövdahl, in order to show from what kind of parentage those
most fortunately situated and best endowed have sprung, and what kind
of education they received at home and in the school. This is, indeed, a
simple and an excellent theme.
“We first see the child led about upon the wide and withered common
of knowledge, with the same sort of meagre fodder for all; we see it
trained in mechanical memorizing, in barren knowledge concerning things
and forms that are dead and gone; in ignorance concerning the life
that is, in contempt for it, and in the consciousness of its privileged
position, by dint of its possession of this doubtful culture. We see
pride strengthened; the healthy curiosity, the desire to ask questions,
killed.”
We are apt to console ourselves on this side of the ocean with the idea
that these social problems appertain only to the effete monarchies of
Europe, and have no application with us. But, though I readily admit
that the keenest point of this satire is directed against the small
States which, by the tyranny of the dominant mediocrity, cripple much
that is good and great by denying it the conditions of growth and
development, there is yet a deep and abiding lesson in these two novels
which applies to modern civilization in general, exposing glaring
defects which are no less prevalent here than in the Old World.
Besides being the author of some minor comedies and a full-grown drama
(“The Professor”), Kielland has published two more novels, _St. John’s
Eve_ (1887) and _Snow_. The latter is particularly directed against
the orthodox Lutheran clergy, of which the Rev. Daniel Jürges is an
excellent specimen. He is, in my opinion, not in the least caricatured;
but portrayed with a conscientious desire to do justice to his
sincerity. Mr. Jürges is a worthy type of the Norwegian country pope,
proud and secure in the feeling of his divine authority, passionately
hostile to “the age,” because he believes it to be hostile to Christ;
intolerant of dissent; a guide and ruler of men, a shepherd of the
people. The only trouble in Norway, as elsewhere, is that the people
will no longer consent to be shepherded. They refuse to be guided and
ruled. They rebel against spiritual and secular authority, and follow
no longer the bell-wether with the timid gregariousness of servility and
irresolution. To bring the new age into the parsonage of the reverend
obscurantist in the shape of a young girl--the _fiancée_ of the pastor’s
son--was an interesting experiment which gives occasion for strong
scenes and, at last, for a drawn battle between the old and the new. The
new, though not acknowledging itself to be beaten, takes to its heels,
and flees in the stormy night through wind and snow. But the snow is
moist and heavy; it is beginning to thaw. There is a vague presentiment
of spring in the air.
This note of promise and suspense with which the book ends is meant to
be symbolic. From Kielland’s point of view, Norway is yet wrapped in the
wintry winding-sheet of a tyrannical orthodoxy; and all that he dares
assert is that the chains of frost and snow seem to be loosening. There
is a spring feeling in the air.
This spring feeling is, however, scarcely perceptible in his last book,
_Jacob_, which is written in anything but a hopeful mood. It is, rather,
a protest against that optimism which in fiction we call poetic justice.
The harsh and unsentimental logic of reality is emphasized with a
ruthless disregard of rose-colored traditions. The peasant lad Wold,
who, like all Norse peasants, has been brought up on the Bible, has
become deeply impressed with the story of Jacob, and God’s persistent
partisanship for him, in spite of his dishonesty and tricky behavior.
The story becomes, half unconsciously, the basis of his philosophy of
life, and he undertakes to model his career on that of the Biblical
hero. He accordingly cheats and steals with a clever moderation, and in
a cautious and circumspect manner which defies detection. Step by step
he rises in the regard of his fellow-citizens; crushes, with long-headed
calculation or with brutal promptness (as it may suit his purpose)
all those who stand in his way, and arrives at last at the goal of his
desires. He becomes a local magnate, a member of parliament, where he
poses as a defender of the simple, old-fashioned orthodoxy, is decorated
by the King, and is an object of the envious admiration of his fellow
townsmen.
From the pedagogic point of view, I have no doubt that _Jacob_ would be
classed as an immoral book. But the question of its morality is of
less consequence than the question as to its truth. The most modern
literature, which is interpenetrated with the spirit of the age, has a
way of asking dangerous questions--questions before which the reader,
when he perceives their full scope, stands aghast. Our old idyllic faith
in the goodness and wisdom of all mundane arrangements has undoubtedly
received a shock from which it will never recover. Our attitude towards
the universe is changing with the change of its attitude towards us.
What the thinking part of humanity is now largely engaged in doing is to
readjust itself towards the world and the world towards it. Success is
but a complete adaptation to environment; and success is the supreme
aim of the modern man. The authors who, by their fearless thinking
and speaking, help us towards this readjustment should, in my opinion,
whether we choose to accept their conclusions or not, be hailed as
benefactors. It is in the ranks of these that Alexander Kielland has
taken his place, and now occupies a conspicuous position.
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN.
NEW YORK, May 15, 1891.
PHARAOH.
She had mounted the shining marble steps with without mishap, without
labor, sustained by her great beauty and her fine nature alone. She had
taken her place in the salons of the rich and great without laying for
her admittance with her honor or her good name. Yet no one could say
whence she came, though people whispered that it was from the depths.
As a waif of a Parisian faubourg, she had starved through her childhood
among surroundings of vice and poverty, such as those only can conceive
who know them by experience. Those of us who get our knowledge from
books and from hearsay have to strain our imagination in order to form
an idea of the hereditary misery of a great city, and yet our most
terrible imaginings are apt to pale before the reality.
It had been only a question of time when vice should get its clutches
upon her, as a cog-wheel seizes whoever comes too near the machine.
After whirling her around through a short life of shame and degradation,
it would, with mechanical punctuality, have cast her off into some
corner, there to drag out to the end, in sordid obscurity, her
caricature of an existence.
But it happened, as it does sometimes happen, that she was “discovered”
by a man of wealth and position, one day when, a child of fourteen, she
happened to cross one of the better streets. She was on her way to a
dark back room in the Rue des Quatre Vents, where she worked with a
woman who made artificial flowers.
It was not only her extraordinary beauty that attracted her patron;
her movements, her whole bearing, and the expression of her half-formed
features, all seemed to him to show that here was an originally fine
nature struggling against incipient corruption. Moved by one of the
incalculable whims of the very wealthy, he determined to try to rescue