VII.—ESAIAS TEGNÉR: JOHANN LUDVIG RUNEBERG.
Now that we have finished our Carolinian romance, shall we hear something of the author? He is certainly a brilliant poet, for his story which we have been reading is no deep-planned and long worked-over effort, but was written in the few days after a severe sickness when the author could not yet leave his couch. He wrote it to occupy his mind, and beguile the time. How is he esteemed in Sweden? Will it be thought incredible when I say no old hero, not even Charles XII., is reverenced there more deeply, no name is cherished so fondly,—that no man so nearly seems worthy to be called the father of his country, as this same poet-bishop, Esaias Tegnér?
All this is hard to explain, so many-sided was the life he led. We need to realize that he was more active as a bishop and party-leader than a poet. Then to appreciate him in the last capacity we must go among the Swedes themselves. We shall find in him the bond of unity of a whole nation, in that he has sung best the ancient glory of the race, and discovered to the world the heroic integrity of the Northern character. We shall note that it is he whose words are most, next to the Bible, on the lips of every Swede. If we go into a peasant’s cottage, far from railways and culture, we shall be sure to find some one who has not only heard of the great poet, but can even repeat for us whole cantos from his “Frithiof’s Saga,”—perhaps all of “Axel” itself. And nobody even sets about learning these poems by heart: they cling to the memory in spite of the reader.
But we must begin our history. Who were Tegnér’s parents? What was their rank in life? C. W. Böttiger, Tegnér’s son-in-law, who wrote a short life of the poet, shall answer for us:—
“A few years ago north of the church in Tegnaby, there was seen a gray cottage fallen into ruins, with moss-grown walls and two little windows of which one, according to the ancient custom of the province, was in the roof. The people regarded it with a kind of reverence; and if one asked the reason, the hat was raised with the answer: ‘The Bishop’s grandfather once lived there.’ His name was Lucas Esai´asson, his wife’s Ingeborg Mänsdotter. According to testimony handed down traditionally in the parish, this Lucas Esaiasson was a poor but exceedingly industrious and pious man. A peasant during a greater part of the time when Charles XII. was king, he continued yet twenty years after the ‘shot,’ a Carolinian at the plow. This and his Bible were his dearest treasures, and all he had to leave to fourteen children, for whom he procured bread with the plow after he had given them names from the Scriptures. There was one called Paul, another John, a third Enoch, and so on. A whole temple-progeny was growing up under his lowly roof: the Old and New Testaments were embracing each other in his cottage. The youngest son, born on the day of King Charles’s death, was named Esaias. The older brothers inherited their father’s plow, and became peasants; Esaias inherited his father’s Bible and became a minister.”
We wish we could continue to quote Mr. Böttiger, but his story proceeds too slowly. This Esaias was the father of our poet. Showing unusual aptitude for books, he was taken from the farm where he had gone out to service, and placed in the school of Wexiö. Coming from the by or village of Tegn, and having but one name, he was entered in the school register, kept after the manner of the time in Latin, as Esaias Tegnérus. The latter, the Latin suffix us being omitted, became afterward the family name.
In due time this Esaias Tegnér passed to the university, and after graduation was ordained as we have seen, a minister. He is remembered as a talented preacher, and merry man of society. He married a pastor’s daughter whose mother was celebrated for wit, force of character, and poetic gifts. Like qualities reappear in a marked degree in our poet, who was the fifth son of this marriage. He was born in Kykerud [Chikerood], November 13, 1782, and took his father’s name.
Ten years later the minister’s family was broken up by the death of the father. Two daughters and four sons were thus left in a measure to the charity of the world. The young Esaias was soon taken into the counting-room of one Jacob Branting, a crown-bailiff of the province and friend of the deceased pastor. Here he learned to keep accounts and developed rapidly into a valuable clerk. All the leisure he could command was given steadily to books. He read everything he could find, particularly the old Norse sagas, and amused himself by turning some of the driest themes of history and biography into poetical form. The crisis in his life came early. He had been in Branting’s office four years, and so won the respect and love of his employer as to be thought of already as the future son-in-law and successor to the office of bailiff. But Branting had observed the lad’s genius for books, and was beginning to think him fitted for something higher. One night, as they were riding together, Esaias astonished him by rehearsing with some minuteness the principles of astronomy, which he had gathered from his reading. Branting’s decision was at once made. “You shall study,” said he. “As for the means, God will supply the sacrifice, and I will not forget you.”
Young Esaias commenced at once to study Latin, Greek, and French. So remarkable was his memory that he was able, after glancing a few times over a list of fifty or sixty words, to repeat them with their meanings. To his other tasks he added later, the study of English, which he learned by the aid of a translation of Ossian. A change soon follows. Lars Gustaf, his oldest brother, not yet graduated from the university, had been asked to serve as tutor in the family of a rich manufacturer and owner of mines in Rämen. Lars consented on condition that he might bring with him Esaias; for during his temporary absence from the university he had undertaken to guide his brother’s work. The rich proprietor into whose house they were to enter was Christopher Myhrman, a name prominent in the history of Swedish manufactures. He had himself built up the foundries and mills of Rämen, turning the wilderness into a large and flourishing town. Amid his multifold business cares he always found time to read his favorite Latin authors, and enjoy the society of his family, whose circle at that time comprised eight vigorous sons and two blooming daughters.
“To this place, and to this circle it was,” says Mr. Böttiger, “that Lars Gustaf and Esaias Tegnér betook themselves one beautiful summer afternoon in July, 1797. They had traveled in a carriage over the road on which the owner of the mills had been obliged, twenty years before, to bring his wife home upon a pack-saddle; but they left the coach behind them and now came on foot at their leisure through the forest. Suddenly there burst upon their gaze the loveliest prospect. On a point of land, extending out into the water thickly set with islands, and encircled with birch and fir, lay like a beautiful promise the pleasant garden sloping in terraces to the sea, girded with the setting sun and covered with shady trees. ‘Who knows what dwells under their branches,’ perhaps the poet-stripling was already asking, with quickened pulses. We know what dwelt beneath them. It was his good fortune he was coming here to meet; it was amidst this smiling and magnificent nature that his talents were destined to develop, his powers to be confirmed, his wit to grow; it was over the threshold of this patriarchic tabernacle that his knowledge was to be brought to ripeness, and his heart find a companion for life.
“What here in the first room attracted his attention was the big book-cases. He found them richly supplied not only with Swedish, English, and French works, but also Greek and Roman authors of every sort. With greedy eyes he fixed himself especially by the side of a folio, on whose leathern back he read: Homerus. It was Castalio’s edition, printed in Basel in 1561. Here was an acquaintance to make. He made it immediately, and in a manner of which his own account is worthy of being told:—
“‘So without any grammatical foundation, I resolved to attempt the task immediately. At the outset it naturally proceeded slowly and tediously. The many dialectic forms of which I had no idea at all, laid me under great difficulties, which would probably have discouraged any less energetic will. The Greek grammar I had used was adapted to prose writers: of the poetic dialects nothing was said. I was therefore compelled just here to devise a system for myself, and further, to make notes from that time, which now show that among many mistakes I sometimes was right. To give way before any sort of difficulty was not at all my disposition; and the farther I went, the easier my understanding of the poet became. With the prose writers Xenophon and Lucian, I also made at this time a flying acquaintance; but they interested me little, and my principal work continued to be with Homer, and also Horace in Latin, whom I had not known before. French literature was richly represented in this library; Rousseau’s, Voltaire’s, and Racine’s works were complete, and were not neglected either. Of Shakspere there was only Hamlet, which strangely enough interested me very little. In German literature there was not a single poet. That language I was compelled to learn from the usual instruction books, and thus conceived a repugnance to it which lasted for a long time.’”
Thus in his first sojourn of seven months in Rämen, the future poet read the Iliad through three times, the Odyssey twice, and from the same book-shelves Horace, Virgil, and Ovid’s Metamórphoses. He was almost insane in his application to study; yet his constitutional vigor, strange to say, remained unimpaired. In 1799 he entered the university of Lund, whither his father and two brothers had preceded him. We will not linger for details of his industry there. It will not surprise us to learn that on the “promotion” (graduation) of his class in 1803, Esaias Tegnér was given the primus, or first place.
Immediately after the ceremony of graduation, Tegnér hastened to greet his friends and especially Jacob Branting and Christopher Myhrman, whose liberality had in part sustained him at the university. “At Rämen he was met with open arms by the older members of the family, and with secret trembling by a beating heart of sixteen years, where his image stood concealed behind the memories of childhood. His summer became an idyl,—the first happiness of love. . . . The traveler who approaches Rämen finds in the pine woods beside the way a narrow stone, bearing the letters E. T., and A. M. By this, one August evening, two hearts swore to each other eternal fidelity.”
The university of Lund hastened to appropriate to itself its brilliant alumnus, as private instructor in Æsthetics. Three years later occurred his marriage with Anna Myhrman. For several years his lyre was silent. He believed success for him lay in the line of scholarship, and only for solace or merriment he tuned its chords. In 1808 appears the first truly national and characteristic poem of this skald, “To the Defenders of Sweden.” “This warlike dithyramb sounded like an alarm-bell through every national breast. Tones at once so defiant and so beautiful had not been heard before. These double services as instructor and poet attracted the attention of the throne. It was manifested by a commission investing Tegnér with the name, rank and honor of professor.”
It was during this period that Tegnér’s literary reputation neared its radiant meridian. Poems of various sort came forth with strange rapidity,—as yet, however, none of much extent. There were at this time two schools of poetry in Sweden,—the mystical, or “phosphoristic,” and the Gothic. The former inclined toward foreign, especially German, models, the latter maintained the sufficiency of national models and subjects. Tegnér, though an ardent disciple of the Gothic school, disdained discussion, and maintained that the best argument was example. Such example he was himself destined soon to furnish. In 1820 appeared his “sacredly sweet Whitsun Idyl,” “The Children of the Lord’s Supper,” which has been so well rendered into English by Mr. Longfellow. Though clear and simple as the brooks and sunshine this poem lacks the stir and vigor which it was so easy for Tegnér to impart. In the next year this lack was supplied in the poem of “Axel,” and almost at the same time by the publication of his “Frithiof’s Saga,”—“the apples,” says Geijer [Yeiyer], “through which the gods yet show their power to make immortal.” This is an old Norse legend which Tegnér has rewritten and modernized, and at the same time charged full with the fervor of his mighty soul. “It would be superfluous to recount here the applause with which this master poem of Northern poetic genius was vociferously greeted by all the educated world; how Goethe from his throne of poetical eminence bowed his laurel-crowned gray locks in homage to it; how all the languages of Europe, even the Russian, Polish and modern Greek, hastened to appropriate to themselves greater or less portions of the same; how in the poet’s own country it soon became a living joy upon the lips of the people, a treasure in the day-laborer’s cot as in the prince’s halls. Its author’s name has gone abroad together with that of Linnæus, and wherever one goes one hears it mentioned with respect and admiration.”
Of this “Frithiof’s Saga” our space forbids us to speak at greater length. Mr. Longfellow has given an excellent analysis of the poem (North American Review for July, 1837), and it has been rendered into English, entirely or in part, no less than nineteen times. We have but to record that this example of the clear treatment of a Gothic or Northern subject was the necessary and final argument against the school of Phosphorists. From the day when the “Frithiof” appeared, we hear of no other model or standard of poetic excellence in Sweden.
With the publication of these longer poems Tegnér’s career as a poet virtually terminates. He never estimated his gifts at their real value, and gave to the practice of his art only leisure moments. To the end of his life the success of his “Frithiof” was a standing surprise to him. His chief fondness was for Greek,—the department in which twelve years before he had been made a university professor. But his life henceforth was to be little with his beloved Greek authors, little with his muse. Not long after graduation he had been ordained and placed for a time in charge of two parishes in the neighborhood of Lund. Now, in January, 1824, came the intelligence that he had been elected to the vacant bishopric of Wexiö. The spirit which breathed from his “Nattvardsbarnen” (Children of the Lord’s Supper) had won the hearts of the clergy, and this was their tribute of love and confidence. He accepted with reluctance, removing to the scene of his future labors in May of the same year. He threw himself into his new duties with all energy. The various interests of his diocese, particularly the schools, received his unremitting care. In the fourteen years that follow he became the acknowledged head of the Swedish Church. In the National Diet he was also an active member. But now we approach the end of this remarkable career. There was a trace of insanity in the family, and Tegnér had long feared he might become a victim. In his poetic facility he saw only a mental intensity emanating from that source; and he was doubtless right. Overwork had also aggravated the danger. Ere long he grew full of great and impossible schemes. He wrote to Mr. Longfellow that he was about to issue a new edition of his writings in a hundred volumes! Finally, in 1838, he was sent to the insane hospital at Schleswig. After a short stay he seemed to mend, and returned to his labors, as all thought, restored. But his vital energy was slowly waning. In 1845 he was obliged to seek release from public duty, and in the year following was stricken with paralysis. It was not the first attack of this kind that had come upon him, but it was the last. “His head now possessed its old-time soundness; his voice had recovered its usual clearness. Only the evening before his death he was attacked by a slight delirium, which was betrayed by his speaking often of Goethe as his countryman. Resigned and peaceful he neared his end. Water and light were still his refreshments. When the autumn sun one day shone brightly into his sick chamber, he broke forth with the words, ‘I lift up my hands to God’s house and mountain,’ which he often afterward repeated. They were his last Sun-song. To his absent children he sent his farewell greeting; to his oldest son a ring with Luther’s picture, which he had worn on his hand for thirty years. Shortly before midnight on the second of November, 1846,—the most beautiful aurora borealis lighted up the sky—the spirit of the skald gently broke its fetters. Scarcely a sigh betrayed the separation to his kneeling wife, who read upon his face, lit up at once by the moon and death, ‘blessed peace and heavenly rapture.’”
Tegnér’s successor in Swedish belles-lettres was Rúneberg, of whom we shall now give a brief sketch. Tegnér belongs to the romantic era of European literature, and, as we know, it would be hard to find a more purely romantic poet. Runeberg was destined to found in Sweden the modern or realistic school. He was the son of a “merchant-captain,” and born in 1804 in Finland. He was sent to college, became professor of Latin, and finally of Greek. He caught in some way the spirit of the coming change, unlearned the old methods in which he had begun to write, and in 1832 published his “Elk Hunters.” This was the beginning of nature-writing in Sweden. It was followed by the delicate idyl of “Hanna,” the brilliant “Christmas Eve,” and finally “Nadeschda” and “King Fjalar.” These bear favorable comparison with anything in modern literature. In his shorter pieces, and notably the “Ensign Stal’s Stories,” Runeberg has earned perhaps greater fame. His death occurred in 1877. The school he founded is continued by the living pens of Wirsén, Carl Snoilsky, and Viktor Rydberg.
We will translate, to close our sketch, a random morsel of Runeberg, not as an example of his genius and skill, but rather of his simplicity and love of nature. The meter is already familiar to us in “Hiawatha,” and was borrowed by both Runeberg and Longfellow from the national epic of Finland, the “Kalevála.”
Poor I hear they call thy mother,
Poor, my gentle child, they call thee.
Art thou poor, thou little maiden,
Art thou poor as people think thee?
Out before thy mother’s cottage
Blossom meadows, flourish forests;
Every mead has brooks of silver,
Every wood its broad lake-mirror,
Over all the sun is smiling,
Pouring forth its golden glory.
Art thou poor, thou little maiden,
Art thou poor as people think thee?
When thou hear’st thy mother singing,
Softly close thy tender eyelids,—
Lids which hide thy soul’s pearl-treasures;
Straight thereafter cometh slumber,
Slumber followed by dream’s angel,
Soft and still dream’s angel takes thee,
Lifts thee on his wings so gently,
Bears thee forth among the meadows,
There to bloom among the flowers,
Bears thee to the birds and forests,
There to fill thy breast with singing,—
Leaves thy soul in purest waters,
Bathes thee in the joyous sunshine.
Art thou poor, thou little maiden,
Art thou poor as people think thee?
When again thy eyelids open,
Thou art on thy mother’s bosom,
Feelest in thy tender senses,
Thinkest in thy darksome thinking:
Sweet it was upon the meadows,
Blithe it was with birds and woodlands,
Good beside the lake’s clear waters,
Warm that bathing in the sunlight,—
Yet best is it on this bosom.
[To be continued.]
[PICTURES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.]
By C. E. BISHOP.