SWEDISH LANDSCAPES: BY HERR ANDERSEN.
In the last International we gave some characteristic historical sketches from Hans Christian Andersen's latest and most delightful book, the Pictures of Sweden; but the inspiration of nature is more powerful with him than that of history, and he is never so felicitous as when painting the scenery of his native country, though he has certainly indulged, to a greater extent than a sober taste can approve, in that passion for the fantastic and visionary, which has been but too visibly manifested in some of his later and slighter works. Our readers, however, shall judge for themselves. The forests of Sweden and its rivers give the most noticeable features to its landscape. This is how they appeared to Andersen—the forest first:
"We are a long way over the elv. We have left the corn-fields behind, and have just come into the forest, where we halt at that small inn which is ornamented over the doors and windows with green branches for the midsummer festival. The whole kitchen is hung round with branches of birch and the berries of the mountain ash; the oat cakes hang on long poles under the ceiling; the berries are suspended above the head of the old woman who is just scouring her brass kettle bright.
"The tap-room, where the peasants sit and carouse, is just as finely hung round with green. Midsummer raises its leafy arbor every where, yet it is most flush in the forest which extends for miles around. Our road goes for miles through that forest, without seeing a house, or the possibility of meeting travellers, driving, riding, or walking. Come! The ostler puts fresh horses to the carriage; come with us into the large woody desert: we have a regular trodden way to travel, the air is clear, here is summer's warmth and the fragrance of birch and lime. It is an up-and-downhill road, always bending, and so, ever changing, but yet always forest-scenery—the close, thick forest. We pass small lakes, which lie so still and deep, as if they concealed night and sleep under their dark, glassy surfaces.
"We are now on a forest plain, where only charred stumps of trees are to be seen; this long tract is black, burnt, and deserted, not a bird flies over it. Tall, hanging birches now greet us again; a squirrel springs playfully across the road, and up into the tree; we cast our eyes searchingly over the wood-grown mountain side, which slopes so far, far forward, but not a trace of a house is to be seen: nowhere does that bluish smoke-cloud rise, that shows us, here are fellow-men. The sun shines warm; the flies dance around the horses, settle on them, fly off again, and dance as though it were to qualify themselves for resting and being still. They perhaps think, 'Nothing is going on without us: there is no life while we are doing nothing.' They think, as many persons think, and do not remember that time's horses always fly onward with us!
"How solitary is it here! so delightfully solitary! one is so entirely alone with God and one's self. As the sunlight streams forth over the earth, and over the extensive solitary forests, so does God's Spirit stream over and into mankind; ideas and thoughts unfold themselves—endless, inexhaustible, as He is—as the magnet which apportions its powers to the steel, and itself loses nothing thereby. As our journey through the forest scenery here along the extended solitary road, so, travelling on the great high road of thought, ideas pass through our head. Strange, rich caravans pass by from the works of poets, from the home of memory, strange and novel; for capricious fancy gives birth to them at the moment. There comes a procession of pious children with waving flags and joyous songs; there come dancing Menades, the blood's wild Bacchantes. The sun pours down hot in the open forest; it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here to rest in Scandinavian forest solitude, and sought itself out a glade where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep; hence this stillness as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a pine tree moves. Of what does the Southern summer dream here in the North, amongst pines and fragrant birches?
"In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of the South, are sagas of mighty fairies, who, in the skins of swans, flew towards the North, to the Hyperboreans' land, to the east of the north winds; up there, in the deep still lakes, they bathed themselves, and acquired a renewed form. We are in the forest by these deep lakes; we see swans in flocks fly over us, and swim upon the rapid elv and on the still waters...."
"Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our thoughts! Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls people now pass in the summer time with cattle and domestic utensils; children and old men go to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song springs forth with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the procession? Paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart, laden high with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The bright copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The old grandmother sits at the top of the load, and holds her spinning wheel, which complete the pyramid. The father drives the horse, the mother carries the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession moves on step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown children; they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows' horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery; she goes the same quiet pace as the others, and lashes the saucy flies with her tail. If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is fuel enough; here the tree falls of itself from old age, and lies and rots.
"But take especial care of the fire—fear the fire-spirit in the forest desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile; he comes from the thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning's flame, which kindles the thick, dry moss of the earth: trees and bushes are kindled; the flames run from tree to tree, it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flames leap to the tops of the trees. What a crackling and roaring, as if it were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the fire, are consumed in it! Hear their cries and roars of agony! The howling of the wolf and the bear, dost thou know it? A calm rainy day, and the forest-plains themselves alone are able to confine the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest by the broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel, but it becomes worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no road at all, but it is about to become one. Large stones lie half dug up, and we drive past them; large trees are cast down, and obstruct our way, and therefore we must descend from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over ditches and opened paths. The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a distance there are huts erected of loose trunks of trees and fresh green boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where the blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is delightful in the forest."
So say we. It is delightful in the forest; not less so on the torrent-river of Scandinavia:
"Before Homer sang, there were heroes; but they are not known, no poet celebrated their fame. It is just so with the beauties of nature; they must be brought into notice by words and delineations, be brought before the eyes of the multitude; get a sort of world's patent for what they are. The elvs of the North have rushed and whirled along for thousands of years in unknown beauty. The world's great high-road does not take this direction; no steam-packet conveys the traveller comfortably along the streams of the Dal-elvs; fall on fall makes sluices indispensable and invaluable. Schubert is, as yet, the only stranger who has written about the magnificence and southern beauty of Dalecarlia, and spoken of its greatness.
"Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in endless windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending trees and the red-painted block-houses of solitary towns, and sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock.
"Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains between Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs, which first become confluent and have one bed above Balstad. They have taken up rivers and lakes in their waters. Do but visit this place! here are pictorial riches to be found: the most picturesque landscapes, dizzyingly grand, smilingly pastoral, idyllic; one is drawn onward up to the very source of the elv, the bubbling well above Finman's hut; one feels a desire to follow every branch of the stream that the river takes in.
"The first mighty fall, Njupesker's Cataract, is seen by the Norwegian frontier in Semasog. The mountain stream rushes perpendicularly from the rock to a depth of seventy fathoms.
"We pause in the dark forest, where the elv seems to collect within itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls its clear waters over a porphyry soil, where the mill-wheel is driven, and the gigantic porphyry bowls and sarcophagi are polished.
"We follow the stream through Siljan's lake, where superstition sees the water-sprite swim like the sea-horse, with a mane of green seaweed; and where the aërial images present visions of witchcraft in the warm summer day.
"We sail on the stream from Siljan's lake under the weeping willows of the parsonage, where the swans assemble in flocks; we glide along slowly with horses and carriages on the great ferry-boat, away over the rapid current under Balstad's picturesque shore. Here the elv widens and rolls its billows majestically in a woodland landscape, as large and extended as if it were in North America.
"We see the rushing, rapid stream under Avista's yellow clay declivities; the yellow water falls, like fluid amber, in picturesque cataracts before the copper works, where rainbow-colored tongues of fire shoot themselves upwards, and the hammer's blow on the copper-plates resound to the monotonous, roaring rumble of the elv-fall."
And so on, past the famous fall down which the waters gush, ere they lose themselves in the waters of the Baltic. One glimpse more ere they reach their resting-place. We take them up as they are circling the garden of a trim Swedish manor-house:
"The garden itself was a piece of enchantment. There stood three transplanted beech trees, and they throve well. The sharp north wind had rounded off the tops of the wild chestnut trees of the avenue in a singular manner; they looked as if they had been under the gardener's shears. Golden yellow oranges hung in the conservatory; the splendid Southern exotics had to-day got the windows half open, so that the artificial warmth met the fresh, warm, sunny air of the Northern summer.
"The branch of the Dal-elv which goes round the garden is strewn with small islands, where beautiful hanging birches and fir-trees grow in Scandinavian splendor. There are small islands with green, silent groves; there are small islands with rich grass, tall brakens, variegated bell flowers, and cowslips. No Turkey carpet has fresher colors. The stream between these islands and holmes is sometimes rapid, deep, and clear; sometimes like a broad rivulet with silky green rushes, water lilies, and brown feathered reeds; sometimes it is a brook with a stony ground, and now it spreads itself out in a large, still mill-dam.
"Here is a landscape in midsummer for the games of the river-sprites, and the dancers of the elves and fairies! There, in the lustre of the full moon, the dryads can tell their tales, the water-sprites seize the golden harp, and believe that one can be blessed, at least for one single night, like this.
"On the other side of Ens Bruck is the main stream—the full Dal-elv. Do you hear the monotonous rumble? It is not from Elvkarleby Fall that it reaches hither; it is close by; it is from Laa Foss in which lies Ash Island: the elv streams and rushes over the leaping salmon.
"Let us sit here, between the fragments of rock by the shore, in the red evening sunlight, which sheds a golden lustre on the waters of the Dal-elv.
"Glorious river! But a few seconds' work hast thou to do in the mills yonder, and thou rushest foaming on over Elvkarleby's rocks, down into the deep bed of the river, which leads thee to the Baltic—thy eternity."
We could fill half our number with passages just as beautiful; but will leave the rest of the poet's landscapes till some American publisher brings out the book. We must nevertheless quote one picture of a different kind. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin;" and the sorrows of the palace and the cottage alike find their level and their rest in the grave. The "Mute Book" speaks with a moving eloquence to those who can read it aright:
"By the high-road into the forest there stood a solitary farm-house. One way lay right through the farm-yard; the sun shone; all the windows were open; there was life and bustle within, but in the yard, in an arbor of flowering lilacs, there stood an open coffin. The corpse had been placed out here, and it was to be buried that forenoon. No one stood by, and wept over that dead man; no one hung sorrowfully over him. His face was covered with a white cloth, and under his head there lay a large, thick book, every leaf of which was a whole sheet of gray paper, and, between each, lay withered flowers, deposited and forgotten,—a whole herbarium, gathered in different places. He himself had requested that it should be laid in the grave with him. A chapter of his life was blended with every flower! 'Who is that dead man?' we asked, and the answer was, 'The old student from Upsala. They say he was once very clever; he knew the learned languages, could sing and write verses too; but then there was something that went wrong, and so he gave both his thoughts and himself up to drinking spirits, and, as his health suffered by it, he came out here into the country, where they paid for his board and lodging. He was as gentle as a child when the dark humor did not come over him, for then he was strong, and ran about in the forest like a hunted deer; but when we got him home, we persuaded him to look into the book with the dry plants. Then he would sit the whole day, and look at one plant, and then at another, and many a time the tears ran down his cheeks. God knows what he then thought! But he begged that he might have the book with him in his coffin; and now it lies there, and the lid will soon be fastened down, and then he will take his peaceful rest in the grave!'
"They raised the winding sheet. There was peace in the face of the dead. A sunbeam fell on it; a swallow, in its arrow-flight, darted into the new-made arbor, and in its flight circled twittering over the dead man's head.
"How strange it is!—we all assuredly know it—to take out old letters from the days of one's youth, and read them: a whole life, as it were, then rises up, with all its hopes and all its troubles. How many of those with whom we, in their time, lived so devotedly, are now even as the dead to us, and yet they still live! But we have not thought of them for many years—them whom we once thought we should always cling to, and share our mutual joys and sorrows with!
"The withered oak-leaf in the book here, is a memorial of the friend—the friend of his school days—the friend for life. He fixed this leaf on the student's cap, in the greenwood, when the vow of friendship was concluded for the whole life. Where does he now live? The leaf is preserved; friendship forgotten. Here is a foreign conservatory plant, too fine for the gardens of the North. It looks as if there still were fragrance in it. She gave it to him—she, the lady of that noble garden!
"Here is the marsh-lotus, which, he himself has plucked and watered with salt tears—the marsh-lotus from the fresh waters! And here is a nettle; what do its leaves say! What did he think on plucking it?—on preserving it? Here are lilies of the valley, from the woodland solitudes; here are honeysuckles from the village ale-house flower-pot; and here the bare, sharp blade of grass. The flowering lilac bends its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead man's head; the swallow again flies past—'qui-vit! qui-vit!' Now the men come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the corpse, whose head rests on the 'Mute Book'—preserved—forgotten!"
The book, to those who are not repelled by a certain quaintness of manner from the enjoyment of a work of true genius, will form a permanent and delightful addition to those pictures of many lands which the enterprise and accomplishment of modern travellers is creating for the delight of those whose range of locomotion is bounded by the limits of their own country, or by the four walls of a sick chamber.
Andersen has grown old in years, and with age he has increase of art, but he was never younger in spirit, and his genius never blossomed with more freshness and beauty.