In this tempestuous mood he wrote at Rome a poem called Brand in which he let himself go and poured out his bitterness against his native land. Brand was a Norwegian priest who tried to live like Christ and “was snubbed and hounded by his latitudinarian companions.” It was a magnificent poem, and verily Norway must have trembled at its ferocity, for in Brand’s “latitudinarian companions” the poet had typified the current religious and moral sentiment of his native land.
Soon he wrote the dramatic satire Peer Gynt, in which the hero typified Ibsen’s conception of Norwegian egotism, vacillation, and luke-warmness. He commenced this splendid work in all the fiery anger with which he had written Brand, but in spite of himself he soon forgot his anger and developed the great piece of literature which critics say is as fine as anything produced in the nineteenth century.
Four years later he did receive a poet’s pension, for his country could not longer ignore his genius.
He had phenomenal success in many lines, but finally turned his attention to simple conversational drama. He is one of the most widely discussed dramatists of recent times. He fearlessly, almost morbidly, braved convention, and was venomously attacked as an immoral writer. Hjalmar Ekdal, the main character of one of his plays, The Wild Duck, has earned the name of being the most abominable villain in all the world’s drama. Certainly Ibsen revelled in the sins and faults of society, but only, as he himself says, as a diagnosist, and not, like Tolstoy, as a healer.
On his seventieth birthday the great dramatist was received with the highest marks of honor by the native land which he had so bitterly abused, and it must have been soothing to his fiery, cynical nature to thus come into his own during the last days of his life.
Henrik Ibsen, and all Norwegian literature in general, should be of especial interest to Americans, for it bears the same relation to Danish literature that our own bears to English. It is only within the last century that Norway has had any real, national literature. The great Holberg, who lived in the seventeenth century, was really a Norwegian, but he hardly thought of his own country as being a fitting home for literature, and he devoted his talents to Denmark, and is generally regarded as a Dane.
You will be ready now to make your way to Christiansand and then up this most peaceful of dals to Brevik. On the way you will see many country scenes, becoming more and more unconsciously primitive and rustic as you leave the outside world behind. You will see swarms of children along the way, or should I say “prides” or “nides” of them? At any rate, there is no race suicide in rural Norway. These children are now in the midst of their summer holidays, which for many of them last nine months in the year. Education is compulsory from the ages of seven to fourteen for every child in Norway, but many of the farms, particularly in the lonely Sætersdal, are so far apart that it would be impossible to maintain any regular public-school system. Accordingly itinerant schoolmasters must travel over the length and breadth of Norway, imparting instruction to every child within the specified ages, for at least twelve weeks in the year. Sometimes he must devote his twelve weeks to a single child or a single family, and in this case he becomes the farmer’s guest. Sometimes two or three neighboring farmers combine and appoint one house as the common schoolhouse and the home of the itinerant pedagog. The Norwegian school-teacher’s life is thus one of pleasurable variety. Very often the farmer’s grown-up daughter assists the teacher in his labors, and many a tender passage occurs between them while the children are studying and the fond, hoping mother peeks through the crack of the door.
As I have said before, Sætersdal is the most charmingly peaceful spot in all Norway. There is nothing strenuous about the scenery or the life. Both continue as they have continued for ages and as they will continue for ages to come, unless the ubiquitous railway finds its way here. The cares of life for these peasants are reduced to a minimum. No problems perplex them. Perhaps their simple minds are hardly capable of being perplexed, but they live a calm, God-fearing, happy life. While their fellow countrymen in the towns are wrestling year in and year out with problems, they scarcely know what the word means. Perhaps you think this is a deplorable mental stagnation, but you would not and could not think so if you saw the people. They are noble and generous and honest and good, and as long as they possess these qualities they certainly do not need problems. These fine Norwegian peasants have done as much as all the fjords and mountains and waterfalls and valleys to fill me with the charm of Norway.
I had intended to visit the “Sand Hills of Jutland” and to write to you about them, but after all they are just what Hans Christian Andersen called them, sand hills, and, charming as some parts of Jutland doubtless are, I fear it would be an anticlimax to the varied glories of Norway. Denmark would not have so much interest for a lover of Norway were it not for the historical associations inseparably linking the two countries together, so I base my strongest plea on the land of the fjord. You have been very obliging, Judicia, in performing these sudden chess-metamorphoses from your natural queenliness to knighthood and castlehood and bishophood (I have never reduced you to the rank of a pawn), as the nature of your imaginary move might demand. However, I will refrain from further compliments, lest you should think I am trying to bribe you.