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.
I.
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.