Jonas Lie reconquered at one stroke all that he had lost, by the delightful sea-novel "Rutland" (1881), and reinstated himself still more securely in the hearts of an admiring public by the breezy tale, "Press On" (1882). But after so protracted a sea-voyage he began to long for the shore, where, up to date he had suffered all his reverses. It could not be that he who had lived all his life on terra firma, and was so profoundly interested in the problems of modern society, should be banished forever, like "The Man Without a Country," to the briny deep, and be debarred from describing the things which he had most at heart. One more attempt he was bound to make, even at the risk of another failure. Accordingly in 1883 appeared "The Life Prisoner" (Livsslaven), which deserved a better fate than befell it. The critics found it depressing, compared it to Zola, and at the same time scolded the author because he lacked indignation and neglected to denounce the terrible conditions which he described. He replied to their arraignments in an angry but very effective letter. But that did not save the book. Truth to tell, "The Life Prisoner" is a dismal tale. It was, in fact, the irruption of modern naturalism into Norwegian literature. It reminds one in its tone more of Dostoyevski's "Crime and Punishment" than of "L'Assommoir." For to my mind Dostoyevski is a greater exponent of naturalism than Zola, whom Lemaitre not inaptly styles "an epic poet." The pleasing and well-bred truths or lies, to the expounding of which belles lettres had hitherto been confined, were here discarded or ignored. The author had taken a plunge into the great dumb deep of the nethermost social strata, which he has explored with admirable conscientiousness and artistic perception. Few men of letters would object to being the father of so creditable a failure. Lie, being convinced that his book was a good one, no matter what the wielders of critical tomahawks might say to the contrary, resolved to persevere in the line he had chosen and to pluck victory from the heels of defeat. And the victory came even the same year (1883), when he published what, to my mind, is the most charming of all his novels, "The Family at Gilje." That is a book which is taken, warm and quivering, out of the very heart of Norway. The humor which had been cropping out tentatively in Lie's earlier tales comes here to its full right, and his shy, beautiful pathos gleams like hidden tears behind his genial smile. It is close wrought cloth of gold. No loosely woven spots—no shoddy woof of cheaper material. Captain Jaeger and his wife, Inger-Johanna, Jörgen, Grip, nay, the whole company of sober, everyday mortals that come trooping through its chapters are so delightfully human that you feel the blood pulse under their skin at the first touch. It is a triumph indeed, to have written a book like "The Family at Gilje."
From this time forth Jonas Lie's career presents an unbroken series of successes. "A Maelstrom" (1884), "Eight Stories," "Married Life" (Et Samliv), (1887), "Maisa Jons" (1888), "The Commodore's Daughters" and "Evil Powers" (1890), which deal with interesting phases of contemporary life, are all extremely modern in feeling and show the same effort to discard all tinsel and sham and get at the very heart of reality.
He had by this series of novels established his reputation as a relentless realist, when, in 1892, he surprised his admirers by the publication of two volumes of the most wildly fantastic tales, entitled "Trold." It was as if a volcano, with writhing torrents of flame and smoke, had burst forth from under a sidewalk in Broadway. It was the suppressed Finn who, for once, was going to have his fling, even though he were doomed henceforth to silence. It was the "queer thoughts" (which had accumulated in the author and which he had scrupulously imprisoned) returning to take vengeance upon him unless he released them. The most grotesque, weird, and uncanny imaginings (such as Stevenson would delight in) are crowded together in these tales, some of which are derived from folk-lore and legends, while others are free fantasies.
Before taking leave of Jonas Lie, a word about his style is in order. Style, as such, counts for very little with him. Yet he has a distinctly individual and vigorous manner of utterance, though a trifle rough, perhaps, abrupt, elliptic, and conversational. Mere decorative adjectives and clever felicities of phrase he scorns. All scientific and social phenomena—all that we include under the term modern progress—command his most intense and absorbed attention. Having since 1882 been a resident of Paris (except during his annual summer excursions to Norway or the mountains of Bavaria) he has had the advantage of seeing the society which he describes at that distance which, if it does not lend enchantment, at all events unifies the scattered impressions, and furnishes a convenient critical outpost. He does not permit himself, however, like so many foreigners in the French capital, to lapse into that supercilious cosmopolitanism which deprives a man of his own country without giving him any other in exchange. No; Jonas Lie is and remains a Norseman—a fact which he demonstrated (to the gratification of his countrymen) on a recent occasion. At the funeral of the late Professor O. J. Broch—a famous Norwegian who died in Paris—the chaplain of the Swedish legation made an oration in which he praised the departed statesman and scientist, referring to him constantly as "our countryman." When he had finished, Jonas Lie, without anybody's invitation, stepped quietly up to the coffin and in the name of Norway bade his countryman a last farewell. "The spirit came over Lie," says his biographer, "and he spoke with ravishing eloquence."
But why did he do such an uncalled-for thing, you will ask? Because there is a systematic effort on the part of Sweden to suppress the very name of Norway, and to give the impression, throughout the world, that there is no such nationality as the Norwegian. Therefore every Norseman (unless he chooses to be a party to this suppression) is obliged to assert his nationality in season and out of season. But Jonas Lie has, indeed, in a far more effective way borne aloft the banner of his country. His books have been translated into French, German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Russian, and Bohemian; and throughout Europe the literary journals and magazines are beginning to discuss him as one of the foremost representatives of modern realism.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN[17]
[17] A portion of this essay appeared originally in "The Dial" of Chicago.
Hans Christian Andersen was a unique figure in Danish literature, and a solitary phenomenon in the literature of the world. Superficial critics have compared him with the Brothers Grimm; they might with equal propriety have compared him with Voltaire or with the man in the moon. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were scientific collectors of folk-lore, and rendered as faithfully as possible the simple language of the peasants from whose lips they gathered their stories. It was the ethnological and philological value of the fairy-tale which stimulated their zeal; its poetic value was of quite secondary significance. With Andersen the case was exactly the reverse. He was as innocent of scientific intention as the hen who finds a diamond on a dunghill is of mineralogy. It was the poetic phase alone of the fairy-tale which attracted him; and what is more, he saw poetic possibilities where no one before him had ever discovered them. By the alchemy of genius (which seems so perfectly simple until you try it yourself) he transformed the common neglected nonsense of the nursery into rare poetic treasure. Boots, who kills the ogre and marries the princess—the typical lover in fiction from the remotest Aryan antiquity down to the present time—appears in Andersen in a hundred disguises, not with the rudimentary features of the old story, but modernized, individualized, and carrying on his shield an unobtrusive little moral. In "Jack the Dullard" he comes nearest to his primitive prototype, and no visible effort is made to refine him. In "The Most Extraordinary Thing" he is the vehicle of a piece of social satire, and narrowly escapes the lot which the Fates seem especially to have prepared for inventors, viz., to make the fortune of some unscrupulous clown while they themselves die in poverty. In "The Porter's Son" he is an aspiring artist, full of the fire of genius, and he wins his princess by conquering that many-headed ogre with which every self-made man has to battle—the world's envy, and malice, and contempt for a lowly origin. It is easy to multiply examples, but these may suffice.