Chapter 3

Two years later appeared "The King, which is in many respects Bjoernson's greatest modern masterpiece in dramatic form. He had by this time become a convinced republican, but he was also an evolutionist, and he knew that republics are not created by fiat. He believed the tendency toward republicanism to be irresistible, but he believed also that there must be intermediate stages in the transition from monarchy. Absolutism is succeeded by constitutionalism, and that by parliamentarism, and that in the end must be succeeded by a republicanism that will free itself from all the traditional forms of symbol and ceremonial. He had also a special belief that the smaller peoples were better fitted for development in this direction than the larger and more complex societies, although, on the other hand, he thought that the process of growth into full self-government was likely to be slower among the Germanic than among the Latin races. In the deeply moving play now to be considered, we have, in the character of the titular king, an extraordinary piece of psychological analysis. The king, is young, physically delicate, and of highly sensitive organization. When he comes to the throne he realizes the hollowness and the hypocrisy of the existence that prescription has marked out for him; he realizes also that the very ideal of monarchy, under the conditions of modern European civilization, is a gigantic falsehood. For a time after his accession, he leads a life of pleasure seeking and revelry, hoping that he may dull his sense of the sharp contrast that exists between his station and his ideals. But his conscience will give him no peace, and he turns to deliberate contemplation of the thought, not indeed of abdicating his, false position, but of transforming it into something more consonant with truth and the demands of the age. He will become a citizen king, and take for wife a daughter of the people; he will do away with the pomp and circumstance of his court, and attempt to lead a simple and natural life, in which the interests of the people shall be paramount in his attention. But in this attempt he is thwarted at every step. All the forces of selfishness and prejudice and ignorance combine against him; even the people whom he seeks to benefit are so wedded to their idols that their attitude is one of suspicion rather than of sympathy. He loves a young woman of strong and noble character, and wins her love in return, but she dies on the very eve of their union. His oldest and most confidential friend, the wealthiest man in the kingdom, but a republican, is murdered by a radical associate of the _intransigeant_ type, and the king is left utterly bereaved by his twofold loss. This brings us to the closing scene of the drama, in which the king, his nerves strained to the breaking point, confronts the group of officials and others who bring to him the empty phrases of a conventional condolence:--

The King. Hush! Have a little respect for the truth that should follow death! Understand me rightly: I do not mean that any of you would lie. But the very air about a king is infected. It was of that-a word or two. My time is short. But a testament. ...

The Priest. Testament.

The King. Neither the Old nor the New! Greet what is called Christianity here in this land-greet it from me! I have thought much about Christian folk of late.

The Priest. That rejoices me.

The King. How your tone cuts me! Greet it from me, what is called Christianity here in this land. Nay, do not crane your necks and bend your backs as if the wisdom of the ages were now forthcoming. (_aside_) Can there be any use in saying something seriously? (_aloud_) You are Christians?

The General. God forbid the doubt! Faith is exceedingly useful. ...

The King. For discipline. (_to the Sheriff_) And you?

The Sheriff. From my blessed ancestors I received the faith.

The King. So _they_ are blessed also. Why not?'

The Sheriff. They brought me strictly up to fear God, to honor the king.

The King. And love your fellowmen. You are a State individual, sheriff. And such are Christians nowadays. (_to the Merchant_) And you?

The Merchant. I have not been able to go to church very much of late because of my cough. And in the foul air. ...

The King. You go to sleep. But are you a Christian?

The. Merchant. That goes without saying.

The King. (_to the Priest._) And you are naturally one?

The Priest. By the grace of Jesus I hope that I am.

The King. That is the formula, boys, that is the accepted thing to say. Therefore, you are a Christian community, and it is no fault of mine if such a community will not deal seriously with what concerns Christianity. Greet it from me, and say that it must have an eye to the institution of monarchy.

The Priest. Christianity has nothing to do with such matters. It searches _the inner man_.

The King. That tone! I know it--it does not search the air in which the patient lives, but the lungs. There you have it! Nevertheless, Christianity must have an eye to the monarchy--must pluck the lie from it--must not follow it to its coronation in the church, as an ape follows a peacock. I know what I felt in that situation. I had gone through with a rehearsal the day before--ho, ho! Ask the Christianity in this land, if it be not time to concern itself with the monarchy. It should hardly any longer, it seems to me, let the monarchy play the part of the seductive wanton who turns the thoughts of all citizens to war--which is much against the message of Christianity--and to class distinctions, to luxury, to show and vanity. The monarchy is now so great a lie that it compels the most upright man to share in its falsehood."

The conversation that follows is in a vein of bitterness on the one side, and of obtuse smugness on the other; the tragic irony of the action grows deeper and deeper, until in the end the king, completely disheartened and despairing, goes into an adjoining room, and dies by his own hand, to the consternation of the men from whom he has just parted. They give utterance to a few polite phrases, charitably accounting for the deed by the easy attribution of insanity to the king, and the curtain falls.

It may well be imagined that "The King" made a stir in literary and social circles, and quite noticeably fluttered the dovecotes of conventionality and conservatism. Such plain speaking and such deadly earnestness of conviction were indeed far removed from the idyllic simplicity of the peasant tales and from the poetical reconstructions of the legendary past. Eight years later, Bjoernson prefaced a new edition of this work with a series of reflections upon "Intellectual Freedom" that constitute one of the most vigorous and remarkable examples of his serious prose. The central ideas of his political faith are embodied in the following sentences from this preface:--

"Intellectual Freedom. Why is not attention called over and over again to the fact that for the great peoples, who have so many compensating interests, the free commerce of ideas is one condition of life among many others; while for us, the small peoples, it is absolutely indispensable. A people numerically large may attain to ways of thought and enterprise that no political censure can reduce to a minimum; but under narrower conditions it may easily come about that the whole people will fall asleep. A powerful propaganda of enlightenment under the conditions of free speech is for us of the first and the last importance. When I wrote this piece it was my chief aim to enlarge the bounds of free thought. I have later made the same attempt in matters of religion and morals. When my opponents seek to sum up my character in a few words, they are apt to say: 'He attacks the throne and the altar.' It seems to me that I have served the freedom of the spirit, and in the interests of that cause I now beg leave to reply. (1) _Concerning the attack on Christianity._ It may be worth while in a country with a state church to recall now and then the meaning of Christianity. It is not an institution, still less a book, and least of all it is a house or a seminary. It is the godly life according to the precepts and example of Jesus. There may be men who think they are attacking Christianity when they investigate the historical origin or the morality of some dogma; I do not think so. Honest investigation can result only in growth. Christianity, with or without its whole apparatus of dogma, will endure in its essence for thousands of years after us; there will always be spiritually-minded people who will be ennobled by it, and some made great. I honor all the noble. I have friends among the Christians, whom I love, and never for a moment have I thought of attacking their Christianity. I have no higher wish than to see them by its help transform certain aspects of our society into seriousness. (2) _Concerning the attack on monarchy._ Monarchy is, on the other hand, an institution, here the circumstances are naturally different. I have attacked monarchy, and I will attack it. But--and to this 'but' I call the closest attention. Shortly before the July Revolution, when its first signs were declared, Chateaubriand was talking with the King, who asked what it all meant. 'It is monarchy that is done with,' replied the royalist, for he was also a seer. Certainly there have been in France both kingdom and empire since that day. If there should be no more hereafter, they still exist in other lands, and will endure for generations after us. But 'done with' are they none the less; notice was given them by the French Revolution. It does not concern them all simultaneously; it fixes terms, different for the different kingdoms, and far removed for the kingdoms based upon conquest. But the face of civilization is now turned toward the republic, and every people has reached the first, second, or third stage of the way. "If a work of the mind is born of Norse conditions and stands before the ethical judgment seat--let it have its full action; otherwise it will not produce its full reaction. If the faith that gave shape to the piece is not the strongest force in the society that gave it birth, it will evoke an opposing force of greater strength. Thereby all will gain. But to ignore it, or seek to crush it--that in a large society may not greatly matter, so rich are the possibilities of other work taking its place; but in a small society it may be equivalent to destroying the sight of its only eye."

In the clean-cut phrases and moral earnestness of this _apologia pro vita sua_, which deserves to be reproduced at greater length, we have the modern Bjoernson, no longer poet alone, but poet and prophet at once, the champion of sincere thinking and worthy living, the Sigurd Slembe of our own day, happier than his prototype in the consciousness that the ambition to serve his people has not been; altogether thwarted, and that his beneficent activity is not made sterile even by the bitterest opposition.

Only a rapid glance may be taken at the books of the five years following upon the publication of "The King." The story of "Magnhild," planned several years earlier, represents Bjoernson's return to fiction after a long dramatic interlude. There are still peasants in this story, but they are different from the figures of the early tales, and the atmosphere of the work is modern. It turns upon the question of the mutual duties of husband and wife, when love no longer unites them. The solution seems to lie in separation when union has thus become essentially immoral. "Captain Mansana" is a story of Italian life, based, so the author assures us, on actual characters and happenings that had come within the range of his observation during his stay abroad. Its interest does not lie in any particular problem, but rather in the delineation of the titular figure, a strong and impetuous person whose character suggests that of Ferdinand Lassalle, as the author himself points out to us in a prefatory note. "Dust" is a pathetic little story having for its central idea what seems like a pale reflection of the idea of Ibsen's "Ghosts," which had appeared a few months before. It is the dust of the past that settles upon our souls, and clogs their free action. The special application of this thought is to the religious training of children:--

"When you teach children that the life here below is nothing to the life above, that to be visible is nothing in comparison with being invisible, that to be a human being is nothing in comparison with being dead, that is not the way to teach them to view life properly, or to love life, to gain courage, strength for work, and love of country."

In the play, "Leonarda," and again in the play, "A Glove," the author recurs to the woman question; in the one case, his theme is the attitude of society toward the woman of blemished reputation; in the other, its attitude toward the man who in his relation with women has violated the moral law. "Leonarda" is a somewhat inconclusive work, because the issue is not clearly defined, but in "A Glove" (at least in the acting version of the play, which differs from the book in its ending) there is no lack of definiteness. This play inexorably demands the enforcement of the same standard of morality for both sexes, and declares the unchaste man to be as unfit for honorable marriage as the unchaste woman. Upon the theme thus presented a long and violent discussion raged; but if there be such a thing as an immutable moral law in this matter, it must be that upon which Bjoernson has so squarely and uncompromisingly planted his feet. The other remaining work of this five-year period is the play called "The New System." The new system in question is a system of railway management, and it is a wasteful one. But the young engineer who demonstrates this fact has a hard time in opening the eyes of the public. He succeeds eventually, but not until he has encountered every sort of contemptible opposition and hypocritical evasion of the plain truth. The social satire of the piece is subtle and sharp; what the author really aims at is to illustrate, by a specific example, the repressive forces that dominate the life of a small people, and make it almost impossible for any sort of truth to triumph over prejudice.

Since the production of "A Glove," twenty years ago, eight more plays have come from Bjoernson's prolific pen. Of these by far the most important are the two that are linked by the common title, "Beyond the Strength." The translation of this title is hopelessly inadequate, because the original word means much more than strength; it means talent, faculty, capability, the sum total of a man's endowment for some particular purpose. The two pieces bearing this name are quite different in theme, but certain characters appear in both, and both express the same thought,--the thought that it is vain for men to strive after the unattainable, for in so doing they lose sight of the actual possibilities of human life; the thought that much of the best human energy goes to waste because it is devoted to the pursuit of ideals that are indeed beyond the strength of man to realize. In the first of the two plays, this superhuman ideal is religious, it is that of the enthusiast who accepts literally the teaching that to faith all things are possible; in the second, the ideal is social, it is that of the reformer who is deluded to believe that one resounding deed of terror and self-immolation for the cause of the people will suffice to overthrow the selfish existing order, and create for the toiling masses a new heaven upon earth. No deeper tragedies have been conceived by Bjoernson than these two, the tragedy of the saintlike Pastor Sang, who believes that the miracle of his wife's restoration to health has at last in very truth been wrought by his fervent prayer, and finds only that the ardor of his faith and hers has brought death instead of life to them both,--the tragedy of his son Elias, who dies like Samson with his foes for an equally impossible faith, and by the very violence of his fanaticism removes the goal of socialist endeavor farther than ever into the dim future. Bjoernson has written nothing more profoundly moving than these plays, with their twofold treatment of essentially the same theme, nor has he written anything which offers a clearer revelation of his own rich personality, with its unfailing poetic vision, its deep tenderness, and its boundless love for all humankind. The play, "Geography and Love," which came between the two just described, is an amusing piece, in the vein of light and graceful comedy, which satirizes the man with a hobby, showing how he unconsciously comes to neglect his wife and family through absorption in his work. The author was, in a way, taking genial aim at himself in this piece, a fact which his son Bjorn, who played the principal part, did not hesitate to emphasize. "Paul Lange and Tora Parsberg," the next play, deals with the passions engendered by political controversy, and made much unpleasant stir in Norwegian society because certain of the characters and situations were unmistakeably taken from real life. After these plays came "Laboremus" and "At Storhove," both concerned with substantially the same theme, which is that of the malign influence exerted by an evil-minded and reckless woman upon the lives of others. From a different point of view, we may say that the subject of these plays is the consecration of the home. This has always been a favorite theme with Bjoernson, and he has no clearer title to our gratitude than that which he has earned by his unfailing insistence upon the sanctity of family life, its mutual confidences, and its common joys. Completing the list, we have "Daglannet," another domestic drama of simple structure, and "When the New Wine Blooms," a study of modernity as exemplified in the young woman of to-day, of the estrangement that too often creeps into married life, and of the stirrings that prompt men of middle age to seek to renew the joys of youth.

During the years that have passed since the publication of "Dust," Bjoernson has produced four volumes of fiction,--his two great novels, a third novel of less didactic mission, and a second collection of short stories. The first of the novels, "Flags Are Flying in City and Harbor," saw the light during the year following the publication of "A Glove," and the teaching of that play is again enforced with uncompromising logic in the development of the story. The work has two other main themes, and these are heredity and education. So much didactic matter as this is a heavy burden for any novel to carry, and a lesser man than Bjoernson would have found the task a hopeless one. That he should have succeeded even in making a fairly readable book out of this material would have been remarkable, and it is a pronounced artistic triumph that the book should prove of such absorbing interest. For absorbingly interesting it is, to any reader who is willing that a novel should provide something more than entertainment; and who is not afraid of a work of fiction that compels him to think as he reads. The principal character is a man descended from a line of ancestors whose lives have been wild and lawless, and who have wallowed in almost every form of brutality and vice. The four preceding generations of the race are depicted for us in a series of brief but masterly characterizations, in which every stroke tells, and we witness the gradual weakening of the family stock. But with the generation just preceding the main action of the novel, there has been introduced a vigorous strain of peasant blood, and the process of regeneration has begun. It is this process that goes on before our eyes. It does not become a completed process, but the prospect is bright for the future, and the flags that fly over town and harbor in the closing chapter have a symbolical significance, for they announce a victory of spirit over sense, not only in the cases of certain among the individual participants in the action, but also in the case of the whole community to which they belong. So much for the book as a study in heredity. As an educational tract, it has the conspicuous virtue of remaining in close touch with life while embodying the spirit of modern scientific pedagogy. The hero of the book,--the last descendant of a race struggling for moral and physical rehabilitation,--throws himself into the work of education with an energy equal to that which his forbears had turned into various perverse channels. He organizes a school, more than half of the book, in fact, is about this school and its work,--and seeks to introduce a system of training which shall shape the whole character of the child, a school in which truth and clean living shall be inculcated with thoroughness and absolute sincerity, a school which shall be the microcosm of the world outside, or rather of what that world ought to be. Bjoernson's interest in education has been life-long; for many years it had gone astray in a sort of Grundtvigian fog, but at the time when this book came to be written, it had worked its way out into the clear light of reason. If the future should cease to care for this work as a piece of literature, it will still look back to it as to a sort of nineteenth century "Emile," and take renewed heart from its inspiring message.