Part 1

Hans of Iceland

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.

BY

VICTOR HUGO

Centenary Edition

_BOSTON_ · DANA ESTES & COMPANY · _PUBLISHERS_

The Centenary Edition

LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND COPIES · _NUMBER_ 555

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

VOL. I.

PAGE

PORTRAIT OF VICTOR HUGO _Frontispiece_

SCHUMACKER BLESSING THE YOUNG COUPLE 22

“HE BLEW A LOUD BLAST ON A HORN” 40

HANS OF ICELAND FINDING THE BODY OF HIS SON, GILL STADT 68

SCHUMACKER AND HIS DAUGHTER IN THE PRISON GARDEN 97

ORDENER BIDDING ETHEL FAREWELL 113

INTRODUCTION.

“Hans of Iceland” is the work of a young man,--a very young man.

As we read it, we see clearly that the eighteen-year old boy who wrote “Hans of Iceland” during a fever fit in 1821 had no experience of men or things, no experience of ideas, and that he was striving to divine all this.

Every intellectual effort, be it drama, poem, or romance, must contain three ingredients,--what the author has felt, what he has observed, and what he has divined.

In a romance particularly, if it is to be a good one, there must be plenty of feeling and plenty of observation; and those things which are divined must be derived logically, simply, and with no solution of continuity, from those things which are observed and felt.

If we apply this law to “Hans of Iceland,” we shall readily grasp the chief defect of the book.

There is but one thing felt in “Hans of Iceland,” the young man’s love; but one thing observed, the young girl’s love. All the rest is a matter of divination,--that is, of invention; for youth, having neither facts nor experience nor models behind it, can only divine by means of its imagination. “Hans of Iceland,” therefore, admitting that it deserves classification, is hardly more than a fanciful romance.

When a man’s prime is past, when his head is bowed, when he feels compelled to write something more than strange stories to frighten old women and children, when all the rough edges of youth are worn away by the friction of life, he realizes that every invention, every creation, every artistic divination, must be based upon study, observation, meditation, science, measure, comparison, serious reflection, attentive and constant imitation of Nature, conscientious self-criticism; and the inspiration evolved from these new conditions, far from losing anything, gains broader influence and greater strength. The poet then realizes his true aim. All the vague revery of his earlier years is crystallized, as it were, and converted into thought. This second period of life is usually that of an artist’s greatest works. Still young, and yet mature,--this is the precious phase, the intermediate and culminating point, the warm and radiant hour of noon, the moment when there is the least possible shade, and the most light. There are supreme artists who maintain this height all their lives, despite declining years. These are the sovereign geniuses. Shakespeare and Michael Angelo left the impress of youth upon some of their works, the traces of age on none.

To return to the story of which a new edition is now to be published: Such as it is, with its abrupt and breathless action, its characters all of a piece, its barbarous and bungling mannerism, its supercilious and awkward form, its undisguised moods of revery, its varied hues thrown together haphazard with no thought of pleasing the eye, its crude, harsh, and shocking style, utterly destitute of skill or shading, with the countless excesses of every kind committed almost unwittingly throughout, this book represents with tolerable accuracy the period of life at which it was written, and the particular condition of the soul, the imagination, and the heart of a youth in love for the first time, when the commonplace and ordinary obstacles of life are converted into imposing and poetic impediments, when his head is full of heroic fancies which glorify him in his own estimation, when he is already a man in two or three directions, and still a child in a score of others, when he has read Ducray-Duminil at eleven years of age, Auguste la Fontaine at thirteen, Shakespeare at sixteen,--a strange and rapid scale, which leads abruptly, in the matter of literary taste, from the silly to the sentimental, from the sentimental to the sublime.

We give this book back to the world in 1833 as it was written in 1821, because we feel that the work, ingenuous, if nothing else, gives a tolerably faithful picture of the age that produced it.

Moreover, the author, small as may be his place in literature, having undergone the common fate of every writer, great or small, and seen his first works exalted at the expense of the latest, and having heard it declared that he was far from having fulfilled the promise of his youth, deems it his duty, not to oppose to a criticism, perhaps wise and just, objections which might seem suspicious from his lips, but to reprint his first works simply and literally as he wrote them, that his readers may decide, so far as he is concerned, whether it be a step forward or backward that divides “Hans of Iceland” from “Nôtre-Dame de Paris.”

PARIS, May, 1833.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

The author of this work, from the day he wrote its first page to the day when he placed the happy word “End” at the bottom of the last page, was a prey to the most absurd illusion. Fancying that a composition in four parts deserved some consideration, he wasted his time in seeking a fundamental idea, in working it out, well or ill, according to a plan good or bad, as the case may be, in arranging scenes, combining effects, studying manners and customs as best he might,--in a word, he took his work seriously.

It is only now, when, as it is the wont of authors to end where the reader begins, he was about to elaborate a long preface, which should be the shield of his work, and contain, together with a statement of the moral and literary principles upon which his conception rests, a more or less hasty sketch of the various historical events which it embraces, and a more or less clear picture of the country in which the scene is laid,--it is only now, I say, that he perceives his error; that he recognizes all the insignificance and all the frivolity of the species of work in behalf of which he has so solemnly spoiled so much paper, and that he feels how strangely he was misled when he persuaded himself that this romance was indeed, up to a certain point, a literary production, and that these four fragments formed a book.

He therefore sagely resolved, after making a proper apology, to say nothing at all in this so-called preface, which the publisher will consequently be careful to print in large letters. He will not tell the reader his name or surname, whether he be old or young, married or a bachelor; whether he has written elegies or fables, odes or satires; whether he means to write tragedies, dramas, or comedies; whether he be the patrician member of some great literary association, or whether he holds a position upon some newspaper,--all things, however, which it would be very interesting to know. He confines himself to stating that the picturesque part of his story has been the object of his especial care; that K’s, Y’s, H’s, and W’s abound in it, although he uses these romantic letters with extreme temperance, witness the historic name of Guldenlew, which some chroniclers write Guldenloewe,--a liberty which he has not ventured to allow himself; that there will also be found numerous diphthongs varied with much taste and elegance; and finally, that each chapter is preceded by a strange and mysterious motto, which adds singularly to the interest and gives more expressiveness to each part of the composition.

JANUARY, 1823.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The author has been informed that a brief preface or introduction to this second edition of his book is absolutely essential. In vain he declared that the four or five paragraphs which escorted the first edition, and with which the publisher persisted in disfiguring it, had already drawn down upon his head the anathemas of one of the most distinguished and honorable of French writers,[1] who accused him of assuming the sour tones of the illustrious Jedediah Cleishbotham, schoolmaster and sexton of the parish of Gandercleugh; in vain he alleged that this brilliant and sensible critic, from dealing severely with an error, would doubtless become merciless, upon a repetition of the same mistake,--in a word, he presented countless equally good reasons for declining to fall into the trap; but better ones must have been brought to bear against them, since he is now writing a second preface, after so bitterly repenting that he wrote the first. While executing this bold resolve, his first thought was to open the second edition with those general and particular views on the subject of romance-writing with which he dared not burden the first. Lost in meditations on this literary and didactic treatise, he was still a prey to that strange intoxication of composition, that brief instant when the author, feeling that he is about to grasp an ideal perfection which, alas, he can never reach, is thrilled with delight at his task; he was, we say, enjoying that period of mental ecstasy when labor is a delight, when the secret possession of the muse seems sweeter than the dazzling pursuit of fame, when one of his wisest friends waked him suddenly from his dream, his ecstasy, his intoxication, by assuring him that several very great, popular, and influential men of letters considered the dissertation which he was preparing utterly flat, insipid, and unnecessary; that the painful apostleship of criticism with which they were charged in various public pages, imposing upon them the mournful duty of pitilessly hunting down the monster of “romanticism” and bad taste, they were even then busily preparing for certain enlightened and impartial journals a conscientious, analytical, and spicy criticism of the aforesaid forthcoming dissertation. Upon hearing this terrible news, the poor author _obstupuit; steteruntque comæ, et vox faucibus hæsit_,--that is to say, nothing remained but to leave in the limbo whence he was about to rescue it the essay, “virgin and yet unborn,” as Jean Jacques Rousseau has it, of which such just and such severe critics had fallen foul. His friend advised him to replace it by a few simple preliminary remarks from the publishers, as he could very properly put into those gentlemen’s mouths all the sweet nothings which so delicately tickle an author’s ear; nay, he even offered him certain models, taken from highly successful works, some beginning with the words, “The immense popular success of this book,” etc.; others thus, “The European fame which this work has won,” etc.; or, “It is now superfluous to praise this book, since popular opinion declares that no praise can equal its merit,” etc. Although these various formulæ, according to the discreet adviser, were not without their attested virtues, the author did not feel sufficient humility and paternal indifference to expose his work to the disappointment or the demands of the reader who should peruse these magnificent apologies, nor sufficient effrontery to imitate those rustic mountebanks who attract the curious public by displaying a painted crocodile upon a curtain, behind which, on paying their fee, they find nothing but a lizard. He therefore rejected the idea of sounding his own praises through the obliging lips of his publishers. His friend then suggested that he should put into the mouth of his villanous Icelandic outlaw, by way of a passport, phrases suited to popularize him and render him congenial with the age,--such as delicate jests directed against the nobility, bitter sarcasms upon the clergy, ingenious invectives against nuns, monks, and other monsters of the social order. The author asked nothing better; but it scarcely seemed to him that nobles and monks had any very direct connection with the work in hand. He might, it is true, have borrowed other colors from the same palette, and thrown together a few highly philanthropic pages, in which--always keeping at a prudent distance from the dangerous shoals hidden under the waters of philosophy, and known as the shoals of the Court of Misdemeanors--he might have advanced certain of those truths discovered by the wise for the glory of mankind and the consolation of the dying; namely, that man is but a brute, that the soul is a gas of greater or less density, and that God is nothing; but he thought these incontestable truths very trivial and very hackneyed, and he could scarcely add a drop to the deluge of reasonable morality, atheistic religion, maxims, doctrines, and principles with which we have been flooded for our good for thirty years, in so monstrous a fashion that we might, if it be not irreverent, apply Regnier’s verses on a shower,--

“From out the clouds the rains in such vast torrents pour, That thirsty dogs can drink and not their foreheads lower.”

Moreover, these lofty themes had no very visible connection with the subject of his story, and he might have been puzzled to find any bond of union leading up to it, although the art of transitions has been singularly simplified, since so many great men have discovered the secret of passing from a stable to a palace direct, and of exchanging without incongruity the policeman’s cap for the civic crown.

Recognizing, therefore, that neither his talent nor his learning, “neither his wings nor his beak,” as the ingenious Arab poet has it, could furnish him with a preface which would interest his readers, the author resolved merely to offer them a serious and frank account of the improvements introduced in this second edition.

He must first inform them that the words “second edition” are incorrect, and that the term “first edition” should really be applied to this reprint, inasmuch as the four variously sized bundles of grayish paper blotted with black and white, which the indulgent public has hitherto kindly consented to consider as the four volumes of “Hans of Iceland,” were so disfigured with typographic errors by a barbarous printer that the wretched author, on looking over his own production, altered as it was beyond all recognition, was perpetually subjected to the torments of a father whose child returns to him mutilated and tattooed by the hand of an Iroquois from Lake Ontario.

For instance, the type turned a “lion’s” voice into a “line,” robbed the Dovrefield Mountains of their “peaks” and bestowed upon them “feet,” and when the Norse fishers hoped to moor their boat in various “creeks,” the printer drove them upon “bricks.” Not to weary the reader, the author will pass by in silence all the outrages of this kind which his wounded memory recalls,--

“Manet alto in pectore vulnus.”

Suffice it to say that there is no grotesque image, no strange meaning, no absurd idea, no confused figure, no burlesque hieroglyph, which the sedulously stupid ignorance of this enigmatical proof-reader did not make him utter. Alas! every one who ever printed a dozen lines, were it only an invitation to a wedding or a funeral, will feel the deep bitterness of such a sorrow!

The proofs of this reprint have accordingly been read with sedulous care; and the author now ventures to hope, in which he is sustained by one or two close friends, that this romance _redivivus_ is worthy to figure among those splendid writings before which “the eleven stars bow low,’ as before the sun and moon.”[2]

Should journalists accuse him of making no corrections, he will take the liberty of sending them the proof-sheets of this regenerate work, blackened by minute scrutiny; for it is averred that there is more than one doubting Thomas among them.

The kindly reader will also observe that several dates have been corrected, historical notes added, one or two chapters enriched with new mottoes,--in a word, he will find on every page changes whose extreme importance is to be measured only by that of the entire book.

An impertinent adviser desired a translation in foot-notes of all the Latin phrases with which the learned Spiagudry sprinkles the book, “for the comprehension,” adds this personage, “of those masons, tinkers, or hairdressers who edit certain journals wherein ‘Hans of Iceland’ may chance to be reviewed.” The author’s anger at such insidious counsel may be imagined. He instantly begged to inform the would-be joker that all journalists, without distinction, are mirrors of courtesy, wisdom, and good faith, and requested him not to insult him by believing him to be one of those ungrateful citizens who are ever ready to address those dictators of taste and genius in this poor verse of an old poet,--

“Keep your own skins, my friends, nor other folk condemn,”

for he is far from thinking that the lion’s skin is not the true skin of those popular gentlemen.

Still another friend implored him--for he must conceal nothing from his readers--to put his name on the titlepage of this story, hitherto the neglected child of an unknown father. It must be owned that beyond the pleasure of seeing the half-dozen capital letters which spell out one’s name printed in fine black characters upon smooth white paper, there is also a certain charm in displaying it in solitary grandeur upon the back of the cover, as if the work which it adorns, far from being the only monument of the author’s genius, were but one of the columns in the imposing temple wherein his genius is some day to spread its wings, but a slight specimen of his hidden talent and his unpublished glory. It proves that at least he hopes to be a noted and admired writer some day. To triumph over this fresh temptation, the author was forced to muster all his fears lest he should never break through the crowd of scribblers who, even though they waive their anonymity, must ever remain unknown.

As for the hint thrown out by certain amateurs with very delicate ears regarding the uncouth harshness of his Norwegian names, he considers it well founded. He therefore proposes, so soon as he shall be made a member of the Royal Society at Stockholm or the Bergen Academy, to invite the Norwegians to change their language, inasmuch as the hideous jargon which they are whimsical enough to employ wounds the ears of Parisian ladies, and their outlandish names, as rugged as their rocks, produce the same effect upon the sensitive tongue that utters them, as their bear’s grease and bark bread would probably have upon the delicate nervous filaments of our palate.

It only remains for him to thank the few persons who have been good enough to read his book through, as is proved by the really tremendous success which it has won; he also expresses his gratitude to those of his fair readers who, he is assured, have formed a certain ideal of the author of “Hans of Iceland” from his book; he is vastly flattered that they should attribute to him red hair, a shaggy beard, and fierce eyes; he is overcome with confusion that they should condescend to do him the honor to suppose that he never cuts his nails; but he entreats them on his knees to rest assured that he never carries his ferocity so far as to devour little children alive; moreover, all these facts will become fixed when his renown has reached the level of that of the authors of “Lolotte and Fanfan” or of “Monsieur Botte,”--men of transcendent genius, twins alike in talent and in taste, _arcades ambo_; and when his portrait, _terribiles visu formæ_, and his biography, _domestica facta_, are prefixed to his works.

He was about to close this long epistle, when his publisher, on the point of sending the book to the reviews, requested that he would add a few complimentary notices of his own work, adding, to remove all the author’s scruples, that “his writing should not be the means of compromising him, as he would copy these articles himself.” This last remark struck the author as extremely touching. Since it seems that in this most luminous age every man considers it his duty to enlighten his neighbor as to his own qualities and personal perfections, concerning which none can be so well informed as their possessor, as, moreover, this last temptation is a strong one, the author thinks it his duty, in case he should yield to it, to warn the public not to believe more than half of what the press may say of his work.

APRIL, 1828.

HANS OF ICELAND

HANS OF ICELAND.

I.

Did you see it? did you see it? did you see it? Oh! did you see it?--Who saw it? Who did see it? For mercy’s sake, who saw it?

STERNE: _Tristram Shandy._

“That’s what comes of falling in love, Neighbor Niels. Poor Guth Stersen would not be stretched out yonder on that great black slab, like a starfish forgotten by the tide, if she had kept her mind on mending her father’s boat and patching his nets. Saint Usuph, the fisher, console our old friend in his affliction!”

“And her lover,” added a shrill, tremulous voice, “Gill Stadt, that fine young man beside her, would not be there now, if instead of making love to Guth and seeking his luck in those accursed Roeraas mines, he had stayed at home and rocked his little brother’s cradle, under the smoky cross-beams of his mother’s hut.”

Neighbor Niels, whom the first speaker addressed, interrupted: “Your memory is growing old along with yourself, Mother Olly. Gill never had a brother, and that makes poor Widow Stadt’s grief all the harder to bear, for her home is now left utterly desolate; if she looks up to heaven for consolation, she sees nought but her old roof, where still hangs the cradle of her son, grown to be a tall young man, and dead.”

“Poor mother!” replied old Olly, “it was the young man’s own fault. Why should he go to Roeraas to be a miner?”

“I do believe,” said Niels, “that those infernal mines rob us of a man for every escalin’s[3] worth of copper which we get out of them. What do you think, Father Braal?”

“Miners are fools,” replied the fisherman. “If he would live, the fish should not leave the water. Man should not enter the bowels of the earth.”

“But,” asked a young man in the crowd, “how if Gill Stadt had to work in the mines to win his sweetheart?”

“A man should never risk his life,” interrupted Olly, “for affections which are far from being worth a life, or filling it. A pretty wedding-bed Gill earned for his Guth!”

“So then that young woman,” inquired a curious bystander, “drowned herself in despair at the death of this young man?”

“Who says so?” loudly exclaimed a soldier, pushing his way through the crowd. “That young girl, whom I knew well, was indeed engaged to marry a young miner who was lately crushed by falling rocks in the underground tunnels of Storwaadsgrube, near Roeraas; but she was also the sweetheart of one of my mates, and as she was going to Munkholm secretly, day before yesterday, to celebrate with her lover the death of her betrothed, her boat capsized on a reef, and she was drowned.”

A confused sound of voices arose: “Impossible, master soldier,” cried the old women. The young ones were silent; and Neighbor Niels maliciously reminded fisher Braal of his serious statement: “That’s what comes of falling in love!”