It was soon after his publication of "Frithjof's Saga" that Tegner became Bishop of Wexioe. He then removed from Lund and took up his residence upon the estate Oestrabo, near the principal town in his diocese. The great fame of his poem came to him as a surprise; and he even undertook to protest against it, declaring with perfect sincerity that he held it to be undeserved. In letters to his friends he never wearied of pointing out the faults of "Frithjof" and his own shortcomings as a poet. In a letter to the poet Leopold (August 17, 1825), who had praised the poem to the skies, he argues seriously to prove that his admiration is misplaced:

"My great fault in 'Frithjof' was not that I chose my theme from the old cycle of sagas, but that I treated it in a tone and with a manner which was neither ancient nor modern, neither antiquarian nor poetical, but hovered, as it were, on the boundary of both. For what does it mean to treat a subject poetically if not this, to eliminate everything which belongs to an alien and past age and now no longer appeals to any heart? The hearts to which it once did appeal are now all dust. Other modes of thought and feeling are current. It is impossible to properly translate one age into another. But to poetry nothing is really past. Poetry is the beautifying life of the moment; she wears the colors of the day; she cannot conceive of anything as dead.... But I am convinced that all poetic treatment of a theme belonging to a past age demands its modernization; and that everything antiquarian is here a mistake. This holds good not only in regard to the northern tone but also in regard to the Greek. Look, for instance, at Goethe's 'Iphigenie.' Who does not admire the beautiful, simple, noble, Hellenic form? And yet who has ever felt his soul warmed by this image of stone?... No living spirit has been breathed into these nostrils; the staring eyes gaze upon me without life and animation; no heart beats under the Hellenically rounded marble bosom. The whole is a mistake, infinitely more beautiful than 'Frithjof,' but fashioned according to the game principles of art. The Greeks said that the Muse was the daughter of Memory; but this refers only to the material, the theme itself, which is everywhere of minor consequence. The question, then, is as to the proper treatment. Where it tends toward the antiquarian it misses the mark; it represents, like 'Frithjof,' only a restored ruin."

This passage is by no means the only one in which Tegner, with an utter absence of vanity or illusion, judged his work and found it wanting. There is no mock modesty in his manly deprecation of the honors that were showered upon him; but as a father knows best the faults of his child whom he loves, so he knew the defects of his work, as measured by his own high standard, and refused to accept any more praise than was his due. Not even the fact that Goethe expressed his admiration of "Frithjof's Saga" could persuade him that he was entitled to the extravagant homage which his enthusiastic countrymen accorded him. There were even times when he disclaimed the title of poet. Whether he was forgotten a little sooner or a little later, he said, was a matter of small moment.

"Speaking seriously," he writes in 1824 (accordingly before the publication of "Frithjof"), "I have never regarded myself as a poet in the higher significance of the word.... I am at best a John the Baptist, who is preparing the way for him who is to come."

He is always just and inclined to be generous in his judgment of every one except himself. It is necessary, however, after the year 1824, to make due allowance for the terrible strain upon his mind which disposed him to give violent and hyperbolical expression to the mood of the moment. The unhappy passion which he could at times smother, but never subdue, went boring away into his heart like a subterranean fire, consuming his vitals, and occasionally breaking forth into a wild blaze. The following reference to it, in his letter to Franzen (November 13, 1825), is very pathetic:

"It is to-day my forty-third birthday. I have thus long since passed the highest altitude of life where the waters divide. With every year one now becomes smaller and smaller; one star is extinguished after another. And yet the sun does not rise. One dies by degrees and by halves. Therefore only children and youth ought to celebrate their birthdays with joy; we who have passed into the valley of age, which with every step is growing darker and chillier, are right in celebrating them with—whims.... However, this is not my only or my greatest affliction, I have had and have others. But the night is silent and the grave is dumb, and their sister, Sorrow, should be as they. Therefore—let this suffice."

December 29th. "Alas, this old year! What I have suffered in it no one knows, if not, perhaps, the Recorder beyond the clouds. But I am indebted to this year. It has been darker, but also more serious than all the others put together. I have learned at my own expense what a human heart can endure without breaking, and what power God has deposited in a man under his left nipple. As I say, I am under obligation to this year, for it has enriched me with what is the real sinking fund of human wisdom and human independence—a mighty, deeply rooted contempt for man.... My inner nature emerges from the crisis like the hibernating bear from his den, emaciated and exhausted, but happily with my ursine sinews well preserved; and by and by some flesh will be growing on them again. It seems to me that my old barbaric, Titanic self, with its hairy arms, is constantly more and more rubbing the sleep out of its eyes. I hope that some vine may still grow upon the scorched and petrified volcano of my heart."

January, 1826. "But when one is compelled to despise the character of a human being, especially of one who has been or is dear to one, then that is the bitterest experience which life can afford; then it is not strange if a frank and ardent soul turns with loathing from this false, hypocritical generation and shuts himself up, as well as may be, in the hermitage of his own heart.

"My mind is unchristian, for it has no day of rest. Generally I think that my disease has its seat in the abdomen or in the waist. Mineral waters I can no more drink this summer. But is there not a mineral water which is called Lethe?

"Whether my little personality returns thither whence it came, with or without consciousness, a few months later or earlier, in order to be drowned in its great fountain-head, or to float for some time yet like a bubble, reflecting the clouds and an alien light—this appears to me constantly a matter of less and less consequence."

There is to me a heartrending pathos in these confessions. It is easy to stand aloof, of course, like a schoolmaster with his chastising rod, and lash the frailties of poor human nature. It is easy to declare with virtuous indignation that the man who covets his neighbor's wife is a transgressor who has no claim upon our sympathy. And yet who can help pitying this great, noble poet, who fought so bravely against his "barbaric, Titanic self with its hairy arms"? His passionate intensity of soul was, indeed, part of his poetic equipment; and he would not have been the poet he was if he had been cool, callous, and self-restrained. The slag in him was so intimately moulded with the precious metal that their separation would have been the extinction of the individuality itself. The fiery furnace of affliction through which he passed warped and scorched and cracked this mighty compound, but without destroying it. A glimpse of this experience which transformed the powerful, joyous, bright-visaged singer into a bitter, darkly brooding pessimist, fleeing from the sinister shadow which threatened to overtake him, is afforded us in the poem "Hypochondria[40]":

"I stood upon the altitude of life, Where mingled waters part and downward go With rush and foam in opposite directions. Lo, it was bright up there, and fair to stand. I saw the sun, I saw his satellite, Which, since he quenched his light, shone in the blue; I saw that earth was fair and green and glorious, I saw that God was good, that man was honest.

"Then rose a dread black imp, and suddenly The black one bit himself into my heart; And lo, at once the earth lay void and barren, And sun and stars were straightway drenched in gloom. The landscape, glad erewhile, lay dark, autumnal; Each grove was sere, each flower stem was broken; Within the frozen sense my strength lay dead, All joy, all courage withered within me.

"What is to me reality—its dumb, Dead bulk, inert, oppressive, grim, and crude? How hope has paled, alas, with roseate hue! And memory, the heavenly blue, grown hoary! And even poesy! Its acrobatic Exertions, leaps—they pall upon my sense; Its bright mirage can satisfy no soul— Light skimmings from the surface fair of things.

"Still I will praise thee, oh, thou human race. God's likeness art thou, oh, how true, how striking! Two lies thou hast natheless, in sooth, to show; The name of one is man, the other's woman! Of faith and honor there's an ancient ditty, 'Tis sung the best, when men each other cheat. Thou child of heaven, the one thing true thou hast Is Cain's foul mark upon thy forehead branded.

"A mark quite legible, writ by God's finger; Why did I fail ere now to heed that sign? A smell of death pervades all human life, And poisons spring's sweet breath and summer's splendor. Out of the grave that odor is exhaling. The grave is sealed and marble guards its freight, But still corruption is the breath of life, Eludes its guard and scatters everywhere.

"Oh, watchman, tell me now the night's dark hour! Will it then never wane unto its end? The half-devoured moon is gliding, gliding, The tearful stars forever onward go, My pulse beats fast as in the time of youth, But ne'er beats out the hours of torment sore. How long, how endless is each pulse-beat's pain! Oh, my consumed, oh, my bleeding heart.

"My heart! Nay in my bosom is no heart, There's but an urn that holds life's burnt-out ashes; Have pity on me, thou green mother Earth, And hide that urn full soon in thy cool breast. In air it crumbles, moulders; earth's deep woe Has in the earth, I ween, at last an end; And Time's poor foundling, here in school constrained, Finds then, perchance, beyond the sun—a father."

[40] The poem is written in the ottava rime, but in order to preserve the sense intact I have rendered it in blank verse.

A physical disease which seems to have baffled the skill of physicians may have been the primary cause of the sufferings here described, and was no doubt aggravated by the psychical condition to which I have alluded. Now it was supposed to be the liver which was affected; then again Tegner was treated for gall-stones. In the summer of 1833 he made a journey through Germany and spent some months at Carlsbad; but he returned without sensible relief. His foreign sojourn was, however, of some benefit in widening his mental horizon. Tegner's intellectual affinities had always been French; and toward Germany he had assumed a more or less unsympathetic attitude. A slight acquaintance with the philosopher Schleiermacher and the Germanized Norwegian author Henrik Steffens (who was then a professor at the University of Berlin) did not, indeed, reverse his predilections, but it opened his eyes to excellences in the German people to which he had formerly been blind, and removed prejudices which had obscured his vision. He had everywhere the most distinguished reception, and was honored with an invitation to Sans Souci, where he was the guest of the witty Crown Prince of Prussia, later Frederick William IV. But these agreeable incidents of his journey were a poor compensation for his failure to obtain that which he had gone in search of. Fame, honor, and distinguished friends, without health, are but a Tantalus feast, the sweets of which are seen but never tasted.

"I fear," said Tegner, in his hopelessness, "that my right side, like that of the Chamber of Deputies, is incurable."

"When this Saul's spirit comes over me I often feel an indescribable bitterness, which endures nothing, spares nothing, in heaven or on earth. It usually finds vent in misanthropic reflections, sarcasms, and ideas which I have no sooner written down than I repent of them."

The activity which he unfolded, even in the midst of intolerable sufferings, was phenomenal. He possessed an energy of will and vigor of temperament which enabled him to rise superior to his physical condition, and lure strong music (though sometimes jarred into discords) from the broken lyre. It was in 1829, after his illness had fastened its hold upon him, that he pronounced the beautiful epilogue in hexameters at the graduating festivities at the University of Lund, and crowned the Dane, Adam Oehlenschlaeger, as the king of poets:

"Now, before thou beginnest the distribution of laurels Grant me one for him in whom I shall honor them all. Lo, the Adam of poets is here, the Northern king among singers; Heir to the throne in poesy's world; for the throne yet is Goethe's. Oscar, the king, if he knew it, would give his grace to my action. Now I speak not for him, still less for myself, but the laurel Place on thy brow in poesy's name, the bright, the eternal.

* * * * *

Past is disunion's age (in the infinite realm of the spirit Never it ought to have reigned), and kindred tones o'er the water Ring, which enrapture us all, and they are especially thine. Therefore, Svea—I speak in her name—adorns thee with laurel: Take it from brotherly hand, of the day in festal remembrance."

Restless official activity, parliamentary labors, educational addresses, and metrical discourses on memorable occasions filled the years from 1829 to 1840. He felt the demon of insanity lurking behind him, now close at his heels, now farther away; and it was a desperate race, in which life and death, nay, worse than death, was at stake. His indefatigable exertions afforded him a respite from the thought of his terrible pursuer. We can only regard with respectful compassion the outbreaks of misanthropic spleen which often disfigure his correspondence from this period of deepening twilight, relieved by a brief interval of brightness. It is especially woman who is the object of his bitterest objurgation. The venerable mutabile et varium of Virgil is the theme upon which he perpetually rings the changes. No occasion is too inappropriate for a joke at the fickle and faithless sex; and even the school-boys in the Wexioe gymnasium are treated to some ironical advice, a propos of the beautiful jade, which must have sounded surprising in an episcopal oration. Life with its bright pageant was oppressive, like a nightmare to the afflicted poet. All charm, all rationality had departed from existence, which was but a meaningless dance of hideous marionettes. The world was battered and befouled; inexpressibly loathsome. And finally, in 1840, while Tegner was attending the Riksdag (of which in his official capacity he was a member), the long-dreaded catastrophe occurred. His insanity manifested itself in tremendous projects of reform, world-conquests, and outbreaks of wild sensuality. He was sent to a celebrated asylum in Sleswick; and on the way thither wrote a series of "Fantasies of Travel" which have all the rich harmony of his earlier verse, and are full of delightful imagery. He fancied that there was a huge wheel of fire revolving with furious haste in his head, and his sufferings were terrific. The following fragment from the notes of his attendant, who kept a record of his ravings, has a cosmic magnificence:

"The whole trouble comes from that accursed nonsense about the diadem which they wanted to put on me. You may believe, though, that it was a splendid piece. Pictures in miniature, not painted, but living, really existing miniatures of fourteen of the noblest poets were made into a wreath. It was Homer and Pindar, Tasso and Virgil, Schiller, Petrarch, Ariosto, Goethe, Sophocles, Leopold, Milton, and several more. Between each one of them burned a radiant star, not of tinsel, but of real cosmic material. In the middle of my forehead there was the figure of a lyre on the diadem, which had borrowed something of the sun's own living light; it poured with such bright refulgence upon the wreath of stars that I seemed to be gazing straight through the world. As long as the lyre stood still, everything was well with me—but all of a sudden it began to move in a circle. Faster and ever faster it moved, until every nerve in my body was shaken. At last it began to rotate in rings with such speed that it was transformed into a sun. Then my whole being was broken, and it moved and trembled; for you must know that the diadem was no longer put on the outside of my head, but inside, on my very brain. And now it began to whirl around with an inconceivable violence, until it suddenly broke and burst into pieces. Darkness—darkness—darkness and night spread over the whole world wherever I turned. I was bewildered and faint, and I who had always hated weakness in men—I wept; I shed hot, burning tears. All was over."[41]

[41] Brandes: Esaias Tegner, pp. 231-223.

Contrary to the expectation of his friends he recovered rapidly, and was able to return home in May, 1841. He promptly resumed his episcopal functions, and even wrote a beautiful rural idyl in hexameters called "The Crowned Bride" (Kronbruden), which he dedicated to Franzen. He was well aware, however, that his powers were on the wane, and in 1845 he was persuaded to apply for a year's relief from his official duties. The last months of his life he spent mostly lying upon a sofa in his library, surrounded by great piles of books containing a most miscellaneous assortment of classics, from Homer to Goethe, intersprinkled with controversial pamphlets and recent novels. He was gentle and affectionate in his demeanor; and his beautiful face lighted up with a smile whenever any of his children or grandchildren approached him. Once or twice a day he drove out in his carriage, and he was even able to visit his eldest son, who was a clergyman in Scania, and to receive the sacrament for the last time from his hand. Shortly after his return he was stricken with paralysis, and died November 2, 1846, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. His mind was unclouded and his voice was clear. When the autumnal sun suddenly burst through the windows and shone upon the dying poet, he murmured: "I will lift up mine hands unto the house and the mountain of God."

These were his last words. He was carried to the grave at night by the light of lanterns, followed by a long procession of the clergy, citizens, and the school-boys of his diocese. Peasants, from whose ranks he had sprung and to whom he was always a good friend, bore his coffin.

The academic tendency which "idealizes" life and shuns earth-scented facts, had, through the decisive influence of Tegner, been victorious in Swedish literature. I am aware that some will regard this as a questionable statement; for the academicism of Tegner is not the stately, bloodless, Gallic classicism of the Gustavian age, of which Leopold was the last representative. It is much closer to the classicism of Goethe in "Iphigenia" and "Hermann and Dorothea," and of Schiller in "Wallenstein" and "Wilhelm Tell." Tegner's poetic creed was exactly that of Schiller, who saw no impropriety in making the peasant lad, Arnold Melchthal, when he hears that his father has been blinded, deliver an enraptured apostrophe to the light:

"O eine edle Himmelsgabe ist Das Licht des Auges," etc.

The rhetorical note is predominant in both. Their thoughts have to be arrayed in the flowing toga before they are held to be presentable. This is the academic tendency in Sweden as in France, even though the degree of euphemistic magniloquence may differ with the age and latitude. The Swedes have been called the Frenchmen of the North, and there is no doubt that delight in this toga-clad rhetoric is inherent in both. It was because Tegner, in appealing to this delight, was so deeply representative that he extinguished the old school and became the national poet of Sweden.



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Transcriber's notes:

Dostoyevski is also spelled Dostojevski and Dostoyefski

Tolstoi is also spelled Tostoi.

It appears that Fortaellinger is also spelled Fortaellinger.

Page 11: valuble changed to valuable. Typo.

Page 45: Gjeunembrud's is a typo for Gjennembrud's. Changed in text.

Page 191: Open parenthesis added to 1882.

Page 262: ["The objections to "Frithjof's Saga" which] was changed to [The objections to "Frithjof's Saga" which]. The first double quote appears to be unnecessary.

Page 270: The stanzas are spaced as they appear in the original text, although they appear to be in error.

THE END