To hold such intimate relations with one’s fatherland is most fortunate for a person who is sympathetically comprehended by that fatherland.  And this is the case with Bjoernson.  It is a matter dependent on conditions deeply rooted in his nature.  He who cherishes so profound an enthusiasm for the reserved, solitary Michelangelo, and who feels constrained, as a matter of course, to place him above Raphael, is himself a man of a totally different temperament:  one who is never lonely, even when most alone (as he has been since 1873 on his gard in remote Gausdal), but who is social to the core, or, more strictly speaking, a thoroughly national character.  He admires Michelangelo because he reveres and understands the elements of greatness, of profound earnestness, of mighty ruggedness in the human heart and in style; but he has nothing in common with the great Florentine’s melancholy sense of isolation.  He was born to be the founder of a party, and was therefore early attracted to enthusiastic and popular party leaders, such as the Dane Grundtvig and the Norwegian Wergeland, although wholly unlike either in his plastic, creative power.  He is a man who needs to feel himself the centre, or rather the focus of sympathy, and insensibly he forms a circle about him, because his own nature is the resume of a social union.

Copyrighted by T.Y.  Crowell and Company, New York.

THE HISTORICAL MOVEMENT IN MODERN LITERATURE

From the Introduction to ’Main Currents in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century’

What I shall portray for you is a historical movement, having very completely the form and the character of a drama.  The six distinct literary groups that I intend to present to you are entirely like the six acts of a great play.  In the first group, the French emigrant-literature inspired by Rousseau, the reaction has already begun, but the reactionary currents are everywhere blended with the revolutionary.  In the second group, the half-Catholic romantic school of Germany, the reaction is growing; it goes further, and holds itself more aloof from the contemporary movement towards freedom and progress.  The third group, finally, formed of such writers as Joseph de Maistre, Lamennais in his orthodox period, Lamartine and Victor Hugo under the Restoration, when they were still firm supporters of the legitimist and clerical parties, stands for the reaction, impetuous and triumphant.

Byron and his associates make up the fourth group.  This one man reverses the action of the great drama.  The Greek war of liberation breaks out, a current of fresh air sweeps over Europe, Byron falls as a hero of the Greek cause, and his heroic death makes a deep impression upon all the writers of the Continent.  Just before the July Revolution all the great French writers turn about, forming the fifth group, the French romantic school, and the new liberal movement is marked