The Nobel Prize winners in literature

By Annie Russell Marble

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Title: The Nobel Prize winners in literature

Author: Annie Russell Marble

Release date: November 15, 2025 [eBook #77238]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1925

Credits: Carla Foust, Sean/IB@DP and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS IN LITERATURE ***




  THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS
  IN LITERATURE

[Illustration:

  _By courtesy of The American-Scandinavian Foundation_

ALFRED NOBEL]




  THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS
  IN LITERATURE
  _By_ ANNIE RUSSELL MARBLE


  [Illustration]


  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
  NEW YORK :: MCMXXVII :: LONDON




  COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY


  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




  TO
  PAUL AND ANNA




PREFACE


These studies of Nobel Prize Winners in Literature have been the
result of research for several years and lectures upon the subject in
University Extension courses, before college clubs and other groups.
The vast scope of the subject suggests temerity in one who attempts
to treat it in such limited space. The writer realizes the inadequacy
of the book and possible conflicting statements because of diverse
authorities that have been consulted. After careful “siftings,” it is
offered as an incentive to further study, as a roadmap to many paths
of literary research. Biographical data and brief criticism of the
authors’ works are followed by a bibliography which is suggestive
rather than exhaustive.

The writer of these chapters has been, in large measure, the recorder
of research by many individuals and educational institutions, with
personal deductions from wide reading. Among many books that have been
stimulating are _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ by Georg
Brandes, _Studies from Ten Literatures_ by Ernest Boyd, books upon the
drama and translations by John Garrett Underhill, Ludwig Lewisohn and
Barrett H. Clark, and studies of Knut Hamsun by Josef Wiehr and Hanna
Arstrup Larsen. Other specific books of interpretation are emphasized
in text and footnotes, as well as in bibliography.

Gratitude that defies fitting words would be here expressed to Miss
Anna C. Reque of the Bureau of Information of the American-Scandinavian
Foundation, to the Svenska Akademien Nobelinstitut of Stockholm, to
Mrs. Velma Swanston Howard, Miss Svea Boson and Thekla E. Hodge for
translations, to Mr. R. F. Sharp of the British Museum, to Eugen
Diederichs Verlag in Jerla, to The Danish National Library, Copenhagen,
to Prof. Josef Wiehr, Prof. Kuno Francke, Francis Rooney, Esq., to
Mr. Theodore Sutro, Mr. Rupert Hughes, Miss Harriet C. Marble, and to
librarians of the Widener Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Miss Grace
W. Wood, Mrs. Helen Abbott Beals, and to librarians of the Widener
Library, Cambridge, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Free
Public Library of Worcester and many other sources of encouragement and
coöperation.

Appreciation of permission to quote extracts from printed works and
to use illustrations is acknowledged to Sir Edmund Gosse, Mr. Rudyard
Kipling and his agents, A. P. Watt & Son, to editors of _The Atlantic
Monthly_, _The Bookman_, _The Edinburgh Review_, and the publishing
houses of American-Scandinavian Foundation, D. Appleton & Co., Boni &
Liveright, The Century Co., Thomas Y. Crowell Company, Dodd, Mead &
Company, Inc., Doubleday, Page & Company, Ginn and Company, Henry Holt
and Company, Houghton Mifflin Company, B. W. Huebsch, Inc., Alfred
A. Knopf, Inc., Little, Brown & Company, J. B. Lippincott Company,
Longmans, Green & Co., The Macmillan Company, Oxford University Press,
American Branch, The Pilgrim Press, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Charles
Scribner’s Sons, Thomas Seltzer, Inc., Leonard Scott Publication
Company, Herman Struck, W. P. Trumbauer, The University of Pennsylvania
and Yale University Press.

  ANNIE RUSSELL MARBLE

  Worcester, Massachusetts,
  September, 1925




CONTENTS


                                                              PAGE

  PREFACE                                                      vii

  CHAPTER

     I. ALFRED NOBEL: THE CONDITIONS OF HIS WILL AND LITERARY
        RESULTS                                                  1

    II. POETS OF FRANCE AND PROVENCE                            21

        Sully-Prudhomme (1901)                                  21

        Frédéric Mistral (1904)                                 31

   III. TWO GERMAN SCHOLARS                                     42

        Theodor Mommsen (1902)                                  42

        Rudolf Eucken (1908)                                    48

    IV. BJÖRNSON: NORWEGIAN NOVELIST AND PLAYWRIGHT (1903)      58

     V. GIOSUÈ CARDUCCI--ITALIAN POET (1906)                    72

    VI. THE WRITINGS OF RUDYARD KIPLING BEFORE AND AFTER THE
        AWARD (1907)                                            85

   VII. SELMA LAGERLÖF--SWEDISH REALIST AND IDEALIST (1909)    104

  VIII. PAUL HEYSE (1910)--GERHART HAUPTMANN (1912)            124

    IX. MAETERLINCK--BELGIAN SYMBOLIST AND POET-PLAYWRIGHT
        (1911)                                                 148

     X. RABINDRANATH TAGORE--BENGALESE MYSTIC-POET (1913)      159

    XI. ROMAIN ROLLAND AND _JEAN-CHRISTOPHE_ (1915)            175

   XII. A GROUP OF WINNERS--NOVELISTS AND POETS                189

        Verner Von Heidenstam (1916)                           189

        Henrik Pontoppidan (1917)                              197

        Karl Gjellerup (1917)                                  201

        Carl Spitteler (1919)                                  205

  XIII. KNUT HAMSUN AND HIS NOVELS OF NORWEGIAN LIFE (1920)    213

   XIV. ANATOLE FRANCE--VERSATILE STYLIST IN FICTION AND
        ESSAYS (1921)                                          224

    XV. TWO SPANISH DRAMATISTS                                 239

        José Echegaray (1904)                                  239

        Jacinto Benavente (1922)                               247

   XVI. W. B. YEATS AND HIS PART IN THE CELTIC REVIVAL
        (1923)                                                 253

  XVII. HONORS TO POLISH FICTION                               264

        Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905)                              264

        Ladislaw Stanislaw Reymont (1924)                      269

  CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS IN LITERATURE      277

  BIBLIOGRAPHY                                                 279

  INDEX                                                        301




ILLUSTRATIONS


                                    FACING
                                      PAGE

  ALFRED NOBEL              _Frontispiece_

  FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL                      32

  BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON                 58

  RUDYARD KIPLING                       86

  SELMA LAGERLÖF                       104

  GERHART HAUPTMANN                    134

  MAURICE MAETERLINCK                  148

  RABINDRANATH TAGORE                  160

  ROMAIN ROLLAND                       176

  KNUT HAMSUN                          214

  ANATOLE FRANCE                       224

  JACINTO BENAVENTE                    248

  WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS                 254

  HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ                   264




THE NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS IN LITERATURE




CHAPTER I

ALFRED NOBEL: THE CONDITIONS OF HIS WILL AND LITERARY RESULTS


_Nobilius_ was the ancestral name, by tradition, of that family
whose representative, Alfred Nobel, has left a name synonymous with
inventiveness and large benefactions to humanity. The grandfather,
Imanuel, an army surgeon, is accredited with changing the family
name to _Nobel_. His son, Emanuel, father of Alfred, taught science
in Stockholm, as a young man. With inventive ability he experimented
with explosives, submarine mines, and other destructive forces and,
by paradox, became designer of surgical appliances and India-rubber
cushions to relieve suffering. He was interested in ship construction
and spent some time in Egypt. To his sons he transmitted his spirit of
scientific research, with all the dangers as well as the inspiration of
such ambition. Two explosions, during experiments with nitroglycerine
and other chemicals, caused severe loss. The first, occurring about
1837 in Stockholm, shattered the nerves of the people as well as their
windows, so that Emanuel went to Russia, on the advice of friends
prominent in affairs of industry and government. Here he was employed
by the Russians to continue his experiments with submarine mines; with
his family, he remained here until after the Crimean War, contributing
to naval warfare by his inventions. An older son, Ludwig, remained in
Russia when his family returned to Sweden. This son gained repute as
an engineer and discovered the petroleum springs at Baku.[1] A second
explosion in one of the factories of Sweden, in 1864, caused the death
of a younger son of Emanuel Nobel and shocked the father so severely
that he was an invalid physically for the rest of his life.

Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born at Stockholm in 1833. He was less
robust than his brothers; he was sensitive and nervous, suffering from
headaches all his life. His mother, Karoline Henriette Ahlssell, was
his devoted comrade from the early days when he would lie on the couch
while she read to him or told him sagas and hero-stories. She was wise
and happy by nature, confident that Alfred would become “a great man,”
in spite of poor physique and moods of depression. He never married,
although he loved a young girl who died in her youth, but he was
devoted to his mother to the end of her life. Letters and frequent
visits to her in Sweden, in his later life, kept alive his affectionate
nature and his idealism.

Like his father he showed studious interest in chemistry, physics,
and mechanical engineering. Shipbuilding attracted his attention for
a time and, when he was about seventeen, he was sent to the United
States to increase his knowledge of mechanics, as applied to ships, by
association with John Ericsson. At the home of the latter on Franklin
Street, New York, where a tablet has been placed to commemorate the
services of this inventor in the Civil War, young Nobel lived for a
time. His father sent him to John Ericsson in order to investigate an
invention of his, an engine which was supposed to work by heat from
the sun. He stayed several months, probably not more than a year.
Ericsson was passing through a period of fluctuating fortunes. At
the end of 1849 his balance was only $132.32--his total receipts for
the year had been but $2,000. Two years later he recorded a balance
of $8,690.10. In the interval he had sold several patents and had
received congratulations from the King of Sweden upon the great future
for his “test caloric engine.” This was the goal of his experiments
during these years; its success was to be tested in the trial trip of
_The Ericsson_, February 11, 1853. A squall came up as the boat was
launched and making headway, and it sank, carrying with it hopes of
the inventor after years of experiment, and half a million dollars of
invested capital. Ericsson was crushed for a few weeks. How pluckily he
recovered his courage, made his plans for _The Monitor_, offered that
to the United States government and won success for the cause of the
North, is familiar history.[2]

Upon Alfred Nobel, with his quick, impressionable temperament, this
direct contact with Ericsson must have left strong influences. Perhaps
he decided then that, should fortune favor him, he would leave a fund
to aid scientists in their experiments and to protect them against
financial duress during periods of discouragement. When he returned
to Sweden and Russia, he coöperated with his father and brothers in
manufacturing nitroglycerine and other explosives; he was constantly
seeking for a compound which would be more powerful and less dangerous.
In 1857, at St. Petersburg, he had taken out a patent for a gasometer.
It has been said that the discovery of what was later known as dynamite
came by accident to Alfred Nobel, during an experiment about 1865-66.
Some nitroglycerine had escaped into the siliceous sand of the packing
and this brought about a partial solution of his problem. Dynamite,
which was composed of 75 per cent nitroglycerine and 25 per cent
kieselguhr, or infusorial earth, was produced. He applied for patents
in several countries, and sought for funds to start factories which he
believed would make a fortune by manufacture of this new explosive. It
was sometimes called “Nobel’s blasting-oil.” He told French bankers
that he had invented “an oil that would blow up the world”; a facetious
commentator declared, “French bankers thought it for their interest to
leave the globe undisturbed” and refused him credit.[3]

Napoleon III became interested and arranged for funds for Nobel’s
factories in France. With some samples of dynamite in his hand bag,
Alfred Nobel came to the United States on the same commercial mission.
New York hotels received him with suspicion because of rumors about
the “deadly explosive”; he went to California where, through the aid
of Dr. Bandman, a friend of Nobel’s brother, a factory was started
near Los Angeles. In a few years manufactories were in operation in
Italy, Spain, France and Scotland, as well as England and Sweden.
When Alfred Nobel was forty years old he was making his fortune out
of this “giant powder.” For several years he lived in Paris where he
had laboratories for further experiments with gelatin, balastite, and
forms of smokeless powder. In his later home, in San Remo, he carried
on developments and took out more patents in petroleum and artificial
gutta-percha. He received the tribute of scientists and educators but
the ignorant people regarded him with a mixture of awe and fear--“he
had put the long hammer of Thor to work again among the giants.”

In spite of his inspiring life-work and many successes, in spite of
his wealth and honors, Alfred Nobel was a lonely man. His health
was unstable; he often worked with bandaged head and in intense
pain, accentuated by the gaseous fumes of his laboratory. He was
self-distrustful and fearful that people were attracted to him _only_
by his wealth. One of the few individuals who gained and kept his
confidence was Baroness Bertha von Suttner. In her _Memoirs_ the
personality of Alfred Nobel is revealed in comments and letters. She
came to him in response to an advertisement in a Paris newspaper,
asking for a secretary for “a very wealthy, cultured gentleman.”
She remained only a few days in her joint capacity of secretary and
housekeeper, for a happy solution of her interrupted romance with the
Baron von Suttner eventuated in her speedy marriage. She exchanged
letters and visits with Alfred Nobel for many years and was devoted
to him in life and in memory. She describes him as somewhat below
average height, without physical attractiveness but in no sense
“repulsive,” as he imagined himself to be. He was a fine linguist,
somewhat of a philosopher, a good conversationalist and entertaining
as a story-teller. He allowed her to read a long philosophical poem
which he had written in English and she found it “simply splendid.”
He was critical of the shallow, false-hearted people, especially
those who importuned him with low motives; but he had faith in a
better development of humanity as education progressed. One of his few
intellectual companions in Paris was Madame Juliette Adams, author and
editor of the _Nouvelle Revue_; at her salon in Rue Juliet, Nobel would
meet, occasionally, men of science and letters.

In the _Memoirs_ of Baroness von Suttner may be located the first
intimations of Nobel’s motives which led to the Nobel prizes,
especially the specific form which was known as “the Peace Prize.” It
will be recalled that the Baroness von Suttner was one of the early
winners of this prize by her widely-read romance, _Die Waffen nieder_
(_Lay Down Your Arms!_). In 1890, after the publication of this story,
advocating world peace, Nobel wrote letters of high commendation. On
another occasion he said to her, “I wish I could produce a substance or
a machine of such frightful efficacy for wholesale devastation that
wars should thereby become altogether impossible.”[4] He contended,
with the mind of a prophet, that a day might come when “two army corps
may mutually annihilate each other in a second”; then he believed
that “all civilized nations will recoil and disband their troops.” On
January 7, 1893, three years before his death, he wrote to the Baroness
from Paris.[5] “I should like to dispose of a part of my fortune by
founding a prize to be granted every five years--say six times, for
if in thirty years they have not succeeded in reforming the present
system they will infallibly relapse into barbarism.... If the Triple
Alliance, instead of comprising only three states, should enlist all
states, the peace of the centuries would be assured.” Affirming his
belief in “reasonable Socialism,” he deplored the custom of leaving
large fortunes to heirs; too often the results were lapses in mental
ambitions and industry.

On December 10, 1896, Alfred Nobel died suddenly in his workshop at
San Remo. For a long time he had realized his condition of reduced
vitality. He consulted doctors unwillingly and heeded their counsel
with reluctance. He kept a record of his own pulse and heart action
but he never desisted from a full day’s work in his laboratory. His
last letters have a sad note that is sometimes sarcastic yet he
kept faith in and with humanity to the last. He had been carefully
considering the disposal of his fortune, determined that it should
contribute to progress in science and literature, for the welfare of
mankind and the education towards world peace. His will startled the
civilized world by its originality and idealism. The man who had been
most successful in inventing elements of destruction, by a paradox, had
left most of his large fortune to constructive, creative purposes.

Because he distrusted many lawyers he had been his own legal adviser
in large measure; sometimes he had acted as his own secretary, lest an
outsider might abuse his confidence. In appointing M. Ragnar Sohlmann
as executor, he explained that here “was a man who had never asked
anything of me.” (Later the manager of the factory at Bergen became
associate executor.) He left legacies of five thousand pounds each
to his nephews but some efforts to “break the will” were threatened.
Emanuel, then head of the family, refused to sanction such interference
and, after many complications and delays, the will was allowed, and
varied equivocal, or impractical, conditions were interpreted by “Code
of Statutes,” issued by the King of Sweden, June 29, 1900.

From this pamphlet is quoted here the extract from the will:[6]
“Extract from the Will and Testament of Dr. Alfred Bernhard Nobel,
Engineer, which was drawn on the 27th day of November, 1895: ‘With
the residue of my convertible estate I hereby direct my executors to
proceed as follows: They shall convert my said residue of property into
money, which they shall then invest in safe securities; the capital
thus secured shall constitute a fund, the interest accruing from
which shall be annually awarded in prizes to those persons who shall
have contributed most materially to benefit mankind during the year
immediately preceding. The said interest shall be divided into five
equal amounts, to be apportioned as follows: one share to the person
who shall have made the most important discovery or invention in the
domain of Physics; one share to the person who shall have made the most
important chemical discovery or improvement; one share to the person
who shall have made the most important discovery in the domain of
Physiology or Medicine; one share to the person who shall have produced
in the field of Literature the most distinguished work of an idealistic
tendency; and finally, one share to the person who shall have most
or best promoted the Fraternity of Nations and the Abolishment or
Diminution of Standing Armies and the Formation and Increase of Peace
Congresses.’”

In further details the will provides: “The prizes for Physics and
Chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Science in
Stockholm; the one for Physiology or Medicine by the Caroline Medical
Institute in Stockholm; the one for Literature by the Academy in
Stockholm (_i.e._ Svenska Akademien) and that for Peace by a Committee
of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storthing. I declare
it to be my express desire that in the awarding of prizes, no
consideration whatever be paid to the nationality of the candidates,
that is to say, that the most deserving be awarded the prize, whether
of Scandinavian origin or not.”

Because of difficulties in interpreting certain sections and
elucidating other phrases, this Code of Statutes was drawn up “in
consultation with a representative, nominated by Robert Nobel’s family,
and submitted to consideration of the King.” After adjustments of
interests had been “amicably entered into” by the testator’s heirs,
June 5, 1898, it was decreed that “The instructions of the will above
as set forth shall serve as a criterion for the administration of the
Foundation (Nobel) in conjunction with the elucidations and further
stipulations contained in this Code.” One “stipulation” was that “each
of the annual prizes founded by the said will shall be awarded at least
once during each ensuing five-year period after the year in which the
Nobel Foundation comes into force.” The phrase used by Nobel in the
words relating to the prize in Literature, “the Academy at Stockholm,”
was interpreted “as understood to be the Swedish Academy--Svenska
Akademien.” Another significant explanation was--the “term,
‘Literature,’ used in the will shall be understood to embrace not only
works falling under the category of Polite Literature, but also other
writings which may claim to possess literary value by reason of their
form or their mode of exposition.” This last provision, which seems
elastic and somewhat vague, has not led thus far to undue difficulties
and criticisms.

The phrase “during the preceding year,” as applied to scientific and
literary achievements alike, was a strange, impractical provision which
was well interpreted broadly in the Code thus: “only such works or
inventions shall be eligible as have appeared ‘during the preceding
year’ is to be understood, that a work or invention for which a reward
under the terms of the will is contemplated, shall set forth the _most
modern results_ of work being done in that of the departments as
defined in the will to which it belongs; works or inventions of older
standing to be taken into consideration only in case their importance
has not previously been demonstrated.”

Two other stipulations were made that have been applied to the awards
in literature, as elsewhere, “The amount allotted to one prize may be
divided equally between two works submitted, should each of such works
be deemed to merit a prize.” Thus, in 1904, the prize was divided
between José Echegaray, the Spanish dramatist, and Frédéric Mistral,
the poet of Provence; again, in 1917, it was divided between two Danish
writers, Gjellerup and Pontoppidan. On the other hand, if all of the
“works under examination fail to attain to the standard of excellence”
required, no award need be given that year, the “amount added to the
main fund or may be set aside to form a special fund for that of one of
the sections to promote the object of the testator.” In 1914 and 1918
there were no awards in literature.

To facilitate impartial judgment it was directed that each of the
four sections of the Swedish corporation of award “shall appoint a
committee--their Nobel Committee--of three or five members to make
suggestions with reference to the award.” To be a member of this
Nobel Committee one need not be “a Swedish subject or member of the
Corporation.” “How are these candidates for prizes nominated?” is a
frequent question. It is stated explicitly in this Code of Statutes,
section 7: “It is essential that every candidate for a prize under
the terms of the will, be proposed as such in writing by some duly
qualified person. A direct application for a prize will not be taken
into consideration.” Further explanations are given of “qualifications
entitling a person to propose another for the receipt of a prize”--he
must be “a representative, whether Swedish or otherwise, of the domain
of Science, Literature, etc. in question and the grounds for the award
must be stated in writing.” In this same Code of Statutes, in a later
section (p. 23) there is expanded information regarding “The right to
nominate a candidate for the prize-competition”--this shall “belong to
Members of the Swedish Academy and the Academies in France and Spain
which are similar to it in constitution and purpose; members also of
the humanistic classes of other Academies and of those humanistic
institutions and societies that are on the same footing as academies,
and teachers of æsthetics, literature and history at universities and
colleges.” For publicity it was provided that these “regulations shall
be publicly announced at least every five years in some official or
widely circulated journals in each of the three Scandinavian countries
and in the chief countries of the civilized world.” The names of
candidates must be presented by February first of each year.

Although the successful candidates for the various prizes are
usually “broadcasted,” in these days of shrewd journalism, sometime
in November, the official announcements of the awards are made on
“Founder’s Day,” the tenth of December, the anniversary of the death
of the testator. “At this time the adjudicators shall make known the
result of their award and shall hand over to the winners of the prizes
a cheque for the amount of the same, together with a diploma and a
medal in gold, bearing the testator’s effigy and a suitable legend.”
The last word may be more freely translated, _inscription_. In further
explanation the Code of Statutes decrees: “It shall be incumbent on
a prize winner, whenever feasible, to give a lecture on the subject
treated of in the work to which the prize has been awarded, such
lecture to take place within six months of the Founder’s Day at which
the prize was won, and to be given at Stockholm or, in the case of the
Peace prize, at Christiania.” This feature of the award has not often
been “feasible” in literature, although a few of the winners have
received the prizes in person at Stockholm and made fitting responses,
as we shall note in later chapters. The decree is final:[7] “Against
the decision of the adjudicators in making their award no protest can
be lodged. If differences of opinion have occurred they shall not
appear in the minutes of the proceedings, nor in any other way be made
public.” To assist in their investigations and to further the “aims
of the Foundation, the adjudicators shall possess powers to establish
scientific institutes and other organizations. The institutes so
established and belonging to the Foundation, shall be known under the
name of Nobel Institutes.”

While the general administration of the funds and awards rests with
the Nobel Foundation, consisting of five persons (“one of whom, the
President, shall be appointed by the King and the others by the
delegates of the adjudicating corporations”) the specific work of
investigation and judgment rests with the organization cited in the
will. In literature, the “prizes are assigned” by the Swedish Academy,
after careful investigation by its members, and the assistance of the
Nobel Institute and Librarian. A large collection of books, mostly of
modern writings, forms the Library. In all languages, translations,
when necessary, are found here, also reports concerning works of
recent publication. The Swedish Academy was founded by King Gustavus
III in 1786. It has devoted itself to “the arts of elocution and
poetry, to the preservation of purity, force and elevation of diction
in the Swedish language both in scientific works and products of pure
literature.” Annual prizes have been offered, for scores of years, in
elocution and poetry. Eighteen members, all Swedes, comprise this
Academy, of which the King is patron. He appoints the Inspector of the
Nobel Institute of the Swedish Academy but its “immediate management is
by a member of the Academy, chosen by that body.”

Two conditions of the will of Alfred Nobel have been faithfully
followed--the recipients in all branches have done something (if not
“most”) “to benefit humanity”; in the second place, “no consideration
whatever has been paid to the nationality of the candidates,” in
the way of favoritism. The most reasonable criticism of the awards,
especially in literature, has been a failure to carry out what seems
to have been the assumed, but not expressed, desire of the donor,
namely, to _stimulate_ work as well as to _reward_ past achievements.
Otherwise, why that puzzling phrase about “the year preceding”? Not
wholly without foundation is the comment that too many of the awards
in literature have been “tombstones rather than stepping-stones.” Many
of the earlier recipients were past seventy, with productive faculties
low, before the honor. It is a satisfaction to the public to know that
a worthy writer has had world recognition before he dies, and that
his last days may have many comforts possible through the financial
award of about $40,000--but such conditions do not seem in accord with
the spirit of the Nobel will and the attitude of the donor toward
creative work. The awards have been too often retroactive rather than
stimulating to further writing. Other winners, as will be noted later,
have accomplished vigorous literature, _after_ the award as well as
_before_ the honor.

During the years from 1901, when the first prizes were given, to 1925,
twelve nationalities have been represented in literature. Germany
and France have had the largest percentages in awards: Spain, Italy,
Poland, Norway, Sweden have had two winners each. Great Britain
(including the awards to Rabindranath Tagore and to Yeats as well as
Kipling) has been thrice honored. Denmark divided the prize one year;
Switzerland came into the lists with her poet, Carl Spitteler. In
science and “promotion of peace,” America has such names on the roster
of honor as A. A. Michelson in physics, T. W. Richards in chemistry,
Dr. Alexis Carrel in medicine, and Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root and
Woodrow Wilson in the “peace prize.”

What have been the influences of the will of Alfred Nobel and the
awards upon international literature? An unquestioned result has been
to arouse both curiosity and aspiration among writers and readers. No
other prizes, among any peoples, have caused such widespread interest.
The announcement of the Nobel prizes each year has become an event
of outstanding significance. Journals enter into competition, in
recent years, to get the first word over the wires and to publish the
most informing articles upon the winners. Tense interest precedes and
follows the awards. Whatever may be one’s individual opinion about the
justice in every instance, the fact remains that the chosen writer
becomes the center of study and discussion for the current season and
later years. To some critics this method of appreciation is offensive;
sometimes it may seem to be a sensational “thrust into the limelight”
of an insignificant or mediocre writer. In the majority of cases, the
result is like that of a strong telescope which can distinguish the
“fixed stars from the meteors” in the literary horizon.

The second influence is upon writers of every nationality--an incentive
to produce “a distinguished work of an idealistic tendency,” some book
which will prove of “benefit to humanity.” This term, idealistic,
is difficult to render in all languages. In the French explanation
of the will, it is explicit, “le plus remarquable dans le sens de
l’idéalisme.” It is not easy to justify the prizes in literature, in
several cases, if one emphasizes the usual meaning of “idealistic.”
Occasionally, the award was given for some less recent work, some
hitherto unappreciated note of idealism in an earlier writing. Two
examples, among many, are Björnson’s tales of peasant life, with
interwoven sagas and poetry, _Arne_ and _A Happy Boy_, or Mistral’s
_Mireio_, the pastoral poem of Provence which was written more than
forty years before the prize was given. In these two cases, as will
be noted later, there was appreciation of efforts to rescue a dialect
or language from literary desuetude. Upon both writers and readers,
the influence of the Nobel awards in literature has been to promote
broader interests and sympathies, more earnest study of standards and
aspirations in widely separated races.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Westminster Review_, 156, 642.

[2] _The Life of John Ericsson_ by William Conant Church, 2 Vols., New
York, 1901.

[3] Vance Thompson, in _Cosmopolitan_, September, 1906.

[4] _Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner; Records of an Eventful Life_, Vol.
I, p. 210, New York, 1910. By permission of Ginn & Co.

[5] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 438.

[6] Nobel Stiftelson, The Nobel Foundation, Code of Statutes given
at the Royal Palace in Stockholm on June 29, 1900 (Stockholm, 1901).
Objects of the Foundation. From copy in Library of Congress.

[7] _Ibid._, section 10.




CHAPTER II

POETS OF FRANCE AND PROVENCE


  The prize of 1901 has been awarded:

  Sully-Prudhomme, René François Armand, member of the French Academy,
  born 1839, died September 7, 1907: “as an acknowledgment of his
  excellent merit as an author, and especially of the high idealism,
  artistic perfection, as well as the unusual combination of qualities
  of the heart and genius to which his work bears witness.”[8]

There has been a steadily cumulative interest in the Nobel prizes,
during the last twenty-five years. Proof is found by comparing journals
of 1901 and 1925, with reference to data and discussion of prize
winners of the respective years. That the will of Alfred Nobel was
an epochal document, in the history of science and literature, was a
slowly recognized truth. What is idealism in literature? What writers
will be candidates with books “of idealistic tendency”? How important
will be the influence of such awards? Such were queries in many minds.
The meaning of idealism is elastic in interpretation, as examples among
the winners will testify. A general principle holds, however, in past
and present standards--the idealistic writer sees _beyond_ nature and
externals; he sees “with the eye of the spirit.” The difference has
been expressed in fitting analogy, by contrast between a photograph
and a portrait of the same individual--if the latter is painted by an
intuitive artist, with vision and insight, as well as artistic technic.

René François Armand Sully-Prudhomme, the first author to win the
prize in literature, in 1901, received adulatory comments from French
journals and several pages of _personalia_ and criticism in literary
magazines of England, Germany, Scandinavia, and America. For more than
forty years he had been recognized as one of the greatest living poets,
the philosophical poet of the nineteenth century in France, about whose
life and work there was inadequate information in English translations;
the inadequacy is still apparent. The French Academy was happy that
one of its members should have been chosen for this honor, the first
on the list of international candidates. Born in Paris, May 16, 1839,
this French poet evidently belonged to the nineteenth century, in its
middle and later decades, rather than to the twentieth century and its
productive or prophetic writers.

In the poetry of Sully-Prudhomme are found, almost always, two elements
sometimes in conflict, wistful tenderness and serious, challenging
reflection. This combination of traits may be explained, in part, by
the circumstances of his inheritance and childhood. For ten years his
mother had waited to marry her lover, the father of the poet; four
years after their marriage, he died. Devoted to her son and believing
that he had marked skill in science, she gave him every possible chance
for education; but his home life was lacking in gayety or lighter
interests. At the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, René Sully-Prudhomme
excelled in mathematical sciences and his future seemed assured as a
scholar and teacher. Then an illness affected his eyes so seriously
that he had to abandon concentrated study and he began to write poems
of philosophic trend, questioning the meaning of life yet vibrating
with emotion.

The first collection of his poems, _Stances et poèmes_, appeared when
he was twenty-six years old. It was received with encomiums from
critics and sold so well that he determined to relinquish the hope
of ever becoming either a scientist or a lawyer and decided that he
would devote his time to poetry. In this collection is found “Le vase
brisé,” one of the most familiar of his poems, with the extended
analogy between the broken vase, the verbena, and the heart; here is
the echoing refrain,

    Il est brisé, n’y touchez pas.

The next year _Les Epreuves_, translated as _The Test_, was
published, followed by _Les Solitudes_ three years later, and _Les
vrais tendresses_, in 1875. In these poetic meditations he showed the
conflict, ever present in his own nature, between the reason and the
emotions,

                le combat sans vainqueur
    Entre la foi sans preuve et la raison sans charme.

Even more pronounced was this motif of disharmony in the two later
poems, _La Justice_ and _Le Bonheur_. By his countrymen he was hailed
as successor to Victor Hugo and was elected to membership in the French
Academy in 1881. In the long and best known poem by Sully-Prudhomme,
_La Justice_, there are strong traces of the influence of Lucretius,
the classic poet whom he admired and translated with felicitous skill.
A Prologue and an Epilogue and eleven “Vigils” comprise the structure
of this poetic search for the element of _Justice_. There are two
divisions; Part I is entitled “Silence au cœur,” rendered into English
as “Heart, Be Silent!” and Part II, “Appel au cœur.” The chosen medium
of expression is dialogue between two symbolic characters, “The
Seeker,” who analyzes all things with metaphysical exactness, and “A
Voice” which proclaims the “divine aspect in all things.” Justice
cannot be located in the Universe; it may be found in the heart of man,
“which is its inviolable and sacred temple.”

As _La Justice_ exemplified the search for Justice in Universal Nature,
so _Le Bonheur_, the second long poem published in 1888, was a symbolic
epic, a progress towards supreme Happiness by three routes--curiosity,
sensuousness and science, virtue and sacrifice. The three Parts have
been called, in one translation, “Intoxication,” “Thought,” “The
Supreme Flight” (“Le suprème essor”). There are lines that are strained
in effect, far less convincing and harmonious than the arguments in _La
Justice_; by contrast there are passages of poetic beauty. Faustus and
Stella are the two seekers after Happiness. In a climax--which might
be more dramatic--they “take flight” spiritually from the temptations
and disillusionments of earth to seek, in sacrifice, their fruition of
possible happiness.

One of the colleagues of Sully-Prudhomme, who has written frankly of
his personality and poetry, is Anatole France. In the biography of the
latter, _Anatole France: the Man and His Work_ by James Lewis May,[9]
among the vignettes written of the group of poet-friends who discussed
life and literature, is a typical sketch of Sully-Prudhomme, at the age
of thirty-six, “mathematical and even geometrical in his sonnets.” He
stressed his intellectuality, as well as his handsome face and wealth.
More illumining, and far more sympathetic, is the analytic study of
Sully-Prudhomme, in the chapter entitled “Three Poets” in Anatole
France’s critiques _On Life and Letters_, first series, translated
by A. W. Evans.[10] Comparing Sully-Prudhomme, François Coppée and
Frédéric Plessis, the critic finds in the first poet, “in his favour,
not only the mysterious gifts of the poet but, in addition, an absolute
sincerity, an inflexible gentleness, a pity without weakness, and a
candour, a simplicity that lift his philosophical scepticism, as it
were on wings, into the lofty regions whither formerly the mystics
were exalted by faith.” As a friend and confidant, he extols this
man of gentle melancholy, sentimental yet reflective, romantic yet
philosophical.

Edward Dowden, in his essay on “Some French Writers of Verse,”[11]
attributes the seeming unhappiness, or melancholy of Sully-Prudhomme,
reflected in some of his poetry, to the lack of a creed or a loyalty
to which he can give absolute devotion. He calls him “an eclectic”
and finds an analogy in the tale of _Merlin_, the poetical romance
by Edgar Quinet. He stresses the almost feminine sensitiveness of
this poet, a woman’s tenderness which in no way diminishes his manly
vigor. An individual of “harder or narrower personality” would not
have been so disturbed by the conflicts between reason and emotion, by
the deterrents to perfect happiness. Ill health for many years was a
contributory factor, doubtless, to many moods of introspective sadness.
He suffered from partial paralysis in later years. Francis Grierson
in _Parisian Portraits_[12] gives a graphic, intimate picture of this
“typical Academician” with grace of manners and intuitive insight into
people, waging war against his illusions with the part of his mind that
was scientific, and maintaining his poetic vision by his sensitive
emotions. At his home in the rue de Faubourg he always welcomed younger
poets. He seldom went into society, although he was often found at
the salons of Countess Diane de Beausacq, the author of _Maximes de
la vie_. This woman of independent spirit and beautiful hair, who was
dressed in tones of lavender, was an inspiration to the poet. Together
they discussed philosophy and art; Sully-Prudhomme emphasized “the
aristocracy of the mind,” the eternal quality of poetry, music, taste,
and judgment.

After the Franco-Prussian War, which was a great strain upon the
physical and spiritual endurance of the poet, Sully-Prudhomme wrote
_Impressions_ that awakened political discussion and revealed his
pervasive idealism. _Essays upon the Fine Arts_, _The Art of
Versification_ and _Le testament poétique_ were expressions of his
poetic studies and theories. On the other hand, _Que sais-je?_ which
appeared in 1895 was another index to his scientific inquiries into
natural science, philosophy, and metaphysics. A commentator upon these
queries, well entitled _What Do I Know?_, has said that his last words
might be summarized as “peut-être.” Doubts, yet never bitterness of
despair, characterize his speculative poetry. Four years after he
received the Nobel prize and two years before his death, at the age of
sixty-six, he wrote _La vraie religion selon Pascal_, a last record of
his profound search for spiritual values in life and literature.

Several of the shorter poems by Sully-Prudhomme, chosen from the five
volumes of his verse, have been translated into English by such poets
as Arthur O’Shaughnessy, E. and R. Prothero, and Dorothy Frances
Guiney. These metrical interpretations are found in anthologies of
French poetry by H. Carrington and Albert Boni. The latter has included
a few of the most representative and musical of Sully-Prudhomme’s poems
in _The Modern Book of French Verse_. A wistful love poem is here
entitled “A Supplication,” translated by I. O. L.:[13]

    Oh! did you know how the tears apace
      Fall by a lonely heart, alas!
    I think that before my dwelling place
      Sometimes you did pass.

    And did you know of the hopes that arise
      In wearied soul from a pure young glance,
    Maybe to my window you’d lift your eyes
      As if by chance....

           *       *       *       *       *

    But if you knew of the love that enwraps
      My soul for you, and holds it fast,
    Quite simple over my threshold, perhaps,
      You’d step at last.

More typical of this scientist-poet is the verse-picture entitled “The
Appointment,” translated by Arthur O’Shaughnessy.[14]

    ’Tis late; the astronomer in his lonely height,
    Exploring all the dark, descries afar
    Orbs that like distant isles of splendor are,
    And mornings whitening in the infinite.

    Like winnowed grain the worlds go by in flight,
    Or swarm in glistening spaces nebular;
    He summons one disheveled wandering star,--
    Return ten centuries hence on such a night.

    The star will come. It dare not by one hour
    Cheat Science, or falsify her calculation;
    Men will have passed, but watchful in the tower
    Man shall remain in sleepless contemplation;
    And should all men have perished there in turn,
    Truth in their place would watch that star’s return.

Not all of the verses by Sully-Prudhomme are as pictorial as these
selections. There is an unevenness more than usual in his meditative
stanzas. While his popularity waned with the years and new rivals, he
was long the honored bard of France, with name linked with that of
Victor Hugo in his meditative poetry. The Nobel prize stimulated new
interest among world readers; more translations and critical estimates
appeared--and are still being issued. Maurice Baring in a recent book
of criticism, _Punch and Judy and Other Essays_, has written words of
succinct analysis of this French poet: he distinguishes him as “a poet
who thinks and not a thinker who merely uses poetry for recreation.” He
adds, of his simple yet fastidious form, “Other poets have had a more
glowing imagination; his verse is neither exuberant in colour nor rich
in sonorous combinations of sound. The grace of his verse is one of
outline and not of colour; his compositions are distinguished by his
subtle rhythm; his verse is as if carved in ivory, his music is like
that of a unison of stringed instruments.”[15]


FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL

Poet of Provence

  The prize of 1904 has been awarded, one half to:

  Mistral, Frédéric, born 1830, died March 25, 1914: “for reason of
  the fresh originality, rich genius, and true artistry in his poetry
  that faithfully mirrors the nature and life of the people of his
  native country; and also with respect to his significant activity as
  Provençal philologist.”[16]

Three years after the first Nobel prize in literature had been awarded
to Sully-Prudhomme, it came again to a writer who is ranked among
French authors, although he is distinctively of Provence, Frédéric
Mistral. This poet of _Mireio_, a pastoral epic, if one may use the
term, and the preserver of the Provençal language from literary
oblivion, shared the financial award and the honor for 1904 with
Echegaray, the Spanish dramatist, who is discussed in another chapter
of this book. Mistral was seventy-four years old when this recognition
came to him; he lived for ten years longer, wielding influence upon
world literature and receiving reverential homage in his own Provence.
His home in later years was in the same quiet town of Maillane, in the
Bouches-du-Rhône where he was born in 1830.

His father was a wealthy farmer who had aspirations to make his son
a lawyer. The boy was sent to school at Avignon and, later, took his
degree at Nîmes University and studied at Aix. One of the teachers
at Avignon was Joseph Roumanille who had a large share in restoring
interest in the language. He compiled a fixed orthography of the
Provençal forms and revived racial sentiment in the schools. Like his
pupil, Mistral, he was a firm advocate of classic poetry. Twenty years
before, a famous barber, Jacques Jasmin of Agen, had recited troubadour
songs throughout the villages and had preserved, by voice, many native
legends and folk ballads. It is said that he gave his receipts in money
to charity and that, within a few years, he had gathered $300,000. The
school-teacher formed a society of young men at Avignon, including
“seven poets and dreamers,” among whom were numbered Roumanille,
Mistral, Aubaniel, Mathieu, and Brunet. They pledged allegiance to
Poetry, Love, and Provence. There has been general acceptance of
the statement that Mistral gave to this group of poets the name of
Félibres, originally called “The Seven Félibres” or Scribes of the Law.
They agreed to write in their native language of Provence, to extend
its knowledge and use, so that it might be more than a dialect. They
maintained that it was similar to that of the medieval troubadours,
that it came from the language of Rome and thus was the parent
tongue of Italy, France, and Spain. Although some of these statements
have been seriously questioned by orthographers, the enthusiasm of
these Félibres was acclaimed and literary masterpieces followed; the
celebrations of the Félibres are still noteworthy festivals.

[Illustration:

  _By courtesy of The New York Public Library_

FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL]

Another story is that Mistral, who was very fond of his mother, began
to write his verses in French and brought them to her, assured of her
encouragement and praise. Alas! his mother could not read French,
although she was confident that her son was a poet of rare genius. “Let
us sing in the language of our mother!” was the determination of the
youth. He collected legends, folk-tales, and romantic episodes from
every possible source near his home in Provence. In 1858 was published
the first edition of _Mireio_, the pastoral epic which has held its
literary rank, with increasing appreciation, for more than sixty
years. Roumanille was sponsor for this work; the next year a French
translation was made by Mistral and the book amazed Parisians by its
poetic charm. It was dedicated to Lamartine. Mistral was compared, by
enthusiastic critics, to Vergil, Theocritus, and Ariosto.

Into the twelve Cantos of his poem Mistral wove many local customs and
personal memories. The _mas_, or farmstead, was modeled from his own
home and Ramoun, the wealthy _mas_-dweller, had many traits of his
own father. Familiar to him from boyhood had been the festivals and
daily tasks here portrayed--the wheat-threshing, the snail-gathering,
the fireside meals, the dance of the farandole on the eve of harvest
day. In outline it is a simple, somewhat conventional theme. Mireio,
daughter of a “farmer-prince,” loved the son of a poor basket-weaver;
their romance had days of joy and nights of deep sorrow; the epical
climax of the death of Mireio at the Church of the Holy Maries is
relieved of its grim tragedy by the words of hope on the lips of the
dying heroine.

There is a gayety of spirit, a zest of life in the opening lines of
Invocation, the poet’s promise to tell the life story of this lovely
girl of fifteen and her innocent, ardent passion:

    I sing the love of a Provençal maid;
    How through the wheat-fields of La Crau she strayed
    Following the fate that drew her to the sea.
    Unknown beyond remote La Crau was she;
    And I, who tell the rustic tale of her,
    Would fain be Homer’s humble follower.

    What though youth’s aureole was her only crown?
    And never gold she wore, nor damask gown?
    I’ll build her up a throne out of my song,
    And hail her queen in our despis’d tongue.
    Mine be the simple speech that ye all know,
    Shepherds and farmer-folk of lone La Crau.

The romantic episodes are told in the cantos, “The Suitors,” “The
Battle,” “The Witch,” “The Saints,” “Death.” Graphic pictures of local
customs and setting are suggested by the subtitles “Lotus Farm,”
“Leaf-Picking,” “The Cocooning,” and “the Camargue” (or salty marshes
of the Rhône). Exquisite songs are interspersed like this in Canto III,
“The Cocooning”:

    If thou the moon wilt be,
    Sailing in glory,
    I’ll be the halo white
    Hovering every night
    Around and o’er thee.

    If thou become a flower,
    Before thou thinkest,
    I’ll be a streamlet clear,
    And all the waters bear
    That thou, love, drinkest.

_Mireio_ was made familiar to American readers of the last generation
by the translation of Harriet Waters Preston (Boston, 1872). Several
excerpts from her verse-interpretations of this and Mistral’s later
poems are to be found in _Library of the World’s Best Literature_,
edited by Charles Dudley Warner; an excellent sketch of the poet is
found here. With unique, virile words George Meredith has rendered
into verse some stanzas from Canto X, “The Mares of Camargue”:[17]

    A hundred mares, all white! their manes
    Like mace-reed of the marshy plains
    Thick-tufted, wavy, free o’ the shears:
    And when the fiery squadron rears
    Bursting at speed, each mane appears
    Even as the white scarf of a fay
    Floating upon their necks along the heavens away.

When the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of _Mireio_ was
celebrated at Arles, Calvé sang the “Song of Magali” and noted French
actors and opera artists rendered Gounod’s _Mireille_, which is based
upon Mistral’s pastoral. The most dramatic canto is the eighth, the
flight of the heroine across the rocky plains of La Crau, finding
shelter at the shrine of the Holy Maries. The maiden’s prayer for help
in her hour of need, for understanding of her love for her “handsome
Vincen,” is wistful and appealing. Two cantos have been devoted to
revival of these old legends of the Holy Maries. Disciples of Jesus,
driven from Palestine after his crucifixion, according to tradition,
were set afloat in a barque by their persecutors. They had neither
sail nor oars. They were washed ashore on the sacred soil where now
stands the village of Les Saintes Maries. Among these disciples were
Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, their servant Sarah (who was
the patron saint of gypsies), Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, and
Trophine, one of the oldest and wisest of the disciples who converted
to Christianity the town of Arles.

Two long narrative poems followed _Mireio_--_Calendau_ and _Nerto_.
The former, published in 1867, is more potent in dramatic skill than
the earlier pastoral. It has lines of emotional intensity, when the
heroine, a Princess who lost her rank because of love for a humble
suitor, inspires him by her fine spirit and tales of prowess and
chivalry. “The Scaling of Ventour” is a dramatic episode in this poem.
Two stanzas, translated by Harriet Waters Preston, indicate the action
and colorful quality; this is a description of “the catch”:[18]

    Yet had we brave and splendid sport, I ween,
    For some with tridents, some with lances keen,
    Fell on the prey. And some were skilled to fling
    A winged dart held by a slender string.
    The wounded wretches, ’neath the wave withdrew,
    Trailing red lines along the mirror blue.

    Slowly the net brimful of treasures mounted;
    Silver was there, turquoise and gold uncounted,
    Rubies and emeralds million-rayed. The men
    Flung them thereon like eager children when
    They stay their mother’s footsteps to explore
    Her apron bursting with its summer store
    Of apricots and cherries.

There is less atmosphere in _Nerto_, an epic tale of the last days of
the Popes at Avignon and “the miraculous burial-place,”

    The Aliscamp of history
      Far below Arles.

The legend of this spot is one of the best portions of _Nerto_:

                  out of the heaven came,
    Our Lord himself to bless the spot,
    And left, if the tale erreth not
    The impress of his bended knee,
    Rock-graven. Howso this may be,
    Full oft a swarm of angels white
    Bends hither, on a tranquil night,
    Singing celestial harmonies.[19]

Among the collections of lyrics of love and patriotism by Mistral the
earlier volume in 1875, entitled _Les Isles d’Or_, contained songs in
many moods. Lamartine listened to recital of these and other verses
“in the sweet nervous idiom of Provence, which combines the Latin
pronunciation with the grace of Attica and the serenity of Tuscany.”
He adds, “The verses of Mistral were liquid and melodious, they pleased
without intoxicating me.”[20] The later collection, issued in 1912,
was entitled _Les Olivades_. Mistral thus explained the title: “The
days that grow chill and the swelling seas--all things tell me that
the winter of my life has come, and that I must without delay gather
_my_ olives and offer the virgin-oil on the altar of God.” At this time
the poet was eighty-two years old. He had written an autobiography,
_Mes origines_, with reminiscences of his youth, which was translated
as _Memoirs of Mistral_ by Constance Elisabeth Maud; the lyrics of
Provence were rendered into English here by Alma Strettell (Mrs.
Lawrence Harrison).

Few writers have had more intensive love of country than Mistral. He
refused the offer of a chair in the French Academy because it would
necessitate leaving Provence; he was given prizes by the Academy and
badges of the Legion. Late in mature years he married a beautiful young
woman of Arlesian family; she has been crowned Queen of the Félibres,
in a yearly festival of contests and songs. Towards the close of the
nineteenth century Mistral began collecting specimens of Provençal
flowers, rocks, and archeological relics for a museum at Arles; he
called this his “last poem.” In a typical _mas_, or farmstead, he
placed these collections and equipment of varied kinds, showing
the customs of the land. He represented, also, certain feasts and
traditions by wax figures. Among others, here is the Arlesian legend
of the feast of Noël and the visit of three women to a mother and her
first-born; one brings a match that the child’s body may be straight,
another brings an egg, that his life may be full, and a third brings
salt, symbol of wisdom.[21] A large part of the Nobel prize money was
used by Mistral for the housing and equipment of this Museum.

Alphonse Daudet, like Mistral, is a native of Provence. The natives
admire the literary grace and wit of the former, “even if he may laugh
at us occasionally,” they say, but they _love_ Mistral. For ten years
the latter worked upon his _Comprehensive Lexicon of Ancient and Modern
Provençal_, which was published in two large volumes in 1886. He was
honored by the educated classes and loved by the peasantry, landowners,
and boatmen of the Rhône. In 1897 he incorporated into his narrative
in verse, _Le poème du Rhône_, many customs and songs of the days
before steamships had increased the speed of travel and reduced its
picturesqueness. In twelve cantos he celebrated this famous river and
its border towns. A dramatic scene recalled the flight of Napoleon
across the border from Russia. As poetic art this poem is inferior
to _Mireio_ or _Calendau_; it lacks spontaneity yet it has musical
measures.

Poet of the soil was Mistral, akin in his simplicity and loyalty to
Burns and Whittier, although more of a scholar and technician than
either of these writers of verse. Like them, however, he created anew
the life of his rural people; he touched daily incidents with poetic
beauty. He received many distinguished visitors from every country in
his later years and treasured letters from scholars of every land.
Among the latter was a letter from Theodore Roosevelt written when he
was President and had received a copy of a new edition of _Mireio_;
to the poet he acknowledged his indebtedness of many years for the
delights that he had found in this wistful love poem of Provence, which
mirrored so perfectly the traditions and life of the people.


FOOTNOTES:

[8] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1901.

[9] London and New York, 1924.

[10] London and New York, 1922, pp. 133-144. By permission of Dodd,
Mead & Co.

[11] _Studies in Literature_, London, 1892.

[12] London, 1913, pp. 66-81.

[13] _The Modern Book of French Verse_, edited by Albert Boni, New
York, 1920. By permission of Boni & Liveright.

[14] _Ibid._

[15] _Punch and Judy and Other Essays_ by Maurice Baring, New York,
1924, pp. 216-219. By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.

[16] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1904.

[17] _Poems_ by George Meredith, New York, 1897, 1898. By permission of
Charles Scribner’s Sons, and the heirs of George Meredith.

[18] By permission of the Atlantic Monthly Co.

[19] Translated by Harriet Waters Preston. By permission of Atlantic
Monthly Co.

[20] _Cours familier de littérature._

[21] “Frédéric Mistral: Poet of the Soil” by Vernon Loggins, _Sewanee
Review_, March, 1924.




CHAPTER III

TWO GERMAN SCHOLARS: THEODOR MOMMSEN--RUDOLF EUCKEN


  The prize of 1902 has been awarded:

  Mommsen, Theodor, Professor of History at the University of Berlin,
  born 1817, died November 1, 1903: “the greatest living master of the
  age in the art of representing history, taking into especial regard
  his monumental work, _Römische Geschichte_.”[22]

France was the first country to be honored by the Nobel prize in
literature; Germany was the second. In 1902, Theodor Mommsen, whose
records of scholarship included history, law and archeology, was
the chosen candidate. He was eighty-four years old and lived for
only a year after the award. While there was gratification among his
countrymen and friends in other lands, at his recognition and this high
honor, yet there were adverse comments in several journals about the
perversion of the intent of Nobel’s will. The recipient had finished
his work; the award could never quicken him to further research or
expression of idealism. This choice showed the intention of the
Swedish Academy to consider “literature” in a broad sense, including
contributions of scientific value as well as those of artistic merit.

Garding, in Schleswig, was the birthplace of Mommsen; his school days
were spent at Kiel. Before he was thirty years old he had been employed
by the Berlin Academy to decipher and examine Roman inscriptions in
Italy and France, because of marked accuracy and zest in research. He
combined the reading of law with that of history and, in 1848, was
called to the department of law at Leipzig University. Always fearless
in political convictions and ardent in Liberalism, he was obliged
to retire from this University because of active participation in
the political issues of 1848-1849. Two years later he was called to
professorship of Roman law at Zürich; after service here for two years
he accepted a similar position at Breslau. In all these places he
was recognized as magnetic in the classroom and inspirational in his
contact with University students from all parts of the civilized world.
In 1858, he went to the University of Berlin as Professor of Ancient
History and there extended his influence among scholars and lay readers.

Although specific in his interests and a student of deep earnestness,
he had read and traveled widely; as conversationalist he excelled,
informed upon topics in almost every branch of learning and activity.
To him has been attributed the oft quoted sentence, “Each student must
choose his special field of labour but he must not imprison himself
within its confines.”[23] He was called “the modern Erasmus” because
of his versatile knowledge. He wrote with facility and grace, as well
as vigor, whether his theme was a monumental _History of Rome_, or
a journalistic discussion of current affairs. In political creed he
belonged to the National Liberal Party. He was, however, never partisan
in his ultimate purposes and hopes for future union of factions. He
opposed Bismarck in his tenets and sometimes won over him in courts of
law and in the Prussian House of Delegates, by his keen, logical mind.
At the same time, he admired the Chancellor very much and said, “What a
calamity it is for us all that political animosity should deprive us of
the privilege of mixing socially with such a man!” On principle, he was
opposed to British attitude towards the Boers, and gave his allegiance
to the revolutionists. Again, he deplored the strained relations at
times between his country and England and asserted, “What a pity that
two great nations of kindred race should remain at loggerheads!”[24] He
detested slavery and considered the Civil War in the United States “a
holy crusade.”[25]

More than one hundred volumes of original writing and translations
from the Latin and Germanic languages are listed under Mommsen’s name
in large German libraries. Edward A. Freeman, a critic and historian
of international repute, has called Mommsen “the greatest scholar
of our times, well-nigh the greatest scholar of all times.” His
writings show mastery of law, languages, customs, archeology, coins,
inscriptions and monuments, that are of inestimable value to students.
He was editor of _Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum_ which was issued
by the Berlin Academy of which he was secretary for many years. To
the average reader, however, the name of Theodor Mommsen will always
be associated with his _History of Rome_, written 1854-1856, which
still maintains its authenticity and popularity. As a writer, Mommsen
was always illumining, with a vivid style; he was often dramatic. He
touched descriptive scenes with grace and color but he was convincingly
realistic in his portrayal of events and characters. He unfolded a
large canvas but he kept a true focus and threw a strong light upon
both individuals and group-pictures, from the early days of Rome to the
death of Julius Cæsar.

Although his masterwork was entitled _History of Rome_, he explained,
in the Introductory Chapter, that he intended “to relate the history
of Italy, not simply the record of the city of Rome.” While the Romans
represented the most powerful branch of the Italian stock, yet they
were only a branch--but this civic community of Rome gained sovereignty
over Italy and the world of its day. Like the historian Freeman,
Mommsen insisted upon “the unity of history,” the similarity of human
nature from 1800 B. C. to modern times. Few writers have surpassed him
in revivifying historical characters. He had strong likes and dislikes,
prejudices which he could impress upon the reader, although he was
generally justified in his statements and balanced in his estimates.
The portrait of Cicero, which “was bitten with vitriolic energy,” as
Mr. Buchan has said, in _Some Eighteenth Century Byways and Other
Essays_, has been most widely quoted; it is less impartial than his
characterizations of Hannibal, Sully, and Cæsar. By temperament and
political bias, Mommsen was an admirer of Julius Cæsar; he has given to
him a living portraiture.

The pictorial Chapter IV in Book III, descriptive of Hannibal’s Passage
of the Alps, is a world-famous extract from this _History of Rome_.
In the same chapter is the analysis of Hannibal’s character, so often
quoted: “He was primarily marked by that inventive craftiness, which
forms one of the leading traits of the Phœnician character; he was
fond of taking singular and unexpected routes: ambushes and stratagems
of all sorts were familiar to him; he studied the character of his
antagonists with unprecedented care.... The power which he wielded
over men is shown by his incomparable control over an army of various
natives and many tongues.... He was a great man; wherever he went, he
riveted the eyes of all.”[26]

There is history of dramatic incident, written with pictorial skill,
in such passages as the Battle of Cannæ, the story of the Gracchi, and
the Crossing of the Rubicon. The breadth of Mommsen’s interests are
suggested by such later chapters as those on Roman Religion, Manners,
and Literature and Art. While he was deeply interested in the past,
and informed about its aspects and personalities, he was alert in all
movements of the present and their trends. He looked to the future
with prevision and optimism. In the Introductory Chapter to his famous
_History of Rome_ he contrasts modern history with past cycles of
culture which will be repeated and adds: “And yet this goal will only
be temporary: the grandest system of civilization has its orbit, and
may complete its course; but not so the human race, to which, just
when it seems to have reached its goal, the old task is ever set anew,
with a wider range and with a deeper meaning.”[27] In spirit, Mommsen
was entitled to rank as an idealist, a worker “to benefit mankind.”
In literary achievements he richly deserved the Nobel prize; his
researches had enriched human knowledge beyond those of other scholars;
his writings appealed to the reader of ordinary mentality as well as
to the more intellectual; his vision and faith in human progress were
undimmed.


RUDOLF EUCKEN

German Philosopher

  The prize of 1908 has been awarded:

  Eucken, Rudolf, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Jena,
  born 1846: “because of the sincerity of his search for truth, the
  penetrating power of thought, the clarity of vision, the warmth and
  force of interpretation with which he has, in his numerous works,
  cultivated and developed an ideal world philosophy.”[28]

In 1908, six years after the Nobel prize came to Mommsen, it was again
awarded to a German scholar, Rudolf Eucken. By translation and lectures
in countries other than his own, this recipient was no stranger to
readers of current literature. Born in 1846, in Aurich, East Friesland,
Eucken was younger than the majority of the earlier winners; he
accomplished much writing and lecturing after the honor had been given.
His mature life was devoted to a struggle against the materialistic
philosophy of his day. He was a worthy winner of a prize for “the most
distinguished work of an idealistic tendency” in his country. His
incessant purpose was expressed in his autobiography: “My reminiscences
tell about all of the struggle to prevent the externalization of life.
This externalization is not, it is true, the defect or fault of one
particular nation; it is found in every nation and a radical change is
needed in each.... Every man who shares the conviction that a spiritual
reformation is needed will follow with a kindly sympathy the modest
efforts which are recorded in my reminiscences.”[29]

His native province, East Friesland, is an agricultural and trading
region in Germany, near Holland, with occasional fisheries as industry.
His birth town, Aurich, is the commercial and social center. The boy’s
childhood was somewhat sad; he was the first child born to his parents
after ten years of marriage, and his father died when the lad was five
years old. He had a series of misfortunes in his infancy and youth: his
throat was badly torn in the effort to extricate a curtain-fastener
which he nearly swallowed as a baby; he had scarlet fever and wrong
treatment, so that he was threatened with blindness for a time but
recovered; a younger brother’s death added to the family gloom.

Rudolf Eucken inherited studious inclinations. His father, spending
his days in the postal service, was a fine mathematician. His mother
(daughter of a clergyman who was a leader of Radicalism) was well-read
in science and ambitious for her son; the latter records that she
was, also, a practical housewife. After the father’s death their
finances were low and the mother took lodgers to add to her income.
She was determined that Rudolf should be well educated, that he should
become a philosopher or scientist. He recalls his debt to her in
his reminiscences. At the gymnasium at Aurich he showed interest in
mathematics and in music. A strong influence of those plastic days
was his teacher, Reuter, who was forced to retire by the bureaucracy
because of his liberalism. Other professors who left traces upon his
development were Letze and Teichmüller. For a time he was at the
University of Berlin. After experimental teaching he was called to
Basel as professor of philosophy. His mother went with him but their
plans for happy years together were shattered by her death.

Basel was at this time a small University with about one hundred
and fifty students; Eucken came into close contact with these in
the classroom and outside activities. Already he had begun to write
studies upon philosophers of classic days, Aristotle and others. In
1873 he accepted a call to Jena University where he was brought into
comradeship with such brilliant associates as Kuno Fischer, Haeckel and
Hildebrand. The issue, in 1878, of Eucken’s book, _Fundamental Ideas of
the Present Day_ (or _The Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic
Thought_) aroused sudden interest among scholars of every country in
this daring, idealistic philosopher of Jena University. The basic idea
was to emphasize the harmonious relations of history and criticism. At
the request of President Noah Porter of Yale University, a translation
of this book into English was made by Professor M. Stuart Phelps; thus
American readers became acquainted with this German scholar who was to
enter later into friendly contact with academic organizations here.

By his marriage, in 1882, to Irene Passow, Eucken increased his
prestige among intellectual and social leaders. He says that his wife
“was not one of the learned women,” but that she had intellectual
interests, gifts in art, and fine administrative ability. Her
mother was the daughter of the noted archeologist, Ulrich, born in
Athens; thus Eucken’s circle of friends widened among scientists and
historians. He continued to write books with cumulative power, like
_The Life of the Spirit_, _Contributions to the History of Modern
Philosophy_, _The Problem of Human Life as Viewed by the Great
Thinkers_, _Life’s Basis and Life’s Ideals_, _Christianity and the
New Idealism_.[30] Many of his own countrymen, who were materialistic
philosophers or monistic evolutionists, criticized Eucken severely;
he declared the German press “ignored him.” He popularized religious
philosophy, especially under such titles as _The Truth of Religion_,
and _Can We Still Be Christians?_ He was invited to deliver lectures in
Holland, France, England, and America.

Some of these later books followed the award of the Nobel prize
in 1908. He was called “the winning dark horse of that year”; he
said that the honor came as “a great surprise” to him. As further
recognition he was made a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The comments in the German press were noticeably restrained beside
the enthusiastic tributes in France, Holland, and England. In 1911 he
went to England and, later, to America as academic lecturer; he was
“exchange professor” and gave lectures at Harvard University, Columbia
University, the Lowell Institute at Boston, and Smith College. His wife
and daughter came with him to America and were guests in the homes
of Professors Moore and Münsterburg at Cambridge. The reader of his
Reminiscences will smile at some of the comments upon Americans and his
reception here. In Germany, with the arrival of “an exchange professor”
and his first lecture, there is a demonstration of welcome, with formal
program and the presence of notables in statescraft as well as letters.
He found no such condition at Harvard University. He presented himself
to President Lowell and was told, “You may begin at once.”[31] By
contrast he says, with naïveté, President Butler of Columbia University
gave a banquet in honor of Eucken and Bergson, who were lecturing in
New York at the same time.

Among Americans whom the German scholar met with friendly contact were
Andrew Carnegie and Roosevelt. He says of the latter, “With Roosevelt I
had a very spirited conversation on American idealism and its future,
in which he gave proof of considerable historical knowledge.”[32] He
found Americans, as a class, alert but not well informed on European
affairs, especially German history. After he returned from America,
he planned a trip to Japan and China, hoping to carry into the Orient
his principles of idealistic philosophy; he sought coöperation of
all nations in “solving problems of life.” The war interfered with
this project and caused him deep depression. He tried in every way to
appeal to the less materialistic traits of his people. In 1915, he
wrote _The Bearers of German Idealism_, a book which sold copies by the
tens of thousands and supplemented, in a way, his earlier volume, _The
Historical Significance of the German People_. He found the war “the
saddest moment in German history”; he felt the nations were disloyal to
themselves and sentiments of honor. His daughter, a musician of rare
gifts, lost her lover during the war. In his sons, one a physician
and another a political economist, Eucken saw examples of many of his
idealistic influences.

The writings of Eucken, especially those of religious trend, have been
popular in America, as well as England. Several of his essays have been
collected and translated by Meyrick Booth. _In the Harper’s Library
of Living Thought_ is the translation by Lucy Judge Gibson and W. R.
Boyce Gibson of his _Christianity and the New Idealism_ (1909 and
1912). _The Meaning and Value of Life_ had one of the same translators;
Joseph McCabe, who translated the autobiography, has rendered, also,
_Socialism: an Analysis_ (1922). Among other books in constant demand
at libraries are _Religion and Life_, the lectures which he gave in
London, Oxford, and elsewhere, 1911, and _Ethics and Modern Thought: a
Theory of their Relations_, which were the Deems lectures, delivered
in 1913 at New York University. These are translated by Margaret von
Seydewitz from the German manuscript. _Can We Still Be Christians?_
with its challenging title (1914) is a careful, tolerant study of
historic Christianity, an advocacy of a religion which will adapt
itself to the demands of daily life. Spirituality and morality must
combine to form a high level of progress and the Church must become “a
repository of the facts and tasks of life itself.”

Comparisons have often been made between Eucken and two other modern
thinkers and writers on philosophy of kindred motive--Adolf Harnack
and Henri Bergson. The former, who has been professor at Leipzig and
Berlin, author of such stirring books as _What Is Christianity?_ and
_History of Dogma_, has the German background while Bergson, in his
_Creative Philosophy_ has written an epoch-making book with dissimilar
but potent deductions. The two men, Eucken and Bergson, have been
discussed in a discriminating essay by E. Hermann who thus summarizes
the message of the Nobel prize winner in philosophy: “Eucken stands
before us today as perhaps the greatest thinker of our age and the
protagonist of a new idealism which satisfies our demands for moral
reality as no idealistic philosophy has ever done, and as the teacher
who has most fully and boldly developed the religious implications
of ethical idealism. His philosophy of life is an insistence upon
the supremacy of the spiritual. His defence of freedom is a doctrine
of spiritual liberty rooted in the saving initiative of God and
our dependence on Him. His vindication of our personality is the
rescue of the free, God-centered personality from the thralldom of a
self-centered individuality.”[33]

Especially interesting is the Nobel Lecture, delivered at Stockholm,
March 27, 1909, by Eucken, translated by Alban G. Widgery, Cambridge,
1912 (W. Heffer and Sons). As an introductory thought, Eucken
emphasizes that we are living in an age when tradition has become a
subject of doubt and new ideas are struggling to guide our lives.
The two terms, “_Naturalism or Idealism_,” which form the title of
this Nobel address, have become confused in meaning and have caused
misunderstandings. To Eucken, Naturalism means “faith in man’s
relation to Nature”; Idealism accepts this faith but asks if this is
the whole of life or if there is not another kind of life, also. He
pleads for domination of “The True, the Good and the Beautiful” in
life, not merely utilitarian aspects. Life is not just a reflection of
a given reality but a striving upward; it does not _find_ another world
but “it may _produce_ one.” Idealism which deals with such expansion
of daily life has no new aims to-day beyond that of classic times but
it is emphasized, because “we have been driven beyond the standards
of Naturalism.” The task before literature is coöperation in this
effort to reach a higher level, “to purify and confirm, to make the
fundamental problems of our spiritual existence _impressive_ to us,
to raise life above the mere transient culture, by the realization of
something eternal.” This, as he interprets it, was the idea of Alfred
Nobel in his will and awards; this has been the life purpose of Eucken
as teacher and writer.


FOOTNOTES:

[22] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1902.

[23] _Bookman_, 18: 346.

[24] _Ibid._ 346-348, December, 1903, article on Mommsen. By permission
of the Editor of _The Bookman_.

[25] _Some Eighteenth Century Byways and Other Essays_ by John Buchan,
Edinburgh and London, 1908, William Blackwood & Sons.

[26] _History of Rome_ by Theodor Mommsen, translated by William P.
Dickson, New York, 1908, Vol. II, pp. 244, 245. By permission of
Charles Scribner’s Sons.

[27] By permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons.

[28] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1908.

[29] _Rudolf Eucken: His Life, Work and Travels_ by himself, translated
by Joseph McCabe, New York, 1922. By permission of Charles Scribner’s
Sons.

[30] For further titles, see bibliography and list of translators.

[31] _Rudolf Eucken: His Life, Work and Travels_ by himself, translated
by Joseph McCabe, New York, 1922, p. 162. By permission of Charles
Scribner’s Sons.

[32] _Ibid._, p. 167.

[33] _Eucken and Bergson: Their Significance for Christian Thought_, by
E. Hermann, Boston, 1912, p. 87. By permission of The Pilgrim Press.




CHAPTER IV

BJÖRNSON: NORWEGIAN NOVELIST AND PLAYWRIGHT


  The prize of 1903 has been awarded:

  Björnson, Björnstjerne, born 1832, died April 26, 1910: “as a tribute
  acknowledging his noble, splendid and varied works of art which have
  always been distinguished by freshness of inspiration, and, at the
  same time, by unusual purity of soul.”[34]

One of the five members elected by the Norwegian Storthing, to select
the winners of the prize for the promotion of peace, under terms of
Nobel’s will, was Björnstjerne Björnson. It was a fitting choice for
he was a vigorous advocate of world peace, an ardent worker in all
causes for “the benefit of mankind.” When the award in literature for
1903 was given to him, he was already known as “Norway’s Father.” As
writer of novels and plays, he had been read more widely than almost
any other Scandinavian of his day, at that time surpassing Ibsen in
translated works. As publicist and orator, as manager of theatres and
civic legislator, he exerted national influence. In giving him the
Nobel prize the adjudicators had in memory, especially, his earlier
tales of peasant life which intermingled poetic idealism with sagas
and realistic pictures of Norwegian life. His plays of later years,
_Beyond Human Power_, _The Editor_, and _Sigurd Slembe_, were problem
plays that awakened discussion in many countries; they were more
universal and realistic in tone than the earlier fiction. Björnson had
a remarkable combination of virility and gentleness. He was a Viking
clansman, as he often averred, but he was also a poet, loving the
folk songs and pictorial delights of rugged Norway with deep, ardent
affection. The symbol of his strength, represented twice in the lingual
root of his name--Björn, a bear--was fitting for his large, fearless
mind and spiritual energy. He was a warrior when occasion demanded
resistance to evil; he was a skald when he wrote tales of peasantry.

[Illustration:

  _By courtesy of The American-Scandinavian Foundation_

BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON]

He was born in 1832 at Kvikne, in the valley of the Dovre Mountains.
He lived seven years after the Nobel prize was given to him, keeping
his mentality alert until almost the end of his seventy-eight years.
His father was pastor in this small place, without beauty of scenery
or fertility of soil. When the boy was six years old the family moved
to a region of marked contrasts, in Romsdale. His memories of this
picturesque scenery and his delights in the valleys, hills, and fjord,
were commemorated in his poem, “Over the Lofty Mountains.” His school
days at Molde were busy and happy; he read with insatiable appetite for
sagas and history, and became devoted to the Swedish poet, Wergeland.
At seventeen he went to Christiania to prepare for the University.
Here he was a schoolmate of Ibsen; with typical humor he wrote--and
treasured--this doggerel of these early days:

    Overstrained and lean, of the colour of gypsum,
    Behind a beard, huge and black, was seen Henrik Ibsen.

The two families cemented their friendship of many years by the
marriage of Björnson’s daughter, Bergliot, a singer of much talent, to
the son of Ibsen.

At Christiania, Björnson became much interested in Danish literature,
especially drama, and he began his play, _The Newly-married Couple_,
which was not finished until a decade later. He completed, however, a
one-act play, _Between the Battles_, which was staged in Christiania
with only moderate success. For a time he abandoned drama and devoted
himself to the peasant tales, to characters of types familiar to him,
against a background of Norwegian folklore. He was proud to recall
that his forefathers were peasants; he knew the common people and
sympathized with their customs and ambitions. He sought to blend sagas
and scenes from modern life, with mutual interpretation. Those early
stories of simple life, _Arne_, _The Fisher Maiden_, _A Happy Boy_,
and _Synnöve Solbakken_, were well received in Denmark and Germany, as
well as his own country. Soon they were translated into English and
commended for their simplicity, poetry, and national spirit. Sir Edmund
Gosse, writing in the late 1880’s, said of Björnson: “His spirit was as
masculine as a Viking’s and as pure and tender as a maiden’s. Through
these little romances there blows a wind as fragrant and refreshing as
the odour of the Trondhjem balsam willows, blown out to sea to welcome
the newcomer; and just as this rare scent is the first thing that tells
the traveller of Norway, so the purity of Björnson’s _novelettes_
is usually the first thing to attract a foreigner to Norwegian
literature.”[35]

Mr. Georg Brandes, in his excellent study of Björnson in _Creative
Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_, affirms that the popularity of
these peasant tales was not so great throughout Norway as one is
inclined to believe from later reports. “People loved the peasant
in the abstract” but they did not know him, nor were they deeply
interested in his welfare or his aspirations. Moreover, the critics
found them sentimental and failed to appreciate the legends and
parables which were often interspersed, like the beautiful symbolism
in the opening paragraphs of _Arne_ with the several trees--juniper,
oak, birch, and heather--seeking to clothe the mountain. In the two
tales, _Synnöve Solbakken_ and _Arne_, Björnson represented two heroes
of Norwegian life; Thorbjörn of the first story was the youth of
physical virility, developed by contact with gentler influences; Arne,
by contrast, was dreamy and poetic, in need of more robust experiences.
There are wistful strains of melody in this story of _Arne_--this
yearning for the ideal. Sir Edmund Gosse has translated one of these
lyrics in rhymed couplets:

    Through the forest the boy wends all day long,
    For there he has heard such a wonderful song.

    He carved him a flute of the willow tree,
    And tried what the tune within it might be.

    The tune came out of it sad and gay,
    But while he listened it passed away.

    He fell asleep, and once more it sung,
    And over his forehead it lovingly hung.

    He thought he would catch it and wildly woke,
    And the tune in the frail night faded and broke.

    “Oh God, my God, take me up to Thee,
    For the tune Thou hast made is consuming me.”

    And the Lord God said, “’Tis a friend divine,
    Though never one hour shalt thou hold it thine.

    Yet all other music is poor and thin
    By the side of this which thou never shalt win.”[36]

The character of Arne, the poetic, restless boy who tries to break
away from the rock-ribbed confines of Norway, is an individual and a
national type; his mother, Marit, is one of the most real, appealing
women of Norwegian fiction. In these two peasant tales, and the
lighter, more joyful romance of _A Happy Boy_, is found some of the
best poetry by Björnson. Many of these verses are found in _Poems
and Songs_, translated by Arthur Hubbell Palmer from the Norwegian
in the original meters.[37] “Synnöve’s Song,” “The Day of Sunshine,”
and “Ballad of Tailor Nils,” from _Arne_, are typical examples of his
lyrics. Included in this anthology are patriotic poems. One of these,
entitled “Song of Norway,” from _Synnöve Solbakken_ (1859) is one of
the most familiar of National Songs, beginning,

    Yes, we love this land that towers
        Where the ocean foams;
    Rugged, stormswept, it embowers
        Many thousand homes.

    Love it, love it, of you thinking,
        Father, mother dear,
    And that night of saga sinking
        Dreamful to us here.[38]

Thirty years later, for the silver wedding anniversary of Herman Anker
and his wife, Björnson wrote another poem of patriotic and idealistic
strains, beginning,

        Land That Shall Be!
    Thither, when thwarted our longings, we sail,--
    Sighs to the clouds, that we breathe when we fail,
    Form a mirage of rich valley and mead
        Over our need,--
    Visions revealing the future until
        Faith shall fulfill,--
        The land that shall be![39]

Ever after a visit to Upsala University and a longer residence in
Copenhagen, Björnson had cravings to write and to direct plays. In the
latter position he served for a time, 1857-1859, at Bergen. His first
plays were of saga heroes and chieftains, like Halvard of _Between
the Battles_ and _Sigurd Slembe_ or _Sigurd the Bad_. They possess
militant virtues and moral integrity but they are driven to misdeeds
and despair by opposition to their good intentions. Thus Sigurd seeks
to make peace with his half-brother, Harold Gille, but is betrayed
into revenge and murder. Mr. Brandes suggests that in these plays the
spiritual sufferings of Björnson--who would elevate and harmonize the
Norwegian people but finds himself misunderstood and rejected in his
idealism--are revealed by analogy. He stresses the difference between
Björnson and Ibsen in this respect and others; the former seeks
comradeship and unity; the latter is “solitary by nature.” Björnson
portrays all aspects of nature; Ibsen seldom uses such descriptions.
With fine distinctions between the two men, in nature and literature,
Mr. Brandes writes: “Henrik Ibsen is a judge, stern as one of the
judges of Israel of old; Björnson is a prophet, the delightful herald
of a better age. In the depths of his nature, Ibsen is a great
revolutionist.... Björnson’s is a conciliatory mind; he wages warfare
without bitterness. His poetry sparkles with the sunshine of April,
while that of Ibsen, with its deep earnestness, seems to lurk in dark
shadows.” Ibsen loved the idea; Björnson loved humanity.[40]

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in his study of Björnson, in _Adventures
in Criticism_[41] divides his writings into three periods which he
calls “simplicity, confusion and dire confusion.” The first group of
tales are those of idyllic type, already considered in _Arne_ and _A
Happy Boy_; the second represent a transition towards the realistic
and self-conscious, exampled in _The Fisher Maiden_ and _Magnhild_;
the third, showing more complications of thought and style, are like
_The Heritage of the Kurts_ (originally entitled _Flags Are Flying_)
and _In God’s Way_. The influence of German and French realists may be
traced in these later novels, especially the former with its portrayal
of polygamous conditions. Other critics consider _Magnhild_ an advance
in characterization over any previous fiction by Björnson, especially
in the musician Tande and the relationship between him and Magnhild. If
the author intends to show that a woman may be happy in other ways than
love, he does not “get the message over” until it is interpreted by
Mr. Brandes or other critics. Rationalism mingles with idealism in the
first scenes of _In God’s Way_.

As the years passed, Björnson traveled on the continent, in England
and to America for a visit in 1881. He sharpened his outlook upon life
but he never lost his “passion for truth,” his hatred of oppression
in any form, his belief that individuals and nations might be joined
by friendship rather than separated by antagonisms. He was deeply
impressed by certain forms of hypocrisy which he witnessed in Norway
and he attacked such abuses in the problem plays, _The King_, _The
Editor_, and _The Bankrupt_. Unlike the traditional patriot who says,
“My country--right or wrong--but my country!” Björnson adopted as his
slogan, “Norway must be right at all cost!” His plays, which revealed
innate evils, made him unpopular with politicians and brought about
threats of violence. He used to tell, with humor, of the visit of
some aggressive opponents among the young men who threw stones at his
windows but went away singing the refrain of his National Song,

    Yes, we love this land that towers, etc.

As dramatist, Björnson attained a skill which is being recognized by
students of to-day. _The Newly-married Couple_, which was, probably,
the first play to be written in original draft but held for later
publication, has a psychological theme, well constructed--the
adjustment necessary between the love of a maiden for her parents and
the new, strange love for her husband. The characters are vital and
the lines effective. Another early play, _Lame Hulda_ (_Halta Hulda_),
was more emotionally intense; the heroine, lame for twenty-four years,
experiences a brief, tragic passion for a man whose love is pledged
elsewhere. There is lack of those elements of comedy that lighten
the lessons of _The Newly-married Couple_. To the earlier period of
play writing belongs, also, _Maria Stuart in Scotland_, a brilliant
retelling of the familiar romance but lacking dramatic situations at
the close; Björnson was always at his best in Scandinavian background;
nevertheless John Knox is a commanding personality in this play. In
this time of mental conflict between the ideal and the realities in
life as they affected his development, he wrote that vigorous novel,
_The Fisher Maiden_, with vivid characterization, and one of his most
pictorial poems, _The Young Viking_.

Truth is the demand of the dramatist, in every crisis in life, as
depicted in his problem plays, from _The Bankrupt_ to _A Gauntlet_.
With skill he shows The King, thwarted in his high ideals and his
love, trying to “serve the freedom of the spirit,” to be a true
“citizen-king” but ending his life in despair because of the deceit
of others. _The Bankrupt_ has a strong character in Berent, the
lawyer; the “problem” centers about the merchant’s temptation to use
the money of others. _The Editor_ aroused much controversy, because
it was claimed that Björnson had here satirized a Swedish editor but
the charge was unfounded; rather the editor and his victims, Halvadan
and Harald, typify journalistic conditions in every land. Mr. Brandes
suggests that the dramatist may have been modeling these two brothers
from the older poet, Wergeland and himself, in their struggles to
create love for truth and freedom. In _Leonarda_, with lyrical as well
as dramatic qualities, Björnson spoke a message of more tolerance and
historical significance through three generations of Norwegian society.
Two excellent translators of his plays have been Edwin Björkman and R.
Farquharson Sharp (_see_ bibliography).

By translation and inclusion in selected plays of merit from many
languages, _Beyond Human Control_ has become one of the most familiar
of Björnson’s social dramas. It is one of the chosen plays in _Chief
Contemporary Dramatists_, Series I, by Thomas H. Dickinson. There
are two parts to this drama, with differing _motifs_--the first in
chronology and most widely read and staged is _Beyond Human Power_
(or _Beyond Our Power: Over Ævne_ I, 1883) dealing with problems of
religious faith and fanaticism; the second part (_Over Ævne_ II,
1895) treats of differences of opinion between labor and capital. The
first part, a complete play, has been given throughout Europe and
was performed in New York in 1902, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell in the
leading rôle. The characters are strongly balanced in interest; the
wife of the self-sacrificing, impractical pastor, Clara Sang, is a
masterly delineation of wifely loyalty and maternal responsibility.
The Bishop is well drawn in antithesis to Pastor Sang. _A Gauntlet_
created discussion in Norway because of its daring theme--the advocacy
of the same standards of social purity for men and women. It is less
effective dramatically but morally it is vigorous.

Björnson’s later work in drama includes such good reading-plays as
_Laboremus_, _Daglannet_, and _When the New Wine Blooms_.[42] As
examples of literary work after the age of seventy, to which may
be added the story, _Mary_,[43] with emotional power, they stand
as testimonials to the vigor, mental and spiritual, of this worthy
“Viking” of our day. After he received the Nobel prize, in accord with
the proviso of the Code of Statutes, he made a noteworthy address upon
the theme, “Poetry As a Manifestation of the Sense of Vital Surplus.”
His own vitality and zest in life never lapsed. He declared that the
possession of a new pair of trousers in his old age gave him a sense
of delight like that of a child and he would get up an hour earlier
“to get full enjoyment of these clothes.” Edwin Björkman, one of the
most intuitive of his many translators, tells, in his _Voices of
Tomorrow_[44] incidents in the later life of Björnson that verify his
childlike nature, combined with serious, passionate efforts for human
betterment. His wife, an actress by training, was his amanuensis and
critic; between husband and wife existed a rare bond of sympathy: at
formal dinners, and on social occasions of varied kinds, Björnson
insisted that his wife should sit at his right hand, in spite of other
conventions. As writer, speaker, “lay preacher,” and civic adviser,
Björnson has an assured rank among “The Creative Spirits of the
Nineteenth Century.”


FOOTNOTES:

[34] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1903.

[35] _Northern Studies_ by Edmund Gosse, Walter Scott, London, 1890. By
permission of Sir Edmund Gosse.

[36] _Ibid._, p. 32. By permission of Sir Edmund Gosse.

[37] American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1915. By permission of
translator and publisher.

[38] This has been adapted to song by Nordraak; another, “Forward,” has
been set to music by Grieg.

[39] _Poems and Songs_ by Björnstjerne Björnson, translated by Arthur
Hubbell Palmer, from the Norwegian in the original meters, London 1915.
By permission of the American-Scandinavian Foundation.

[40] _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ by Georg Brandes,
translated by Rasmus B. Anderson, New York, 1923, p. 345. By permission
of Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

[41] London and New York, 1925. New edition.

[42] Translated by Lee M. Hollander, _Poet Lore_, 1911.

[43] Translated by Mary Morison, 1910.

[44] New York, 1913.




CHAPTER V

GIOSUÈ CARDUCCI--ITALIAN POET


  The prize of 1906 has been awarded:

  Carducci, Giosuè, Professor in the History of Literature at the
  University of Bologna, born 1835, died February 16, 1907: “in
  consideration not only of his wide learning and critical research,
  but, in the first place, as homage to the plastic energy, the
  freshness of style, and the lyric strength that distinguish his
  poetry.”[45]

In 1906, when he was seventy years old, Giosuè Carducci, the greatest
of living Italian poets of that time, for more than two score years
professor at the University of Bologna, was announced the winner of the
Nobel prize in literature. As in the case of Mistral, the choice had
fallen upon a poet of patriotic influence, although the Italian was
far more independent in spirit, with less sentimental devotion to his
country. At different periods he had been a critic of both the Liberal
and the Monarchial parties; sometimes he had seemed to be vacillating
in his political convictions but he had always been an ardent patriot
for Italy of the past, with hopes for a future of greater freedom and
world influence.

Carducci was born at Val di Castello, July 27, 1835. His father, of a
Florentine family, was a country doctor who had been imprisoned for
political activities before the son was born. When Giosuè was three
years old, the family moved to Bolgheri, in Tuscan Maremma; here the
boy roamed about the hills and valleys for eleven years; he recalled
some of his childhood memories in “Crossing the Tuscan Maremma.” He was
educated, in the first place, at home; his father taught him Latin and
his mother read to him from the poems of Alfieri. After the turbulent
conditions of 1848 the family moved to Florence and he was sent to the
Scuole Pie; at eighteen, he was writing _Sapphics and Alcaics_, in
which he urged a return to classic meters and early ideals of Italy.
His vein of satire was shown in mild attacks upon the church and
its restrictions upon progress. Schiller, Byron, and Scott were his
favorite authors during a part of this formative period.

In 1856 he was nominated as Professor of Rhetoric at the Gymnasium
of San Miniato al Tedesco but he became involved in political and
literary controversies. He was refused government sanction to teach in
a position offered at Arezzo, so he returned to Florence. He was poor
and lived in extreme self-denial, frequenting libraries, storing his
mind with Greek and Latin literature and finding some employment with
the publisher, Barbèra, for whom he wrote prefaces, notes, etc., for
Italian classics. Two griefs came within a year--the suicide of his
brother, Dante, and the death of his father. In memory of his brother
he wrote the lines “Alla memoria di D. C.” Happier days came when he
married the gifted daughter of his relative and friend, Menicucci. His
home life was stimulating and sympathetic. He had four children; to a
daughter he gave the symbolic name of “Liberty.” Again death came to
crush his spirit; his little boy, Dante, three years old, died the same
year as Carducci’s mother. The latter, of fine Florentine family, had
been a loved comrade to her son; and although he was reconciled to her
death in old age, he rebelled, in deep grief, at the loss of the little
boy, declaring “three parts of his life” had departed. The elegiac
stanzas, “Funere mersit acerbo,”[46] written in a mood of longing for
the child, are pathetic.

His poems, as collected previous to 1870, showed political agitation
and frequent bitterness and satire; many of these had appeared in the
periodical, _Il Poloziano_. In 1860 he went to Pistoia as Professor of
Greek and Latin; there he wrote his poem, “Sicilia e la rivoluzione,”
celebrating Garibaldi’s Sicilian Expedition of that time. During the
next ten years he passed through political changes of allegiance;
when his _Hymn to Satan_[47] appeared, and “made him famous in a day,”
(republished in 1869 over signature of “Enotrio Romano”) extolling the
advance of Liberalism over the reactionary influences of both monarchy
and church, he was declared to be an unqualified Republican. It was
a daring _motif_ that the poet chose for his voice of “Revolt”; it
required courage, at that time, to summon as witnesses to the progress
of the “lord of the feast, Satan,” such names as Savonarola and Luther,
Huss and Wycliffe. One reason for the immediate popularity of this poem
may have been the flowing, almost lilting, form of four-line stanzas.

Seven years before the publication of _Hymn to Satan_, Carducci had
become identified, as professor, with the University of Bologna; here
he remained until his death--a period of forty-six years of educational
service. The first offer from Mamiani, as Minister of Education, was
to the Turin Lycée but the poet was unwilling to leave Tuscany. After
a little delay the chair of elocution--and later of literature--was
open to him at Bologna. His influence upon students of all types was
stimulating, always conducive to individual expression and ambition.
After the appearance of _Hymn to Satan_ he was in marked disfavor with
the government. His liberal ideas were in high favor with the students,
however, so that it seemed wise to “make a change” by offering him
a position to teach Latin at Naples. Carducci refused on the ground
that he was not qualified to teach Latin. He was prohibited from
continuing classroom instruction at Bologna, on the ground of “constant
opposition to the acts of the Government.” Affairs were quieted by a
change of ministers and the poet, wisely, refrained from promulgating
political doctrines in the University, or from giving dominance to
them in his later volumes of poems, like _Levia grandia_, in 1867,
and _Nuove poesie_, in 1873. Mr. Bickersteth has emphasized duly the
more restrained, tender note in the later volume, following soon after
the loss of his mother and his son. So different were the lyrics from
his previous type, so surely did they show the influence of Goethe,
Schiller, and Heine, in romanticism, that some critics accused Carducci
of being a mere imitator, or even a plagiarist. This challenge aroused
his ever-present spirit and he wrote the prose defense, with broad as
well as personal comment, _Critica ed arte_.

As lecturer, he became yearly more popular and students from distant
places hastened to come under his inspiration. He was one of the
noteworthy exponents of Dante. When Rome established a chair of Dante
Exigesis, Carducci was appointed as professor. Although sorry to lose
him at Bologna, the whole country applauded the honor. He hesitated,
because he was not in accord with those who interpreted Dante by
contemporary political conditions, those who had founded the chair at
Rome. Later he became one of “four leading Dante scholars” who gave
short courses of lectures each year. At his first lecture there was
an effort to make a political demonstration by the anti-Papal party.
Among his sentences at this first discourse he said, “Papacy and
Empire, their discord and their power, were passing away when Dante was
born--Dante who does not pass away.” In an earlier sonnet, published in
essays in 1874, he had interpreted what he believed were Dante’s views
and the reason for his immortal fame:[48]

    Dante, whence comes it that my vows and voice,
    Adoring thy proud lineaments I raise;
    That, o’er thy verse, which made thee lean and wan,
    The sun may set, the new dawn finds me still?

    I hate thy Holy Empire; with my sword
    I should have thrust the crown from off the head
    Of thy good Frederick in Olona’s vale.
    O’er church and Empire, both now ruins sad,
    Thy song soars up, and high in heaven resounds--
    Though Jove may die, the poet’s hymn remains.

With one of those marked changes in his impulses and convictions which
ever characterized Carducci, he broke away from tendencies towards
German Romanticism and declared a “literary revolution” as his purpose
in writing his most familiar odes, _Odi barbare_, 1873-1877. Back to
the poetry of Greece and Rome he would lead the people, away from the
romanticists and “sickly sentimentalism.” To his friends, Chiarini
and Targioni, who were critics of these odes, he declared that the
world’s greatest poets had been Homer, Pindar, Theocritus, Sophocles,
and Aristophanes.[49] There was a great variety of meter in this
collection; several poems that lacked rhymes seemed, to the hackneyed
critics, unconventional in form. Mr. Bickersteth has informing comments
upon Carducci’s _Metres in the Barbarian Odes_ and other poems, in his
Introduction to his _Selection of Poems_, already cited. Among the
examples of the Italian poet at his best, his most simple, flexible,
and musical lines, one recalls from this collection such verses as
“The Ideal,” “The Mother,” and “By the Urn of Percy Bysshe Shelley.”
Addressing one of his imaginary Greek women, Lalage, he unfolds his
own deep, loving appreciation of the English poet in such couplets as
these:[50]

    Vain are the joys of the present, they come and they fade like a
      blossom,
    Only in death dwells the truth and loveliness but in past days.

    Lo, on the mount of the centuries Clio hath nimbly descended,
    And bursts into song as she spreads her magnificent wings to the
      sky.

           *       *       *       *       *

    O heart of hearts, o’er this urn, thy cold, uncongenial prison,
    The warm spring blossoms again with the fragrance of flower and
      fruit.

    O heart of hearts, thy divine great father, the Sun, hath arisen,
    And lovingly bathes thee in light, poor heart that forever art mute.

This poem, inspired by the grave of Shelley, is one of the most
beautiful and appealing of the odes; to him the English poet was, in
truth, “Poet of liberty,” with a “spirit Titanic.” In spite of the
simplicity and directness of Carducci’s diction his poems have defied
many translators, especially in English. It is interesting to note that
two of his German translators have been winners of the Nobel prize in
literature, Paul Heyse and Theodor Mommsen.

In this same volume, _Odi barbare_, was a poem which attracted wide
attention in Italy and aroused some indignation among the former
friends of Carducci who had Republican principles. It was the tribute
entitled “To the Queen,” dated November 20, 1878. While it was
essentially an effusion to the grace, beauty, and literary gifts of
Queen Marguerite as an individual, it resounded with the Hail! (“Long
Live!”) which has come down from Hebrew days for king and queen.
Although a Liberal to the end of his life, Carducci relinquished his
antagonism to monarchy as he grew older and gentler in spirit. The
influence of his friend in political life, Crispi, caused a reaction
in Carducci from alliance with Republicanism, which veered towards
Socialism, and an alignment again with the monarchical party. The final
pledge of this political change was chronicled in the tribute to King
Albert Charles in the poem, “Piedmonte,” in 1890. In the same year the
poet was elected as senator and served for a brief time. To him Liberty
now became an ideal for art, literature and religion, as well as for
the State.

Although the more serious interpreters of Carducci’s political
fluctuations trace the gradual, and reasonable, steps from hatred
of monarchy to acceptance and even poetic homage, there are other
commentators who give a romantic flavor to the change of attitude. They
declare that the new allegiance may be explained by a visit that the
King and Queen made to Bologna. Carducci was lame and disinclined to
meet people socially; he was immersed in his books and a few friends,
outside his University classes. The story runs that Queen Marguerite,
who was a literary critic and sponsor of the arts, invited the poet
to an audience. Such an invitation is a summons but Carducci went
unwillingly. He came away, however, from the visit inspired by the
Queen’s appreciative sympathy and her literary insight. Thenceforward
she was to him “Eterno femminino Regale.” Letters passed between the
Queen and the poet. Their friendship has been compared to that of
Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna, in inspirational quality.

As the years passed the Queen was able to serve both the poet and
her country, for Carducci’s health and finances became impaired. In
1899 he suffered a stroke of paralysis which crippled him somewhat
but he continued his work at the University, assisted by his favorite
pupil, the poet Severino Ferrari. That he might not be obliged to sell
his valuable library the Queen purchased this, with the arrangement
that he might use it during his life. After his death she purchased
his home, also, and gave this to the Italian people as a memorial,
“Casa Carducci,” with a beautiful garden, adorned with statuary that
symbolizes some of his poems. In 1904 the government gave him a pension
and the University students honored him with a celebration. The next
year the sudden death of his assistant, Ferrari, was a terrible loss to
him and left him enfeebled in body and spirit. When the Nobel prize was
awarded the next year, he was unable to leave his chair to receive it;
the King of Sweden sent a deputy to Bologna to give the testimonial in
person to the aged poet. He lived only two months after this honor; his
funeral at Bologna was attended by thousands. Because of his Florentine
descent and his literary rank, the city of Florence offered for him a
tomb in Sta. Croce, the Italian Pantheon, but his family preferred a
burial place just outside Bologna.

As a poet Carducci mingled vigor and grace to an unusual degree. He was
an artist both in his conceptions and his forms; he never left a poem
unfinished. His historical odes, resultant from his classical studies,
are less impressive than such lyrics as “Night,” “Fiesole,” “Idyll of
the Maremma,” “Before San Guido,” “Virgil,” and “Primo Vere” which
are found in translations by Mrs. Maud Holland.[51] A wistful sadness
is found in many of his poems of nature and life, a sensitiveness to
insincerity, a change from a mood of hopefulness to that of longing and
question. Such poetic traits are marked in the poem, “Primo Vere,” a
delicate spring-song with gentle sadness;

    Behold! from sluggish winter’s arms
    Spring lifts herself again;
    Naked before the steel-cold air
    She shivers, as in pain,
    Look, Lalage, is that a tear
    In the sun’s eye that shines so clear?
    Today my spirit sleeps and dreams,
    Where do my far thoughts fly?
    Close to thy beauty’s face we stand
    And smile, the spring and I:
    Yet, Lalage, whence come those tears?
    Has Spring, too, felt the doom of years?[52]

In his old age Carducci declared that “his guiding principles had
been three--in politics, Italy before all things; in art, classical
poetry before all things; in life, sincerity and strength before all
things.”[53] As he mellowed in his political opinions, so he became
less vehement against the church and Christianity in later writings.
In truth, it was not Christianity but asceticism and bigotry which he
combated. Like many poets he regretted the loss of some of the best
marks of pure paganism; he found in it truth and freedom, in contrast
with many evidences of falsehood and slavery in the Christian world
of his day. He did not always get a vision of life as a whole, only
a segment which was sometimes distorted in perspective. He was more
interested in historical and poetic figures than in creative types.
Italy of the past and her classic literature were his ideals in his
later writings. Rejecting romanticism as exotic, he pleaded for “the
representation of reality with truth.” In summary of his aim and its
fulfillment, Mr. Bickersteth has written with lucidity: “Carducci’s
conception of reality, considered from the artistic point of view,
controls his treatment of all the chief themes of his poetry, as will
at once become apparent if we examine any of these at all closely. Man,
Nature, Liberty, for instance--he held it incumbent upon the poets
of his own time to deal mainly with these three, and they constitute
accordingly a large portion of the subject-matter of his own verse.”
It is difficult to identify the word idealism with much of Carducci’s
poetry about women--for he was strongly realistic in his love poems, in
general, often compared to Walt Whitman in his emphasis of the physical
attractiveness of woman. Again, he too often failed in his efforts
to adapt old Latin forms to modern themes and reflections. In spite
of such defects, however, Carducci’s poetry at his best, his earnest
patriotism and his hopes for Italy, reflects his country, says Mr.
Bickersteth, “in her purest and serenest aspect, and her ideals linked
on to many, if not all, the most cherished traditions of her past.”[54]


FOOTNOTES:

[45] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1907.

[46] Found in original and translation in _Carducci: a Selection of His
Poems_, etc. by G. L. Bickersteth, London, 1913, p. 141.

[47] _Ibid._, p. 8.

[48] _Italian Influences: Carducci and Dante_ by Eugene Schuyler, New
York, 1901, p. 24. By permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons.

[49] _Impressioni e ricordi_ by Chiarini, p. 237.

[50] _Carducci: a Selection of His Poems_ by G. L. Bickersteth,
Copyright by Longmans, Green & Co., London and New York, 1913. By
permission of Longmans, Green & Co.

[51] _Poems by Giosuè Carducci_: with an introduction and translations
by Maud Holland, New York, 1907.

[52] _Edinburgh Review_, April, 1909. By permission of Leonard Scott
Publication Co.

[53] _Ibid._, “The Poetry of Carducci.”

[54] _Carducci: a Selection of His Poems_ by G. L. Bickersteth, London
and New York, 1913. By permission of Longmans, Green & Co.




CHAPTER VI

THE WRITINGS OF RUDYARD KIPLING BEFORE AND AFTER THE AWARD


  The prize of 1907 has been awarded:

  Kipling, Rudyard, born 1865: “in consideration of the power of
  observation, originality of imagination, and also the manly strength
  in the art of perception and delineation that characterize the
  writings of this world-renowned author.”[55]

Six years passed after the first prizes were given in literature
from the Nobel fund; the countries honored thus far had been France,
Germany, Norway, Spain, Italy, and Poland. “Where is Great Britain
on the literary map?” asked certain speakers and writers. Names of
British authors had been sent to the Committee of the Nobel Foundation
and the Swedish Academy, with ardent commendation by individuals and
academic circles. Prominent among such names, suggested in the press,
had been Swinburne, George Meredith, John Morley, Thomas Hardy, Barrie,
and Robert Bridges. One journal asked, “Why not Kipling?” The answer
came in the announcement that the award for 1907 was given to Rudyard
Kipling, poet and story-teller. Again the issue, “What is Idealism?”
was raised and challenged by some opponents of this choice yet, on the
whole, it met with wide favor. Kipling’s type of robust idealism was
defended; said W. B. Parker, “His idealism needs no other evidence than
the enthusiastic following he has had from boys.”[56]

Combined with this _robust idealism_ are two other qualities of
Kipling as writer, that have given him “the enthusiastic following of
boys”--his virility and courage. For adolescents and college youths
he has upheld the ideals of vigorous action, of honor and bravery, of
daring in speech and deed. In his dynamic poems and tales of _The Day’s
Work_, _Kim_, _Life’s Handicap_, and the other volumes so familiar,
he reflects his “gospel” of fearlessness, that does not hesitate
to shock some who abide by the conventional standards of speech.
Gilbert K. Chesterton has said forceful truths about this trait of
Kipling in _Heretics_: he affirms that credit is due to Kipling for
his appreciation of _slang_ and _steam_. He expands the thought thus:
“Steam may be, if you like, a dirty by-product of science. Slang may
be, if you like, a dirty by-product of language. But at least he has
been among the few who saw the living parentage of these things and
knew that where there is smoke, there is fire--that is, wherever
there is the foulest of things there, also, is the purest.”[57] Mr.
Chesterton declares that Kipling’s type of courage is not that of
war, nor valor of the battle-field, but “that interdependence and
efficiency which belongs quite as much to engineers, or sailors, or
mules, or railway engineers.” Recurrent in memory are such tales as
“The Bridge-Builders,” “The Ship That Found Herself,” “.007,” “With the
Night Mail” and “Wireless.”

[Illustration:

  _By courtesy of Doubleday, Page & Co._
  _Photograph by E. O. Hoppe_

RUDYARD KIPLING]

One trait sharply differentiates Kipling from some of his colleagues
among the Nobel prize winners. He is a patriot-poet but with less
ardent tribute than is found in the verse of Mistral and Björnson
and Heidenstam. Perhaps his open criticism of his country in certain
political crises has barred him from the laureateship. His frank,
democratic attitude in later years, somewhat in contrast with earlier
utterances of imperialism, finds expression in every stanza of “A
Pilgrim’s Way.” Few poets, however, have written such magnetic lines in
urgence of “fitness,” honor and service for country as has Kipling, in
the familiar words of “If,” “For All We Have and Are,” “The Children’s
Song,” and the refrain in the poem in _Land and Sea Tales for Scouts
and Scoutmasters_--

    Be fit--be fit--for honour’s sake be fit!

He is patriotic with the world knowledge of a traveled man; two
examples in proof are found in “The Return” and “The English Flag,”
with the pertinent query--

    And what should they know of England who only England know?

In recent years it has been a “fad” in certain journals to depreciate
Kipling and to charge against him faults of narrowness in outlook and
lack of modernism. Especially during the years of the war and its
immediate aftermath one found tones of sad, somewhat cynical writing.
In large measure this was due to the personal trials of the time and
the loss of his son. That elegiac poem, “My Boy Jack; 1914-1918,” will
live as a heart-gripping memorial. In his speech at the Sorbonne,
November 19, 1921, he gave evidences of spiritual recovery; he said,
“One cannot resume a broken world as easily as one can resume a broken
sentence. But before long our sons who have spent themselves in
suffering and toiling to abolish the menace of barbarism will recover
also from the menace of moral lassitude.” With old-time sprightliness
and vigor he wrote, in the spring of 1924, the stanzas “A Song of the
French Roads,” after a visit to France and the joyful experience of
finding the roads to the border, that had been laid out by Napoleon
and devastated by the war, were now repaired and open to traffic.[58]

It was the Kipling of the earlier years of writing who received the
Nobel prize. He was forty-two years old, one of the youngest winners.
He had already published volumes of prose and verse that would be
creditable to a writer of twice his age. Born at Bombay, December 30,
1865, he inherited intellectual promise from both parents. His father,
John Lockwood Kipling, an artist, was at that time Director of the
Lahore School of Industrial Art. He was a delightful story-teller and
expertly trained in technical and artistic knowledge. He illustrated
some of his son’s earlier tales; a book by him, entitled _Beast and Man
in India_, with unusual drawings, was attributed to Rudyard Kipling
(London, 1891). Alice MacDonald, the mother, gave to her son a keen
zest in life and a rare sense of humor. Her devotion has had many lines
of commemoration, notably in such a poem as “Mother O’ Mine.”

The boy was named Joseph Rudyard but he seldom used the first name.
The second, in memory of a lake in England where his father and mother
had met, is so arresting and unique that it has been called one of the
causes of his first appeal to the curious public. After his early
boyhood in India, leaving with him strong impressions and love for
the land, he was sent to Southsea, Devonshire, to school and later to
the United Services College at Westward Ho. He was homesick for his
mother and found it difficult to mix well with the English-born boys.
_Stalky & Co._ is largely autobiographical of this period. In 1880 he
returned to India, anxious to enter journalism and know the native
people, especially in the army. The story runs that once, when Kipling
was doing journalistic work in Lahore, the Duke of Connaught visited
the place and asked the young man what he would prefer to do in India.
The reply came promptly, “I would like, sir, to live with the army for
a time, and go to the frontier to write up Tommy Atkins.” The request
was granted and the literary results in later years are listed in
_Department Ditties_, _Soldiers Three_, _Under the Deodars_, and many
more stories in volumes, from _Plain Tales from the Hills_ to _Eyes of
Asia_.

Much discussion has been rife about the truth or exaggeration of
Kipling’s pictures of India, especially types of army men and
officers’ wives. Many critics, who have traveled in India, affirm
the photographic quality of the tales and verse but some raise the
issue of the tone--is it sincere or sardonic? Others, who claim to
have talked with certain “natives,” condemn both the spirit and the
characterizations. To the charge of insincerity or disloyalty there
seems to be a firm answer in the friendly Prelude to _Departmental
Ditties_, which has a prominent place in the Inclusive Edition of
_Rudyard Kipling’s Verse_. He lays stress, in the last stanza, upon
“the jesting guise” but he emphasizes, also, his loyalty to these
people, especially in the second stanza:

    Was there aught that I did not share
      In vigil or toil or ease,--
    One joy or woe that I did not know,
      Dear hearts across the seas?[59]

During these years from 1882 to 1889, while he was doing journalistic
work and associating with civil and military representatives in Lahore,
Bombay, and Mandalay, he was writing stories and verses which appeared
in the newspaper columns of India. The first issue in book form was by
A. H. Wheeler & Co. of Allahabad, a little book in gray paper covers
which was sold at railway stations. In his own hand and with striking
illustrations, Kipling edited some of his early tales; one such, “Wee
Willie Winkie,” dedicated to his mother, with others that formed “an
illustrated set,” found a purchaser in J. Pierpont Morgan, in recent
years at a price stated to be $17,000.[60]

When Kipling was twenty-five years old, with his memory packed with
scenes of adventure and characters in India, and his pockets filled
with unpublished tales and verse, he decided to try his literary fate
in England. He traveled by way of the Pacific to California and reached
New York with hopes of editorial encouragement because he had letters
of introduction. He was not received with cordiality; perhaps in later
years some of these editors and publishers regretted their lost chance
to launch a new genius. In London, he attracted attention slowly but,
with influence from family and officials, he won recognition by critics
and reading-public. One of the first to appreciate Kipling’s unique
work was Andrew Lang; later he was severe in criticism of certain
faults. One of his essays upon Kipling of the earlier _Tales_ is
included in _Essays in Little_ (Scribner’s, 1891). It has a prophetic
note, an emphasis of “the brilliance of colour,” the strange, varied
themes, the “perfume of the East.”

The Nobel prize was given to Kipling because of these qualities of
his earlier work, as well as his more mature, potent messages. He
had, from the first, rare ability to revivify, to secure for future
generations of readers the real and the romantic in Anglo-India of the
later nineteenth century. He preserved the landscapes, the customs, the
ideals, the intrigues, the foibles, even the slang of the natives and
the British soldiers. Just as Mistral saved the language and romances
of Provence from oblivion, in his _Mireio_ and other poems; just as
Björnson recorded the almost forgotten sagas of Norway and blended
these with modern, peasant life; so Kipling made literary use of this
unfamiliar material of India. His idealism converted the ordinary,
often petty and rough aspects of life, into stories and verses of
undying flavor, like “The Phantom Rickshaw,” _Soldiers Three_, “Drums
of the Fore and Aft,” “On the City Wall,” “M’Andrew’s Hymn,” “Danny
Deever,” “Mandalay,” and “The Lover’s Litany.” Here are recorded days
of adventure and danger, nights of memory and longing. In 1902, more
than ten years after he left India, he wrote one of his most appealing
poems, “The Broken Men,” the exiles from England with their pluck and
their pathos, which grips the sympathies like those tales of O. Henry
about the American self-imposed “exiles” in Central America.

The later visit that Kipling made to the United States cheered his
heart, in contrast to the earlier reception. He had met Caroline
Balestier, sister of Wolcott Balestier, a young man with whom Kipling
became intimate in London and with whom he collaborated in the novel,
_The Naulahka_. Their home was in Brattleboro, Vermont. In 1892 Miss
Balestier was married to Kipling in All Soul’s Church, Portland Place,
London. They came to Vermont to live for a few years in the unique
house, which Kipling built for his bride overlooking Brattleboro. Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle accredits him with “chivalrous devotion” to his
wife, which caused him to come to America lest she might miss her
home and friends.[61] Before coming to America they took a journey
“round the world,” or a segment of it. The death of Wolcott Balestier
was a deep grief to his friend and a loss to American literature. In
dedicatory elegy (_Barrack-Room Ballads_) Kipling wrote the lines of
noble characterization:

    E’en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth,
    In simpleness and gentleness and honour and clean mirth.[62]

For the little daughter, who died at an early age, Kipling wrote his
first _Jungle Book_. In this American home he wrote, also, many of
the poems collected in _The Seven Seas_ and the short stories, _Many
Inventions_. In the latter book were the daring pictures of life like
“The Disturber of Traffic,” the haunting tale of “The Lost Legion,”
and the tragic “Love o’ Women.” The inspiration of Mrs. Kipling, her
perfect appreciation of her husband’s gifts and moods, and her gracious
influence have been attested by him in many tender words, as well as
in the more impersonal tributes to womanhood of brains and heart, which
one finds expressed in _From Sea to Sea_ or “His Chance in Life.” The
world will never forget the persistent story that Mrs. Kipling saved,
from the wastebasket, that grand hymn of all time, “The Recessional.”
In some of his tales he antagonized Americans, notably in _The Light
That Failed_ and “An Habitation Enforced” in _Actions and Reactions_;
as compensation one recalls “An Error of the Fourth Dimension” from
_Plain Tales_, the story of Wilton Sargent, American.

The writing of Kipling showed advance in form during the decade from
1890 to 1900. There was gradual elimination of the jingoism and
cynicism which tainted some of his earlier work. In 1897 he visited
South Africa again. He recounted an actual experience in riding on
a Cape Government Railway in his tale “.007,” among the stories in
_The Day’s Work_, published in 1898. In this same collection is found
“The Brushwood Boy,” a masterpiece of mystic idealism which will
stand beside his more poetic allegory, “They.” The year 1899 has been
regarded sometimes as a crisis in the life of Kipling which affected
his later writing. On his arrival in New York, in the late autumn
of that year, he was attacked by a severe case of pneumonia and was
desperately ill for many weeks. The press of America, England, and
the Continent awaited the bulletins with anxiety. He recovered but
some critics have affirmed that he lost his vigor and literary power.
Looking over the dates of his poems, and recalling the books which have
appeared since this crisis, such a surmise is not warranted. One could
scarcely expect that any author could continue to write, on a level
or ascending scale, many more books about India than he had already
written or many more poems of vital spell like “If,” “When Earth’s Last
Picture is Painted,” and “M’Andrew’s Hymn.”

He had already proved his ability to write for children and
adolescents. Few books among juveniles surpass, in visualization and
imaginative skill, _The Jungle Books_, _Just So Stories_, and that
pioneer sea tale that has gained favor with the years, _Captains
Courageous_. In the years that followed his serious illness, he wrote
tales of clever inventiveness collected in _Puck of Pook’s Hill_,
_Rewards and Fairies_, and _Kim_. To this period belong, also, many
of the poems collected in the volume, _The Five Nations_. Who will
say that there was decadence of literary power, any lapse of dramatic
skill, in that story of _Kim_, or Kimball O’Hara, the orphan boy of
Lahore? The boys of to-day--and normal girls--have wholesome “thrills”
at this lad’s story, his pilgrimages over India with the Tibetan
lama, and his final adoption by the regiment to which his father had
belonged. Humor, adventure, vivid photographs of places and people--all
are mingled in this tale. When it appeared in the London edition
of 1901, the father of Kipling contributed some of the striking
illustrations.

_The Five Nations_ of this later period gave permanence in form to such
vital poems as “White Horses,” “Our Lady of the Snows” (the beautiful
ode to Canada), “The Dykes,” “The Feet of the Young Men,” “Boots,”
“The Explorer,” and “The Recessional.” “Buddha at Kamakura,” which
first appeared in _Kim_, should be listed in this collection. Are there
here traces of lapse in form or spontaneity compared with the earlier,
less restrained verses in _Departmental Ditties_ or _Barrack-Room
Ballads_? In _Traffics and Discoveries_, published in 1904, are found
such literary achievements as “Wireless,” “They,” and “The Army of a
Dream.” Kipling had shown his keen observation, humor, and appreciation
of varied beauties of Nature in his volumes of travel-sketches and
letters, _From Sea to Sea_ and _Letters of Travel_. “In Sight of
Monadnock” contains a brief, fine description of that distant New
Hampshire peak. With his long experience in travel and adjustment to
diverse conditions of life, Kipling has ever been a poet of home,
national and domestic. His poem, “Sussex,” written in 1902, has deep
feeling as well as notable lines of description and a rhythmic swing.

New poets and story-writers came into prominence with the twentieth
century. Although Kipling was in his full maturity and vigor when the
Nobel prize was awarded, with years of promising, creative work before
him, he had been so long before the public that it became the fashion,
in some brilliant, cynical groups, to speak of him as belonging to the
older generation. His volumes attracted less attention in competition
with those of mere “modernism.” The announcement of the Nobel prize,
in 1907, aroused interest anew in every country. In looking over the
Kipling bibliographical cards, in the Widener Library at Harvard
University, it is interesting to find records of translations of his
books into Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish,
Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish. The journals took occasion to
review what he had accomplished in literature before 1907, to commend
or reprove the decision of the Swedish Academy in giving him a prize
for “idealistic” literature. Some cited his imperialistic “complex”
and quoted “The Man Who Would Be King.” In _Current Literature_ for
October, 1908, are quotations from diverse opinions: Said the _London
Nation_: “There is hardly any English writer more closely identified
with the doctrine of force or a firmer believer that the Deity is
to be found on the side of the big battalions.” The _New York World_
declared, “He sings of blood-lust, with a schoolboy’s disregard of
consequences.” The _Chicago Post_ believed that his idealism was “the
idealization of might” but it praised his strong, Biblical English.

Comments of this kind fail to recognize the _two_, paradoxical traits
in Kipling’s nature and writings. There is stark realism, sometimes
relentless, as in “The Courtship of Dinah Shadd,” “The Gate of a
Hundred Sorrows,” “My Son’s Wife,” or poems like “The Galley-Slave,”
“Danny Deever,” and “Kitchener’s School.” Close beside this realism,
penetrating and often sordid, sounds a note of idealism, a promise
of “a happy issue out of all troubles,” a vision that comes to an
idealist. Recall that in _The Day’s Work_, there is the tense,
realistic tale of “The Devil and the Deep Sea,” and, within a few
pages, the idyll of “The Brushwood Boy.”

Since the Nobel prize was received, Kipling has written with less
frequency and more unevenness of form. Some of the prose and verse
reflects the war, like “Fringes of the Fleet,” “Sea Warfare,” “France,”
and the “History of the Irish Guards.” Not soon forgotten will be that
tribute to Roosevelt, tender and virile, “Great-Heart” (1919). In the
collected poems, _The Years Between_, there are challenging war poems,
“For All We Have and Are,” an appeal to England, and “The Choice, or
The American Spirit Speaks,” for the United States. The elegy to “Lord
Roberts,” less militant in tone, is true poetry in emotion and measure.
Some stanzas are touched by irony, and have the sermonic quality which
is characteristic--“The Sons of Martha,” “En-Dor” and “Russia to the
Pacifists.” The juvenile of 1923, _Land and Sea Tales for Boys and
Girls_ (or _for Scouts and Scoutmasters_) is uneven in quality but it
has two dramatic sketches. _Eyes of Asia_, portraits of Europeans as
seen by Oriental eyes, is more comparable to mediocre pages in _Actions
and Reactions_ than it is to the more vital stories in _Plain Tales_
and _The Day’s Work_. “Fumes of the Heart” is the best of these later
tales.

Mr. Kipling is reaping honors in educational and civic life. His
reserve, which is sometimes rated as coldness, keeps him far from the
limelight of publicity. He cannot be persuaded to “come to America”
as lecturer or reader, in the train of many of his compatriots of far
less worth or fame. In his Sussex home, with family and a few friends
about him, he is a delightful _raconteur_ or conversationalist upon
topics of world-wide politics. He is more amused than angered at some
of the petty criticisms upon his writing, like the recent attack upon
“Mandalay” for its anachronisms in geography, not unlike the charges
against Shakespeare in _The Tempest_ and _The Winter’s Tale_. Arnold
Bennett, in _Books and Persons_,[63] has some comments upon Kipling’s
flaws in _Actions and Reactions_ and his “prejudices and clayey
ideals,” but he ends with tribute to him as a painstaking artist,
devoted to his craft.

Philip Guedalla, brilliant journalist and ironist, in his essays, _A
Gallery_, under caption of “Mandalay,” says “much in little” about the
“remoteness and antiquity” of Kipling; he finds him so “antiquated”
that the “Dinosaurus” might give him “points in modernity.” Despite
such witty extravagances, however, the critic admits that Kipling “has
sharpened the English language to a knife-edge and with it has cut
brilliant patterns on the surface of our prose literature.”[64] In
both his prose and poetry he has “sharpened the English language to
a knife-edge.” His verses may seem “antiquated” to the reader whose
exclusive tastes welcome only “new poetry” and sneer at “lilting
rhymes” and conventional meters. To broader minds, however, there is
appreciation of the vibrant messages of spiritual courage, the bold and
graphic excerpts from real life, in both the verse and the fiction of
Kipling at his best.

One of the honors that came to this writer recently was an invitation
to give the Rectorial Address at St. Andrews University, in 1923.
This has been published in book form as _Independence_, similar in
format to that of Barrie’s address, on a kindred occasion, entitled
_Courage_. Mr. Kipling urges here the fundamental duty of developing
one’s individuality: “After all,” he says, “yourself is the only person
you can by no possibility get away from in this life, and maybe, in
another. It is worth a little pains and money to do good to him.”[65]

His idealism is not that of mere sentiment, much less of
sentimentality. It is the idealism of work, of action, of
responsibility. It is the idealism even in the midst of misjudgments,
of carrying “The White Man’s Burden,” of training youth towards clean,
productive manhood. One grants that some of his writings, both prose
and verse, might be eliminated from collections and memory, with an
increase in his literary rank. He is uneven and was prone, in his
earlier days, to mistake coarseness for vigor, yet he has been able to
make his readers both _listen_ and _see_. Perhaps he has not maintained
the almost unanimous favoritism among college youths that he had two
decades ago--there have been competitors with “college stories” of
rank realism--but it may be questioned if any author of our day is more
often quoted among both educated and unlettered adults. Mr. Kipling has
never been tempted to lower his standards for commercial ends; with
fearless truth, he has spoken messages of uprightness and service. “A
Song of the English” is national, perhaps imperialistic, but it has,
like scores of his other stanzas, a catholic message to Christian
nations everywhere:

    Keep ye the Law--be swift in all obedience--
    Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford.
        Make ye sure to each his own
        That he reap where he hath sown;
    By the peace among our peoples let men know we serve the Lord![66]


FOOTNOTES:

[55] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1907.

[56] _World’s Work_, February, 1908.

[57] _Heretics_ by Gilbert K. Chesterton, London and New York, 1915,
1919. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co.

[58] _Literary Digest_, July 5, 1924.

[59] _Rudyard Kipling’s Verse_: Inclusive Edition, Garden City, N. Y.,
1924, p. 3. By permission of Mr. Kipling and Doubleday, Page & Co.

[60] _Bookman_, 25: 561.

[61] _Memories and Adventures_ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Boston, 1924.

[62] By permission of Mr. Kipling.

[63] George H. Doran, New York, 1917.

[64] _A Gallery_ by Philip Guedalla, New York, 1924. By permission of
G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

[65] _Independence_: Rectorial Address at St. Andrews by Rudyard
Kipling, New York, 1924. By permission of Mr. Kipling and Doubleday,
Page & Co.

[66] _Rudyard Kipling’s Verse_: Inclusive Edition, Garden City, N. Y.,
1924. By permission of Mr. Kipling and Doubleday, Page & Co.




CHAPTER VII

SELMA LAGERLÖF--SWEDISH REALIST AND IDEALIST


  The prize of 1909 has been awarded:

  Lagerlöf, Selma, born 1858: “because of the noble idealism, the
  wealth of fancy and the spiritual quality that characterize her
  works.”[67]

“I declare it to be my express desire that in the awarding of the
prizes no consideration whatever be paid to the nationality of the
candidates, that is to say, that the most deserving be awarded the
prize, whether of Scandinavian origin or not.” These words from the
will of Alfred Nobel had been faithfully obeyed during the first
eight years of the awards in literature. Only once had the prize
been given to a Scandinavian, to Björnson, the Norwegian, in 1903.
When the announcement came that the winner for 1909 was the Swedish
writer, Selma Lagerlöf, the most severe critics of the Nobel Foundation
Committee in former years were either commendatory or silently
acquiescent. Here was an author who richly deserved the prize, for
she was already known throughout Europe and America for her unique
fiction, in which photographic realism was always blended with a
dominant note of idealism. The juvenile book which combined geography,
fancy, humor, and fascination for old and young, _The Wonderful
Adventures of Nils_, and other books had followed the strange tale
of folklore and character study, _The Story of Gösta Berling_; these
writings were outstanding evidences of her literary gifts. It was an
honor to womanhood everywhere that the Nobel prize was given to Selma
Lagerlöf, first of the countrymen of Nobel to be thus immortalized in
literature. In her years of teaching and her later messages from the
press, she had shown her sincere purpose “to benefit mankind.”

[Illustration:

  _By courtesy of The American-Scandinavian Foundation_

SELMA LAGERLÖF]

It is interesting to note that the family name of this woman means
“laurel leaf,” a symbol of her fame. In _Mårbacka_, one of her later
books to be translated into English, the reader finds detached
photographs of the home and environment of this author’s girlhood. Mrs.
Velma Swanston Howard, who has been so successful as translator of Miss
Lagerlöf’s books, knows perfectly the languages of both Sweden and
England; she is a friend of the author, with kinship in her traditions
and spirit, and thus has sustained that indefinable but pervading
“atmosphere” which characterizes all of Miss Lagerlöf’s fiction. The
setting of _Mårbacka_ is alive with elements of Nature and humanity,
with folklore and “wonderful tales of old Varmland” which became the
basis for many of her later books. The spacious manor house, where
Selma Lagerlöf was born sixty-seven years ago, becomes familiar to
readers of this autobiography. The nursery chairs, with individual
names and portraits of Johan, Anna, and little Selma Ottiliana Louisa,
were treasured heirlooms; the beds that “parted company,” perhaps,
in the night and the old owl in the lumber-loft above the bedroom,
contributed infantile “thrills” and memories.

A gay-hearted, courageous, popular man was her father, Lieutenant
Lagerlöf, retired from the army but entertaining former associates in
his home and recounting, for his daughter’s education, tales of earlier
history of Sweden and his family. The germ-idea of Gösta Berling,
hero of her first romance, came after a reminiscence that her father
had told her one morning after breakfast, his memory of “the most
fascinating of men,” one who could sing, write poetry, dance so that
all feet moved in unison, and could bend everyone’s will to his own
mood--and yet one who lacked certain qualities of manly strength. The
mother of Selma Lagerlöf came from two generations of ministers; she
was quiet, practical, intuitive, a fine administrator of her large
household and frequent guests. Aunt Lovisa gave a touch of romance to
the family circle by a sad chapter in her past that is recounted in
“The Bridal Crown,” the tragic result (according to legend) of the
substitution of whortleberry for myrtle in the wreath for the bride’s
hair. The nurse, Back-Kaisa, large and stern yet devoted to the family,
was another interesting character at Mårbacka; from the old housekeeper
and the grandmother the children learned stories, sagas, and bits of
family histories.

When Selma Lagerlöf was three and a half years old, after bathing in
a fresh-water pond with her father, she developed a form of infantile
paralysis. Months of inactivity followed; some lasting results of
this disease have been handicaps of the author throughout her life.
With humor and realistic portrayal of a child’s point of view of this
period, she tells in _Mårbacka_, the chapter “Grand Company,” how
she increased in social importance in the family, having exclusive
attention of the grim nurse, and dainties to eat in place of the usual
food, much to the jealous disgust of her brother and sister. A sojourn
at Stromstead by the sea brought new vigor and recovery of motion to
the little girl; with amazement to herself and her family she walked to
investigate a brilliant, stuffed “bird of paradise.” The sprightly zest
in living, which characterizes the author’s personality, is reflected
in all her books. Animals as pets, poultry of the farmyard, and birds
and flowers are vital factors in her earlier and later tales.

Among important influences of her childhood was the singing of Bellman
Ballads, with their humor, pathos, and haunting music. One day when
Miss Lagerlöf had won a place among twenty-five chosen candidates at
Teachers’ College in Stockholm, and had been listening to a lecture
about Bellman and Runeberg and their ballads, she had her “flash of
inspiration.” She determined to tell stories about her own Varmland;
she would become narrator of her “Cavaliers” and would incorporate
into her tales the legends, folklore and real characters of the home
district. She had cherished ambitions to write verse and even plays,
from the days when, as a young girl, she visited her uncle in Stockholm
and went to the theatre with the old housekeeper, becoming impressed
by peasant plays and scenes from Nosselt’s _History_. She had lain
awake at night, composing rhymes and neglecting the sleep which would
have fitted her for the tasks of the next day in “composition and
arithmetic.”[68]

After graduation she taught at Landskrona, in the province of Skåne,
always hoping to find time to write, always meeting disappointments
because of the demands of the classroom, often telling orally some of
her tales to her pupils after school hours, always returning to her old
home, Mårbacka, in vacations and gaining new impetus for her literary
aspirations. Her first chapter of _The Story of Gösta Berling_ was
composed on a Christmas holiday evening when she, with members of her
family, was returning from a party at a distant neighbor’s house. A
blizzard was raging and she sat in the sleigh, covered with furs, while
the old horse, urged by the aged coachman, tried to plough through the
drifts, in defiance of the wild winds. In her mind was formulated that
chapter of the Christmas night at the smithy, which is an arresting
episode in the complete novel. She made first a metrical version;
then she tried it in dramatic form and, finally, wrote it as a short
story. Later she wrote other episodes--that of the flood at Ekeby and
another of the ball. In 1890, at the urgence of her sister, she sent
some of these episodic stories to a prize competition, offered by the
magazine, _Idun_, for the best novelette of one hundred pages. A few
weeks later the journal announced that some of the manuscripts were “so
confusedly written that they could not be considered for the prize”;
Miss Lagerlöf was sure that hers was among this rejected class. Then
came a telegram, signed by three classmates, with the words, “Hearty
Congratulations.”

The editor offered to publish the novel, in expanded form, if Miss
Lagerlöf could have it ready in a short time. Again, she was in despair
when a friend, Baroness Aldersparre, arranged financial matters so that
the teacher could be given a year’s leave of absence--and “the miracle
happened.” When she had completed this initial story, combining Swedish
legend, history of the days of the Cavaliers and the pensioners and
the old forges, with humor and delicate idealism, she was dissatisfied
because it seemed to her “wild and disjointed.” There are passages
where the sentences are detached, places where the links in her chain
of plot are weak. In structure she has gained skill, as is evident
by a comparison of her earlier fiction with such masterworks as the
first part of _Jerusalem_ and _The Emperor of Portugallia_. With this
improved technic, she has kept her spontaneity, her vital realism and
intuition, her spiritual insight. After the publication of one of her
novels, the _London Times_ said, with true emphasis upon her unusual
combination of qualities: “She is an idealist pure and simple in a
world given over to realism, yet such is the perfection of her style
and the witchery of her fancy that a generation of realists worship
her.” An optimism which defies apparent failures, akin to that of
Browning, brings about the redemption of her characters from Gösta
Berling, drunken poet-preacher and fascinating vagabond, and flighty
Marianne Sinclair to Lilliecrona, the restless violinist, and Glory
Golden Sunnycastle, heroine of _The Emperor of Portugallia_.

Mrs. Velma Swanston Howard said, in a recent interview with the writer
of this book, that Miss Lagerlöf, like her translator, considers this
story of Jan, who calls himself “The Emperor of Portugallia,” and his
daughter, Glory, as her best work in fiction. Thousands of readers will
echo the preference. To the incisive, ruthless realism in this tale she
has added sympathy that grips the heart, poetic setting and sagas, and
a message that is more impressive because it is dramatic rather than
sermonic. The threads of this story are seldom tangled; the pattern
stands out with distinctness and artistry.

_Invisible Links_, a collection of short stories, was published in
1894, with peasants, fisherfolk, children, and animals all “linked”
in interrelations of spirit; Miss Lagerlöf then received a yearly
stipend for her services to literature, through the friendly interest
of the Swedish Academy and King Oscar and his son, Prince Eugen. With
a friend she went to Italy and Sicily, gaining impressions that bore
harvest in _Miracles of Antichrist_, issued in 1897 and translated
into English two years later by Pauline Bancroft Flach, who had done
the same service for _The Story of Gösta Berling_ and _Invisible
Links_. Mingling traditions and poetry of old Sicily with reactions
to modern socialism and its effects upon established religion, Miss
Lagerlöf wrote with deep fervor and colorful imagination. The slight
plot is evolved about the ruse of the Englishwoman who coveted an image
of Christ as a child, in a church in Rome, and substituted an image,
seemingly the same but with the legend upon the crown, “My Kingdom
is only of this World.” By a miracle, a few weeks later, the false
image is cast down and the true Christchild stands in the doorway. The
Antichrist is taken away to Sicily where miracles of helpfulness are
recorded by its agnostic followers. Miss Lagerlöf seeks to preach,
through the words of the Pope to Father Gondo, the ideal of unity
between Christianity and antichristianity: “You could take the great
popular movement in your arms, while it is still lying like a child
in its swaddling clothes, and you could bear it to Jesus’ feet; and
Antichrist would see that he is nothing but an imitation of Christ, and
would acknowledge him his Lord and Master.”[69]

_From a Swedish Homestead_, which was published in 1899, contains the
strong, mystical novelette, “The Story of a Country House.” A student
at Upsala University loses his reason as a result of seeing his flock
of sheep frozen to death in a storm when, by his forethought, the
tragedy might have been averted. Known as “The Goat,” he wanders about
the countryside, selling toys and trinkets, until his redemption and
sanity are achieved through his love for a girl of noble character.
Among the other short tales in this same volume is “Santa Catarina
of Siena,” a reflection of the Italian trip, and “The Emperor’s
Money Chest,” which is allegorical yet photographic of Belgium in an
industrial crisis.

Two other books preceded the award of the Nobel prize--_Jerusalem_
and _The Wonderful Adventures of Nils_, with its sequel. In 1899,
the Swedish government gave to Miss Lagerlöf a commission to go to
Palestine. She was to report, on her return, upon conditions which she
might discover there in the Swedish colony which had migrated from Nås,
a parish of Dalecarlia, a few years previously. Urged by promoters
of missionary enterprise, among them Mrs. Edward Gordon of Chicago,
scores of peasants and householders had sold their homesteads and left
their families to join this colony in the Holy Land. Rumors had come to
Sweden of direful conditions there--of disease and hunger, of depleted
morale and bickerings among colonists and missionaries. “Jerusalem
kills!” became a common phrase of the day. Miss Lagerlöf undertook
investigation and made a report on existent evils and exaggerated
rumors. She accomplished a far more important work for literature than
this report. She gathered material for one of her most emotional,
graphic books, _Jerusalem_. Against the background of facts, both in
Dalecarlia and Palestine, she wove a story of intense feeling, with
folklore, psychological insight, and characterization of a fine type.
The portrayals of the Ingmarsson family and the women, Brita, Karin,
and Gertrude, whose fates were interlinked with those of the later
generation of the ancestral family of Dalecarlia, are vivid.

Humor relieves the tragic intensity of this book, so well rendered
into English by Mrs. Howard who has, says Mr. Henry Goddard Leach in
the Introduction, been able “to reproduce the original in essence as
well as verisimilitude.” An example of the descriptive style of this
story of Swedish life under religious tension is found in the opening
sentences of the chapter, “The Departure of the Pilgrims” of Part
I.[70] “One beautiful morning in July, a long train of cars and wagons
set out from the Ingmar Farm. The Hellgumists had at last completed
their arrangements, and were now leaving for Jerusalem--the first stage
of the journey being the long drive to the railway station.

“The procession, in moving towards the village, had to pass a wretched
hovel which was called Mucklemire. The people who lived there were a
disreputable lot--the kind of scum of the earth which must have sprung
into being when our Lord’s eyes were turned, or when he had been too
busy elsewhere.

“There was a whole horde of dirty, ragged youngsters on the place, who
were in the habit of running loose all day, shrieking after passing
vehicles, and calling the occupants bad names; there was an old crone
who usually sat by the roadside, tipsy; and there were a husband and
wife who were always quarrelling and fighting, and who had never been
known to do any honest work. No one could say whether they begged more
than they stole, or stole more than they begged.

“When the Jerusalem-farers came alongside this wretched hovel, which
was about as tumbledown as a place can become when wind and storm
have, for many years, been allowed to work havoc, they saw the old
crone standing erect and sober at the roadside, on the same spot where
she usually sat in a drunken stupor ... and with her were four of the
children. All five were now washed and combed, and as decently dressed
as it was possible for them to be....

“All the Jerusalem-farers suddenly burst into tears, the grown-ups
crying softly, while the children broke into loud sobs and wails....
When they had all passed by, Beggar Lina also began to weep.

“‘Those people are going to Heaven to meet Jesus,’ she told the
children. ‘All those people are going to Heaven, but we are left
standing by the wayside.’”

Another literary outcome of the visit of Miss Lagerlöf to Palestine
was a renewed interest in legends about Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
Always deeply religious, with an unusual ability to blend worship with
tradition and never lose the distinctive flavor of each element, she
wrote the tales that were collected as _Christ Legends_, translated
by Mrs. Howard in 1908. Here are new, impressive versions of such old
myths as “The Wise Men’s Well,” “Saint Veronica’s Kerchief,” and “Robin
Redbreast.”

The Swedish school authorities wished for a good geography which should
be popular with the children and satisfy the teachers. The National
Teachers’ Association appealed to Miss Lagerlöf for such a book and the
results were _The Wonderful Adventures of Nils_ and _Further Adventures
of Nils_, appearing in 1906 and 1907. These books, so widely read in
schools and homes in every civilized country to-day, are worthy a place
on the shelves beside _Alice in Wonderland_ of the past and _Doctor
Doolittle_ of the present type of juveniles. The boy, Nils Holgersson,
and his “goosey-gander,” with companions on the earth and in the air,
appeal to the imagination of all ages, while the information about
Sweden’s outlines and landmarks is both accurate and entertaining.

Such had been the literary output of Miss Lagerlöf before she was
chosen for the Nobel winner of 1909. Already she had been given a gold
medal for her work by the Swedish Academy and the degree of LL.D. by
the University of Upsala. Five years after the award she was elected
to membership in the Swedish Academy, “the eighteen immortals”--the
first woman to be thus honored. When the prize was given to her, with
a grand fête at Stockholm, she was the guest of honor at a banquet at
the Grand Hotel, given by King Gustav V. Her acceptance was in the form
of a unique speech, a story, briefly told, of her summons to her father
to aid her in saying the right words, this father who, long dead, had
been her inspiration for her first work in literature and her spiritual
guide in many crises. Wistful beauty and delicate humor were blended in
the closing words:[71] “Father sits and ponders a while; then he wipes
away the tears of joy, shakes himself, and strikes his fist on the arm
of the chair. ‘I don’t care to sit here any longer and muse on things
which no one, either in heaven or on earth, can answer!’ he says.
‘If you have received the Nobel Prize, I shan’t trouble myself about
anything but to be happy.’

“Your Royal Highness--Ladies and Gentlemen--since I got no better
answer to all my queries, it only remains for me to ask you to join
me in a toast of gratitude, which I have the honour to propose to the
Swedish Academy.”

Miss Lagerlöf was fifty-one years old when this honor came to her; in
the years since then she has exemplified, in spoken and written words,
“the noble idealism, the wealth of imagination, the soulful quality
of her style.” Her speech, in 1911, when the International Suffrage
Congress was held in Stockholm, was widely read and translated. In
this, as in so many of her stories, she stressed the idea of home and
its influence throughout every avenue of betterment in the world. This
year marked, also, the publication of _Lilliecrona’s Home_, translated
in English three years later by Anna Barwell. The setting was Varmland
and the hero’s home, Lövdalla, closely resembles the home of the
author, Mårbacka. This is, perhaps, the most poetic and mystical of
all her stories. The violinist who found in “music and music alone his
home, his place of rest,” is a haunting character, sharing many traits
with Gösta Berling. His life-passage is turbulent, often dramatic,
sometimes melancholy, ending in a happy romance for him and Maia Lisa,
the pastor’s daughter. There are scenes of emotional vigor, like “The
Bride’s Dance” and “The Accusation.” These are comparable to the more
familiar chapters in _The Story of Gösta Berling_, like that where
the autocratic Mistress of Ekeby is driven forth by her pensioners
because they discover that she has vowed a soul each year to the devil
(in expiation for her secret sin) or the redemptive power of Countess
Elizabeth in reclaiming Gösta’s manhood. Beautiful descriptions of
apple orchards in bloom are found in the later book, interwoven with
romantic legends like the excitement for the pastor’s daughter when
young Lilliecrona comes forward in her dream and offers her water
“after the magic pancake,” a sure prophecy that he will be her husband.

Against the same background of her girlhood home is placed the later,
strong story of _The Emperor of Portugallia_. This is less episodic
and more unified than some of her other fiction. Jan, the dull,
plodding man with no zest in life until he holds in his arms his little
daughter, whom he calls Glory Goldie Sunnycastle, is a vital character;
we share his pride in the beauty and charm of Glory, his faith in her
even when rumors would smirch her moral character, not without basis,
as she goes out into the world to save the home for Jan and his wife,
Katrina, his final act of self-sacrifice when, with clouded mind but
spiritual vision, he would save her from the demons of “Pride and
Hardness, Lust and Vice.” This story has been well called in France “an
epic of fatherhood--a Swedish _Père Goriot_.”

In 1922 appeared in the United States _The Outcast_, the English
version of _Bannlyst_, as its title was in Swedish when it was
published in 1918. The World War entered as a motif in the latter part
of the story, sometimes with strained effects. As a work of artistic
fiction it seems inferior to _The Story of Gösta Berling_ or _The
Emperor of Portugallia_. It has virility however, and much intensity
of feeling. Although she lived in a neutral country Miss Lagerlöf was
deeply stirred by the war and the terrible sacrifices of life. She
resented all evidences of brutal humanity. The sacredness of human
life forms her keynote in _The Outcast_. Sven Elversson, who had lived
through a fearful experience upon an Arctic expedition and had been
accused of eating human flesh in an hour of imminent famine, returns
to his mother and his home to find himself denounced by the villagers
and even by the minister. To save his mother from further torture of
spirit, after he has tried in vain to overcome the prejudice of the
people by his charity and Christlike deeds, he goes away to the woods
of the Far North. Here he wanders, and is called “The Outcast,” until
he meets the beautiful wife of the bigoted minister who had preached
against Sven, the man who, in unfounded jealousy, had cast off his
wife. The love scenes in this book are elemental in their simplicity,
yet have poetic touches. Then comes the Battle of Jutland and the
frightful scenes when the bodies of the dead are washed upon the shores
of his home town. Sven returns and organizes a group of men to bury
the dead; in the pocket of one of the victims is found a letter which
exonerates Sven from the false charge of cannibalism. It is a daring,
grotesque tale in parts, with local color and superstition interwoven
with good character-drawing and a dominant message of faith.

An early folk story which has been recently translated by Arthur
G. Chater, is entitled _The Treasure_. It is slight in volume and
literary value compared with such major books as _Jerusalem_ and _The
Emperor of Portugallia_. It has features of the spectacular with
restrained dramatic power. It lends itself to scenario effects because
of the pictorial background and the brilliant contrasts in characters
and sentiments. In Sweden of the sixteenth century, in the days of
Frederick II of Denmark (who was also ruler of Sweden), occurred this
legendary tale. It mingles the sea, with its galleys and its wild
storms, with the parsonage and the hidden treasure chest which was
looted. All the family had been murdered by these mysterious robbers
except a foster child, Elsalill. The supernatural element is used with
fine effects; this girl is haunted by the ghost and messages from her
foster sister who was killed. Elsalill is in anguish of spirit because
she loves the bold, persuasive, and richly apparelled Sir Archer,
although she finds that he is one of the robber-murderers. How her body
becomes his shield from the sheriff, even to her death and his escape,
forms the romantic climax of this tale.

Miss Lagerlöf’s early ambition to become a dramatist has never wholly
died; she has written a few plays that have been staged with success
in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Among these has been a dramatization
of _The Girl from the Marshcroft_; this story has been shown as a film
in many places in America as well as abroad. The setting in rural
picturesqueness, with tragic and romantic notes mingled, affords
dramatic opportunities. Mrs. Howard says that _The Story of Gösta
Berling_ has been shown at the cinema in Sweden and elsewhere in
Europe. “Will Miss Lagerlöf ever come to the United States?” we ask her
friend and translator. The reply is a probable negative. She is deeply
interested in America and reads many books by our authors, especially
those of mystical or informing trend. She had an uncle who lived in
Seattle and, on the walls of her dining-room, are found landscapes
of Western America. She is not very strong, although never lacking
in energy of mind and purpose. The freedom and vivacity of American
women impress her as she receives many visitors, either at her summer
home at Mårbacka or in the winter at Falun, close to the scenes of the
first part of _Jerusalem_. She reads six languages with ease and is
conversant with the major interests of every country. She has a keen
humor and rare graciousness.

Miss Lagerlöf is intensely racial and national in her literary
reflections; she is international in her sympathies and insight into
problems of life. Love of home is one of the primal qualities of her
personality and writing. She has applied her creed of “keeping the
imagination young” by never losing her own delight in sagas, hero
tales, and “belief in fairies” that will enhearten and redeem humanity.
Edwin Björkman, in _Voices of Tomorrow_, has stressed her ability
and courage “to dream and feel and aspire.” Her literary work varies
in excellence; sometimes it is weak in structure and ineffective in
artistry; in other and major portions she has clothed the commonplace
incidents of life with original, new vitality and revealed their
meanings with imaginative beauty. Her characters and settings are
racial but her impulses and messages are universal, unconfined by land
or age.


FOOTNOTES:

[67] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1909.

[68] _Selma Lagerlöf; The Woman, Her Work, Her Message_ by Harry E.
Maule, Garden City, N. Y., 1917. By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.

[69] _Miracles of Antichrist_ by Selma Lagerlöf, translated by Pauline
Bancroft Flach, Garden City, N. Y., 1899. By permission of Doubleday,
Page & Co.

[70] _Jerusalem_ by Selma Lagerlöf, translated by Velma Swanston
Howard, Garden City, N. Y., 1916. By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.

[71] _Selma Lagerlöf: The Woman, Her Work, Her Message_ by Harry E.
Maule, Garden City, N. Y., 1917. By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.




CHAPTER VIII

PAUL HEYSE (1910)--GERHART HAUPTMANN (1912)


  The prize of 1910 has been awarded:

  Heyse, Paul, born 1830, died April 2, 1914: “as a mark of esteem of
  an artistry, finished and marked by an ideal conception, which he has
  shown during a long and significant activity as lyric dramatist, and
  as an author of romances and famous short stories.”[72]

Two German scholars had been winners of the Nobel prize in literature
in 1904 and 1908--Theodor Mommsen and Rudolf Eucken. Two more
distinguished authors with international reputations were added in 1910
and 1912, making four awards to German literature within eight years.
Paul Heyse, the versatile author of the year 1910 has been difficult
to classify, because he is dramatist, poet, novelist, and writer of a
form of short story known as the _Novelle_. More than one hundred and
fifty of these tales are accredited to him, in addition to prodigious
industry in other literary forms. The _Novelle_ bears some resemblance
to the short stories of Hoffmann, Tieck, Alfred de Musset, and the
American masters of this type, Poe, Hawthorne, and O. Henry. In more
definite method than some of these _conteurs_, Heyse developed a
principle which he applied and explained, in part, in his Introduction
to his _Deutscher Novellenschatz_; he stresses the fact that the
essential foundation of this form is “what children call the story” but
he adds, “A strong silhouette should not be lacking.” The “silhouette
will be a brief summary of conditions which underlie the focal scene
or incident.” Thus Heyse became creator, or developer, of this form of
fiction, with a wide range of incidents and characters, in which keen
observation of life and faithful recital were blended with idealism of
a distinctive motive--that of “glorifying nature,” human and inanimate.

Johann Ludwig Paul Heyse was born in Berlin, March 15, 1830; he was
eighty years old when the Nobel honor was received. His father, Karl
Ludwig Heyse, with a firm, Teutonic nature, was a famous philologist
and professor at the University of Berlin. His mother came from a
Jewish family of wealth and social rank. In his _Memoirs_, her son
recalls her as “passionate and imaginative”; from her he inherited his
bent toward story-telling and delight in the sensuous which mingled
with the rationalistic trend of mind, bequeathed by his father. In
the home of the Heyses gathered scholars, authors, and artists. The
atmosphere fostered the natural precocity of the boy, Paul. One
of his older friends was Kugler, the historian of art, who had an
inspirational influence upon the youth; in manhood, Heyse married the
gifted daughter of this friend.

At the University of Bonn, where Heyse went from Berlin, he showed
much interest in Romance languages. He was fascinated with Spanish,
especially the writings of Cervantes and Calderon. In 1849, and again
in 1852, he traveled in Italy, adding Dante, Boccaccio, and Leopardi
to his list of literary heroes. The homes of artists were open to him
and he found Italy an ideal land of “colour and grace.” Shakespeare
received his tribute throughout his literary life. He began to write
dramas and lyric poems, tales in verse and prose with youthful zest and
marks of great promise. In 1854, King Max of Bavaria offered to him a
position at the Court of Munich, at a salary of 1500 florins. Munich
was an environment sure to awaken his talent and satisfy his love of
beauty. Under Louis I it had been favored with some fine buildings; an
atmosphere of culture was pervasive. Among the poets and scholars, with
whom Heyse became associated here, were Geibel, Bodenstedt, Wilbrandt,
Luogg, and Schack, the historian. In 1868, when Louis II, successor to
King Max, insulted Geibel, the poet, and caused him to leave the city,
Heyse was depressed although he stayed in Munich, living in a charming
villa there until his death in 1914.

From the early years of his authorship, Heyse showed an aristocratic
culture which did not dim his interest in fisherfolk, peasants, and
rural characters. Although family sorrows came upon him, and he
suffered, from 1880 to 1900, from attacks by the ardent followers
of Zola and Ibsen, yet he never lost his serenity of character and
his belief in individualistic expression. “Instinct” was his guide,
as he has exemplified in scores of his tales and dramas. The “child
of nature,” or the man or woman of inherent nobility, was incapable
of any low or mean action according to his belief. In _Salamander_,
which Mr. Georg Brandes regards as his best _Novelle_ in versified
form,[73] he expresses his creed of the vigorous life, of allegiance to
nature, in spite of failings and adverse judgments against him by the
“naturalistic school”:

    I never yet of virtue or of failing
    Have been ashamed, nor proudly did adorn
    Myself of one, nor thought my sins of veiling.

    Beyond all else, betwixt the nobly born
    And vulgar herd, this marks the separation,--
    The cowards whose hypocrisy we scorn.

    Him I call noble, who, with moderation,
    Carves his own honor, and but little heeds
    His neighbors’ slander or their approbation.[74]

Another character, familiar to readers of Heyse, Toinette of _Kinder
der Welt_ (_Children of the World_) speaks words of similar trend often
quoted; “There is but _one_ genuine nobility; to remain true to one’s
self.... He who bears within himself the true rank, lives and dies
through his own grace, and is, therefore, sovereign.”

To Italy, Heyse turns for sensuous delights in many of his tales.
_L’Arrabiata_, probably the best known of any of his _Novellen_ by
students of German in colleges and classes, written when he was
twenty-three, has an interesting history.[75] Paul Heyse as a young
man, and his friend, Joseph Victor Scheffel, were at an inn at
Sorrento. They had been together at Capri and had planned to hold a
“literary joust,” to read to each other, at Sorrento, some new tale or
poem. Scheffel contributed the poem, _Der Trumpeter von Gättingen_;
Heyse read _L’Arrabiata_. Piquant is this tale of the maiden’s love
for Antonio, the boatman, and her maidenly pride and resistance to his
love until the injury to his arm and his plea to her, in memory of her
mother, brings about a romantic sequel. Twenty-five years later Heyse
was again at Sorrento; he sent a greeting, in rhyme, to this friend of
earlier days and later life. He told him that he had seen again his
model, “Laurella,” on the street but she did not recognize him; she was
far removed from the “madcap” of fifteen, the “cross-patch,” with her
youthful charm and wistful appeal. The background of this tale, against
Naples and Vesuvius, is painted with that vivid photography which
characterizes Heyse’s scenes in drama and fiction. Unlike Balzac or
Turgenieff, he wrote few words of description but “created atmosphere”
that was alive. Striking examples are the familiar tales, “Barbarossa,”
“At the Ghost Hour” and “The Dead Lake.”

In the later _Novellen_, as well as the novels and plays of other
years, Heyse showed tendencies towards realism and less romanticism.
On the other hand, he never lost his urge for sensuous beauty, his
determination “to follow one’s bent” (“sich gehen zu lassen”). He
would not compel himself to irksome writing; he would yield to
impulse and mood. “The real sin is against nature” was his keynote,
reiterated from the short tale of “Reise nach dem Glück” (“Journey
After Happiness”) to the longer novels, _Kinder der Welt_ (_Children
of the World_) and _Im Paradiese_ (_In Paradise_). In philosophy he
has been called both fatalistic and epicurean. The conflicts between
restraint and self-surrender, especially in women, are germ-ideas
in such diverse writings as _L’Arrabiata_, _The Sabine Women_ (with
the heroine, Tullia) and _In Paradise_, with the forceful character
of Irene. In the dialogue, in _Children of the World_, between
Balder, the invalid-idealist and Franzel, the socialist-printer, the
author’s convictions are unfolded. Balder declares that life is full
of enjoyment to him, in spite of outward sufferings, because “he can
experience past and future,” because he can “conjure up” all the
periods of his life and find a totality, a completeness of enjoyment.
So the young baron in the novel, _In Paradise_, which has been
vehemently discussed for two generations, sins against his own nature
and his friend and, for a time, his “inner harmony” is destroyed but
after sufferings, portrayed with analytical skill, harmony is restored.
The city of Munich, in its varied aspects as related to society and
the arts, forms the “chorus” and subtle influence in this dramatic
story.[76]

Heyse has written more than sixty dramas yet too few of them are
translated adequately into English; too often they have failed in stage
presentation. Many are historical; _The Sabine Women_ is erotic and
less consistent in development than _Hans Lange_, _Hadrian Colberg_,
and _Mary of Magdala_; the last play has been translated by William
Winter and by Lionel Vale. The old philologist, Zipfel, in _Colberg_,
may have been modeled, in part, from Heyse’s father. His speech,
relating the story of Leonidas and the Persian War, reaches a climax
of courage and self-sacrifice, with an application to later days of
struggle between the French and Germans. In Henning, the old servant in
_Hans Lange_, the author emphasizes his belief in the redemptive power
of nobler nature, in spite of incentives to revenge against the young
squire.

There is unevenness of workmanship among the many _Novellen_. _Felice_,
the tale of the peasant girl who “listened to reason rather than the
call of passion,” is a vital expression of the author’s creed of
obedience to “impulse of the heart.” The later tales are more keen
and realistic than the photographic, romantic scenes laid in Italy
and Southern Germany. Heyse became more of an analyst of all kinds of
humanity, with their conflicting “impulses,” but he never acquiesced
in the scenes of squalor and moral slime that delighted some of his
contemporaries of the “naturalistic school.” By contrast, he was an
idealist with a strong vein of poetry. One of his best stories of
later period, _The Last Centaur_, expresses his revolt against the
materialistic spirit of his age. The creature who represents the age
of myths and imagination is driven back into the wood by the evil
ways and heartless gibes of the modern villages; in turn, he scorns
their opposition with “an exhalted humor.” It seems almost a modern
version of the old tale of _Baucis and Philemon_. In another tale, _The
Incurable_, the hero keeps faith in the ideal, in spite of the “rabble
in kid gloves.” _Die Blinden_ (_The Blind_) is an appealing story, with
colorful pictures of garden and ravens and flocks, and two children,
Clement and Marlene, waiting with tense emotion for the doctors to
restore their sight. The stern father, obsessed with his idea of
“duty,” is a strong character. “Nils mit der offenen Hand” is a fairy
tale that defies adequate translation into English but has situations
of dramatic skill, notably that of the gulls biting the rope at the
execution of Nils, and the brave deed of Stina, the princess who loves
Nils.

Heyse was more successful in portraying women than men. He was long
called “the favorite of maidens.” He had insight to see fairly and to
balance well the traits of normal maidenhood--beauty, coyness, love
of prowess and adventure, ardent but concealed love until the lover
came to whom she would yield her “maidenly pride” (“Mädschenstoltz”).
There are traces of the influence of Goethe in certain passages in
_Kinder der Welt_, and such _Novellen_ as _The Broiderer of Treviso_,
_The Prodigal Son_, and _The Spell of Rothenburg_. In the last story,
there are comments upon art, interwoven with humor and irony as the
characters journey from Ausbach to Würzburg. Originality, however,
marks his drama and his fiction--that “ideal conception and fine
literary craftsmanship” which won for him the Nobel inscription.

Mr. Georg Brandes believes that Heyse was, primarily, a pupil of
Eichendorf, as his poetry indicates.[77] The poems by Heyse are less
familiar than his prose, although he wrote both epics and lyrics.
“Salamander” ranks among his best long poems; “The Fury” and “The
Fairy Child” are examples of his lyrics. He delighted to translate--or
transpose--troubadour lays, folk songs from the Spanish and the
Italian. Like Mendelssohn, to whom he has been compared in temperament,
he lacked dynamic force but he was sensitive, artistic, and idealistic
in his basic character.


GERHART HAUPTMANN (1912)

  The prize of 1912 has been awarded:

  Hauptmann, Gerhart, born 1862: “principally for his rich, versatile,
  and prominent activity in the realm of the drama.”[78]

During the quarter century since the first Nobel prize was awarded,
it has happened, at intervals, that two representatives of the same
nation but different generations, are found on the lists in literature.
Thus Björnson and Hamsun, among Norwegian novelists, Echegaray
and Benavente in Spanish Drama, and Heyse and Hauptmann in German
literature of the imagination, are exponents of succeeding generations
of thought and expression. Heyse stood for the older, more poetic
and romantic forms; he decreed a philosophy of nobleness in man and
contentment in life. Gerhart Hauptmann, who received the prize only two
years later than Heyse, in 1912, was ranked by some critics with the
realists of the modern, restless type, whose criticism of society in
general was world-disturbing. After 1900 the fame of Heyse had declined
among the younger, more progressive writers. His award, at eighty
years, revived interest in his writings, especially the _Novellen_;
translations and articles about his personality were widely printed in
current journals.

One of the authors whom Heyse had censured for his naturalism and
depressing dramas had been Gerhart Hauptmann. When the announcement
was made that the prize of 1912 was again given to a German novelist
and playwright, racial pride ran high but critics of other countries
asked, “How could idealism be perverted in meaning so that it would
apply to the author of _Before Dawn_, _Lonely Lives_, _The Weavers_
and _Michael Kramer_?” Unfairly, the name of Hauptmann was linked
constantly with that of Sudermann by the most bitter malcontents with
this award. Such an attitude was biassed and unjust. That Hauptmann has
written some of the most photographic, haunting dramas of industrial
strife and social vices is true; but it is as true that he has produced
two, possibly three, of the really poetic, symbolic plays in modern
German literature--_The Assumption of Hannele_, _The Sunken Bell_, and
_Parsival_.

[Illustration: _From an original etching by Hermann Struck. Reproduced
by permission of the artist and courtesy of the New York Public Library_

GERHART HAUPTMANN]

There are two distinctive, but not wholly contradictory, personalities
in Hauptmann as he reveals himself to his readers. It was as author
of _The Sunken Bell_, especially, that he was chosen for the Nobel
prize; it had certain autobiographical suggestions of this conflict
between the material and the spiritual in the nature of its author.
Recognizing that he is often associated with Sudermann, the brilliant,
relentless novelist and dramatist, it is interesting to find these two
writers well differentiated by Otto Heller in _Studies in Modern German
Literature_ (Boston, 1905). He compares the nervous, sensitive mind of
Hauptmann, “possessed of a reproductive, feminine talent,” in contrast
with the masculine personality of Sudermann, less subtle, more virile
and coarse, with broader knowledge of life but lacking the intuitive
perceptions of Hauptmann. One may question some of these adjectives
used by Mr. Heller, but the general contrast is well phrased,
especially as applied to the poetic dramas by Hauptmann, like _The
Sunken Bell_, _And Pippa Dances_, and _Parsival_.

Before Hauptmann conceived any of this work that entitles him to rank
among the idealists, he had written grim tragedies, similar in trend to
those by Ibsen, Zola, Tolstoy, Max Nordau, and Arno Holz. As realist
he has been censured as weak in plots and sometimes strained in his
social tenets: there are such defects in _The Beaver Coat_, _Rose
Bernd_, and _The Conflagration_. That he had a poetic instinct, a true
lyric quality, was acknowledged from occasional lines in such gloomy
plays as _Lonely Lives_, _Colleague Crampton_, and _The Weavers_. Among
the plays of industrial upheaval and suffering, _The Weavers_ has
tense feeling, with lines of irony and suppressed aspirations. It was
dedicated to Robert Hauptmann, father of the author, in affectionate
words that express the source of its inspiration and the allegiance
of Gerhart Hauptmann to his forefathers: “You, dear father, know what
feelings lead me to dedicate this work to you, and I am not called upon
to analyze them here. Your stories of my grandfather, who in his young
days sat at the loom, a poor weaver like those here depicted, contained
the germ of my drama. Whether it possesses the vigor of life or is
rotten at the core, it is the best ‘so poor a man as Hamlet is,’ can
offer.”

While this grandfather had been a poor weaver, he met with better
fortunes in later life, and the father of Gerhart Hauptmann was owner
of three hotels. The boy was born at Salzbrunn, a seaside town in
Silesia, in 1862; thus he was thirty-two years younger than Heyse--a
full generation in time and standards of literature. His mother was
“one of the people.” The boy was inclined to study sculpture and he
was sent to art schools in Breslau, Jena, and in Italy. He was a slow
pupil; his brother, Carl, seemed almost the only person who expressed
faith in his gifts or future success. With his art studies he combined
agriculture and history. After a brief apprenticeship as modeler, he
decided that he would be an actor; he had a lisp that interfered with
the continuance of this histrionic hope. He married a woman of wealth
and moved to Berlin, in 1885, where he became identified with “The Free
Stage” movement and began to write plays. Byron had been one of his
earlier literary heroes; in _The Fate of the Children of Prometheus_,
he recorded some impressions of travel along the same route as _Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage_.

In 1889 “The Free Stage Society” was formed in Berlin; it was, in a
way, “an imitation of Antoine’s Free Theatre, organized two years
before,” says Barrett H. Clark in _A Study of the Modern Drama_.[79]
Among the founders were Otto Brahm, Maximilian Harden, Theodor Wolff
and others who wished to produce plays of varied types, especially
the work of naturalistic writers. Hauptmann came under the influences
of Bruno Wille, the socialist, and Arno Holz, the dramatist; certain
reactions from this companionship of minds may be traced in his plays
_Before Dawn_, _Colleague Crampton_, and _Florian Geyer_. Brahm was the
director of this Free Stage Society which, in 1894, after fulfilling
its mission for Germany, was merged into the Deutsches Theatre. Among
the plays by Hauptmann written under this stimulus, in addition to the
three mentioned above, were _The Festival of Peace_, _Lonely Lives_,
_The Weavers_, _The Beaver Coat_, and _The Assumption of Hannele_.
_Before Dawn_, written in the Silesian mountains and staged in Berlin,
in 1889, was a haunting tragedy with loose construction. The ribald
father and his low associates, and the daughter, who kills herself to
escape assault at their hands, combine to make a gripping, repulsive
story with certain dramatic possibilities that are not fulfilled.

_The Weavers_ showed progress in technic and characterization of a
group. Here no single individual plays the leading part; the group
of weavers, the mob at the time of crisis, are the principal actors.
There are marked contrasts in setting between the home of the rich
capitalist and the poverty of the weavers, between the government’s
indifference and the industrial slavery of the victims of rapacity. One
of the most poignant passages is the monologue of old Ansorge, in Act
II; he cannot believe that the King will fail to help them, if word is
sent to him of their needs. When Jaeger assures him it is futile, that
the rich people are as “cunning as the devil,” his lament for the home
that must be sacrificed, where his father sat at the loom for more than
forty years, is pathetic and dramatic.

_The Assumption of Hannele_, which appeared in 1893 and had a germ-idea
not unlike that of _Before Dawn_, created sharp discussion in Germany.
There was protest against its performance. The next year it was brought
to the United States, to be staged at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New
York. It was translated into English by William Archer and by Charles
Henry Meltzer. Reformers of many kinds denounced the play without a
hearing. They threatened the author, who had come to this country to
see the performance and to advise with his publisher, with arrest; the
same fate was to fall upon the translator, Charles Henry Meltzer, and
the actress who was to play the leading rôle. “Some representatives
of the press, with critics and authors, were bidden to a private
performance and the next day the newspapers, with a few impenitent
exceptions, published eulogies of _Hannele_! No one was arrested. And
the public performance took place.”[80]

The American translator of both _The Assumption of Hannele_ and _The
Sunken Bell_, Mr. Charles Henry Meltzer, has described Hauptmann at
this period, in the Foreword to _The Sunken Bell_. He had expected to
meet an aggressive, self-satisfied man. On the contrary, he found one
who seemed like a student, with shy, boyish manners; he might have
been classified as a curate or a teacher; “A painful, introspective,
hunted earnestness was stamped upon his face--the face of a thinker, a
dreamer, a genius” (Foreword). _Hannele_ was not a success theatrically
in New York. _The Weavers_, at the Irving Place Theatre, attracted
somewhat more attention but the time was too indifferent to such plays
in America; one could not forecast the cordial reception for problem
plays and grim tragedies, with mystic elements, three decades later.

It was eighteen years before the Swedish Academy gave world recognition
and honor to Hauptmann. A few men and women of literary insight--or
foresight--proclaimed a future for the creator of such a “dream-poem”
as _Hannele_. Gradually, readers became interested and stirred by this
strange play based upon the weird apparitions of the fevered brain
of the little waif, the poetic chorus of the angels, the comfort of
her mother and Pastor Gottwald, in contrast with the terrifying fear
of her father’s return, the stormy December evening in this mountain
almshouse, and the poems of “The Stranger” which cast a spell of
religious peace upon the reader, as the mystic, green light fell upon
the face of dying Hannele. This “dream-poem,” as Hauptmann called it,
won for him the Grillparzer prize in Germany. Two years later, after
the failure of _Florian Geyer_ to win plaudits of dramatic critics,
he wrote another play of symbolism and anapestic meters, combining
the realities of life with mystic allurements, and he called it “A
Fairy-Tale Play,” _Die versunkene Glocke_. His most severe critics were
convinced of his lyrical quality and dramatic power.

The basic material for this play, _The Sunken Bell_, says its
translator, Mr. Meltzer, is found in Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology. Here
are the characters of the bell maker, his wife, the elfish spirit,
the schoolmaster and the vicar, and other factors interwoven with the
allegorical and mystical. Hauptmann visualized these characters with
consummate skill. Heinrich, the bell forger, who seeks the sun and a
new, marvellous chime of bells, Magda, his faithful wife eager to
free him from domestic toils, Rautendelein, the spirit of nature that
lures him away and stirs his soul to unfulfilled aspirations, and
Wittikin, the wise woman, the village priest and barber--all are alive
and convincing. The evasive and mystical element becomes a part of the
atmosphere of this “fairy-tale play”; the dramatic unities are well
maintained.

What is the meaning of _The Sunken Bell_? Each reader may make his own
answer, for several are possible. It is as futile to analyze it, as
it is to destroy the fantasy and mystery of _Peter Pan_ or _The Blue
Bird_ or _Dear Brutus_. It is too subtle, too delicate to be treated by
rigid rules of criticism. However, Mr. Meltzer makes three pertinent
explanations; it may be a parable, the effort of all artists to reach
their ideals; it may be the effort of a reformer to remold society by
visionary ambitions; or Heinrich may embody any human being, striving
for the goal of truth and light. As Rautendelein symbolizes Nature
which offers freedom, so Wittikin expresses the eternal philosophy of
life, opposed to the conventional creeds of the world, like those of
the barber and the vicar, that are stumbling-blocks in the path of
lofty idealism. Heinrich fails to attain his ideal; he cannot weld the
pagan and Christian truths into one gospel, because he is _human_, with
limitations. He cannot stay on the pinnacle of the mountain, with its
mystic light and its new sun-bells, but he has not lost the influence
of these in his life. When the vicar rejoices that “the old Heinrich”
has returned, he answers:

    That man am I, and yet ... another man.
    Open the windows--Light and God stream in.[81]

This play proved a moderate success, especially when played by Sothern,
and has been repeated in academic circles, although it has not been
so popular in America as have been the plays by Ibsen, Rostand, and
Maeterlinck. It is one of the dramas that yields more of its beauty
and symbolic message to the reader than to the spectator. The play,
_Henry of Aue_, or _Der arme Heinrich_, which was called a fable
(1902) has sometimes been listed as a sequel to _The Sunken Bell_
but they are unlike in setting and theme. Heinrich, the crusader, is
attacked with leprosy at the summit of his glory--a punishment for his
insolence to God. The healing begins when he purges his soul of despair
and hatred and begins to recognize “Beneficence” in Nature and Life.
There are well drawn characters, especially Heinrich, Hartmann von
Aue, Gottfried, Brigitta, and Ottegebe, the farmer’s daughter, whose
influence is strong in the “cure” for the hero. As dramatic art this
play is inferior to _Hannele_ or _The Sunken Bell_, but the reader’s
interest is sustained in the leading character, from his tragic
condition as an outcast, with a wooden clapper to warn people of his
approach, to the last scene of his redemption by love.

During the years since he received the Nobel prize, Hauptmann has
written several plays and novels that continue to reveal his dual
traits as realist and idealist. The writings during the World War
have a tang of bitterness. Ludwig Lewisohn has edited eight volumes
of Hauptmann’s _Dramatic Works_ (Huebsch, New York, 1915-1925). The
introductions are informing and the translations are clear and strong.
In the series are included several Social and Domestic Plays as well
as “Symbolic and Legendary Dramas.” _Parsival_, a play translated by
Oakley Williams, has an ethical or religious tone with sympathetic
insight into humanity. “Heartache” was the name of Parsival’s mother;
said her creator, “I should hate to make anyone sad, but I believe we
might call every mother, at any rate, very, very, many mothers by this
name.”[82] There are symbolism and poetic sermonizing in this drama of
Parsival, “Bearer of Burdens”; his development from a care-free youth
to later responsibilities for world burdens is well portrayed. Traces
of irony and humor are found. The setting of the play, _And Pippa
Dances_, is picturesque, in the Silesian mountains. Wann is a grotesque
element and the tales of “the Wild Huntsman” are entertaining; Pippa,
the fair-haired daughter of the glass blower, is the persuasive
character. There is a lack of dramatic unity in certain scenes.
Translations of this play, and of _Elga_, have been made by Mary Harned
in _Poet Lore_ (Boston, 1906-1909). _And Pippa Dances_ is included in
Volume V of the plays edited by Mr. Lewisohn.

Among interesting, intensive studies of Hauptmann as dramatist, is
the thesis by Walter H. P. Trumbaeur, on _Gerhart Hauptmann and John
Galsworthy; a Parallel_ (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,
1917).[83] The parallelism is traced, with occasional excess of effort,
between their careers, their themes, and certain plays like _Hannele_
and _The Little Dream_, _Michael Kramer_ and _A Bit o’ Love_, and
_The Weavers_ and _Strife_. Both dramatists, says the critic, seek to
escape social bondage; both are vitally concerned in social problems;
both are realists temperamentally; both have a purpose to enlighten
rather than to delight; both see moral values and, also, _the irony of
things_. Hauptmann is more interested in characters while Galsworthy’s
main interest lies in the _relations_ between characters. In both
writers, there is a strain of idealism, seeking _truth_, material and
spiritual. Another interesting thesis is by Mary Ayres Quimby, on
_Nature Background in the Dramas of Gerhart Hauptmann_ (University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1918). Among later plays _A Winter Ballad_
and _The Festival Play_ register the fearless assault of this dramatist
upon vices and the exaltation of an idealism which is “union with
Nature.”

The best work of Hauptmann in fiction has been attracting attention
and becoming familiar to English readers. _The Fool in Christ:
Emanuel Quint_ has been translated by Thomas Seltzer (Huebsch, 1911);
_Atlantis_, translated by Adele and Thomas Seltzer (1912), and
_Phantom_ and _The Heretic of Soana_, both translated by Bayard Quincy
Morgan (1922-1923). The characterizations are forceful, with humor that
is sometimes broad and, again, subtle. Daring satire and exposition
of modern social problems are qualities that arrest the interest of
the reader and attest the brilliant mind of the writer, in the recent,
neo-romantic novel, _The Island of the Great Mother_, translated this
year by Willa and Edwin Muir (Huebsch). The leaders in this “Women’s
State” are delineated with shrewd, ironical skill. Phaon, the solitary
“masculine” on the island, passes through strange adventures before he
reaches maturity and finds his “ideal woman.” In his keen, illumining
analysis of Hauptmann’s poetic plays, _Hannele_ and _The Sunken Bell_,
in _A Study of the Modern Drama_ (New York, 1925), Barrett H. Clark
accepts the statement of other critics that these are not “well-made
plays,” but he finds in them the qualities which are high lights in
this writer’s masterpieces--“psychological interest, dramatic as
distinguished from purely lyrical poetry, a fairly well constructed
plot and an atmosphere of beauty.”[84]


FOOTNOTES:

[72] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1910.

[73] _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ by Georg Brandes, New
York, 1924.

[74] _Gesammelte Werke_: Vol. III, p. 300, translated in _Creative
Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ (by Georg Brandes) by Rasmus B.
Anderson, New York, 1924. By permission of Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

[75] Introduction by Mary A. Frost to edition of _L’Arrabiata_,
published by Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1896.

[76] An excellent study of Heyse is by Professor von Klenze in _German
Classics_ edited by Kuno Francke, German Publication Society.

[77] _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ by Georg Brandes, New
York, 1924, Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

[78] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1912.

[79] D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1925.

[80] _The Sunken Bell_: a Fairy Play in Five Acts by Gerhart Hauptmann,
freely rendered into English verse by Charles Henry Meltzer, New York,
1913, Foreword. By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.

[81] _The Sunken Bell_ by Gerhart Hauptmann, freely rendered into
English verse by Charles Henry Meltzer, New York, 1913, Act III. By
permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.

[82] _Parsival_, a play by Gerhart Hauptmann, translated by Oakley
Williams, New York, 1915. By permission of The Macmillan Co.

[83] By permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press.

[84] P. 82. By permission of D. Appleton & Co.




CHAPTER IX

MAETERLINCK--BELGIAN SYMBOLIST AND POET-PLAYWRIGHT (1911)


  The prize of 1911 has been awarded:

  Maeterlinck, Maurice, born 1862: “because of his many-sided literary
  activity and especially because of his dramatic creations which are
  marked by wealth of fancy and poetic idealism that sometimes, in the
  fairy play’s veiled form, reveals deep inspiration and, also, in a
  mysterious way, appeals to the reader’s feeling and imagination.”[85]

The first decade of the Nobel prizes was over and a new group of
candidates was coming into the literary limelight in 1911. There
was hopeful speculation that the award might go to either Russia or
America, the two larger countries that have not yet been included.
There was, however, a new type of poetry and drama, and a writer of
unique personality, that were attracting widespread interest--namely,
the mystical and symbolic plays by Maurice Maeterlinck. The
announcement that he was the winner for 1911 caused much pride to the
little kingdom of Belgium. Maeterlinck wrote most of his plays in
French so they gained readers more quickly than those of his Belgian
predecessors and contemporaries. _On the Scent_, the drama by Charles
Van Lerberghe, has been compared to Maeterlinck’s earlier work by
Barrett H. Clark in _A Study of the Modern Drama_.[86] Other Belgian
playwrights commended by Mr. Clark are Henri Maubel and Edmond Picard.

[Illustration:

  _By courtesy of Dodd, Mead & Co._

MAURICE MAETERLINCK]

Maeterlinck was not quite fifty years old when the Nobel honor came to
him. He was born in Ghent, in 1862, of good ancestry. He recalled the
surroundings of his early life--the gardens and the sea and the ships
in sight. Especially was he interested in the Flemish peasants as they
sat, in quiet, stolid attitudes, in the doorways of their cottages
or by the smoking lamps. One group impressed his boyhood memory, as
he saw them on his way from school--seven toothless brothers and a
sister. Their lethargy and inert lives awakened him, in young manhood,
to psychological curiosity; their strange traditions and unreasoning
fears are reflected in some of his plays. His father was anxious to
have him study law, so he read and practised for a little time in
Ghent--long enough “to lose a case or two,” he said with humorous
reminiscence. He spent seven years at a Jesuit College, and showed a
mind of philosophical trend. He thought that in Paris he might come
into contact with men of literary rank and scholars. Villiers was
his especial influence there; another inspirational friend was Octave
Mirabeau to whom Maeterlinck dedicated his first published plays,
_Princess Maleine_ and _Pelléas and Mélisande_. In too extravagant
praise Mirabeau hailed Maeterlinck as “the Belgian Shakespeare” and
Maeterlinck became the victim of flattery, on one hand, and ridicule
on the other. He bore himself with calm dignity then as he has all his
life; his serene manner and low voice, in contrast with his muscular
physique, have been noted by many acquaintances.

Before the death of his father, in 1889, he returned to Belgium and
lived there for seven years, continuing his studies of nature and
metaphysics, writing marionette plays, and more serious dramas, and
making translations from authors of other tongues, including English,
that left impressions upon his mind. He declared that the three
writers who exerted the strongest influence during these formative
years were Emerson, Novalis, and Ruysbroeck, the medieval mystic whose
writings were translated by Maeterlinck when he was a student at the
Jesuit College. To visitors from America he delights to show his worn
copy of Emerson. In his collected studies, _On Emerson and Other
Essays_, translated by Montrose J. Moses, he summarizes the Concord
philosopher’s thoughts about “the greatness of man’s spiritual nature,
about the forces of the soul.” In conclusion of his vital influence,
he writes: “Emerson has come to affirm simply this equal and secret
grandeur of our life. He has encompassed us with silence and with
wonder. He has placed a shaft of light beneath the feet of the workman
as he leaves the workshop. He has shown us all the powers of heaven and
earth, at the same time intent on sustaining the threshold on which
two neighbors speak of the rain that falls or the wind that blows. And
above these two passers-by who accost each other, he has made us see
the countenance of God who smiles with the countenance of God. He is
nearer than any other to our common life. He is the most attentive,
the most assiduous, the most honest, the most scrupulous, and probably
the most human of guides. He is the sage of commonplace days, and
commonplace days are, in sum, the substance of our being.”[87]

In 1896 Maeterlinck returned to Paris and there he has made his home.
He refused to renounce his Belgian citizenship, however, that he might
become a member of the French Academy; during the war he did valiant
service in many ways for his native country. In his home town to-day,
and at Brussels, the visitor is told of Belgian pride in Maeterlinck;
the people say, “You know he has lived in Paris almost all his life but
he is a true patriot, just the same.” To the years in Belgium, between
1889 and 1896, belong such plays as _The Blind_, _The Intruder_,
_The Seven Princesses_, _Alladine and Palomides_ and _The Death of
Tintagiles_. It is a question whether he has surpassed, in dramatic
vigor combined with mystic beauty, that play of earlier period,
_Pelléas and Mélisande_. Like the story of _Paolo and Francesca_, which
it resembles in theme, it has an appealing quality both on the stage
and in the book. The tragic death of Mélisande, after the murder of her
lover and the birth of her daughter, reflects a high-light of dramatic
power. The lines are simple in diction, masterly in structure and
suggestion.

One of the first translators of Maeterlinck into English was Richard
Hovey, the brilliant American poet who died in his prime. In two
decorative volumes, first issued in Chicago (Stone & Kimball) in
1894-1896, he interpreted, as well as translated, these earlier plays
already cited. The Introduction in the first volume is informing
for all students of modern drama. Mr. Hovey defined Symbolism, as
distinguished from Realism and Expressionism; he joined with the name
of Maeterlinck, such other exponents of Symbolism as Mallarmé, Gilbert
Parker, and Bliss Carman. Two traits distinguished the Belgian from
other symbolists of his day, according to this interpreter--“the
peculiarity of his technique, and the limitation of his emotional
range.” The use of reiteration is cited as a French characteristic
for effective emphasis. “The danger-border between the tragic and
the ridiculous” is a menace to Maeterlinck. More true of his earlier
than his later plays is another restriction noted by Mr. Hovey: “His
master-tone is always terror--terror, too, of one type--that of the
churchyard.... He is the poet of the sepulchre, like Poe--as masterly
in his own methods as Poe was in his, and destined, perhaps, to exert
the same wide influence.”[88] _Premonition_ plays a large part in the
plays of Maeterlinck from _The Blind_ and _Home_ to _Joyzelle_.

In Paris, under the stimulus of literary associates and the comradeship
of Georgette Le Blanc (the actress who became his wife), Maeterlinck
wrote three plays that register his dramatic climax--_Joyzelle_, _Monna
Vanna_ (1903) and _The Blue Bird_ (1908). Probably, the last symbolic
drama was the primal cause of the Nobel award. The idealism, the
delicate fancy, the imaginative charm, the fascinating characters in
every scene, real or fantastic, and the pervasive message for every
age and land, give to this play a perennial appeal. As Maeterlinck
affirmed, this play, like others of the type, may lose some of its
“mystic transparency” and symbolism on the stage but it has been
alluring both as acted play and as a film. Why there should have been
“a sequel” to such a perfect, complete play as _The Blue Bird_ is a
question that has troubled many a critic. Resentment against _The
Betrothal_, the continuance of this fairy-tale play, however, gives way
before appreciation of its fine passages and strong message. At the
same time, the impression lingers that Tyltyl, like Peter Pan, should
“never have grown up.” Alexander Teixeira de Mattos has made a fine
translation of _The Betrothal_ and Edith Wynne Mattison was a charming
“Fairy Berylune,” when the play was given in New York. Here Maeterlinck
ventured almost too near the borderland between fantasy and farce,
especially in Act II, where the girls, who would marry Tyltyl, reveal
their lower natures.

The versatility of Maeterlinck is evidenced by comparing such plays,
within ten years, as _Joyzelle_ and _The Blue Bird_, _Monna Vanna_
and _Mary Magdalene_. _Joyzelle_ has elements of dramatic ecstasy
with a tragic undertone. Professor William Lyon Phelps has summarized
well the salient qualities of this play and its heroine in _Essays on
Modern Dramatists_ (New York, 1921). _Monna Vanna_, written especially
for Maeterlinck’s wife, is a rare blend of intense emotionalism and
convincing characters with a crisis which challenges the reason.
Giovanna, or Monna Vanna, wife of Guido Colonna, commander of the
garrison at Pisa, will remain as Maeterlinck’s most vital heroine.
Prinzivalle, general of the Florentines and her boyhood lover, is an
idealized hero for his age but convincing in his chivalry. Medieval
atmosphere and dramatic action accentuate the strong dialogue of this
play. Ten years later, in 1913, appeared _Mary Magdalene_. In his
Introduction, Maeterlinck relates, with some feeling, his effort to
win cordial response from Paul Heyse, who had written a play on the
same theme and with certain situations that the Belgian wished to
use. Meeting with a refusal, “none too courteous I regret to say,”
he decided to take his privilege of using Biblical words and his
previously conceived situation. He gives to Mary Magdalene a few
masterly lines; to Joseph of Arimathea, she says, “We save those whom
we love; we listen to them afterwards.” To the Roman Verus, who would
have her save Jesus by yielding herself to him, she replies: “I should
perhaps sin against all that he loves, to save what I love. I could
save him in spite of himself; but no longer in spite of myself. If I
bought his life at the price which you offer, all that he wished, all
that he loved, would be dead. I cannot plunge the flame into the mire
to save the lamp.”[89]

The war left deep scars upon Maeterlinck’s spirit; they are reflected
in such essays and plays as _The Wrack of the Storm_, _Belgium at
War_, _The Burgomaster at Stilemonde_, _The Cloud that Lifted_, and
_The Power of the Dead_. Some of the essays, or chapters, in the
book first mentioned, deal with psychometry, the interest which is
expanded in other books like _The Great Secret_, _Our Eternity_, _The
Unknown Guest_, and _The Light Beyond_. That man is the product of
unseen forces, that he is molded by “hidden powers,” that humanity
and nature are always closely linked, were tenets that underlay such
books as _Treasure of the Humble_, _Life and Flowers_, and _The Life
of the Bee_. He became a beekeeper that he might study at first-hand
the traits of these workers and apply their analogy to humanity--much
as Dallas Lore Sharp has done more recently in _The Spirit of the
Hive_. In the beehives and the garden, Maeterlinck finds the same
complications and conflicts, the same “domination of the spirit of the
race,” as among men. In an essay in his earlier book, _Treasure of the
Humble_, he expressed a surety which has been verified with the passing
of the years: “A time may come perhaps--and many things herald its
approach--a time will come, perhaps, when our souls will know each
other without the intermediary of the senses.”

To penetrate beyond the tangible things of life requires courage but
brings light to the spirit. In his plays, _Ariadne and Blue Beard_
and _Sister Beatrice_, translated by Bernard Miall into English verse
(1916), and _The Miracle of Saint Anthony_, translated by Alexander
Teixeira de Mattos (1918), Maeterlinck has suggested the neglected but
magic “key” which may gain for us new adventures into “the prohibitions
of the tangible world.” The _premonition_ of his earlier plays has
become the _intuition_ which penetrates the unknown and supernatural.
Life has been symbolized by him as “a garden,” as an “inner temple,” as
analogous to the world of plants and “the swarm” of the bees. He seldom
reveals passionate feeling in his writings, but he exemplifies search
for truth, “care for moral stoic beauty.”[90] Intuition, as interpreted
by Bergson, he has expanded into the “raison mystique” by which one
may penetrate the unknown and the mystic. There are shades of gloom
and sadness in many of his plays; his characters are sometimes weak in
conflict with the forces about them; there are hints of fatalism in
plays like _The Intruder_, _The Death of Tintagiles_, and _Interior_,
but the keynote of Maeterlinck, in his maturity, has been that of
spiritual progress and mystic idealism.


FOOTNOTES:

[85] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1911.

[86] New York, 1925, p. 161.

[87] _On Emerson and Other Essays_ by Maurice Maeterlinck, translated
by Montrose J. Moses, New York, 1912. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co.

[88] _The Plays of Maurice Maeterlinck_, translated by Richard Hovey,
Chicago, 1894-96.

[89] _Mary Magdalene_ by Maurice Maeterlinck, translated by Alexander
Teixeira de Mattos, New York, 1910, Act IV. By permission of Dodd, Mead
& Co.

[90] _Some Modern Belgian Writers_ by Turquet Milnes, New York, 1917.




CHAPTER X

RABINDRANATH TAGORE: BENGALESE MYSTIC-POET


  The prize for the year 1913 has been awarded:

  Rabindranath Tagore, born 1861: “For reason of the inner depth and
  the high aim revealed in his poetic writings; also for the brilliant
  way in which he translates the beauty and freshness of his Oriental
  thought into the accepted forms of Western _belles-lettres_.”[91]

As a Bengalese, Rabindranath Tagore, to whom the Nobel prize was given
in 1913, is a British subject. Thus, for the second time, the honor
came to Great Britain through the writings of one whose formative
years, like those of Kipling, had been spent in India and whose typical
writings were associated with that country. On the contrary, the
words and thoughts of this mystic-poet are so exotic, sometimes so
unlocalized in form and spirit, that they belong to world literature,
rather than to a distinctive country. Possibly no other prize winner
has been so idealistic, so international in his appeal as this author
of _The Gardener_, _Sadhana_, and _The King of the Dark Chamber_.

In his biographical study,[92] Ernest Rhys suggests that the award was
given to Tagore because of the enthusiasm of a Swedish Orientalist
for his writings before they were known in English. The year before
the award, however, Yeats had praised the poems of Tagore[93] and
other poet-critics had found him an inspirational influence. To the
winner, the announcement gave mingled gratitude and regret; the latter
he expressed in his sentence, “They have taken away my refuge.”[94]
His life had been so untouched by external struggles that he was, in
truth, “a child of Nature.” In _My Reminiscences_, he writes: “From
my earliest years I enjoyed a simple and intimate communion with
Nature. Each one of the cocoanut trees in our garden had for me a
distinct personality.... On opening my eyes every morning, the blithely
awakening world used to call me to join it like a playmate.”[95]

Born in Calcutta, May 6, 1861, he came into a rare inheritance for
his later work as religious leader and writer. Like all children of
the higher social classes in India, he was environed from his birth
with poetic atmosphere. His blessing, as a newborn babe, was spoken
in verse; as he grew older many of his studies were in poetic form.
The family name was Thakur, Anglicized into Tagore; his father and
grandfathers had been identified with education and civil reforms. Raja
Sir Sourindra Mohun Tagore was founder of the Bengal Music School;
another, Abanindranath Tagore, was a noted painter and leader in
art-movements. His father might have been a Maharaja (a great king) but
he preferred to be Maharshi (a great sage), thus he was more closely
linked with the people than with nobility. He insisted upon paying
debts which his father, a prince, had left. He would have made himself
a pauper but the creditors refused to accept such sacrifices, so he had
a certain amount of property. He devoted himself to spiritual teachings
and traveled through India on such missions, gaining the respect of all
classes.

[Illustration:

  _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._

RABINDRANATH TAGORE]

The son who won this Nobel prize was the youngest in a family of seven
brothers and three sisters. He was lonely as a child, for his mother
died when he was young and he was often left with men-servants for
days. The return of his father marked the “gala-days”--_his_ presence
pervaded the whole house. Nature was the boy’s comrade and he would
often dig with a bamboo stick in the ground to find any possible
“mysteries.” Perfumes affected his senses and left vivid memories, as
he tells in his _Reminiscences_. The school life, after he was six
years, was a brief period of unhappiness. He was, perhaps, stubborn to
a degree and was ranked as the lowest in his class because he refused
to answer orally, but he thought out problems so well, in written work,
that he amazed his teachers and was given first place. The Oriental
Seminary, the Normal School, the Bengal Academy--all seemed to him
“prison-houses.” At home he studied, with a tutor, history, sciences,
and English literature. At first, he laughed, somewhat scornfully, at
English poetry because of the unusual sounds.

An influence of this formative age was his nephew--older than he was,
Jyotiprokash, who read _Hamlet_ to the lad and urged him to write
verses and poetic imaginings. He saw a future for this boy with his
fancies and love of Nature. A teacher at the Normal School, also,
inspired him to write, asking him to complete lines or stanzas which
had been begun by another. Although his father was often separated from
the boy, he realized the child’s promise and his sensitive nature;
he gave him a vacation trip into the Himalayas, stopping at Bolpur,
the Peace Cottage, where his father often retired and where the son
was to have his own home later. In his “blue blank-book,” that he
carried always with him, were written poems suggested by scenery and
incidents of this trip. His father taught him botany and astronomy, as
well as English, Sanskrit, and Bengali. Back in Calcutta he “played
truant from school,” sometimes, and caused his older sister to write
in despair of the fulfillment of their hopes for him; that he would be
“the only unsuccessful man in the family.”[96] For a year he went to
London to study law but he was homesick and returned to Bengal.

In his _Reminiscences_ at fifty, he recalled the years between sixteen
and twenty-three as those of unrest and “extreme wildness.” He was the
victim of the impulses of strong, young manhood; for a time he was an
epicure rather than a mystic. He delighted in silk robes and luscious
foods and romances in love. An expression of this time may be found
in the poem, “The Gleaming Vision of Youth,” in _The Gardener_. Other
reflections are in _Sandhya Sangit_ and _The Songs of Sunrise_, more
philosophical. Two poems, “The Eternity of Life” and “The Eternity
of Death,” indicate the period of transition from this time to the
years of religious meditation. At twenty-three he married happily; at
the request of his father, he went to oversee the family estate at
Shilaida, on the Ganges. Here, with intervals of travel, he remained
for seventeen years, living close to the people and to Nature, and
writing some of his tales and poems. One of his most famous love
poems, showing mingled sensuous and spiritual strains, is “The Beloved
at Noon and in the Morning.”

In a house boat on the Padma he often spent hours of meditation, long
evenings of reverie, that were pictured in the background of his
idyllic song, “Golden Bengal.” He studied the poverty, trials, and
simple idealism of the people; he knew elementary medicine and cared
for the sick; he was saddened by the loss of rice crops in destructive
rains; he was determined that tenants should not suffer unduly from
tax-gatherers. He brought upon himself the jealous criticism of
British magistrates in the district and was called a revolutionary
and visionary disturber. He had already formulated his ideas of both
a small republic and the school at Bolpur when he was interrupted in
his plans by domestic sorrows. He journeyed to England and the United
States for recuperation and inspiration.

The first grief was the death of his wife for whom he had a deep
love. Within a few months his daughter died of tuberculosis. Shortly
afterwards came another poignant sorrow in the loss of his youngest
son. With the serenity of a mind that recognizes Nature as mother and
friend, he turned toward more intimate relations with spiritual and
religious thoughts. These are revealed especially in _Gitanjali_, the
first book by which he became well known to English readers. It was
written in English with vigor and grace, with distinctive structure.
In 1912-13 he came to the United States, partly for a change of
scene, partly to add to his knowledge of industrial improvements and
agricultural equipment, that he might apply this information in his
school at Bolpur. His older son was with him, to learn methods of
harvesting. In his biographical study of Tagore, Basanta Koomar Roy[97]
tells interesting facts about the visit to this poet and discussion,
with him, of the possibilities that he might win the Nobel prize. He
was then at Urbana, Illinois, with his son. He was impressed with the
sunshine of our climate--“enchanted American days” he called them. He
liked the superior engineering and business abilities of Americans but
he deplored their lack of culture. He was urged to translate more of
his writings into English and was assured that, should he win the Nobel
prize, it would increase international brotherhood and world peace, as
well as raise India among the nations. Sceptical of the probability
he said, should it come to him, he would use the money to start an
industrial department in his school at Bolpur.

Ten months later the award was made to Tagore. Some of his compatriots
were his most severe critics, complaining that he “dabbled” in too
many forms of literature. He admitted the charge but averred that
poetry represented “the deep truth” of his life. As a poet he has
revived the work, in kind, of the Vaishnava poets of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, of mystic writers like the Upanishads who lived
between 2000 and 1000 B. C. He adapted the beauties of these poets to
modern interpretation. He was indebted, also, to Kabir, the mystic of
the fifteenth century, and to Ramprosad of Bengal, of the eighteenth.
In his form and spiritual progress he has shown marked originality,
following the work of Bengalese like Raja Ram Mohun Roy and Bankim,
who had cleared away many obstacles of British domination over native
expression.

Much has been written about the school at Bolpur to which, true to his
promise, he has devoted funds from his award. In his essays, _Sadhana,
or the Realization of Life_, are found several of the “student
addresses” made here; the war caused changed conditions and frustrated
some of the founder’s hopes. This school was started in 1902, approved
by his father, and with the goal, “To revive the spirit of our ancient
system of education ... to make the students feel that there is a
higher and a nobler thing in life than practical efficiency.” At first,
such a venture met with curiosity and some scorn. Parents sent here
unmanageable or backward boys. They had simple surroundings and lived
and slept outdoors; they sang chants as the birds begin their morning
songs; they had time for individual prayer and thought, clad in white
silk robes. They enjoyed games and long walks, simple food, no wine or
meat, music in the evening and plays, written by Rabindranath Tagore;
they wrote and illustrated school papers. There was self-government and
close, brotherly relations between boys and teachers. Their scholastic
work became satisfactory to the University at Calcutta. The boys were
happy, often refusing to go home for their vacations, unless compelled
to do so by their parents.

In addition to his work as educator for boys, Rabindranath Tagore has
been a strong influence for more training and freedom for the women
of India. He believes that the life of woman, in a generic sense,
is more full and harmonious than that of man. He found the ideas of
both Hindu teachers and Christian missionaries were extreme, as he
viewed them, but he advocated education and broadened opportunities.
As an Oriental he has poetized the love of the home, the coming of
the woman at the end of the day, “with a pitcher of nectar,” to bring
comfort to the home. His poetic play, _Chitra_, much discussed and
puzzling in passages to a Western mind, is a frank exposition of
his philosophy regarding the sensuous and spiritual qualities of
women. Other expressions are in _The Home and the World_ (1919) and
_Personality_ (1917) and in plays like _Sanyas_, and _The King and the
Queen_ (in _Sacrifice and Other Plays_, New York, 1917). That he is a
lover of children, and able to interpret their thoughts and fancies
with unmatched beauty, is evident to all readers of Sir Rabindranath
Tagore’s writings (he was knighted in 1915). His own simplicity of
nature and life, his imagination in its purity and freedom, make him
an intimate comrade for boys and girls. The year after he received the
Nobel prize, the original, unrhymed poems, _The Crescent Moon_, were
translated, with effective illustrations in color. _Stray Birds_, with
frontispiece in color by Willy Pogany (1921), is another appealing and
typical book, but more mature and philosophical.

The periods of childhood, from babyhood to school days and
letter-writing, are unfolded in _The Crescent Moon_ in delightful
pictures. Especially intuitive are “Baby’s World,” “Paper Boats,” “The
Little Big Man,” and “The First Jasmines.” Humor enlivens many of
these fancies and questions of the child, as in “Twelve O’Clock” and
“Authorship”; the latter raises a query--_why_ the mother allows father
to waste “heaps of paper” without a protest, while a single sheet,
taken for a paper boat, may bring a remonstrance to the child. There
is emotional beauty and Oriental philosophy in “The Beginning.” “Where
have I come from?” asks the child, and the mother:

    She answered half crying, half laughing, and clasping the baby to
      her breast,--
    You were hidden in my heart as its desire, my darling....
    In all my hopes and my loves, in my life, in the life of my mother
      you have lived.
    In the lap of the deathless Spirit who rules our home you have been
      nursed for ages....
    As I gaze on your face, mystery overwhelms me; you who belong to all
      have become mine.[98]

During the twelve years since the Nobel award, Tagore has translated
several of his earlier poems, plays and tales and has written _My
Reminiscences_, one of the most illumining autobiographies of the
last decade. He has expanded his ideas on government, education and
religion in books like _Nationalism_ and _Creative Unity_. He has
written _Prayers for Mother India_--that she may be raised from her
chronic want to a place of influence and success. He has urged united
action by the people of England and those of India to bring about this
material union. He has said, “One section of the human race cannot
be permanently strong by depriving another section of its inherent
rights.” Taking as his text that mooted line from Kipling,

    Oh, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet--

Tagore said, at a banquet in London: “I have learned that, though our
tongues are different and our habits dissimilar, at the bottom of our
hearts we are one.... East is East and West is West--God forbid that it
should be otherwise--but the twain must meet in amity, peace and mutual
understanding; their meeting will be all the more fruitful because of
their differences; it must lead both to holy wedlock before the common
altar of Humanity.”

In the sympathetic, analytical study of _Mahatma Gandhi_ by Romain
Rolland, there are some excellent sentences of comparison of these
two religious leaders of modern India. “Tagore looked upon Gandhi as
a saint,” says M. Rolland, and he deplored his political activities,
especially his non-coöperation doctrine. Tagore seeks and finds harmony
in coöperation. He wrote, “My prayer is that India may represent the
coöperation of all the peoples of the world. For India, unity is truth,
and division evil.” In summary, the French writer says, “To my mind
Gandhi is as universal as Tagore, but in a different way. Gandhi is a
universalist through his religious feeling; Tagore is intellectually
universal. While venerating him, (Gandhi) we understand and approve
Tagore.”[99] In _Creative Unity_, Tagore has included an essay upon
“The Nation” in which he stresses “the fight” to-day between “the
living spirit of the people” and the methods of organizing nations.

If one were to prophesy which type of Sir Rabindranath Tagore’s
writings will survive among many peoples, the chances are in favor of
his mystical prose-poems and his national songs. The latter have kept
alive the love of home-country and faith in India. They are sung by
boatmen on the Ganges, by the peasants in the fields, by students and
groups at all kinds of festivals and conferences. These songs are of
two kinds; one is a wistful idealization of the “Motherland,” with
graphic pictures of scenery, homes, and religion; the second type is
the “Song of Consecration,” of sacrifice and valor, exampled in “Follow
the Gleam,” to which many young Nationalists have marched and died.
Bitterness is absent from nearly every line by this poet-patriot; there
is spiritual excitation, strong appeal to love of home and broader
idealism. It has been said that contradiction is evident between some
of these national songs and the broad humanism of many other writings,
notably those in the _Gitanjali_. Those who know the man personally,
and who are familiar with the tenets of Hindu philosophy which he
embodies, as well as the spiritual ideals of the Upanishads, do not
find it difficult to reconcile the two creeds, as he has united them in
his “Ode to the Earth” and some of the essays in _Sadhana_.

While it is gratifying to note that Rabindranath Tagore, as prize
winner, found incentive to write more idealistic literature, yet it is
evident that he never has surpassed the earlier books of distinctive
quality, books that maintained the classic traditions of his native
literature but gave them new form and significance, as _The Gardener_,
_The Post Office_, _King of the Dark Chamber_, _Gitanjali_, and _The
Elder Sister_. When he was in the United States he read, at colleges
and other places, many passages from _The Gardener_ and _Gitanjali_.
The two books have similar tone and melody; both are difficult to
translate into adequate English because much of the mysticism is lost
in concrete words--the same is true of his plays when they are staged
without sustaining the “illusion” of the Oriental atmosphere. In native
language the rhythm and music surpass and interpret the words; the
swaying movement accompanies many odes and invocations. A song that may
be chanted with the music of the flute, and thus appreciated, is one of
the mystical lyrics beginning:

    I am restless, I am athirst for far-away things,
    My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirts of the dim
      distance.
    O Great Beyond, O the keen call of my flute!
    I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings, that I am bound in
      this spot, evermore.[100]

_Gora_, a so-called “novel” by Rabindranath Tagore, has been issued
this current year. It tells the story of a Hindu youth, a Brahmin,
whose full name is Gourmohan Babu. He cherishes a large-souled
ambition to “unify” India but he cannot break down the barriers of his
religious fanaticism enough to consent to the marriage of his younger
brother, Binoy Babu, to a girl of a lower Brahmin caste. The romantic
interest vibrates from the love affairs of Gora to that of his brother.
The chief merit of the book is not its art as fiction, for that is
negative, but the graphic presentation of religious tenets and native
customs. The author seems, at times, to be seriously concerned about
the development of his hero and the more tolerant brother; in other
places, he introduces an element of whimsical humor and kindly irony
as in the unexpected sequel of Gora’s parentage. Poetry and essays or
short tales, rather than fiction of long-sustained plot, are the forms
of writing best adapted to his gifts.

As _The Gardener_ represents the youth of Rabindranath Tagore, with
normal desires fused with spiritual longings, so _Gitanjali_ is the
expression of the mature philosopher-poet, still responsive emotionally
but seeking for “joy eternal.” He has preserved for world literature,
the philosophy and poetry of earlier teachers like Chaitanya Deva,
usually called “Nimäi,” the Hindu poet, who lived near Bolpur, the home
of Tagore. In addition to these revivals of the earlier tenets and
aspirations in poetry, Rabindranath Tagore has become an international
humanist. He has never lost his joy in Nature and in solitude but
he has walked forward into the vision of a united brotherhood and a
spiritual commonwealth.


FOOTNOTES:

[91] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1913.

[92] _Rabindranath Tagore_ by Ernest Rhys, New York, 1915.

[93] _Gitanjali_, with Introduction by W. B. Yeats, London and New
York, 1913.

[94] _Rabindranath Tagore: a Biographical Study_ by Ernest Rhys, New
York, 1915, Preface, xiv. By permission of the Macmillan Co.

[95] _My Reminiscences_ by Rabindranath Tagore, New York, 1917, p. 225.
By permission of the Macmillan Co.

[96] _Rabindranath Tagore_ by Basanta Koomar Roy, New York, 1915, p. 52.

[97] _Ibid._, pp. 189-193.

[98] _The Crescent Moon: Child-Poems_ by Rabindranath Tagore,
translated from the original Bengali by the author, New York, 1913,
1916. By permission of the Macmillan Co.

[99] _Mahatma Gandhi: The Man Who Became One with the Universal Being_,
by Romain Rolland, translated by Catherine D. Groth, New York, 1924. By
permission of the Century Co.

[100] _Gitanjali: Song-Offerings_ by Rabindranath Tagore, New York,
1916. By permission of the Macmillan Co.




CHAPTER XI

ROMAIN ROLLAND AND _JEAN-CHRISTOPHE_


  In 1916 the prize of 1915 has been awarded:

  Rolland, Romain, born 1866: “as homage to the exalted idealism in
  his authorship, and also to the sympathy and truth with which he has
  drawn different types of people.”[101]

There was no prize money awarded in literature for 1914. The
announcement that the winner for 1915 was Romain Rolland, author of
_Jean-Christophe_, was generally approved. Here was an instance when
a single book had focussed attention of readers and the judges; this
masterpiece, which had appeared in France at intervals from 1904 to
1912, had been translated into many languages and much discussed. It
was a mirror of the conditions of society, especially in France and
Germany at the junction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; it
was an exhaustive, vital life story of a musician with aspirations,
struggles, loves, defeats, revolts, friendships, and tragic, but
triumphant, end. In the biography of Rolland by Stefan Zweig, emphasis
is laid upon the period of nearly fifty years of the author’s life
as a quiet scholar and musician, “an artist working without serious
interruption or serious recognition,” and then a sudden, disturbing
publicity which followed in the wake of this novel.[102]

Clamecy, a little town of the Morvan on the Nivernais canal, was the
birthplace of Romain Rolland, January 29, 1866. His father was a
notary; his mother was daughter of a magistrate; she was musical and
religious, devoted to her son and the younger child, Madelaine. Their
happy home life is reflected in pages of the section, “Antoinette,”
in _Jean-Christophe_. When he was young, Romain Rolland showed taste
for music and his mother taught him and told him stories about great
musicians. When his school days ended at the Communal College in his
native town, his father, with rare self-sacrifice, gave up his law
practice in Clamecy and went to Paris, becoming clerk in a bank that
the boy might be educated in the best schools. After attendance at
the Lycée Louis-le-Grand until he was twenty, he entered the Ecole
Normale Supérieure where he specialized in history. Gabriel Monod was
a teacher of surpassing influence over the minds and characters of his
students. Rolland was enthusiastic about Tolstoy, both as reformer
and writer.[103] For Shakespeare he had ardent admiration, especially
for the historical plays and sonnets.

[Illustration:

  _By courtesy of Henry Holt & Co._

ROMAIN ROLLAND]

Another friend of these tentative years was Paul Claudel, the author of
books with mystical tendencies upon the history of Catholicism. Already
Rolland had expressed a fugitive, recurrent wish to write a romance,
“the history of a single-hearted artist who bruises himself against
the rocks of life.” Such was the norm of _Jean-Christophe_. He was
surprised, and not wholly pleased, when he was told that he had won a
traveling scholarship from the Normal School and could go to the French
School of Archeology and History at Rome. For two years he stayed in
this city, making contacts with some of the vital influences of his
life, notably the friendship with Fräulein Malwida von Meysenburg;
she was many years his senior but still alert and inspiring. She knew
intimately scores of statesmen, writers, and artists, as references
in her book, _Mémoires d’une idéaliste_, testify. She took a profound
interest in this young Frenchman with his musical gifts and visionary
hopes. In his essay, “To the Undying Antigone,” Rolland speaks of his
gratitude to two women--his mother and Fräulein von Meysenburg. With
the latter he went to visit Wagner at Bayreuth and increased his
musical enthusiasm and knowledge. One day, as he was walking on the
Janiculum, the germ-idea and plan of his epic novel, _Jean-Christophe_,
formed in his mind but its writing was delayed for many years.

Back in Paris as lecturer at the Normal School, and at the Sorbonne,
he determined to attack indifference to the fine arts. His thesis
had a title of arresting words for that time, “The Origins of the
Modern Lyrical Drama.” While in Rome he had written a few plays that
were not made public, _Orsino_, _Caligula_, and _Niobe_. He was eager
to increase interest in music at the Normal School and elsewhere.
He attended musical festivals at Bonn and Strasburg and began that
series of biographies published later as _Musicians of Former Days_,
_Musicians of Today_, _Beethoven_, _Handel_, and other volumes. He
married the daughter of Michael Bréal, the philologist, at whose home
he met noted men of letters, science, and art. His wife was cultured
and sympathetic with his aspirations to extend knowledge of music and
art among the people. He rebelled against educational restrictions,
as well as political reactions; in such moods he wrote plays such as
_Danton_, _Fourteenth of July_, _Triumph of Reason_, and _Saint Louis_,
a heroic legend. He urged popularizing of the theatre and lamented the
dominance of “the aristocratic theatre.” Some of the articles which he
wrote at different times on this theme have been translated by Barrett
H. Clark as _The People’s Theatre_ (New York, 1918). He looked to the
theatre as beneficial to the people in three ways: “(1) as a source of
joy; (2) as a source of energy; (3) as a source of guiding light to the
intelligence.”

Before Rolland had really “found himself” in literature, the Dreyfus
case racked his sensitive soul. In almost all his later writings there
are references, direct or implied, to this “welter of feeling” which
divided families and shattered friendships. At the time of the trial
he wrote, “He who can see injustice without trying to combat it,
is neither entirely an artist nor entirely a man.”[104] He wrote a
dramatic parable, _Les Loups_ (_Wolves_) under the pseudonym of “Saint
Just,” in which he lifted “the problem from the realm of time into
that of the eternal.” As the political strife became more personal
and bitter, Rolland retired from public attention and devoted himself
to writing lives of artists like _Michael Angelo_ and _Millet_ and
musicians. He contributed the first chapters of _Jean-Christophe_ to
the literary magazine, _Cahiers de la Quinzaine_, known to students
_only_ for many years. In two small rooms on the fifth floor of a
Parisian house, above the boulevard Montparnasse, Rolland wrote and
read, seeing a few friends, taking walks, and playing the piano for
recreation. Outwardly, he was serene; inwardly, he was seething with
indignation at the falsities and hypocrisy of life, at the disdain
shown for spiritual values, at “the world dying of asphyxia in its
prudent and vile egoism,” as he expressed it in _Jean-Christophe_.

Slowly, without any aids of publicity, the real value of
_Jean-Christophe_ became apparent to critics and discriminating
readers, as the last volumes appeared in the magazine. German
journalists called attention to its unique merits. Paul Seippel,
the Swiss writer, related the life and earlier work of Rolland. In
June, 1913, Rolland was given the Grand Prix of the French Academy.
Translation of _Jean-Christophe_ was made into English by Gilbert
Cannan and critics awakened. The same year Rolland republished some of
the plays written in his student days, under the title, _Les tragedies
de la foi_; by examples of such heroes as “Saint Louis” and “Aërt,” he
would inspire the people of the twentieth century to a new idealism.
His play, _Wolves_, has been staged in Yiddish in New York, has been
translated into English by Barrett H. Clark, and has been performed at
the University of Minnesota.

In his epic story of a musician and his associates, Rolland was a
preacher of aspiration and harmony to the whole world, in spite of
localized atmosphere. He recalled the words of Goethe, “National
literature now means very little; the epoch of world literature is
at hand”; and he urged, “Let us make Goethe’s prophecy a living
reality.”[105] His hero was to have a long, circuitous journey in his
search for expression of his aspirations; he was to meet many kinds
of people and races; he was to have some of the tragic experiences
of musicians of real life, Beethoven, Wagner, and Hugo Wolf; he was
to keep aloft the banner of idealism, of faith in humanity. Like the
author, he was to be victimized by the hard realities of life and
disillusionments. The book was to have many themes and varied notes but
was to be blended, at the last, into a perfect symphony. The preludes
were written in 1895-1897; the last chords were played in October,
1912. Parts were written in France and Italy; others, in Switzerland
and England.

No work of fiction of such prodigious length, totaling more than 1550
pages, in the three-volume edition translated by Gilbert Cannan, could
be written without many lapses, many passages of uneven merit. Some
of the characters are vital and haunting to the memory, like Olivier,
Grazia, Antoinette, Sabine, Jacqueline, Emmanuel, Dr. Braun, besides
the hero; others flit across the pages and are forgotten. Condensation
of some chapters would add to their effectiveness but the author’s
discursive, intuitive comments make a valuable asset of the book. It
may be reread in parts with enjoyment, just as a musical program, for
an evening, has selected movements in a fugue or a symphony. When it
was suggested to Rolland that he seemed to show enmity towards Germany,
by some of the reproaches of her false standards, his reply was, “I
am not in the least an enemy of Germany”; in proof, he cited that he
had rated soundly as many faults in France, in Volume V, as he had in
Germany in Volume IV. He contended that Germany had creative energy and
moral vigor but that she was “sick” in this twentieth century, just
as France was diseased and needed to be purged to restore her noble
qualities. Heroic souls are found in both countries but the people, as
a whole, fail to interpret each other aright. Unless such understanding
can be established in _friendship_, war will sunder the nations--such
was the prophetic message of _Jean-Christophe_ which was fulfilled two
years later. His book was intended as a “common heritage for all” of
Europe.

Time will fix the exact status of this epic novel and its lasting
influence upon international thought. It may be classified as allegory,
romance, psychological study, or idealistic vision; it has sincerity,
inspiration, and imaginative intensity. The author’s statement that
he always thought of the life of his hero as analogous to a river, is
significant; he sustains the imagery from the first Dawn, Morning,
Youth, and Revolt in Germany to the very end of the journey “across the
border,” to the final act where “Saint Christopher” hears the roar of
the torrent but also, the “tranquil voice of the Child” as the Angelus
sounds forth The New Day. Gilbert Cannan has compared the phases of
life, explored by _Jean-Christophe_, to the tortuous channel of an
uncharted river. His judgment that this novel is “the first great book
of the twentieth century,” is more stable than the prophecy of other
critics that would leave out the word “first.” It has many passages
of artistic perfection, like “Antoinette,” “The House,” and “The New
Dawn.” With emotional fervor the author, in the closing volume, speaks
his message to the future, apostrophizing the young men; “You men of
today, march over us, trample us under your feet, and press onward. Be
ye greater and happier than we.... Life is a succession of deaths and
resurrections. We must die, Christophe, to be born again.”[106]

And since the award, what has Romain Rolland written? _Colas
Breugnon_, the tale of a Burgundian artist, translated in 1919 by
Katherine Miller, is less intense, much more free and diverting than
his long novel. It was a work of relaxation for the author during
the summer months in Switzerland, 1913. He had recently visited his
birth town and modeled the hero, in part, from a resident, a wood
carver there, “an artist of the vanished type.” He has his struggles
and defeats but he never loses his optimism. The next year the
war began, with its devastating, soul-searing effects upon Romain
Rolland. He had seen its black shadow and had forewarned the people
in _Jean-Christophe_ but the actual conflict overwhelmed his spirit.
Like Olivier, in his story (whom he resembles in many ways), he had
feared such a war from boyhood; it had been “a nightmare to him; it
had poisoned his childhood days.” He was at Vevey, on Lake Geneva,
when the war broke out and he decided to stay there; he longed for
France but he could not fight without blighting his soul. He would
suffer as a pacifist, loving his country, rather than yield to hate.
He did secretarial work for the Red Cross and assisted in welfare
measures of many kinds. When the Nobel prize money came, he gave it “to
the mitigation of the miseries of Europe.”[107] He wrote some of the
papers that were collected in _Above the Battle_; his friendly letter
to Hauptmann, appealing for amity, and the German’s reply, are given
here. In spite of the aggressive tone of the German’s note, Rolland
refused to believe that the ideals of human brotherhood had been
destroyed; they were suffering eclipse temporarily but would relive
in “The New Dawn.” To Woodrow Wilson, in the later months of the war,
Rolland made an appeal to “be the arbiter of the free peoples.” On
the day of the armistice he issued a manifesto, _L’Humanité_, a call
to “brain workers,” comrades all through the world, to reconstruct
a fraternal union. The play, _The Montespan_, translated by Helena
van Brugh de Kay, is called a “sequel to _Above the Battle_.” He had
written, during these days of seclusion and thought, his study and
appreciation of _Mahatma Gandhi: the Man Who Became One with the
Universal Being_ (translated by Catherine D. Groth), which has been
quoted in the previous chapter upon Rabindranath Tagore.

As relaxation, he wrote _Liluli_, a comedy with the “goddess of
illusion” as its heroine. There are some lines of satire and some
of burlesque, as the combatants wrestle. It was symbolic of France
during the war years, as _he_ viewed his country, scorning Truth and
heaping up ruins of past greatness. This has been illustrated with
thirty-two wood engravings by Frans Masereel (New York, 1920). While
Rolland was exercising his ironical wit upon this picture of war, he
was writing _Clerambault: the Story of an Independent Spirit during
the War_, a sad portrayal of a pacifist. This has been translated by
Katherine Miller (New York, 1921). It is a dissertation more than
a story, a presentation of the author’s own sentiments, with much
philosophy about life and conflicts. The man, Clerambault, passes
through strange spiritual experiences. The early scenes of his rural
home life, peaceful and happy, are contrasted with his fanaticism when
he reaches Paris and urges his son, Maxime, to enter the army; then
come reactions, after the death of the son and his own probings of
conscience. The author interprets the tale as a tragedy for the man
and his wife, but a triumph of freedom for his soul. There are many
autobiographical touches in this psychological story.

In 1922 there appeared in Paris, from the pen of Rolland, the first
volumes of _L’âme enchantée_ which is now appearing in English
version, by Ben Ray Redman, as _Annette and Sylvie: The Prelude_ and
a second volume, _Summer_, translated by Eleanor Stimson and Van Wyck
Brooks. In his Foreword the author tells his readers that they are
starting with him upon a new journey which will not be so long as
that of _Jean-Christophe_ but will include more than one stage. He
asks suspension of judgment until the tale is finished, quoting the
old adage, “La fin loue la vie, et le soir le jour.” He expresses the
domination that his characters gain over him--Jean, Colas, Annette--so
that he becomes no more “than the secretary of their thoughts.” No
thesis nor theory is in this story but it is another life history,
struggling to find Truth, to reach harmony of spirit amid many kinds
of buffetings and joys. Two girls, half sisters, Annette and Sylvie,
afford him scope for sharp antitheses in character-drawing. Annette
is a girl of fine health and brain, educated at the Sorbonne. She had
adored her father but, because of some letters which she found after
his death, she realizes his infidelities to her mother and understands
his secretive smiles. She locates her half sister who never bore his
name--Sylvie, pretty, uneducated, capricious, gay, unmoral. The deep
passions of Annette, her reserves and independence, her repugnance to
any “possessiveness” on the part of her lover, Roger Brissot, and his
family, lead to a scene of erotic realism. This is followed by words of
the author’s own creed, his Search for Truth: “I am not one of those
who fear the fatigues of the road.... I am seeking.... I am convinced
that it is possible to love one’s child, loyally perform one’s domestic
task, and still keep enough of oneself, as one ought to--for the most
essential thing ... one’s soul.”[108] The second volume reveals the
material and spiritual conflicts of Annette, as a mother and teacher,
and Sylvie’s experiences in marriage and business.

In his latest book, as in his earlier plays and fiction, M. Rolland
has revealed that idealism which, in his philosophy, means harmony and
freedom, of both aspiration and action. His form is often careless
and sometimes crude; but it has high lights of great beauty and
true art. In his own life he has waged many battles that have left
scars upon his sensitive temperament and fine soul. They have never
shattered his spiritual creed, his faith in humanity. He has written
ardently in behalf of international friendship and intellectual unity.
In the future he may be ranked as a prophet as well as a scholar,
a seer as well as a writer. Amid the turmoil of his generation he
has been a force, making for peace; he has held high the banner of
world-fellowship and sounded the challenge against racial jealousies.


FOOTNOTES:

[101] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1915.

[102] _Romain Rolland: the Man and His Work_ by Stefan Zweig,
translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, New York, 1921. By permission of
Thomas Seltzer.

[103] See his _Tolstoy_, translated by Bernard Miall, London and New
York, 1911.

[104] _Century Magazine_, August, 1913, article on Rolland by Alvan V.
Sanborn.

[105] _Romain Rolland: the Man and His Work_ by Stefan Zweig,
translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, New York, 1915. By permission of
Thomas Seltzer.

[106] _Jean-Christophe_ by Romain Rolland, translated by Gilbert
Cannan, Vol. III, p. 348, New York and London, 1913. By permission of
Henry Holt & Co.

[107] _Romain Rolland: the Man and His Work_ by Stefan Zweig, New York,
1921, p. 270.

[108] _Annette and Sylvie: Being Volume One of the Soul Enchanted_ by
Romain Rolland, translated from the French by Ben Ray Redman, New York,
1925. By permission of Henry Holt & Co.




CHAPTER XII

A GROUP OF WINNERS--NOVELISTS AND POETS

  HEIDENSTAM OF SWEDEN (1916)
  PONTOPPIDAN AND GJELLERUP OF DENMARK (1917)
  CARL SPITTELER OF SWITZERLAND (1919)


  The prize of 1916 has been awarded:

  Heidenstam, Verner von, born 1859: “in recognition of his
  significance as spokesman of a new epoch in our literature.”[109]

“Sweden’s Laureate” is the name often given to Verner von Heidenstam
who won the prize in 1916. By public, competitive vote of his
countrymen he had been chosen as the most popular poet before he was
accorded this world honor. He is less familiar, by translation in
English, than his compatriot who preceded him in recognition by the
Swedish Academy, Selma Lagerlöf. His plays, novels, and poems are
gaining new appreciation through the translations in recent years by
Charles Wharton Stork, Arthur J. Chater, and Karoline M. Knudsen. He
was born of aristocratic family at the manor house of Olshammar in
Närke, July 6, 1859. As a boy he was never strong; he was shy and
loved to read, especially poetry and hero stories. When he was in
early adolescence, he developed such a condition that lung-disease was
feared and he was sent to the south of Europe for a milder climate.
For eight years he was away from Sweden, spending time in Italy,
Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. Some of his ancestors had
been in governmental positions in the Orient; he was lured by the
picturesqueness and freedom of these lands.

His first ambition was to be a painter; for a time he was a student
of Gêrome in Paris. Critics have often recognized this quality of
the painter’s skill in his poems, in selection of objects and colors
and in reproduction of life in Paris, in Italian carnival days, and
at Damascus. While Heidenstam was still a young man, he fell in love
with a Swiss girl of the people and married her. At an old castle of
Brunegg, estranged for a time from his parents, he lived in seclusion,
seeing few people except his wife and August Strindberg who had become
deeply interested in the young poet. Already he had decided that
literature, not art, must be his profession. He wrote many poems that
were gathered later as _Pilgrimages and Wander-Years_. In _Thoughts in
Loneliness_ one may read expressions of his moods of longing for home,
mingled with resentment against injustice. “Childhood Scenes” is an
example, beginning:

    I’ve longed for home these eight long years, I know.
    I long in sleep as well as through the day!
        I long for home!
    I seek where’er I go, not men-folk, but the fields
        Where I would stray,
    The stones where as a child I used to play.[110]

There are sundry references to his mother; a line that will arouse
sympathy reads,

    She prayed my life might have a worthy goal![111]

In the poem, “Fame,” he is melancholy and laments:

    You seek for fame but I would choose another
    And greater blessing:
      So to be forgotten
    That none should hear my name;
    No, not my mother.[112]

The death of his father, in 1887, called him back to Sweden; here,
with intervals of travel, has been his residence through his mature
life. A volume of his _Poems_, following those of _Pilgrimages and
Wander-Years_, increased his reputation among his countrymen. They
were of diverse types; some were emotional like “A Man’s Last Word to a
Woman”; others were scenic and dramatic narratives, like “The Forest of
Tiveden” and “The Burial of Gustaf Fröding.” The lyrical quality in his
songs adapts them to community singing; his “Sweden” is most familiar
and has been compared by Mr. Stork to John Masefield’s “August, 1914.”
The vibrant quality is strong; the patriotism is appealing:

    Oh, Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, native Land!
    Our earthly home, the haven of our longing!
    The cow-bells ring where heroes used to stand,
    Whose deeds are song, but still with hand in hand
    To swear the eternal troth thy sons are thronging!

In later poems, as well as prose essays, Heidenstam has shown ardent
liberalism and a spirit of brotherhood. “Singers in the Steeple”
emphasizes

    Not joy to the rich, to the poor men care;
    Our toil and our pleasure alike we share.

_Poems_, published in 1902, contain appeals for democracy and universal
suffrage, in the verses, “Fellow-Citizens,” and other lines. Like
his predecessor, Björnson, he is both national and universal in his
idealism. With honor and love he has written the elegy of Björnson as
“Norway’s Father,” with the closing lines:

    Yet the soul of the people deep within
    Still breathes the eternal brother-song,
    We stand and gaze at the sunset long
    And grieve for thee as one of our kin.[113]

Verner von Heidenstam must be included on the lists of novelists as
well as poets. In 1889 he published his first romance, _Endymion_, a
new treatment of an old theme. With a painter’s glow of fancy he sought
to depict, through a love story of moderate interest, the atmosphere of
the East, when it is clouded by restraints of Western civilization. He
had registered rebellion against the growth of naturalism in fiction:
in _Pepita’s Wedding_ (1890) he urged idealism, and search for inner
truth. The term, “imaginative realist,” which has been used to classify
Heidenstam, is especially applicable to the fantastic, emotional
tale, _Hans Alienus_ (1892). As writer of fiction, however, the name
of Heidenstam will always be linked most closely with _The Charles
Men_ (_Karolinern_)--stories of Charles XII and his wars--a series of
prose-poems depicting Swedish heroism, written with fervor and artistic
finish. A translation by Charles Wharton Stork, with introduction
by Fredrik Böök, has been added to the _Scandinavian Classics_
(American-Scandinavian Foundation, New York, 1920). Among the best of
several dramatic tales are “French Mons,” “The Fortified House,” and
“Captured.” Like Rolland, Heidenstam is a pacifist yet he has written
a vigorous tribute to this “King who lived his whole life in the field
and died in a trench,” the man who was a genius in war but, like his
heroic men, gentle as well as brave, with lofty visions.

Other romances followed this major work, _The Charles Men_--tales
and folklore, sagas and modern applications in _Saint George and the
Dragon_, _Saint Briggitta’s Pilgrimage_, and _Forest Murmurs_. In
fiction and essays the writer has attacked naturalism that “lets the
cellar air escape through the house.” Some of his significant essays
are collected as _Classicism and Teutonism_. It is unfortunate that
so few of his works are adequately rendered into English. He has
contributed to liberal and reform journals. In 1900, marrying for a
third time, he bought a home near Vadstena, the place of his childhood,
and with his wife, a woman of broad culture and social charm, he has
exerted a wide influence upon Swedish life. In 1912 he was elected a
member of the Swedish Academy which honored itself, as well as him, by
the award of the Nobel prize four years later, after his candidacy had
been urged throughout Scandinavia and elsewhere.

Among his verses had been delightful “Cradle Songs”; he had written,
also, juvenile stories. He was asked by the Swedish educational
authorities to write a Reader for school use. He calls this “a work of
love.” Without the originality and glamour of Miss Lagerlöf’s books,
_The Wonderful Adventures of Nils_ and its sequel, this Reader contains
some absorbing tales of heroism, and poems and scenes of descriptive
merit. For older youths and adults he has embodied poetic legends with
modern teachings in two plays, translated into English by Karoline M.
Knudsen, _The Soothsayer_ and _The Birth of God_ (Boston, 1919, 1920).
The first play is located upon “An Arcadian Plain” with Apollo, the
Soothsayer, the Fates, and Erigone, wife of the Soothsayer, as leading
characters. There are sentences of subtle humor about “a man in love,”
and more serious counsel of Apollo, with modern meaning:

        Son of dust!
    Thou didst try to serve two gods; therefore, thy power became thy
      doom!

_The Birth of God_ is founded upon Egyptian mythology, with symbolism
in the words of Dyskolus, an Ancient, to a modern merchant, A Stranger,
comparing “the altar-fire and the sacred hymn,” when “divine destiny
had not been forgotten,” with humanity of less pure standards.

_The Tree of the Folkungs_, translated from the Swedish into English
by Arthur J. Chater (New York, 1925), is a romance, mingling history,
sagas, fantasy, pageantry, action, and modern interpretation of some
of the deeds and ideals of the Vikings. It has been compared to _Peer
Gynt_. Two distinctive parts of the book, welded into one story, are
“Folke Filbyter” and “The Bellbo Heritage.” The elemental character
that gives title to the first part is Earl Birger, sacrificing to all
gods in adversity and pulling down all altars in days of prosperity.
He opposes the dynasty of the Folkungs but he ends his days in squalor
and piteous craving for the love denied him by his sons and grandsons,
a lesson to moderns of the futility of material miserliness. The second
section of the strange, impressive tale deals with the fortunes of the
Folkungs two hundred years later and the conflict between two brothers
and their differing standards, King Valdemar and Junker Magnus. The
latter considers his older brother a “good-hearted, sunny-eyed fool,”
compared with his own masterful ways. This legendary romance-pageant
has scenes of dramatic power--the battle between Valdemar and Magnus,
the love of the minstrel for an outcast maiden, and many customs of
historical and imaginative past. It is an elaborate, well constructed
revelation of Heidenstam’s imaginative insight and vigor, united with
his skill in interpreting the _past_, in history and sagas, to the
problems of the _present hour_. He is, in truth, “the herald of a new
epoch in our literature.”


HENRIK PONTOPPIDAN

  The prize of 1917 has been awarded one half to:

  Pontoppidan, Henrik, born 1857: “for his profuse descriptions of
  Danish life of today.”[114]

The Swedish Academy had sprung several surprises in the awards of
the first fifteen years but they surpassed all previous records, in
1917, when the honor was divided between Henrik Pontoppidan and Karl
Gjellerup of Denmark. Danish writers, in general, were less known by
translation in France, Italy, England, and America than their neighbors
of Sweden and Norway. Outstanding exceptions are Hans Christian
Andersen and Georg Brandes. The Danish Royal Theatre was recognized
in contemporary life as an educational force; such playwrights of
earlier and later days as Holberg, Oehlenschlager, and Edward Brandes
had been studied by dramatic scholars in many countries. Bergström’s
play, _Karen Borneman_, translated by Edwin Björkman, is discussed by
Barrett H. Clark in _A Study of the Modern Drama_.[115] Another play
by Bergström, _Thora van Deken_ (1915) was a dramatization of a novel
by Pontoppidan.

An interesting note, regarding the reaction to this joint award
of 1917, is found in the _American-Scandinavian Review_.[116] The
first comment is upon the ages of the recipients--both were past
sixty--“another veteran medal” for writers whose productivity is
past. In addition, says the editorial writer, “Neither has mastering
genius that would entitle him to the prize.” Pontoppidan is the better
known; he stands for progress that will not forget tradition. Vilhelm
Anderson, literary historian, has said of Pontoppidan’s writings,
“Modern Denmark could be reconstructed entire from his books.” The
family had scholars, among them a bishop, Eric Pontoppidan, of the
seventeenth century, who published the oldest Danish grammar in Latin.

Henrik Pontoppidan was born at Frederica in Jutland, in 1857. His
grandfather and father had been clergymen. While he was a schoolboy the
family moved to Randers where he remained until he went to Copenhagen,
to the Polytechnic Institute, to study engineering. He made a visit
to Switzerland where he had his first love affair and wrote his early
sketches. In 1881, in Denmark, appeared _Clipped Wings_, a collection
of stories of which “The Church Ship” excels in imagination and
dramatic concentration, the mystical mingling with the realistic. In
1891 he lived for a time at Ostby but a few years later, after his
second marriage, he moved to Copenhagen where he has been a noted
leader in educational and literary life, a friend of Brandes and an
adviser of the younger dramatists and novelists. He has been called
an imitator of Ibsen; an echo of some of the melancholic effects of
_Brand_ and _Ghosts_ may be seen in Pontoppidan’s tales but he is
distinctive in his methods of portrayal. He is criticized sometimes as
narrow and localized, without spiritual vision.

A trilogy of novels (1892-1916) presents scenes and characters in
the rural life of Denmark. The first book, _The Promised Land_, is
depressing, strongly realistic in its hero, Emanuel, called by some
critics “a prose Brand.” It is a tale of disillusionment, a revelation
of the struggle of idealists in this world of material ambitions. It
is written with care--three years was devoted to it--and the note of
sincerity is marked. The second novel, _Lucky Peter_, to which the
author devoted four years, is partly subjective. The hero, like his
author, was son of a clergyman and studied as an engineer. _The Kingdom
of the Dead_, written during the war years, reflects such influences
with a stronger tone of patriotism than is dominant in the author’s
other tales; it is loosely constructed but it gives clear glimpses
of Copenhagen, both in city streets and outlying districts. _The
Apothecary’s Daughter_ has been translated by G. Nielsen (London, 1890).

In an English edition of Pontoppidan’s stories, _The Promised Land_
and _Emanuel, or Children of the Soil_, translated by Mrs. Edgar
Lucas, with several illustrations by Nelly Erichsen (London, 1896),
the illustrator explains the author’s purpose in the chapters of _The
Evolution of the Danish Peasant_. He has chosen a disturbing period in
educational and religious life after the Danish peasant was transformed
from a slave to a citizen, by the act of 1849. Political parties, “The
National-Liberal” and “Friends of the Peasants,” were formed and high
schools were established. Then, by a revision of 1866, the liberties of
the peasants were again threatened and despair settled on their minds.
In two remote villages, Veilby and Skibberup, prototypes of the places
where the author had lived and taught for a time and knew the people,
he has portrayed their customs and revolts in a vivid, descriptive
style.

In some of his short stories, like “Eagle’s Flight” and “Mimosas,”
Pontoppidan reveals himself at his best as narrator. He is deeply
interested in educational progress for his people; he urges freedom
from hypocrisy and weak compromises. Idealist in his aspirations and
photographer of Danish life in town and country, he is an author whose
writings will be appreciated as the years add to their interpretations
and translations.


KARL GJELLERUP

  The prize of 1917 has been awarded, one half to:

  Gjellerup, Karl, born 1857, died October 13, 1919: “for his
  many-sided, rich, and inspired writing with high ideals.”[117]

Like Pontoppidan, Karl Adolf Gjellerup was the son of a clergyman. He
was born at Roholte in 1857. To please his father he studied for the
ministry, and took examinations in theology, but he was not willing to
accept any parish. He was deeply interested in “modernist doctrines”
and became a disciple of Darwin, Georg Brandes, and Spencer. Later he
recanted from some of these teachings and became less radical and more
historical in his studies. He delighted in the Eddas and had a natural
flair for literature even before he became a professional writer. He
has lived much of his life in Dresden, where his popularity seems to be
greater than in his home country. Said the commentator on Gjellerup, in
the _American-Scandinavian Review_,[118] after the prize was divided
between him and Pontoppidan in 1917, “his appointment has been
received with marked coolness in Scandinavia.”

As a writer, Gjellerup has traveled far afield for his subjects. He
has written books on art and music; he is an ardent Wagnerian and
has studied many aspects of this influence, as his writings testify.
He has tried his hand at plays in which he sought to reconcile the
modern spirit of Christianity with the Greek love of beauty. It is not
a new theme--nor is there much distinction in his treatment. He has
translated, in modern Danish language, several tales of the Eddas and
old Norse sagas. By translation into English he is known especially by
two stories, _The Pilgrim Kamanita_ and _Minna_; other novels, typical
of his style are _An Idealist_ and _Pastor Mons_, with satirical and
photographic passages.

_The Pilgrim Kamanita_, translated by John E. Logie (London and New
York, 1912), is subtitled _A Legendary Romance_. It is laid on the
banks of the Gunga, when Lord Buddha visits the “City of Five Hills”;
there is graphic description of locusts and coral trees and blossoms
in the grove of Krishna. The text is from Byron’s _Don Juan_--“This
narrative is not meant for narration”--an indication of its imaginative
quality. The opening pages are brilliant with colorful passages,
“billowy clouds of purest gold,” blossoming gardens and terraces and “a
long line of rocky eminences, rivaling in colour the topaz, amethyst,
and the opal, were resolved into an enamel of incomparable beauty at
this City of the Five Hills.” Kamanita was the son of a merchant in
the land of Avanti, among the mountains. He was rich, well educated,
could sing and draw, could color crystals and “tell whence any jewel
came.” At twenty he was sent on an embassy of business to King Udena in
Kosambi. Here began his “Pilgrimage” in love and memories that form the
trail of this story. Mysticism, and esoteric philosophy are _mixed_,
rather than _blended_, with realism.

_Minna_, the novel translated into English by C. L. Nielsen (London,
1913), has Dresden for its background. There are songs from Wagner and
music by Chopin and Beethoven, interspersed with the tale of Minna
and her tragic life, after her _mariage de convenance_. In a note,
dated Dresden, August, 1912, the author confesses, “I have often
felt a homesick feeling for the Danish _sund_.” He adds that he has
been reading Thomas Moore’s _Irish Melodies_, bequeathed to him by
his deceased friend, Harald Fenger. This love story, in manuscript
form, was entrusted to Gjellerup before Fenger died in London, after
he had lost “Minna” and developed a fatal illness of the chest. With
these memories before him, he narrates this romance of the hero who
comes into the country, near the Elbe and, crossing the ferry, meets
a pretty governess and Lisbeth, whose chief distinction was that
of wearing a veil, “at a time when veils are out of fashion.” The
character of Minna is revealed largely through letters with emotional
tones. There are disillusionments as well as emotional joys in this
tale, justifying the motto chosen from Moore’s line, “To live with them
is far less sweet than to remember them.”

The Nobel honor to Gjellerup was appreciated much in Germany because
his influence upon art and literature had been strong, especially
in Dresden. He interpreted, to Danish readers, certain factors in
German life and philosophy. While his Danish compatriots recognize
his scholarly work, his literary insight, and subtle wit, they do not
rank him as a genius nor essentially as a Danish writer. Some leaders
in that country would have much preferred to be represented, among
Nobel prize winners, by a versatile, world-honored writer like Georg
Brandes, or a playwright like Bergström (before his death in 1914)
or a poet like Drachmann (before his death in 1908) or a writer of
localized scenes but broad vision like J. V. Jensen. There are elements
of poetic insight and analytical skill in the romances by Gjellerup;
and translation into English will increase appreciation of his literary
influence.


CARL SPITTELER

  The prize of 1919 has been awarded:

  Spitteler, Carl, Switzerland, born 1845; died 1925; “having
  especially in mind his mighty epic _Olympischen Frühling_.”[119]

Another small country and an author, little known outside France and
Germany and his own land, was the choice for the award of 1919--Carl
Spitteler of Switzerland. There was no prize given in 1918, in
literature. In spite of the fact that Nietzsche had written of
Spitteler as “perhaps the most subtle æsthetic writer of Germany,”[120]
his name was not familiar to international readers. Born in Liestal,
a canton of Basel in 1845, he was nearly seventy-five years old. His
work had been idealistic in trend, thus fulfilling one condition of the
prize; his epic for which he was honored had been completed fourteen
years before--_Olympian Spring_. He had suffered from disappointments
and lack of appreciation by critics until his later years. He had never
lost his zeal for literature and desire to promulgate ideals of truth
and freedom.

He was fortunate in opportunities for travel and study as a youth.
His father was in the post-office service at Basel and later was
Secretary of the Treasury at Berne. While at Basel University, Carl
Spitteler came under two influences of lasting results on his life
and writing--Wilhelm Wackernagel, the German philologist, and Jacob
Burckhardt, the historian of the Italian Renaissance. He loved
music, especially Beethoven, and showed taste for art. Later he went
to the Universities of Zürich and Heidelberg, to study history and
jurisprudence. He took courses in theology--thinking he might be a
minister--but decided wisely that his bent was towards philosophy
and literature. His ambition was to become an epic poet; he essayed
to write _John of Abyssinia_, _Atlantis_, _Theseus and Heracles_ but
he pushed aside these pioneer efforts as puerile. For eight years
he was tutor in Russia, in the family of a Russian general. While
there, he was writing slowly the poem that he had planned in student
days at Heidelberg, _Prometheus and Epimetheus_. It was issued first
under the pseudonym of “Felix Tandem” and ten years later with his
own signature.[121] His Prometheus is “an exalted soul,” suffering
rather than proving untrue to his spiritual ideals. By contrast is his
brother, Epimetheus, receiving Pandora’s gifts and material honors but
losing his soul until he recalls Prometheus from exile, to drive away
“the powers of evil.” There is depth of philosophy mingled with modern
ideas in this poem of grace and beauty. He was charged with imitating
Nietzsche’s _Also sprach Zarathustra_ so he wrote a pamphlet, _My
Relations with Nietzsche_, emphasizing his ignorance of the latter’s
work when he wrote his poem on Prometheus.

He continued his teaching in Switzerland at Berne and at Neuenstadt,
spending thirty hours a week in the classroom; then he did some
journalistic work at Basel. In 1883 he married and soon after
published _Extramundana_, in which he told, in verse, cosmic myths of
the history of creation. A collection of his lyrics, _Butterflies_
(_Schmetterlinge_), excel in rhythm and love of nature. In 1891, he
inherited a small fortune; from that time he was relieved from routine
teaching and writing; he went to Lucerne where the scenic beauty
increased his literary inspiration. He experimented in various forms--a
series of essays known as _Laughing Truth_ (_Lachende Wahrheiten_),
with irony and earnestness mingled, a prose idyl, _Gustav_, and
a juvenile _Mädchenfeinde_, translated by Mme. la Vicomtesse Le
Roquette-Buisson as _Two Little Misogynists_ (New York, 1922). There
are clever illustrations by A. Helene Carter. This is an amusing tale,
perhaps more appealing to adults than to children readers by its
subtle wit and modern educational problems; but it is entertaining
and lively. Two boys, aged ten and nine, Gerold and Hänsli, “fine,
healthy boys,” are returning to a military school after a vacation.
If only some great event might save them--a flood or earthquake or
epidemic among the teachers, or “a declaration of war.” Their feelings
towards the girls, Theresa and Marianelli, are natural and amusing.
There is irony in the warning given to Gerold lest “he should think
for himself,” a process that is both popular and unpatriotic, as many
people consider.

After the publication of some poems as _Balladen_ in 1905, Carl
Spitteler wrote _Imago_, which he declared was “an explanation of
Prometheus and Epimetheus--what really happened.” “Prometheus shows
what a poet made of it.”[122] Autobiography, as in many of his books,
reappears in the young man, Victor, the poet in _Imago_; in the
discussion or analysis of Frau Doktor and German womanhood, the author
has shown the _provincial_ attitude, in many conditions of life outside
Germany as well as within.

_Der olympische Frühling_, which is known by translation as _Olympian
Spring_, was the mature expression of Spitteler as poet. It appeared
from the press at intervals from 1900 to 1905. It has five parts,
with more than thirty cantos, written in iambic couplets. Four lines,
describing Apollo, from _Olympian Spring_, have been freely translated
by Thekla E. Hodge:

    Threefold is thy royal crown of fame:
    Thou hast conceived it: that shows thy lofty aim.
    Thou hast dared it: that tells the hero’s valor.
    Thou hast achieved it: from thousands thou art chosen.

The poem mingles classic mythology with satire, contemporary problems,
humor and idealism. With high praise, it has been called “The Divine
Comedy of the New Century.”[123] It has been compared to Shelley’s
_Prometheus Unbound_, to Keats’ _Endymion_ and other epical poems.
Ananke, ruler of the universe, is a vitalized character from mythology
who imprisons the gods in Erebus. He permits them to start on a journey
to visit the distant world while Moira, daughter of Ananke, gives
springtime and peace to the world. Their joy is turned into discord and
suffering as they come near;--

    And from the yawning cleft the echoes’ thunder rolled,
    For aye no spot on earth but witnessed grief untold.

The blue flower of Memory has a vital part to play. The angels chant
their message of hope, their assurance of “a coming morn” when cocks
will crow at the advent of a Saviour, and Part I ends in a climax of
idealism. The “Winning of Hera,” Queen of the Amazons, and the choice
of Herakles as wanderer on the earth, suffering any tortures for the
sake of Truth, are larger themes in Part II. Marguerite Münsterberg has
made an interpretive translation of parts of this epic poem which won
for its author the Nobel prize.[124] There is drollery and satire, as
in the plan of Aphrodite to lead mankind away like children, and the
frustration by rain and burlesque features. The poetic climaxes are
vigorous and the complete work is masterly and epical.

Spitteler is often ranked as representative of German literature in
Switzerland, in company with Gottfried Keller, Conrad Meyer, author
of _The Monk’s Marriage_, and Joseph Victor Widman, author of _Saints
and Beasts_. He showed influences, in prose and verse, of Goethe and
Schiller but he had originality in his approach to his subject and
its treatment. He endured much loneliness of spirit from neglect of
his literary messages and from political bitterness. During the war
he urged the neutrality of German Switzerland and so lost favor with
the people who had stimulated and encouraged him; in return he gained
popularity in France and was given the greeting of the French Academy
when he was seventy years old. His poems vary much in tones and
measures; there are musical _Bell Songs_ (_Glockenlieder_, 1906) and
light, joyful _Butterflies_ of earlier years. In the later _Ballads_
he often struck a note against commercialism, with a ring of robust
idealism in behalf of spiritual values, and denunciation of those
“Prudes to the bone”--

    For what of old our fathers virtues made
    They’ve chaffered for in markets or betrayed.

The death of Carl Spitteler at Lucerne, in the current year,
revived interest in his life and writings, and evoked recognition
of his influence towards revival of the best in classicism, and his
aspirations for freedom and sincerity in modern life and letters.

Among many tributes to the work of this poet a few may be cited from
the monograph, compiled by Eugen Diederichs Verlag in Jena, translated
for this book by Thekla E. Hodge. Michael Georg Conrad, often compared
with Spitteler as a leading exponent of modern German literature,
writes: “The marked superiority of Spitteler over his contemporaries
in the realm of _belles-lettres_ is due to his brilliant creative
genius, and the rare combination of deep feeling and keen humor.”
Widman, another author-critic, writes of _Prometheus_: “In this poem
he blends poetry with religion (mythology) and thought (philosophy).
Unfortunately, we can draw no comparison for nothing like it is found
in literature.” The same critic is enthusiastic about the poems,
_Butterflies_ (_Schmetterlinge_). “The fate of these wondrous little
creatures, whose transformation has ever brought to the human mind a
mysterious and touching symbolism, was wrought by the poet’s touch into
scenes of dramatic tragedy, and irresistible charm.”

Several commentators have stressed the qualities of vigor and
grotesqueness, combined with idyllic poetry in the epics and lyrics by
Spitteler. One of the most sincere tributes was that of Romain Rolland,
written soon after he had received the Nobel prize and before that
honor was given to Carl Spitteler. He regrets that it was not bestowed
upon the Swiss writer and adds: “Spitteler is to my mind the greatest
European poet, the only one today who approaches the most famous names
of the past.... Strange blindness of the world to pass by the living
flame of the genius of the most inspired poet without even divining its
splendour.” The award of 1919 was the fulfilment of Rolland’s desire.


FOOTNOTES:

[109] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1916.

[110] _Sweden’s Laureate: Selected Poems_ translated by Charles Wharton
Stork, New Haven, 1919. By permission of Yale University Press.

[111] _Ibid._, “Mother.”

[112] By permission of Yale University Press.

[113] _Sweden’s Laureate: Selected Poems_, translated by Charles
Wharton Stork, New Haven, 1919. By permission of Yale University Press.

[114] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1917.

[115] New York, 1925, p. 27.

[116] Vol. VI, p. 109.

[117] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1917.

[118] Vol. VI, 1918.

[119] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1918.

[120] _Carl Spitteler_; monograph compiled by Eugen Diederichs Verlag
in Jena.

[121] _Studies from Ten Literatures_ by Ernest Boyd, New York, 1925.

[122] _The German Classics_, edited by Kuno Francke, New York, 1914,
_Carl Spitteler: Life and Works_, Vol. XIV, pp. 493-515.

[123] _Contemporary Review_, January, 1920, article by J. G. Robertson.

[124] _The German Classics_, edited by Kuno Francke, New York, 1914,
Vol. XIV, p. 515.




CHAPTER XIII

KNUT HAMSUN AND HIS NOVELS OF NORWEGIAN LIFE


  The prize of 1920 has been awarded:

  Hamsun, Knut, Norway, born 1859: “for his monumental work, _The
  Growth of the Soil_.”[125]

It was characteristic of a type of journalism in the United States
that the announcement of the Nobel award in literature for 1920, to
Knut Hamsun, should have been featured in a digest of news thus: “The
Horse-Car Conductor Who Wins the Nobel Prize.” A passing incident
in the life of this author--a few months of service on street cars
in Chicago--but they loom large in minds that cherish trivialities.
His works in fiction and drama, more than twenty-five in number,
have been translated into a score of dialects; he is an outstanding
and unique figure in the literary life of to-day; his development of
personality and fame vies in interest with the challenging quality of
his writings. Few authors have been so self-revelatory as he has been
in his plays and novels. Except for statistical facts and side lights,
to be found in other sources, one can make almost a complete picture
of his background, his early struggles and revolts, his innate poetry
and growing idealism, by reading in succession _Hunger_, _Mysteries_,
_Pan_, and _Munken Vendt_, followed by _Dreamers_, _Benoni_, _Children
of the Age_, and _Growth of the Soil_.

Although Knut Hamsun’s parents were of peasant stock, the boy, born
August 4, 1860, at Lom, in Gudbrandsdalen, in eastern Norway, inherited
strains of artistic craftsmanship. His grandfather was a worker in
metals (sometimes called a blacksmith) but fortunes were low and, when
the lad was four years old, the family moved from the Gudbrandsdalen
mountain valley to the Lofoden Islands, Nordland. Here, amid wild,
awesome scenery and simple fisherfolk with sordid tasks, the youth
grew to young manhood. For a time he lived with an uncle who was a
preacher, of the state church; he was a severe man. In his short
story, “A Spook,” Hamsun recalls those days with their floggings and
work and hours of escape to the cemetery or the woods.[126] Before he
could satisfy his cravings for an education, he was apprenticed to a
shoemaker in Bodö, in Nordland. He managed to get his first writings
published; in 1878 appeared the serious poem, that showed appreciation
of the glowing colors and wild aspects of nature, _Meeting Again_,
and the story _Björger_ with the pseudonym, Knud Pederson Hamsund.
While there were interesting bits of autobiography, this initial
fiction was imitative of Björnson and has not been revived by its
author among his books.

[Illustration:

  _By courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc._

KNUT HAMSUN]

Restless and unwilling to spend his days at Bodö as a shoemaker, he
worked for a short while as coal heaver, and later as road-maker and
school-teacher and sheriff’s assistant. Then, like so many Scandinavian
youths, he decided to emigrate to America. Some of these earlier
experiences are recalled in his novels, _A Wanderer Plays on Muted
Strings_ and _Under the Autumn Star_ (in the English edition united as
_Wanderers_). In the United States he drifted from one occupation to
another and covered a wide range of pursuits as street-car conductor,
farm laborer, clerk in grocery store and lecturer. He cherished
hopes of literary chances in this country but the lack of them, and
the misfortunes that came upon him, made him bitter for a time,
in retrospect. Those who recalled him on the Halstead street-car
line in Chicago, and later on a cable line, affirmed that he had “a
perpetual stare into the horizon,” that he was “out-at-elbows” and
had small volumes of classic poets sticking out of his pockets.[127]
They add that he would forget to ring the bell for passengers or
would fall over their feet in his reverie. One is skeptical of such
detailed memories of famous men. In the summer of 1885, he was back in
Christiania, doing some journalistic work and lecturing. Hanna Arstrup
Larsen in her authoritative study of Knut Hamsun[128] says that he had
been at the University of Christiania, before he went to America; but
that he found he was a misfit and went back to his “old life on the
road.”[129]

In 1886, says Professor Josef Wiehr,[130] he returned to the United
States as correspondent for _Current Events_ (_Verdens Gang_) but
he was obliged to undertake manual work to get a living wage; for a
time he was with a Russian fishing vessel off the Newfoundland banks.
For about a year he was secretary to Kristoffer Janson, a Norwegian
clergyman in Minneapolis; he was then twenty-eight years old, and had
been working on a farm in North Dakota. He wanted a chance to lecture
in Minneapolis on literary topics but his ambitions were unrealized
and he left America with some bitter feelings and the manuscript
of his satirical book, _The Spiritual Life of Modern America_ (or
_Intellectual Life in Modern America_), sometimes entitled _Of American
Culture_. In a copy of this book, owned by Edwin Björkman, Hamsun
wrote an inscription, dated 1905, thus, “A youthful work. It has ceased
to represent my opinion of America.”[131] He scoffs at “American
patriotism, engendered by means of tinfifes”; he asserts, “There is
an enormous gap in American liberty, a chasm which is kept open by
the thick-headed democracy”; he finds no cultural life but coarse
materialism and “prudishness” and “self-satisfied ignorance.”[132]
The book justifies a critic’s comment that it is “a masterpiece of
distorted criticism.”[133] His short story, “Woman’s Victory,” in the
collection, _Struggling Life_, is based on his experiences in Chicago;
in the Preface, he tells of his life as car conductor. “Zacchæus,” in
the collection, _Brushwood_ (1903), is reminiscent of the days upon the
North Dakota farm.

In Copenhagen, on his return from America, he enlisted the interest
of Edward Brandes, then editor of a daily newspaper there. Through
his influence, place was found for the manuscript of _Hunger Sult_ in
a Copenhagen magazine, _New Soil_, in 1888, to appear anonymously;
two years later it came out as a book, with the author’s name on the
title-page. It was immature and subjective, but it gripped readers
everywhere by its sincerity and whimsicality. Miss Larsen makes a true
criticism of this book when she says it is “without beginning and end
and without a plot but it has a series of climaxes.” Antithetical
to such passages of poetic and dramatic power there are pages of
naturalism that cause a revulsion of emotion and seem to some readers
an insult to taste. It is absolutely true and relentless; perhaps,
as Professor Wiehr suggests, “By the production of this work, Hamsun
sought to free his mind from terrible memories of the past that were
haunting him” (p. 13). Two years later the same mixture of poetic high
lights and crass realism characterized _Mysteries_. Johan Nagel is the
restless hero who falls in love with Dagny Kielland, daughter of the
pastor, and meets with tragic experiences and suicide. Like his author,
“Nagel is at odds with life” and finds peace only in nature. Like
Hamsun he tries vainly to adapt himself to conventions of society and
becomes embittered. “The Hamsun ego,” as Miss Larsen calls the _motif_
of these earlier tales, recurs in _Editor Lynge_, the drama, _Sunset_,
and _Pan_ (1894). Lieutenant Glahn, the hunter in this last book,
is happy in his hut and outdoors but is proudly unhappy in contact
with humanity; the tale ends in tragedy. Edvarda, the woman of this
story, is erotic and capricious to the point of disgust yet she has a
pathetic element in her nature.

_Victoria_ shows an advance away from the “Hamsun ego” of revolt and
naturalism towards that of poetry: Johannes, the hero, the miller’s
son, is in harmony with nature; even loss in love cannot blight his
soul. There are sentences of poetic diction in this novel and in
_Munken Vendt_ (1902), the dramatic poem which embodies the character
of a lovable, simple vagabond. One recalls the words of Edwin Björkman,
in the Introduction to his translation of _Hunger_; “The artist and the
vagabond seem equally to have been in the blood of Hamsun from the very
start.”[134] Before he attained to the second type of novel--the less
subjective and more idealistic group--(if idealism may be so expanded
in meaning) Hamsun wrote a trilogy of plays, beginning with _At the
Gates of the Kingdom_ (1895) with Kareno, a philosophical student
and writer, as hero, and a wife of sexual domination. The author’s
tenets about life and government are voiced by Kareno in this drama
and _Life’s Play_, ten years later in setting; the third in the cycle,
_Sunset_ (1898) shows Kareno at fifty, full of scientific doubts and
reactions from earlier aspirations for liberty and truth. The author
indulges his satire against professional “moralists” in these plays;
sometimes, he indulges, also, his unvarnished frankness of sensual
portrayals, and his lack of deference for old age. The play, _In the
Grip of Life_, was translated by Graham and Tristan Rawson and issued
in 1924 (Knopf). The women in his plays are, generally, animalistic, or
erotic, lacking diversity in types.

With the appearance of _Children of the Age_ (or _Children of the
Times_) in 1909, followed by _Segelfoss Town_ and _Growth of the Soil_,
the reader of persistent interest in Hamsun realized that the author
had orientated himself, that he was “finding his place” in literature.
He was still defying society, “the group,” still disclaiming belief
in democracy, but he had gained “a social vision.” In method
characteristic of many novelists, he has chosen a family, with strong
racial traits, the family of Willatz Holmsen, for the expression of
his sociological ideas. The despotic, anxious Willatz III, a retired
Lieutenant, is a character that lingers in memory; he is vitally real
in his relations with his wife, of higher social rank, and with his
son, the musicianly boy; he is dramatic and pathetic in his defiance
of Tobias Holmengraa, the industrial “king” from South America. The
last days of stubborn pride and loneliness are scenes of artistic
fiction. _Segelfoss Town_, written before _The Growth of the Soil_,
but translated afterwards by J. S. Scott (Knopf, 1925), continues the
story of this family and the departure of Holmengraa, after a financial
collapse, leaving behind his daughter, Mariane, half Mexican in blood,
who marries the commercial “leader of the small town. Segelfoss Town
has been called a ‘Norwegian Main Street.’” There is much irony and
reiterated sordidness in the tale. The telegraph operator, Baardsen, is
a daring, strong character.

In the Introduction to _Dreamers_, W. W. Worster (New York, 1922) calls
_The Growth of the Soil_ Hamsun’s “greatest triumph.” It is the _one_
book thus far appearing in American edition, that seems to win wide
reading. It is localized in setting, objective in theme, and universal
in human appeal. Isac (or Isak) is a convincing character of elemental
type. He symbolizes man, when face to face with nature. Inger is a
coarse Lapp woman in her physical nature yet she seeks expression for
finer feelings, even as she strangles the third baby girl that would
bear, through life, the mother’s curse of a hair lip. “Back to the
soil!” is the message of this masterpiece of Norwegian fiction. It has
a large group of Norwegian characters, and a challenging tone regarding
many moral issues, but it maintains artistic unity.

That Knut Hamsun has grown steadily in literary skill, that he has
written novels of vigor and photographic effects, cannot be denied.
That he has a philosophical attitude towards humanity and the driving
forces behind society (especially as applied to Norway), is also
evident. His self-education, his persistence, and his assimilated
judgment, together with caustic wit and grotesque humor, are other
qualities that must be accounted to his credit. On the other hand, he
is often slothful and diffuse in structure and offensive to æsthetic
minds because of his stress of sexual impulses and his coarseness.
He does not condone immorality but he seems indifferent to its
existence. In his personal convictions, however, he realizes the need
of a basic morality. Says Professor Wiehr: “It is just this absence
of ‘the triumph of a moral idea’ which will stand most in the way of
any popularity of Hamsun’s works with the great majority of American
readers.” Other explanations of Hamsun’s attitude towards Christianity
and “constructive ideas” are given in this excellent study by Professor
Wiehr.[135] He thinks that his countrymen, and “all backward nations,”
are in a much better position to follow his advice than the millions
that populate the countries leading the world in industries. Some
critics affirm that Hamsun’s compatriot, Johan Boyer, in his condensed,
dramatic novels, _The Great Hunger_, _The Last of the Vikings_, _A
Pilgrimage_, and _The Emigrants_ is more gifted as a novelist and
shows more evidences of idealistic vision. In his personal life,
Hamsun has revealed the traits of the wanderer, “vagabond” if you
will, combined with the deep-rooted love of home and devotion to his
countrymen in their industrial needs and their educational struggles.
He is not an optimist but he advocates persistent work and the
preservation of spiritual freedom and courage.


FOOTNOTES:

[125] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1920.

[126] _Knut Hamsun: His Personality and His Outlook upon Life_ by Josef
Wiehr, _Smith College Studies in Modern Languages_, Vol. III, Nos. 1
and 2, pp. 2, 3.

[127] _Literary Digest_ 67: 35, November 20, 1920.

[128] _Knut Hamsun: A Study_ by Hanna Arstrup Larsen, Knopf, New York,
1922.

[129] _Ibid._, p. 19.

[130] _Knut Hamsun: His Personality and His Outlook upon Life_,
Northampton, 1922.

[131] Introduction to _Hunger_ by Knut Hamsun, translated by Edwin
Björkman, New York, 1920. By permission of Alfred A. Knopf.

[132] _Knut Hamsun: His Personality and His Outlook upon Life_ by Josef
Wiehr, Northampton, 1922, pp. 8, 9. By permission of Prof. Wiehr.

[133] Introduction to _Hunger_, translated by Edwin Björkman.

[134] _Hunger_, translated by George Egerton, New York, 1920. By
permission of Alfred A. Knopf.

[135] _Knut Hamsun: His Personality and His Outlook upon Life_ by Josef
Wiehr, Northampton, 1922.




CHAPTER XIV

ANATOLE FRANCE--VERSATILE STYLIST IN FICTION AND ESSAYS


  The prize of 1921 has been awarded:

  Anatole France (Thibault, Jacques Anatole), Paris, born 1844; died
  1924: “in recognition of his splendid activity as an author,--an
  activity marked by noble style, large-hearted humanity, charm and
  French _esprit_.”[136]

When Anatole France, who had been the Nobel prize winner of 1921, died
in the autumn of 1924, there was scarcely a journal of standing in any
country that did not summarize his influence upon letters and life in
France and other nations. Distinctly Parisian in traits and expression,
this writer was broadly international in his analysis of humanity, in
his genial mockery of life, in his dreamy idealism which coexisted
with a ruthless realism. He had lived the full span of life--and
_lived_ it to the end of his eighty years. He had written in moods of
biting satire and emotional intensity; he had found themes in history,
current topics, and the future. As he neared the close of his life,
the emphasis was more upon the genial, kindly aspects of humanity;
his later literary expressions were memories of his boyhood and youth,
the completion of that cycle of intuitive memories that began with _My
Friend’s Book_ (1885) and _Pierre Nozière_, and ended with _Little
Pierre_ and _The Bloom of Life_ (1922).

[Illustration:

  _Copyright, 1925, by J. B. Lippincott Company._
  _Photograph by Choumoff, Paris_

ANATOLE FRANCE]

Between these volumes of imaginative and reminiscent delights, which
form a better biography of his mind and spirit than has otherwise been
written, Anatole France produced such diverse literary types, such
books of ironic and cynical flavor as _The Red Lily_, _Thaïs_, _The
Revolt of the Angels_, _The Amethyst Ring_, _At the Sign of the Reine
Pédauque_, _Crainquebille_, _The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife_, _The
Elm Tree on the Mall_, _Penguin Island_, _The Gods Are Athirst_, _The
Life of Jeanne d’Arc_, _The Human Comedy_, and volumes of critical
essays and poems. To the books of more reminiscent flavor, with wistful
idealism, he was indebted, especially, for the honor of the Nobel
prize. These had already won the tributes--and critical estimates--of
readers of European countries, of Canada, United States and South
America. Few writers have had such diverse judgments passed upon them;
in many cases, the temperamental traits of the critic influence his
reactions to this author; in other instances, most effusive tributes,
like those by James Lewis May and Paul Gsell, of recent years (1924),
have brought natural reactions in more unvarnished truth, tinged
with wit and naturalism, like the biography by Jean-Jacques Brousson:
_Anatole France Himself_ which has been called facetiously _Anatole
France in Bed-Slippers_ (the French title reads _Anatole France en
pantouffles_, 1925). Mr. May has written as a friend and warm admirer;
Paul Gsell, as a disciple; M. Brousson, as private secretary and
fearless narrator.

It might be said that Anatole France was _born_ into the inheritance of
books in 1844, for his father, François Noël Thibault, was a bookseller
of repute throughout Paris and its environs. Son of a shoemaker in
Anjou, this elder Thibault had taught himself to read and write while
he had been in military service as a young man. At his bookshops in
the Quai Malaquais and Quai Voltaire gathered scholars and authors,
iconoclasts in politics and letters and religion; the shopkeeper was
a Royalist and a fervent Catholic. In the character of Dr. Nozière,
in _Pierre Nozière_, his son “has taken away the bookshop,” as he
confesses, but he has revealed many traits of his father’s character.
In the Epilogue to _The Bloom of Life_ are other memories that may be
“capricious,” as he admits, but are none the less true “records” of his
childhood. Here his father’s lack of business instincts is suggested
as elsewhere--he would often prefer to _read_ his books rather than to
_sell_ them. The influence of these boyhood days in this bookshop,
with contact directly with thinkers and writers, with wits and critics,
must have been vital and permeating in the later development of Anatole
France as psychologist and stylist.

In his last hours, we are told, this famous writer who had been “a
genial mocker at life,” an epicurean and scoffer, a scholar of wide
culture, called upon the name of his mother. She had been the first,
and one of the most significant factors in his life-development. There
are passages of less deferential tone about her in _Anatole France
Himself: a Boswellian Record_, by Jean-Jacques Brousson (Philadelphia,
1925). She was of good Flemish family, with unfailing _esprit_ and
optimism, practical and able to “attend to the gears of household
management that got loose sometimes,” with an absent-minded father.
She was, however, a rare story-teller and devoted to her boy with
the unusual gifts which she alone, in his boyhood, could foresee and
encourage. How happy he was at home is revealed in many chapters of
his books--not alone those of acknowledged reminiscence but others
like _The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard_ and an occasional essay _On Life
and Letters_. By contrast with the joys of home--the delicate table
linen and decanters, the “tranquil faces,” the easy talk--he disliked
the classrooms and the restrictions of school life, declaring, “Ah,
Home is a famous school.” A sense of humor and a keen interest in
humanity made the life at the Collège Stanislas endurable but he loved
solitude; he resented the gibes of instructors and students, and he
stole away to the quays along the Seine at the hour of noon recess to
eat his luncheon--or to forget to eat it--and returned too late for the
afternoon session and his chance to recite.

It was his mother’s faith and intuition that refused to be severe with
him, even when the professor’s report of his school work was “progress
nil--conduct bad,” even when his father accepted the verdict of M.
Dubois, the professor, that the boy would never accomplish anything in
arts or sciences. Then his mother whispered words that he never forgot:
“Be a writer, my son; you have brains and you will make the envious
hold their tongues.” If his mother was the first vital influence in
making her son a world-famous writer, the second was the city of Paris
that he loved, studied and photographed on his memory from boyhood
to old age. The parks and avenues, the Louvre and the Trocadéro, the
sidewalk cafés and the bookshops beyond beautiful Notre-Dame, the
vivacious men and women, the workers on the streets and the children
in the playgrounds, the stately palaces and the tiny rooms above a
publishing shop--all these aspects of Paris form a panoramic picture in
his books.

In 1868, when Anatole France was an unknown, dreamy, book-browsing
young man of twenty-four, there appeared an _Etude_ of Alfred de
Vigny which was _his_ tribute to the poet who was “the exemplar of a
beautiful life, which gave beautiful work to the world.” The author was
known as one of a group of young men who gathered in the rue de Condé
to discuss poetry and other forms of writing. Two years later he was
serving in the army, trying to forget the shells that dropped in front
of him by reading Vergil or playing his flute.[137] In the years that
followed he wrote political satires, prefaces, read manuscripts for the
publisher Lemerre, collaborated in Larousse’s dictionary and did other
“odds and ends” of an editorial kind.

After the Franco-Prussian War, Lemerre published the small book of
verse to which Anatole France had devoted his leisure and zest,
_Poèmes après_. In spite of some stanzas of lyrical beauty they
attracted little attention. Better known is _The Bride of Corinth_ that
appeared three years later and revealed the author’s keen analysis of
paganism and early Christianity. It is translated with other plays
and poems by Wilfrid Jackson and Emilia Jackson, 1920. For a time
he was assistant to Leconte de Lisle in the Senate Library.[138]
As a witty conversationalist and brilliant companion, he was a
favorite in the salons of Catulle Mendes and Mme. Nina de Callias,
the would-be poet. At the home of M. de Bonnières, where gathered
actors, writers, and musicians, Anatole France was always welcomed. In
1881 appeared the book which registered the beginning of his popular
acclaim, _The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard_; one may say that it is
_the book_ by which, during the last forty years, the author has been
familiar to international readers, old and young. It is a simple
tale, sentimental, without much plot but with two marked qualities of
lasting appeal--sincerity and charm. Ten years later he laughed at its
continued popularity, especially the claim that it was “a masterpiece,”
saying “it was a masterpiece of platitudinousness,” adding that he
wrote it for a prize and won it.[139]

Predictions of future fame were expressed in reviews of this book and,
four years later, the public responded to _My Friend’s Book_, the first
of the cycle of youthful memories, vignettes of life which reveal the
author’s poetic reveries and friendly humanity. They differ from _The
Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard_ as the author gives here photographic
pictures of his boyhood, adolescence, and young manhood while in
Sylvestre Bonnard, the aged, lovable book-collector and Academician,
he gives an imaginative picture of what the author _may be_. He is
lonely and dominated by his cat, Hamilcar, and his housekeeper,
cherishing the romantic memories of Clementine, and is urged by these
sentiments to his sacrifice for her daughter. A few of his boyhood
memories, however, are incorporated into the early chapters of this
book--the craving for a doll, the silhouette of the uncle, Captain
Victor, and other pages of wistfulness and humor. Lafcadio Hearn, in
his Introduction to the translation of this classic _roman_, says
words that may be applied to the cycle of memories (for they all have
hall-marks of the author’s superb paradoxical genius). “If by Realism
we mean Truth, which alone gives value to any study of human nature,
we have in Anatole France a very dainty realist;--if by Romanticism we
understand that unconscious tendency of the artist to elevate truth
itself beyond the range of the familiar, and into the emotional realm
of aspiration, then Anatole France is at times a romantic.... It is
because of his far rarer power to deal with what is older than any art,
and withal more young, and incomparably more precious: the beauty of
what is beautiful in human emotion, that this story will live.”[140]

After 1886 the weekly “Causerie,” which Anatole France contributed _On
Life and Letters_ to the Paris _Temps_, increased his literary fame and
established his rank as critic. Here appeared such diverse, stimulating
judgments upon writers of the day, as Maupassant and Dumas, Balzac and
Marie Bashkirtseff, François Coppée (compared with Sully-Prudhomme and
Frédéric Plessis), Renan and George Sand; among topics of more general
interest were “Prince Bismarck,” “The Young Girl of the Past and the
Young Girl of the Present,” and “Virtue in France.” Four volumes of
these essays, _On Life and Letters_, have been translated into English.
It was nine years after _The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard_ that another
book appeared to rivet attention upon this industrious, progressive
author. He once declared that he wrote the earlier book “to please
the public” but that he wrote the later, _Thaïs_, to please himself.
In development of skill in fiction it is superior; it has been well
described as “an epic of eternal struggle between the spirit and the
senses.”[141] The author had passed through some emotional crises since
he wrote his earlier books of reminiscence, notably _My Friend’s Book_,
with its reflections of his happy home life and the whimsical domestic
discussions between the wife of his youth and himself about their
daughter, Susanne. He had traveled and become imbued with sensuous
beauty of southern lands; he had been annoyed, to the verge of anger,
by reactionists, represented in _Thaïs_ by Palaemon, “who would banish
joy and beauty from the world.” He made Nicias, often a skeptic in
his surface sentiments, his spokesman. The poet and the realist are
commingled in this tale of disillusionment, even as they are found
in the later, more vehement books of the novelist-satirist, _The Red
Lily_, _At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque_ (considered by many critics
his masterwork), _The Amethyst Ring_, _The Gods Are Athirst_, _The
Wicker-Work Woman_, _Penguin Island_, _The Revolt of the Angels_, and
shorter stories like _Crainquebille_, _The White Stone_, _The Seven
Wives of Bluebeard_, and _Tales from a Mother of Pearl Casket._

Fresh memories of the Dreyfus Case were awakened by his poignant satire
in _Penguin Island_ with its elements of burlesque. The author’s
historical research, which bore ripe fruits in _The Life of Jeanne
d’Arc_, is revealed in _The Gods Are Athirst_, with sardonic wit and
dramatic passages between Evariste, his mother, and his mistress.
Julie, his beautiful sister, appeals to the reader’s sympathy. The
ex-farmer of taxes, whose livelihood is now made by cutting out
cardboard dancing dolls, is a haunting character. He voices, perhaps,
the author’s attitude to life at this period--that is was full of
disillusionment and defeats but was not worth the cost of one’s anxiety
to the point of despair. In some of these satiric tales of life,
notably _The Revolt of the Angels_ when they come to Paris and behold
certain social conditions, there are passages so naturalistic that they
offend tastes of less “sophisticated” readers. Some of the books by
Anatole France were tabooed in libraries before the award of the Nobel
prize; the year after that was given, all of his works, without due
discrimination, were “placed on the Index” by the Roman Curia because
of excess of utterances that were communistic and anti-clerical in
tone. When he went to Stockholm to receive this prize in person he
was reported to have said, regarding the Treaty of Versailles, “the
most horrible of wars was followed by a treaty which was not a treaty
of peace but a prolongation of the war. The downfall of Europe is
inevitable unless at long last the spirit of reason is imported into
its councils.”[142]

In contrast to these fearless words that brought him the condemnation
of French journals, he made more urbane response to the literary honor
conferred upon him, adding to his personal gratitude, tribute to the
Swedish Academy: “Its decisions possess an international value,
and I rejoice in it, for it is a confirmation of what is, for me,
the principal lesson of the war, the beneficent influence exerted
by intellectual intercourse with other countries.” There had been
rumors, well attested, that the young men of France had repudiated
Anatole France as a leader, seeking other exponents of philosophy and
echoing the adverse comments upon him by Maurice Barrès and Henri
Massis, editor of _La Revue Universelle_. They contended that he
failed to give them a constructive philosophy in the hour of need.
He never claimed to be a philosopher; he was an observer of life, a
commentator, a poet-dreamer, a lover of justice, an ironist, a stylist
rather than a thinker. He was not widely read in other languages and
philosophies as were Georg Brandes or Sainte-Beuve. He bore some
relationship to Brotteaux of his story, _The Gods Are Athirst_, who was
condemned to death because of his lack of reverence for great political
revolutionists. Anatole France saw the world as a subject for keen
wit that is often sardonic but seldom bitter. He found life sadly in
contrast with some of his visions as a youth but he did not despair of
a future of more equality of conditions, more tolerance in creeds. Paul
Gsell, one of his hero-worshipers, in his records of conferences at the
Villa Saïd, the Paris home of “the Master,” has recalled significant
thoughts uttered by him upon “The Credo of a Skeptic,” “Politics in
the Academy,” and other themes.[143]

In his _Boswellian Record_ by Jean-Jacques Brousson (Lippincott,
1925) there are frank confessions of his “show conversations” and his
“contradictory ideas” which caused shyness and lack of clarity of
mind. He recalls “the almond icing” which he put on his first version
of _The Life of Jeanne d’Arc_, to be “picturesque” and to please “the
sanctimonious.” These “snap-shots” of Anatole France “en pantouffles,”
in moods of relaxation, are even less interesting than some of the
quotations of serious sort from the words of this master of style. Two
significant sentences will be often quoted; “You become a good writer
just as you become a good joiner; by planing down your sentences.”...
“People take me for a juggler, a sophist, a droll fellow. In reality I
have passed my life twisting dynamite into curl-papers.”[144]

Without question the return of Anatole France to the spirit and mode
of his earlier books, to the idealism, combined with photographic
vividness in _The Bloom of Life_, influenced the decision of the
Swedish Academy in his favor, in 1921. He was, in his old age,
living again the scenes of his youth--discussing with his schoolmate,
Fontanet, “People Who Do Not Give Enough”; playing truant from the
ferule of Monsieur Crottu whose rule “was a tissue of injustices”;
recalling “Days of Enchantment” when he went to his first play;
photographing “Monsieur Dubois, the Quiz,” and plucky Phillipine
Gobelin; and yielding again to the spell of Vergil and the Sixth
Eclogue, with its wonder and beauty. The stinging irony disappeared
from these later pages--irony which motivated such books (or portions
of them) as _Histoire contemporaine_ and _The Revolt of the Angels_ or
“A Mummer’s Tale” in _Histoire comique_.

Dual personality which resides in all persons was most marked in this
writer of charm and force, this exponent of his race, and of his age
among _all_ races. “Compassionate idealism” is the phrase chosen by
James Lewis May to explain the polemical essays and radical criticisms
of governments and religions, that are expressed or implied in many
of his writings. James Huneker calls him “a true humanist”; he thinks
he loved humanity and learning; he loved words, also, but he was “a
modern thinker, who has shed the despotism of the positivist dogma
and boasts the soul of a chameleon.”[145] He stresses his irony which
is “Pagan” and his pity which is “Christian.” Sisley Huddlestone, in
_Those Europeans_, devotes a chapter to Anatole France as “Ironist
and Dreamer.” The phrases are well chosen; the interpretation of
his salient traits is condensed but convincing: “In his irony one
constantly catches glimpses of beauty. By showing us life as it is,
though without bitterness, he indicates life as it should be. He
teaches tolerance and placidity in an age in which even the reformers
add to the confusion by their reckless energy.”[146]


FOOTNOTES:

[136] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1921.

[137] _Anatole France: the Man and His Work_ by James Lewis May, London
and New York, 1923, p. 72.

[138] _Studies from Ten Literatures_ by Ernest Boyd, New York, 1925.

[139] _Anatole France Himself_ by Jean-Jacques Brousson, Philadelphia,
1925.

[140] London, Bodley Head, Crown Edition, 1924, pp. v and ix. By
permission of Dodd, Mead & Co.

[141] _Anatole France: the Man and His Work_ by James Lewis May,
London, 1924, p. 120. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co.

[142] _Ibid._, p. 108. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co.

[143] _The Opinions of Anatole France_, recorded by Paul Gsell; in
American edition, _The Conversations_, etc., New York, 1924.

[144] _Anatole France Himself: a Boswellian Record_, by Jean-Jacques
Brousson, pp. 95, 347, Philadelphia, 1925. By permission of J. B.
Lippincott Co.

[145] _Egoists_ by James Huneker, New York, 1909, p. 143. By permission
of Charles Scribner’s Sons.

[146] _Those Europeans_ by Sisley Huddlestone, New York, 1924. By
permission of G. P. Putnam’s Sons.




CHAPTER XV

TWO SPANISH DRAMATISTS--ECHEGARAY (1904), BENAVENTE (1922)


  The prize of 1904 was awarded one half to:

  Echegaray, José, member of the Spanish Academy, born 1833, died
  September 14, 1916: “in appreciation of his comprehensive and
  intellectual authorship which, in an independent and original way,
  has brought to life again the great traditions of the Spanish
  drama.”[147]

Until recent years, Spanish literature has been less accessible by
translation than that of many other European countries. Fiction by
Galdós, Valera, Valdes, and Ibañez have given to English and American
readers somewhat adequate impressions of the realistic power and poetic
undertones of some of these latter-day novelists. In drama, three of
Galdós’ plays, nine by Martínez-Sierra, a dozen more by Echegaray,
and several by Benavente have been rendered into excellent English
by such gifted translators as John Garrett Underhill, James Graham,
Charles Nirdlinger, Hannah Lynch, Ruth Lansing, and others.[148] In
the awards to Spanish dramatists of the Nobel prize in 1904 and 1922,
two generations with their differing standards and literary methods,
have been represented--Echegaray and Benavente. In German literature,
as exampled by Heyse and Hauptmann, and in Polish fiction, with its
representatives, Sienkiewicz and Reymont, one finds the same recurrent
recognition in successive generations.

José Echegaray, who shared the honor of 1904 with Frédéric Mistral,
was born in Madrid in 1833; that city was his home until his death in
1916, except for periods of travel or retirement because of political
friction. As Sully-Prudhomme found his first impulse towards science,
so Echegaray studied mathematics “ferociously, ravenously.” He made
researches, also, in geology and philosophy. Under the republican
government he held public offices, like Ministers of Agriculture,
Industry, and Commerce, President of the Council of Education, and
Senator for Life. After teaching at the National Technical School,
where he had been educated, he became identified with the University of
Madrid.

At first the writing of plays seems to have been a pastime for this
mathematician and politician. _The Wife of the Avenger_, _At the Hilt
of the Sword_, and _The Gladiator of Ravenna_, which appeared between
1874 and 1876, were popular in Spain but are little known by English
translation. In 1877 he wrote a drama that has been much discussed,
since it was translated as _Madman or Saint_ by Ruth Lansing (Poet
Lore, Boston, 1912); another translation by Hannah Lynch (Boston, 1895)
bore the title, _Folly or Saintliness_. Still another translation by
Mary Serrano is used in _Library of the World’s Best Literature_. It
is a strong play emotionally, with that touch of idealism and romance
which were traits of the author, blended with his keen analysis. Don
Lorenzo, a wealthy man of Madrid, finds that he has been deceived
regarding his parentage; he is not the son of a rich mother of noble
family, as he and the world supposed, but the child of his nurse,
Juana, who dies after she tells him the tale. No longer young, with his
daughter engaged to a son of the Duchess of Almonte, he is determined
to tell the truth and so defy his family. A specialist in mental
disease is called with the physician to examine him; at the same time
he sends for a notary to record his renunciation of his name and
estate. His final monologue is dramatic, beginning with the lines:
“What! is a man to be declared mad because he is resolved to do his
duty. It cannot be! Humanity is neither so blind nor so bad as that!”

These earlier plays by Echegaray, which called forth such ardent praise
from his countrymen, who would rank him with Calderon and Lope de
Vega of the past centuries, are trivial in literary value beside two
of later years, _The Great Galeoto_ and _The Son of Don Juan_. Eleven
years separated these two strong dramas (1881-1892) during which the
author continued to write plays, some with historical setting like
_Harold the Norman_ and _Lysander the Bandit_; others were of romantic
type, some tragedies and more comedies. In general, he sought to
revive romantic drama, to proclaim the sharp conflicts in life between
passion and duty. His motives were often more pronounced than his
characterization; his men and women were sometimes mere mechanisms,
fighting their battles for honor and truth. There was a chivalrous
note in his lines where domestic fidelity formed the keynote of the
emotional struggle. Soliloquy was much used by this dramatist.

When _The Son of Don Juan_ and _Mariana_ were translated, and linked in
the memory of English readers with _The Great Galeoto_, world-critics
gave study to this forceful Spanish dramatist who had grown in favor
during the decade from 1890 to 1900. Two characteristics of _The Great
Galeoto_ were noted: the fearless, vigorous portrayal of the evil of
gossip and resultant tragedy; the fact that the chief personage in
the play exercised occult influence and did not appear on the stage.
He is the “busybody,” who creates all the troublesome situations,
who directs the characters (or suggests their words) but he is not
present. Elizabeth Wallace, in an article of value in the _Atlantic
Monthly_, September, 1908, on “The Spanish Drama of Today,” says: “This
vanishing hero is the cruel, careless world, hastening eagerly to cast
the first stone, and, so soon tired of the sport, hurrying on to find
some new excitement, leaving death and destruction in its wake.”[149]
This culprit is the city of Madrid (or society anywhere). There are
individualized characters like Theodora and Don Julian; Don Severo, the
plotter, may well be compared to Iago.

Even more virile than this romantic tragedy is _The Son of Don Juan_;
it suggests Ibsen’s _Ghosts_, both in germ-idea and _dénouement_,
although it has distinctive merit. Echegaray borrowed the words of the
Norwegian dramatist for the lines of Lazarus, “Mother, give me the
sun!” In the Prologue the Spanish author expands these symbolic words
to “enfold a world of ideas, an ocean of sentiments, a hell of sorrows,
a cruel lesson, a supreme warning to society and to the family circle.”
Society is, again, at the bar of justice, as in _The Great Galeoto_;
the offense this time is lax morality of parent, and the lunacy which
falls, in retribution, on the child. The mother of Lazarus is a
convincing character. In _Mariana_ are found some of the strongest
delineations in Echegaray’s dramas, notably Clara, wife of Don Castulo,
the grotesque archeologist, and Mariana, the widow, with riches in
America, described by Clara (in a touch of jealousy, yet appreciation)
as “a widow who is hardly a widow and is almost a child.” The latter
woman is capricious, disdainful, yet passionate in her relations with
her lover, Daniel. Melodrama enters somewhat into the closing scenes of
intrigue and excitement. James Graham has translated both _Mariana_ and
_The Son of Don Juan_.

Echegaray continued to write plays, stimulated by the recognition
and the honors of 1904. When the award was made, there was a popular
demonstration in Madrid; the king presided and presented the prize,
while speeches were made by Galdós, Valera, and Mendenez Palayo, who
had once been his bitter critic. On this occasion Palayo said: “For
thirty years Echegaray has been the dictator, arbiter and idol of the
multitude, a position impossible to attain without the strength of
genius, which triumphs in literature as everywhere.”[150] He was much
honored in France and called “a second Victor Hugo.” It has not been
easy for American students to interpret the plays by Echegaray; they
fail to understand fully, especially on the stage, the situations
and sentiments of the Spanish dramatist. Many of the keen, brilliant
lines, both of analysis and wit, suffer in translation into English.
For Drama League readings, or group study and discussion, his plays
lend themselves to interpretation and study. This is true, not alone
the longer and familiar dramas already noted but such short plays as
_Always Ridiculous_, translated by T. W. Gilkyson,[151] and _The Street
Singer_, translated by John Garrett Underhill[152] and included in
Frank Shay’s _25 Short Plays_ of international selection (New York,
1925). Irony and wistfulness are mingled in this dramatic picture of
the little beggar-girl, Suspiros, of Augustias, the street singer, and
her lover, Pepe. Suspiros, sixteen and pretty but sickly, speaks to
Coleta, a professional beggar of fifty years:[153]

  _Coleta._ You don’t know how to beg.

  _Suspiros._ Yes, sir, I know how to beg; the trouble is, people don’t
  know how to give. I say, “A penny for my poor mother who is sick.”
  And you ought to see how sick she is! She died two years ago. Well,
  I get nothing. Or else I say, “A penny for God’s sake, for my mother
  who is in the hospital, in the name of the Blessed Virgin! I have two
  baby brothers.” No one gives, either.

  _Coleta._ They don’t, eh? And how many brothers are you going to have
  to-night?

  _Suspiros._ Ay, Signor Coleta! I had two and nobody gave me anything.
  Last night I tried four and I got sixpence, so to-night I mean to
  have five and see what they give me, or whether I just get the cuff
  from my mother.

  _Coleta._ Just in the family, how many brothers have you, really?

  _Suspiros._ Really, I had two. But they died, like my mother. Ay!
  they died because of the way my stepmother treated them--as she does
  me--and I am dying! Listen! If I can make two or three dollars I am
  going to run away to Jativa, and live with my aunt.

Echegaray was seventy-two years old when he gained the prize; he
was already called by some critics a “representative of the older
generation.” Interest in his plays, however, has gained rather than
waned, among critical scholars in every country, and his rank is
assured among the romantic dramatists of this century. His seriousness,
combined with keen wit and insight, has been compared with similar
traits of Tolstoy. Both writers have emphasized the “dignity of
suffering” for the sake of spiritual freedom. This is exampled in
Echegaray’s _Madman or Saint_, already cited. Conscientious and sincere
in his work, this Spanish dramatist has left a few plays of strong
characterization and potent message to society, a message that has an
element of idealism, flashing out amid the grim realities of life.


JACINTO BENAVENTE

  The prize of 1922 has been awarded:

  Benavente, Jacinto, dramatic writer, Madrid, born 1866: “for the
  happy way in which he has pursued the honored traditions of the
  Spanish drama.”[154]

Jacinto Benavente, to whom the Nobel prize was given in 1922, was
acclaimed as especially worthy by those who sought for a representative
of “the new generation” in Spanish drama--what was known as “the
generation of 1898” which decried past methods and urged modern themes
and viewpoints. Benavente was born in Madrid in 1866, a generation
younger than Echegaray. His father was a prominent physician and the
boy had stimulating home environment. He studied law for a brief time
but he inclined towards writing and the theatre. He had some actual
experiences “on the road” with theatrical troupes and with a circus,
thus gaining first-hand information about theatrical devices and the
needs of both actors and audiences. His first venture in print was as
a poet, in 1893, but the next year he published a play, _Thy Brother’s
House_. This and other immature plays received scanty notice until,
in 1896, appeared _In Society_. Two years later _The Banquet of Wild
Beasts_ focussed attention upon this daring, brilliant playwright. He
became a leader among young professional men in Madrid who, following
the Spanish-American War, were eager to renounce tradition and to
revolutionize society by exposing its vices and weaknesses. They would
punctuate “modernism” in thought and expression with ideals of poetry.
A summary of this is found in _A Study of the Modern Drama_ by Barrett
H. Clark (New York, 1925).

Benavente is less radical than some of his literary associates in
Spain, France, and Russia. He does not disdain “traditions,” if they
ring true to life and art. He is graceful and versatile, writing plays
of manner and characterization, satires on aristocracy and sympathetic
scenes of peasant life. He compels his readers or spectators to
_think_, if they will get stimulus from his plays like _The Truth_,
_Autumnal Roses_, _The Magic of an Hour_, and _Field of Ermine_.

In 1913, Benavente was elected to membership in the Spanish Academy.
He is widely quoted on educational and political, as well as literary
affairs. He has ideals for a greater freedom than now exists in Spain
and other European countries. He has traveled widely, seeing his plays
performed and making friends in Russia, England, South America, and
the United States. _The Passion Flower_ (_La Malquerida_), the tragedy
of peasant life with colorful setting and tense emotion, has been
popular in America, as a film, and as a play with Nance O’Neil as
actress. The Theatre Guild of New York and the Jewish Art Theatre gave
careful study to the interpretation of _The Bonds of Interest_. As in
many of his plays the serious lesson is not stressed to interfere with
the artistry. One of his best characterizations is Nevé, heroine of
_El Hombrecito_, often compared to Ibsen’s Nora of _A Doll’s House_.
Benavente believes that the inner meaning of a play must be revealed
by the mind or emotions of the spectator or reader. He is deeply
indebted--a debt which English and American readers share--for the
intuitive, careful translations and editing of several series of his
plays by John Garrett Underhill (Scribner’s, New York, 1917-1925).
Only in such interpretation can one fully appreciate the strength and
fineness of character-drawing, the satirical thesis, the fantasy and
poetry blended in such plays as _The Governor’s Wife_, _The Prince
Who Learned Everything out of Books_, _Saturday Night_, _The Other
Honor_, and _The Necklace of Stars_, with its fanciful charm and
sermonic lesson of love to one’s neighbor. In Ernest Boyd’s _Studies
from Ten Literatures_ there is a good summary of his life and work
which includes 144 plays. Mr. Boyd raises the question, “Has he been
overestimated?” Possibly it is an echo of French criticism. Valuable
material is found, also, in Storm Jameson’s _Modern Drama in Europe_
and _A Study of the Modern Drama_ by Barrett H. Clark (New York,
1925). A new intensive study is _Jacinto Benavente_ by Walter Starkie
(New York, 1925).

[Illustration:

  _Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._

JACINTO BENAVENTE]

_Expressionism_ classifies the work of dramatists like Benavente,
Molnar, and Capek. The methods used by the Spanish playwright to embody
this principle are to “generalize” both the action and his characters,
so that they become symbols of real life, appealing to the subjective
element in readers. He has declared that, henceforth, he intends to
write plays for publication and not for the theatre.... “The only way
in which a play may be appreciated thoroughly is by being read,” he
says. “I have written more than a thousand parts, yet of that number
I can recall perhaps five which I have recognized as being truly the
characters I had conceived, when they stepped upon the stage. I have
not even seen some of my plays.”[155] This stress upon the futility
of staging plays that should be interpreted by the reader’s own
imagination and mind, is not unlike that by Maeterlinck, already noted
in a previous chapter.

Benavente not infrequently uses puppets in place of real characters
to convey his inner meanings. Sometimes they are given real names but
they are not the _true_ characters he wishes the reader to discover
in them, as in the first scenes of _The Bonds of Interest_. In a
brief parable-play, _The Magic of an Hour_,[156] he has two symbolic
characters, “A Merveilleuse” and “An Incroyable,” two porcelain
figures upon columns that converse about life and love, books and
flowers, poetry and music. In this adroit, short comedy the author has
interwoven some thoughts that express that peculiar idealism which is
his, that contrast between weak humanity and the craving “for something
which is not ourselves, and yet which is the breath of living.” The
nearest approach to this ideal is love, which can transform, “by the
magic of an hour,” evil, men-beasts, cowards, “devils in crime,” into
“spirits of light, luminous with a divine wisdom through all instincts
of the beast.”[157] In sentences of such groping faith, such idealism
of the “inner eye,” scattered through the hundred and more plays by
Jacinto Benavente, one may establish, in a measure, his right to the
Nobel prize. With this is blended what Storm Jameson calls his “divine
sanity.” On the score of literary achievement, he is an artist,
versatile and sincere, delicate and yet vigorous in his workmanship.
His plays vary in value for the student of drama; some of the later
titles, like _A Pair of Shoes_ or _Doubtful Virtue_, indicate the
types of psychological plays among Continental playwrights. In his
finer, more characteristic plays, however, there are vital expressions
of idealism. Mr. John Garrett Underhill (in a letter to the author of
this book) says, “Benavente is an idealist of the highest type and
his philosophy is best and most explicitly stated in _The School of
Princesses_ and _Field of Ermine_--service and sacrifice.”


FOOTNOTES:

[147] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1904.

[148] See _A Study of Modern Drama_ by Barrett H. Clark, New York,
1925, and _Modern Drama in Europe_ by Storm Jameson, New York, 1920.

[149] By permission of the Atlantic Monthly Company.

[150] _Review of Reviews_, 31: 613.

[151] _Poet Lore_, Boston, 1908.

[152] _Drama_, 25, 62-76.

[153] By permission of John Garrett Underhill.

[154] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1922.

[155] _Plays_; fourth series, xix, edited by John Garrett Underhill. By
permission of Mr. Underhill and Charles Scribner’s Sons.

[156] _Ibid._

[157] _Ibid._, _Magic of an Hour_, p. 125.




CHAPTER XVI

W. B. YEATS AND HIS PART IN THE CELTIC REVIVAL


  The prize of 1923 has been awarded:

  Yeats, William Butler, born 1865: “for his consistently emotional
  poetry, which in the strictest artistic form expresses a people’s
  spirit.”[158]

In the book, _Ideals in Ireland_, edited by Lady Gregory (London and
New York, 1901), the editor speaks of the various contributors to this
revival of letters including George Moore, Æ (George Russell), Douglas
Hyde and W. B. Yeats as “candle-stick makers.” Unlike the “butcher and
the baker,” who have their daily newspaper and appointed tasks that are
appreciated, this type of worker, who makes and holds the candle, is
not so well served. He is the _idealist_ who finds himself, too often,
ignored or maligned; he searches out the “dark places of the earth”;
he is the seer, seeking for truth, aspiration, idealism. This analogy
holds good for many of the winners of the Nobel prizes--Björnson,
Mistral, Tagore, Maeterlinck, Selma Lagerlöf, Heidenstam, Rolland. By
universal consent of readers the name of W. B. Yeats would be added to
this list, the winner of 1923. With delicate imagery Lady Gregory has
expressed the subtle gift of this Irish poet-dramatist, his ability to
catch “the will o’ the wisp fire, miscalled evanescent,” which is the
mark of universal idealism. In his paper, contributed to this book,
_Ideals in Ireland_, Mr. Yeats writes a brief “History of the Literary
Movement” in his country and asks whether this revival of folklore and
poetry of the soil, which is called the Celtic revival, will become a
part of the intellectual and social development of Ireland. These words
were written in 1899; the quarter century since then has answered the
question in the affirmative and has accorded to Mr. Yeats a large share
in this appreciation of simple beauty, love, and chivalry. The names of
Donn Byrne and Padraic Colum, James Stephens and Winifred Letts, Lord
Dunsany and St. John Ervine, suggest some of the poets and playwrights,
“the candle-holders,” who have followed the inspiring leadership of
Lady Gregory, John Synge, Dr. Douglas Hyde, and W. B. Yeats, weaving
their romances and poems about old ballads and folklore of the
“sage-cycles” of Irish literary history. In this Gaelic literature are
songs of battles and of love, legends of saints and heroes, that have
the simplicity and musical vigor of old Greek odes and plays.

[Illustration:

  _Photograph by Bain News Service_

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS]

As dramatist, certain critics will aver, with reason, that Synge was
greater than Mr. Yeats; as researcher among the peasantry for folk
tales and forgotten poetry, Lady Gregory and Dr. Douglas Hyde may
deserve higher rank. In the writings of Mr. Yeats, however--lyrics,
ballads, and plays--there are three distinctive qualities: lyrical
beauty, mystical strains, blended wistfulness, and merriment. These
poetic distinctions are found in many of his ballads, notably in “The
Host of the Air,” “The Stolen Child,” and “The Fiddler of Dooney”; they
form the literary warp of such plays as _The Land of Heart’s Desire_,
_The Hour-Glass_, and _On Baile’s Strand_. In every edition of his
plays Mr. Yeats has emphasized his indebtedness to Lady Gregory for
assistance as well as inspiration. In his Notes to _Plays in Prose and
Verse_ (New York, 1924) he acknowledges the sources of “the greater
number of his stories,” as those found in Lady Gregory’s _Gods and
Fighting Men_ and _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_. He affirms that these
two books have made the legendary tales of Ireland as familiar as
are the stories of Sir Arthur and his Knights. Again, he records his
gratitude to Lady Gregory for introducing him to firesides where he
might get “the true countenance of country life.” A third form of
helpfulness was the skill of this friend in her mastery of dialect and
her generous work in revising the lines of Mr. Yeats in this detail
of form. His own ability to evoke music and poetry from dreams and
traditions, and to portray the simple, domestic incidents of peasant
life, was coördinated with Lady Gregory’s aspiration and background of
folklore.

The father of William Butler Yeats was a well-known artist, John Butler
Yeats, R.H.A. The son, named for his paternal grandfather, was born
at Sandymount, Dublin, June 15, 1865. His father’s family had been
identified with the church; the grandfather of the poet was Rector of
Tullylish Down. His mother’s father was a merchant and shipowner at
Sligo. The boy passed much time with these grandparents in the old
town by the sea. When he was of school age, he was living with his
parents in London and went to the Godolphin School, Hammersmith. At
fifteen he returned to Dublin, attending the Erasmus Smith School and
living with his relatives at Sligo. Memories of these early days are
interwoven with legends and fancies in _The Celtic Twilight_, and the
novel of autobiographical trend, _John Sherman_, which appeared under
the pseudonym of “Gauconagh.” Like his hero of this tale, Yeats was
homesick in London and longed to return to the environment of Sligo (or
Ballah), to the familiar streets, the rows of tumble-down cottages
with thatched roofs, the wharves covered with grass and the walls of
the garden where, it was said, the gardener used to see the ghost of
the former owner in the form of a rabbit.[159] In his poems he recalled
the waves dashing upon the cliffs, the island of Innisfree, and the
distant hills at sunset.

His father hoped he would become an artist and so continue the family
profession; the youth studied art for a brief time but he was restless
and unproductive. He preferred to browse in libraries, reading
translations--or making them--from Gaelic tales and poems. Even more he
liked to sit by the turf fires in old Connaught and listen to the folk
tales of the peasantry. The first poem in his collection of 1906, is
addressed “To Some I Have Talked With By the Fire.” Here he saw again,
in reverie, the ghostly companions and heard the weird tales of

                  the dark folk who lived in souls
    Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees.

When he was nineteen his first poem, “The Island of Statues,” was
published in the _Dublin University Review_. With other young men at
the University he became interested in a Brahmin, who was in London;
on their invitation he came to Dublin to teach his philosophy. This
yearning towards the occult was natural for a temperament like that
of Yeats. He recalled that they fed the Brahmin a plate of rice or an
apple every day and listened to his expositions.

Mrs. Katherine Tynan Hinkson, a friend of Yeats in young manhood
and later life, in her _Twenty-Five Years; Reminiscences_ has given
interesting stories of his zest in reciting his poems, even in the
middle of the night and of his dreamy, gentle nature. In 1889, _The
Wanderings of Oison_ established the fame of the young Irish lyrist.
Besides the title-poem here were “The Stolen Child” and “The Madness
of King Goll.” Influences of Tom Moore were traceable in a poem, with
lilting rhymes, like “Down by the Salley Gardens,” pictorial and
sentimental. In London, after the poems were published, Yeats was
still homesick, although he made congenial friends at the Cheshire
Cheese--Arthur Symons, Lionel Johnson, and W. E. Henley, who obtained
for him a commission to write some topics about Ireland for Chambers’
_Encyclopedia_. His interest was strong in varied “cults” and forms of
symbolism which he revealed in his poems, _The Wind Among the Reeds_,
and the essays, _Ideas of Good and Evil_.

Mr. Yeats is both lyrist and playwright; to the latter type of writing
he owes his recognition by students of the drama in every country;
the two qualities are interwoven in his plays. George Moore, Lady
Gregory, Forrest Reid, his critic and biographer, and others have
stressed his large part in the success, as well as the inception, of
the Abbey Theatre, “a gift of immense and national importance upon
Ireland.”[160] One would not minimize the work of Lady Gregory and
Douglas Hyde, of William Fay and Florence Farr and Miss Horniman, who
contributed as actors, playwrights, and financial supporters. The
assurance of this theater for performance of his plays gave incentive
to the dramatic impulse of Yeats. He created new plots and utilized
folk tales interwoven with fantasy and poetry. With the aid of Lady
Gregory and Edward Martyn, he won success with plays like _The Pot of
Broth_, _Cathleen ni Hoolihan_, _The King’s Threshold_, _The Land of
Heart’s Desire_, _Deirdre_ and _The Hour-Glass_. This last play, first
in prose, later in verse, is a masterpiece of the morality-play; the
Wise Man, faced with death within an hour, goes desperately in search
for “one person who believes in God and Heaven,” so that he may go
to Paradise. Only in Teague, the fool, who has learned his lessons,
_not_ in the schools of the Wise Men but in the _woods_, can he find
such assurance. In later versions of this play the author introduced a
strange Gaelic ballad.

In his Notes to the volume of _Plays in Prose and Verse_, recently
reissued (New York, 1924), Mr. Yeats gives credit for the first use
of correct dialect to Synge’s _Riders to the Sea_ and Lady Gregory’s
_Spreading the News_. In this same Note he declares that his words
“never flow freely but when people speak in verse”: it need not be
rhymed verse, for some of the finest lines in _Deirdre_ and _The
King’s Threshold_ are _rhythmical_ but not in rhyme. In _The Land of
Heart’s Desire_ the poet-playwright’s words all “flow freely.” This
is a general favorite among his plays with professionals and amateurs
upon the stage. Forrest Reid may be extreme in praise when he calls
it “the most beautiful thing that has been done in our time,” for it
invites comparison with _The Sunken Bell_, _Peter Pan_, and _The Blue
Bird_ among poetic, fanciful plays. It lingers in memory, however, as
pictorial and dramatic, simple and beautiful in May Eve legends and
“fairy spell,” in the natural characters, well contrasted, of Maire
Bruin and her husband, Shawn, of Father Hart and the old parents by the
fireside. That is an exquisite couplet that Maire speaks to her sturdy
husband, when the fairy calls,

    O you are the great door-post of this house,
    And I the red nasturtium climbing up.[161]

_The Shadowy Waters_ is another symbolic play, with an undertone of
idealism. Begun when Yeats was young, it changed form often before the
poet was satisfied. Into this he has introduced varied types--the magic
harpist, the sailors, and Dectora, the restless, craving woman. The
king, Forgel, who cares not for gold or fame, voices some tenets of the
author’s creed in the lines:

                        All would be well
    Could we but give us wholly to the dreams,
    And get into their world that to the sense
    Is shadow, and not linger wretchedly
    Among substantial things; for it is dreams
    That lift us to the flowing, changing world
    That the heart longs for.[162]

Mr. Yeats has ever been a dreamer-poet; he said once that, if our
dreams could all come true, there might not be any poetry to be
written; so we are told by his biographer, Forrest Reid. Many of
his dreams are embodied in his lyrics, his plays, his short stories
and sketches, and his essays, _Ideas of Good and Evil_. _The Celtic
Twilight_ and _The Secret Rose_ contain some of his most fanciful,
poetic tales; “The Binding of the Hair” is an example of his highest
art in this form. Dreams of love and service are found in the volumes
of poems, like _The Wind Among the Reeds_, _In the Seven Woods_,
_The Wild Swans at Coole_, and _Responsibilities_. These separate
collections are now appearing in the uniform edition of his _Works_
(Macmillan). Like Keats and William Blake, Mr. Yeats has been
criticized for the lack of human contacts; he has been accused of
more interest in and sympathy with waves and winds, with trees and
fairy-lore than with deep human emotions. His absorption emotionally
seems to be in lyrical and spiritual rhapsodies. In reading a love
lyric, like “A Poet to His Beloved,” one feels that the dreams and
the words are more ardent than the passion of love. One of the best
interpretive essays ever written upon Shelley is found in _Ideas of
Good and Evil_; these two poets were alike in many moods, in their
delicate, elusive fancies. In the exquisite diction of some of his
lines, and the fluctuating moods that affect his themes and modes of
expression, Mr. Yeats seems to me comparable to Thomas Bailey Aldrich
and such delicate lyrics, as “Nocturne” and “A Mood.”

In these later years Mr. Yeats has carried his ideals into more
active life; he has undertaken _Responsibilities_ other than poetic
expression. He has been deeply concerned about the future of Ireland
and has been a member of the Senate of the Irish Free State. He has
become a leader in political and educational, as well as literary,
movements. Through the _Daily Express of Dublin_, he entered the lists
of combatants against Bernard Shaw and his adherents who maintained
that “poetry is a criticism of life.” In expanded thought upon this
idea, in _Literary Ideals in Ireland_, Mr. Yeats has prophesied that,
as the years pass, the function of poetry as _criticism_ will be
discarded; for it, will be substituted poetry as _revelation_ of life,
sometimes in tangible forms, more often in idealistic spirit.


FOOTNOTES:

[158] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1923.

[159] John Sherman, pp. 88-90, and _W. B. Yeats: a Critical Study_ by
Forrest Reid, New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1915.

[160] _Op. cit._, p. 151.

[161] _Land of Heart’s Desire_ by W. B. Yeats, copyright by W. B.
Yeats, New York, 1911; also in _Plays and Controversies_, New York,
1925. By permission of the Macmillan Co.

[162] _Poems_ by W. B. Yeats, copyright by W. B. Yeats, New York, 1911,
1919, pp. 206, 207. By permission of the Macmillan Co.




CHAPTER XVII

HONORS TO POLISH FICTION--SIENKIEWICZ (1905), REYMONT (1924)


  The prize of 1905 has been awarded:

  Sienkiewicz, Henryk, born 1846, died November 16, 1916: “because of
  his splendid merits as an author of historical novels.”[163]

As has been noted in previous chapters, in the Nobel prizes in
literature, exponents of the same kind of writing in a country have
been honored in successive generations. Björnson and Knut Hamsun, Heyse
and Hauptmann, Echegaray and Benavente, Anatole France and Rolland,
Henryk Sienkiewicz and Ladislaw Reymont are examples of such awards.
Another inference from the lists of winners is that the adjudicators
wish to recognize the aspirations and achievements of small countries
that are too often overlooked upon the map of world literature. Thus
Denmark and Switzerland, Ireland and Belgium have shared with the
so-called “great nations” of Europe. Twice has Poland been selected
for recognition. The very name suggests struggle and oppression on
one hand, hope and faith in ultimate right on the other. In spite of
tragic sadness, the messages of Poland in art and literature have been
vital and lofty in idealism. Some of the melancholy and passionate
yearning of later Poland has been expressed in the poets Michievicz
and Slowacki, who are allied in their moods with Chopin; the “Funeral
March” was described by Liszt as “the murmuring plaint of a whole
nation following the bier of its dearest hopes.”[164] In his book,
_Poland Reborn_, with keen analysis of advance in education and
literary opportunities, Roy Devereux says, “Henceforward there will not
be need for Polish men of letters like Henryk Sienkiewicz, who belongs
as much to Western Europe as to Poland, to seek the protection of a
foreign flag for their literary labours.”[165] To Sienkiewicz came
the Nobel award in 1905, a surprise to European critics and a blow to
Russian aspirants for the honor.

[Illustration:

  _Copyright, 1912, by Little, Brown and Company_

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ]

Born in Lithuania, at Wola Okrzejska, in 1846, he was sixty when
he received the prize; he was already known by translation to
international readers. He belonged to a patrician family and was
educated at the University of Warsaw until political conditions,
following the revolution of 1863, caused him to leave Poland for
Russia, where he edited a journal at St. Petersburg. He wanted to know
more of the world so he traveled, in gypsy or Bohemian fashion, in
Southern Europe; in 1876 he came to America, to Los Angeles, seeking
to found there a Polish Commonwealth of Utopian type. He had written
tales and travel sketches under the pseudonym of “Litwos”--_Nobody
is a Prophet in his own Country_ and _From the Notebook of a Posen_.
He wrote impressions of America for a Warsaw newspaper; among these
earlier sketches were “Janko, the Musician,” “Across the Prairies,”
and “In Tartar Captivity.” A later tale, “The Old Bell-Ringer,” was
patriotic and wistful.

In 1880 he returned to Poland where he faced sadness in the death
of his wife with the panacea of work upon his trilogy of historical
romances of Poland. For eight years he worked winters in Warsaw at
libraries and in his study, in summers in the Carpathian mountains.
The results were the long, imaginative but strictly historical tales
of _With Fire and Sword_, relating events from 1647 to 1651, _The
Deluge_, from 1652 to 1657, and _Pan Michael_, dealing with the Turkish
invasion and incidents from 1670 to 1674. This cycle of romances showed
scholarship and dramatic ability, especially in the first and third
stories of the trilogy. The background is panoramic; the dialogue is
natural in most places. The author visualized individuals and the
Polish people, under sentiments of distress, fear, love, conflict,
and aspiration. The qualities of honor, patriotism, and faith are
emphasized in these portrayals of Poland, under successive invasions of
Cossacks, Swedes, and Turks. He idealized Poland and gave hope to his
people.

Modern Poland was the setting for his next series of tales, _Without
Dogma_ and _Children of the Soil_. The former is pathological and
tragic, the diary of Leon Ploszowski, aristocrat and bore, and his love
for his cousin, Aneila. The vices of modern society and self-indulgent
forces are in sharp contrast with the heroes of the trilogy. For many
years he had studied early Christianity with its opposing force,
Paganism. In 1896 he wrote his masterpiece, _Quo Vadis_, which has
been called “an epochal book.” In many translations it was familiar to
readers before the Nobel prize was given to its author. Of somewhat
similar trend was the later brief message, _Let Us Follow Him_, which
appeared in a single book and is included in the collection of stories
and sketches, _Hania_, in translations by C. W. Dynicwicz, Jeremiah
Curtin, and Casimir Gonski.[166]

The confessed purpose of _Quo Vadis_ was to show “how God’s truth,
because it is the only Truth, conquered pagan might.” The sustained
interest in this religio-historical novel is not gained by melodrama
or sensational intrigues. It has breadth and dignity. The characters
vary in vividness but among the outstanding photographs are Paul
and Petronius, Ursus and Chilo, and the girl captive, Ligeia. He
called the tale “A Narrative of the Time of Nero.” The background was
convincing but Nero was not successfully drawn; even such a master
of characterization as Sienkiewicz could not make the Roman emperor
vitally real to modern readers but he introduced several dramatic
situations that center about his baffling personality. The question
of the title, “Whither goest thou?” was asked of the modern world of
unrest and discord, even as it was asked in the days of the apostles;
the author felt the need of guides of to-day to hold up the banner of
faith and service.

Sympathy and spirituality were qualities found, not alone in _Quo
Vadis_ but in many other works in fiction by this Polish writer.
_Knights of the Cross_, recounting the struggle between the Poles and
Lithuanians against the Teutons, is a favorite with many readers.
_After Bread: a Story of Polish Emigrant Life in America_ (also
entitled, _For Daily Bread_ and _Peasants in Exile_) is typical of his
tales of emigration. _On the Field of Glory_ celebrates Sobieski’s
rescue of Vienna. Few authors have been so fortunate in English
translators as this Polish novelist. Jeremiah Curtin, S. A. Binion,
and S. C. de Soissons are among the best known; they have given
fine interpretations to his historical trilogy, his religious novel,
and such other stories as _On the Field of Glory_, _On the Bright
Shore_, _In Desert and Wilderness_, _That Third Woman_, and _In Vain_.
Sienkiewicz lived until 1916, alert and productive, ever exemplifying
the word that he used in a criticism of Zola, “The novel should
strengthen life, not undermine it; ennoble it, not defile it; bring
good tidings, not evil.”


LADISLAW STANISLAW REYMONT

  The prize of 1924 has been awarded:

  To Reymont, Ladislaw, born 1868: “For his great epic, _The
  Peasants_.”[167]

Again, a new generation has come “to hold the candle to light the dark
corners of the earth” in Poland, since Henryk Sienkiewicz wrote his
novels of historical and religious potency. A new group of authors
had come forward, many of them scarcely known outside their racial
confines. Among the better known of the representatives of “Young
Poland” is Ladislaw Reymont to whom the Nobel prize was given in
1924. A few weeks before this award was made public there appeared a
translation of the first part of the four-volume novel, _The Peasants_
by Reymont, with the title, _Autumn_ (Knopf, New York, 1925). The
translator was Michael H. Dziewicki, Professor of English Literature
at the University of Cracow. The book attracted meager attention
until the Nobel prize was announced; then a furor of interest was
aroused in this first volume and those to appear since then--_Winter_,
_Spring_, and _Summer_. Reymont had visited America twice but escaped
much publicity. He had been translated into English as author of _The
Comedienne_ (1920), the tale of a girl who sought to be beautiful and
famous on the stage but ended in “philisticism.” Some of his short
stories had been included in a collection of Polish tales, in the
Oxford University series of _World Classics_ (1921). An extract from
his industrial novel, _The Promised Land_, was used in the _Anthology
of Modern Slavonic Literature_, edited by Paul Selver, in 1921. He has
written more than a score of novels, and is well known and commended in
Germany. Comparisons to Sienkiewicz reveal more pictorial skill, more
dramatic vigor like that of Dumas, in the older writer, but a realistic
force of surpassing effects in Reymont.

His family was of the lower middle class. His father was a windmill
owner in Kobiala Wielka, then in Russian Poland, where the author was
born in 1868. He went to the village school and attended to the cattle
and farm work. One of the interpreters of Reymont to Americans has
been Rupert Hughes; in the translation of his Preface to the German
edition of _The Peasants_ we read,[168] “Reymont was born to be the
epic poet of the Polish village. He is, in spite of his foreign name,
a child of that strange, uncouth world where he began his life among
goose boys and cowherders, where he drove the herds of his father, the
village organist, and whence he has climbed to the rank of a beloved
and recognized poet, spending a large part of his life in Paris, the
centre of modern culture.” Reymont attended some of the gymnasiums, or
High Schools, but he was defiant to the Russian demand _not_ to speak
in Polish; sometimes he was expelled.[169]

Several trades and occupations gave Reymont experiences which he
has used in some of his fiction. He was a clerk in a store, railway
employee, telegraph operator, and longed to travel like the hero
of _The Dreamer_. For a time he was actor in a small company whose
reflections are found in _The Comedienne_ and _Lilly_. He was, also,
a novitiate with the Paulist Fathers for a time at Czenstochowa.
_The Promised Land_, with scenes laid at Lotz and indications of
revolt against the capitalists and landowners (on the part of the
proletariat) was a forerunner of his agrarian novel, _The Peasants_.
The earlier book has been compared with Zola’s _Germinal_ in intense
naturalism. In this long story, _The Peasants_, Reymont became the
“mouthpiece of the peasant and rural elements.” Combined with Reymont’s
devotion to the peasant village as “protagonist,” is his passion for
Nature in her varied aspects; hence he made his divisions of the book
to show the four seasons. Like Thomas Hardy and George Meredith he uses
Nature as a vital personality in his story, aiding or restraining the
development of his leading characters, especially Yagna, who has been
called “a Polish Tess.” The English author is superior in condensation
and dramatic sympathy.

To use the Polish peasant as literary material is no exclusive trait of
Reymont; he has been portrayed by other writers like Ladislaw Orkan,
Jan Kasprowicz, and Stanislaw Prybyszewsski. In _The Peasants_ the slow
movement is varied by scenes of intense emotion, like the marriage
festival in _Autumn_, or the death of Kuba, like the passionate quest
of Yagna and Antek in _Winter_, and the bitter fight between father and
son, husband and lover of Yagna, or the tragic, gruesome scene of the
death of the father, old Boryna, in the last pages of _Spring_. The
mob-attack upon Yagna, at the close of _Summer_, grips the reader and
makes a strong climax to the epical story. In addition to specific,
haunting situations, there are interwoven customs and legends and
a wonderful collection of Polish proverbs (a mine of literature!).
Passions of love and hate and revenge, the constant excess of vodka
and clouded minds, fear of landlord and slumbering revolt against the
loss of forest lands and oncoming industrial domination--such are
significant factors in this panoramic novel. In the background is the
dull color of the soil, the rank smells and fragrant odors of farmyards
and woods, sunsets of splendor, and terrifying storms. One of the
most poetic, idealistic passages is the last chapter in _Autumn_, the
passing of the soul of faithful Kuba, after his long years of service
and keen suffering:

  And higher yet it flew, and higher, yet higher, higher--yea, till it
  set its feet--

  Where man can hear no longer the voice of lamentation, nor the
  mournful discords of all things that breathe--

  Where only fragrant lilies exhale balmy odours, where fields of
  flowers in bloom waft honey-sweet scents athwart the air; where
  starry rivers roll over beds of a million hues; where night comes
  never at all--[170]

Many passages in this novel are repugnant to Anglo-Saxon æsthetic
tastes, if one is unable to assimilate the raw sordidness of many
modern stories of the soil, with the passages of emotional vigor and
poetic beauties. Reymont has revealed, in panoramic form, the life of
the Polish peasant, typified in the family and associates of Boryna;
he has treated his big theme with psychological insight, realistic
photography, and robust idealism. The first and second volumes seem
more spontaneous and dramatic than the later. He lacks condensation and
incisiveness. An excellent review of the four volumes by Vida Scudder
is in _The Atlantic Monthly_, August, 1925.

Reymont knows America far better than Americans know him or his books,
but the discrepancy is being remedied. He enjoys friendship with many
men of affairs and letters here, including Rupert Hughes, whose story,
_What Will People Say?_ has been translated by Mme. Reymont, a fine
linguist, and published serially in the Warsaw _Gazeta_. Many critics
have noted the sincerity of Reymont as man and artist.

In Chapter III, “Naturalism and Nationalism,” of the collected
lectures, on _Modern Polish Literature_, by Roman Dyboski, Professor at
Cracow University,[171] there are interesting comments upon Reymont’s
earlier work and his tendencies. His attempt at historical fiction,
following the lead of Sienkiewicz, was recorded in _The Year 1794_ but
it was, says Professor Dyboski, a failure, the “bewildering mass of
details obscured the outlines of the historical picture.” More adapted
to his analytical skill are the earlier novels, _Ferments_ and _The
Dreamer_ (largely autobiographical in background), and the later, more
impersonal tales that deal with anarchists and political conditions,
_The Vampire_ and _Opium Smokers_. Like other critics Professor
Dyboski ranks Stephen Zeromski as “supreme in the Polish novel
today.” He compares him to Sienkiewicz; he has the dramatic power and
concentration which Reymont lacks. Zeromski is “a social pessimist”;
like Sienkiewicz he was a short-story writer at first, then turned
to history for fictional themes, like _Lay of the Leader_ and has
written more recently of contemporaneous conditions. With his faults of
diffuseness and unevenness of structure, Reymont is gifted in depicting
the small and large interests of the Polish peasant, in revealing their
aspirations and dormant passion for freedom.

As an example of “the novel of the soil,” so close to earth that
the reader often finds his senses are keen and that other faculties
are almost dormant, this epic by Reymont proclaims him a masterful
interpreter of peasant life. In every volume there are lapses of
interest and diffuseness. In retrospect, however, the many monotonous
pages will be forgotten and the outstanding scenes of passionate love,
hatred, suffering, and primitive ecstasy will remain in memory as
tributes to this second Polish novelist who is listed among the Nobel
prize winners in literature.


FOOTNOTES:

[163] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1905.

[164] _Poland Reborn_ by Roy Devereux, London, 1922, p. 237.

[165] _Ibid._, p. 225.

[166] Chicago, 1898; Philadelphia, 1898.

[167] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in 1924.

[168] By permission of Rupert Hughes.

[169] Interview with Dr. A. M. Nawench in _New York Times Review_,
November 30, 1924.

[170] _The Peasants: Autumn_ from the Polish of Ladislaw St. Reymont,
New York, 1924. By permission of Alfred A. Knopf.

[171] Given at King’s College; Oxford University Press, 1924. By
permission of _Oxford University Press_.




CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS IN LITERATURE


                                                 PAGE

  1901. SULLY-PRUDHOMME, RENÉ FRANÇOIS ARMAND      21

  1902. MOMMSEN, THEODOR                           42

  1903. BJÖRNSON, BJÖRNSTJERNE                     58

  1904. MISTRAL, FRÉDÉRIC, shared with             31

  1904. ECHEGARAY, JOSÉ                           239

  1905. SIENKIEWICZ, HENRYK                       264

  1906. CARDUCCI, GIOSUÈ                           72

  1907. KIPLING, RUDYARD                           85

  1908. EUCKEN, RUDOLF                             48

  1909. LAGERLÖF, SELMA                           104

  1910. HEYSE, PAUL                               124

  1911. MAETERLINCK, MAURICE                      148

  1912. HAUPTMANN, GERHART                        133

  1913. TAGORE, RABINDRANATH                      159

  NO AWARD IN 1914

  1915. ROLLAND, ROMAIN                           175

  1916. HEIDENSTAM, VERNER VON                    189

  1917. PONTOPPIDAN, HENRIK, shared with          197

  1917. GJELLERUP, KARL                           201

  NO AWARD IN 1918

  1919. SPITTELER, CARL                           205

  1920. HAMSUN, KNUT                              213

  1921. FRANCE, ANATOLE                           224

  1922. BENAVENTE, JACINTO                        247

  1923. YEATS, WILLIAM BUTLER                     253

  1924. REYMONT, LADISLAW                         269




BIBLIOGRAPHY OF “NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS IN LITERATURE”


The compiler of this bibliography has not attempted to make an
exhaustive list of writings of the several prize winners; the aim is
to suggest an adequate reading list, to supplement the studies of
individual authors and to stimulate further research. As this book is
intended, especially, for English and American readers, the foreign
editions are not cited, if there is any adequate translation available;
in a few cases, the works must be read in the original language.

The bibliography has been compiled largely with the assistance of
librarians at the Widener Library of Harvard University, so that the
books listed will be found in the card catalogue there, and at the
Library of Congress. In isolated cases, the _data_ have been furnished
by individual writers and translators. The authors are here listed in
the order of the awards, with dates appended; in the Index they are
given alphabetically.


SULLY-PRUDHOMME (1901)

  _Œuvres_: 5 Vols. (Paris, 1869-1901).

  Selected poems in _Anthology of French Poetry_, edited by H.
    Carrington (London and New York, 1900).

  Selected poems in _The Modern Book of French Verse_, edited by Albert
    Boni (New York, 1920).

  _Journal Intime_ (Paris, 1922).

  _Le testament poétique_, 4th ed. (Paris, 1901).

  _La vraie religion selon Pascal_ (Paris, 1905).

  _Que sais-je? Examen de conscience_ (Paris, 1896).

  _On Life and Letters_ by Anatole France (“Three Poets”), translated
    by A. W. Evans, first series (London and New York, 1922).

  _Punch and Judy and Other Essays_ by Maurice Baring (New York, 1924).

  _Studies in Literature_: “Some French Writers of Verse” by Edward
    Dowden (London, 1892).


MOMMSEN (1902)

  _The History of Rome_, translated with the author’s sanction and
    additions by Rev. William P. Dickson (London, 1862, 1885; New York,
    1869, 1908); (_Everyman’s Library_, London and New York, 1911,
    1916); 5 Vols. (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1903).

  _Rome, from Earliest Time to 40 B. C._, edited by Arthur C. Howland
    (Philadelphia, 1906).

  _The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Cæsar to Diocletian_,
    translated with the author’s sanction and additions by Rev. William
    P. Dickson (New York, 1887; London and New York, 1909).

  _Historical Essays_ by E. A. S. Freeman, second series, 3rd ed. (New
    York and London, 1889).

  _Some Eighteenth Century Byways and Other Essays_ by J. Buchan
    (London, 1908).

  _Theodor Mommsen: His Life and Work_ by Wm. W. Fowler (Edinburgh,
    1909).


BJÖRNSON (1903)

  _Novels_, in 13 Vols., edited by Edmund Gosse (London and New York,
    1895-1909).

  _Novels_, in 3 Vols., translated by R. B. Anderson, American edition
    (Boston, 1881).

  _Plays_, 2 series, translated by Edwin Björkman (New York, 1913,
    1914).

  _Plays_, 2 Vols., translated by R. Farquharson Sharp (_Everyman’s
    Library_, London and New York, 1912).

  _Poems and Songs_, translated from the Norwegian in the original
    meters, by Arthur Hubbell Palmer (New York, 1915).

  _Arne_, and _The Fisher Maiden_, translated by Walter Low, with
    introduction (London and New York, 1894).

  _Mary_, translated by Mary Morison (London and New York, 1910).

  _Mary, Queen of Scots_, translated by August Sahlberg (Chicago, 1912).

  _When the New Wine Blooms_, translated by Lee M. Hollander (_Poet
    Lore_, Boston, 1911).

  _The Heritage of the Kurts_, translated by Cecil Fairfax (London,
    1908).

  _The Wise Knut_, translated by Bernard Stahl (New York, 1909).

  _Adventures in Criticism_ by A. T. Quiller-Couch, rev. ed. (New York,
    1924).

  _Björnstjerne Björnson_ by William Morton Payne (Chicago, 1910).

  _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ by Georg Brandes, rev.
    ed. (New York, 1924).

  _Northern Studies_ by Edmund Gosse (London, 1890).


MISTRAL (1904; shared with Echegaray)

  _Œuvres de Frédéric Mistral, texte et traduction_ (Paris, 1887-1912).

  _Le poème du Rhône, xii chants, texte, provençal et traduction
    française_ (Paris, 1897).

  _Mireille, poème provençal, illustré par Jean Droit_ (Paris, 1923).

  _Mireio: a Provençal Poem_, translated by Harriet Waters Preston
    (Boston, 1872; London, 1890).

  _Mireio_, from the original Provençal, under the author’s sanction,
    translated by C. H. Grant: “An English Version of Mr. Frédéric
    Mistral’s _Mireio_” (Avignon, 1867).

  _Mireille; a Pastoral Epic of Provence_, translated by H. Crichton
    (London, 1868).

  _Memoirs of Mistral_, rendered into English by Constance Elisabeth
    Maud; lyrics from the Provençal by Alma Strettell (Mrs. Lawrence
    Harrison) (New York, 1907).

  Selections from _Mireio_, _Calendau_, and _Nerto_, translated by
    Harriet Waters Preston, in _Library of the World’s Best Literature_,
    edited by C. D. Warner, Vol. 17.

  _Frédéric Mistral, Poet and Leader in Provence_, by C. A. Downer (New
    York, 1901).


ECHEGARAY (1904; shared with Mistral)

  _The Great Galeoto: Folly or Saintliness_, translated with
    introduction by Hannah Lynch (Boston, 1895).

  _Madman or Saint_, translated by Ruth Lansing (_Poet Lore_, Boston,
    1912).

  _Mariana_, translated by James Graham (Boston, 1895).

  _Mariana_, translated by F. Sarda and C. D. S. Wupperman (New York,
    1909).

  _The Son of Don Juan_, translated by James Graham (Boston, 1895).

  _The Street Singer_, translated by John Garrett Underhill (_Drama_,
    Chicago, 1917); included in

  _25 Short Plays_, edited by Frank Shay (New York, 1924).

  _Always Ridiculous_, translated by T. W. Gilkyson (_Poet Lore_,
    Boston, 1916).

  _The World and His Wife_ (an American adaptation of _The Great
    Galeoto_) by C. F. Neidlinger (New York, 1908).

  _Representative Continental Dramas_, edited by Montrose J. Moses
    (Boston, 1924).

  _Masterpieces of Modern Spanish Drama_, edited by Barrett H. Clark
    (London and New York, 1917).

  _A Study of the Modern Drama_ by Barrett H. Clark (London and New
    York, 1925).

  _The Modern Drama in Europe_ by Storm Jameson (London and New York,
    1920).

  _Main Currents of Spanish Literature_ by J. D. M. Ford (New York,
    1919).

  _The Drama of Transition_ by Isaac Goldberg (Cincinnati, 1922).

  _Masques and Mummers_ by C. F. Neidlinger (New York, 1899).

  _Dramatic Opinions and Essays_ by G. Bernard Shaw (London and New
    York, 1907).

  _The Modern Drama_ by Ludwig Lewisohn (New York, 1915).


SIENKIEWICZ (1905)

  Authorized and unabridged translations from the Polish by Jeremiah
    Curtin: _With Fire and Sword_; _The Deluge_; _Pan Michael_; _Quo
    Vadis_; _Without Dogma_; _In Desert and Wilderness_ (Little, Brown
    & Co., Boston, 1890-1912).

  _Quo Vadis_, translated by S. A. Binion and S. Malevsky
    (Philadelphia, 1897).

  _Hania_, short tales, translated by Jeremiah Curtin (Boston, 1897).

  _Let Us Follow Him_, translated by Jeremiah Curtin (Boston, 1897).

  _On the Field of Glory_, translated by Jeremiah Curtin (Boston, 1906).

  _On the Bright Shore_, translated by Jeremiah Curtin (Boston, 1898).

  _On the Bright Shore_, translated by S. C. de Soissons (New York,
    1897).

  _Pan Michael_, translated by S. A. Binion (New York, 1898, 1905).

  _The Irony of Life_ (_Children of the Soil_), translated by N. M.
    Babad (New York, 1900).

  _In Desert and Wilderness_, translated by Max A. Drezmal (Boston,
    1912, 1923).

  _After Bread (For Daily Bread: Peasants in Exile)_ translated by
    Vatslaf Z. Hlasko and Thomas H. Bullick (New York, 1897).

  _The Third Woman_, translated by N. M. Babad (New York, 1898).

  _Lillian Morris and Other Stories_, translated by Jeremiah Curtin
    (Boston, 1895).

  _Modern Polish Literature_, lectures by Roman Dyboski, Ch. II (Oxford
    University Press, 1924).


CARDUCCI (1906)

  _Carducci: a Selection of his Poems_, with three introductions, etc.,
    translated by G. L. Bickersteth (London, 1913).

  _Poems by Carducci_, translated with an introduction by Maud Holland
    (New York, 1907).

  _Poems of Giosuè Carducci_, with verse translations, notes and
    introduction by Frank Sewall (New York, 1892).

  _Poems of Italy_, selections from the odes of Giosuè Carducci,
    translated by M. W. Arms (New York, 1906).

  _Italy from the Poems of Joshua Carducci_, translated by E. A. Tribe
    (Florence, 1912).

  _A Selection from the Poems of Giosuè Carducci_, translated with
    biographical introduction by Emily A. Tribe (London and New York,
    1921).

  _Selections from Carducci_, prose and poetry, with introductory notes
    and vocabulary by A. Marinoni (New York, 1913).

  _The Rime Nuove_ of Giosuè Carducci, translated from the Italian by
    Laura Fullerton Gilbert (Boston, 1916).

  _Italian Influences_ by Eugene Schuyler (New York, 1901).

  _Italica; Studies in Italian Life and Letters_ by William Roscoe
    Thayer (Boston, 1908).

  _Giosuè Carducci_ by Orlo Williams (London, 1914).

  “The Poetry of Carducci,” (_Edinburgh Review_, April, 1909).


KIPLING (1907)

  _Kipling’s Collected Works_, 23 Vols., Outward Bound Edition (Charles
    Scribner’s Sons; New York, 1897-1923).

  _Writings in Prose and Verse_, 28 Vols., Pocket Edition (Doubleday,
    Page & Co., Garden City, New York, 1898-1923).

  The New World Edition, 13 Vols. (Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden City;
    Toronto).

  _Rudyard Kipling’s Verse_; Inclusive Edition (Garden City, New York,
    1924).

  _The Years Between_ (New York, 1919).

  _American Notes_ (Boston, 1899).

  _Independence_, Rectorial Address at St. Andrews (London and New
    York, 1925).

  _Letters of Travel_ (London and New York, 1920).

  _Land and Sea Tales for Boys and Girls (for Scouts and Scoutmasters)_
    (London and New York, 1923).

  _The Irish Guards in the Great War_ (London and New York, 1923).

  _The Fringes of the Fleet_ (London and New York, 1915).

  _The Second Jungle Book_, decorated by John Lockwood Kipling (New
    York, 1914).

  _Selected Stories from Kipling_, edited by William Lyon Phelps (New
    York, 1919, 1921).

  _The Eyes of Asia_ (Garden City; New York, 1923).

  _Mine Own People_, introduction by Henry James (New York, 1899).

  _Essays in Little_ by Andrew Lang (London and New York, 1899).

  _Heretics_ by Gilbert K. Chesterton (London and New York, 1919).

  _Rudyard Kipling: a Criticism_ by Richard Le Gallienne (London and
    New York, 1900).

  _Shelburne Essays_, series II, by Paul Elmer More (New York, 1906).


EUCKEN (1908).

  _Fundamental Concepts of Modern Philosophic Thought_, critically
    and historically considered, translated by M. Stuart Phelps, with
    introduction by Noah Porter (New York, 1880).

  _Can We Still Be Christians?_ translated by Lucy Judge Gibson (New
    York, 1914).

  _Christianity and the New Idealism_, translated by Lucy Judge Gibson
    and W. R. Boyce Gibson (London and New York, 1909, 1912).

  _Collected Essays of Rudolf Eucken_, translated and edited by Meyrick
    Booth (New York and London, 1914).

  _Intellectual Movements of the Present Day_, translated by Meyrick
    Booth (London, 1912).

  _Knowledge and Life_, translated by Tudor Jones (London and New York,
    1913).

  _The Truth of Religion_, translated by Tudor Jones (New York, 1911).

  _The Meaning and Value of Life_, translated by Lucy Judge Gibson and
    W. R. Boyce Gibson (London and New York, 1909, 1911).

  _The Problem of Human Life, as Viewed by the Great Thinkers from
    Plato to the Present Time_, translated by W. S. Hough and W. R. B.
    Gibson (New York, 1909, 1914).

  _Life’s Basis and Life’s Ideal_, translated by Alban G. Widgery
    (London, 1912).

  _Naturalism or Idealism?_ (Nobel lecture) translated by Alban G.
    Widgery (Cambridge, England, 1912).

  _Deems Lectures_, delivered in 1913 at New York University,
    translated by Margaret von Seidewitz (New York, 1913), English
    edition by W. Tudor Jones (London, 1913), entitled, _Present-Day
    Ethics in their Relation to the Spiritual Life_.

  _Main Currents of Modern Thought_, translated by Meyrick Booth
    (London, 1912).

  _Socialism; an Analysis_, translated by Joseph McCabe (London and New
    York, 1922).

  _Rudolf Eucken: His Life, Work and Travels_ by himself; translated by
    Joseph McCabe (London and New York, 1921, 1922).

  _Rudolf Eucken: His Philosophy and Influence_ by Meyrick Booth (New
    York, 1913).

  _Eucken and Bergson; Their Significance for Christian Thought_ by E.
    Hermann (Boston, 1912).


SELMA LAGERLÖF (1909)

  The Northland Edition of Selma Lagerlöf’s _Works_, 11 Vols.
    (Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden City, New York).

  _Christ Legends_, translated by Velma Swanston Howard (New York,
    1908).

  _Gösta Berling’s Saga_, or _The Story of Gösta Berling_, translated
    by Pauline Bancroft Flach (London; New York, 1910, 1918).

  _Invisible Links_, translated by Pauline Bancroft Flach (Boston,
    1899; New York).

  _From a Swedish Homestead_, translated by Jessie Brochner (London and
    New York, 1901).

  _Jerusalem_, translated by Velma Swanston Howard (Garden City, New
    York, 1915, 1918).

  _Jerusalem_, translated by Jessie Brochner (London, 1903).

  _Holy City: Jerusalem II_, translated by Velma Swanston Howard
    (Garden City, New York, 1918).

  _Liliecrona’s Home_, translated by Anna Barwell (New York, 1914).

  _Mårbacka_, translated by Velma Swanston Howard (Garden City, New
    York, 1924).

  _Miracles of Antichrist_, translated by Pauline Bancroft Flach
    (Boston, 1899, Garden City, New York).

  _The Emperor of Portugallia_, translated by Velma Swanston Howard
    (Garden City, New York, 1916).

  _The Girl from the Marshcroft_, translated by Velma Swanston Howard
    (New York, 1916).

  _The Outcast_, translated by W. W. Worster (Garden City, New York,
    1922).

  _The Treasure_, translated by Arthur G. Chater (Garden City, New
    York, 1925).

  _The Wonderful Adventures of Nils_; _Further Adventures of Nils_,
    translated by Velma Swanston Howard (Garden City, New York, 1907,
    1911, 1920).

  _Selma Lagerlöf: The Woman, Her Work, Her Message_ by Harry E. Maule
    (Garden City, New York, 1917).

  _Voices of Tomorrow_ by Edwin Björkman (New York, 1913).


PAUL HEYSE (1910)

  _Deutschen Novellenschatz_, 24 Vols., edited by Max Lentz (New York,
    1899).

  _L’Arrabiata_, edited by Mary A. Frost with notes and introduction
    (New York, 1896).

  _L’Arrabiata_, translated by Vivian Elsie Lyon (New York, 1916).

  _L’Arrabiata_, edited by W. W. Flower (Ann Arbor, 1922).

  _At the Ghost Hour_ and _The Fair Abigail_, translated by Frances A.
    Van Santford (New York, 1894).

  _A Divided Heart and Other Stories_, translated by Constance S.
    Copeland (New York, 1894).

  _Mary of Magdala_, translated by W. Winter (New York, 1904).

  _Barbarossa and Other Tales_ by L. C. S. (London, 1874).

  _Mary of Magdala_, an historical and romantic drama in 5 acts;
    adapted in England by Lionel Vale (New York, 1902).

  _Tales from the German of Paul Heyse_ (D. Appleton & Co., New York,
    1879).

  Study of Paul Heyse in _German Classics_, edited by Kuno Francke
    (German Publishing Co., New York).

  _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_ by Georg Brandes (New
    York, new ed., 1925).


MAETERLINCK (1911)

  _Works of Maurice Maeterlinck_, 27 Vols., in two editions, cloth and
    leather (Dodd, Mead & Co.; London and New York) includes essays,
    plays, poems, children’s books; interpreted by several translators,
    including Alfred Sutro, Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, Bernard Miall,
    Montrose J. Moses.

  _Plays of Maurice Maeterlinck_, translated and edited with
    introduction, by Richard Hovey (Chicago, 1894, 2 vols.; New York,
    1911).

  _Joyzelle_, translated by Charlotte Porter (_Poet Lore_, xv, iii,
    Boston).

  _Three Little Dramas for Marionettes_, translated by Alfred Sutro and
    William Archer (Chicago and London, 1899).

  _Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck_ by Jethro Bithell (London,
    1913).

  _Maurice Maeterlinck: Poet and Philosopher_ by MacDonald Clark (New
    York, 1916).

  _The Symbolist Movement in Literature_ by Arthur Symons (London and
    New York, 1899; New York, 1917).

  _Maurice Maeterlinck: A Study_ by Montrose J. Moses (New York, 1911).

  _Dramatists of Today_ by E. E. Hale, Jr. (New York, 1905).

  _Iconoclasts_ by James Huneker (New York, 1905).

  _Varied Types_ by Gilbert K. Chesterton (New York, 1905).

  _Essays on Modern Dramatists_ by William Lyon Phelps (New York, 1921).

  _A Study of the Modern Drama_ by Barrett H. Clark (New York, 1925).

  _The Modern Drama_ by Ludwig Lewisohn (New York, 1915).


HAUPTMANN (1912)

  _The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann_, 8 Vols., edited by Ludwig
    Lewisohn, translations by Lewisohn and others (Huebsch, New York,
    1906-1925).

  _Hannele_, translated by William Archer (London, 1894).

  _Hannele_, translated by Charles Henry Meltzer (New York, 1908).

  _The Assumption of Hannele_, translated by G. S. Bryan (_Poet Lore_,
    Boston, 1909).

  _The Sunken Bell_, translated with introduction by Charles Henry
    Meltzer (New York, 1899; Garden City, 1914).

  _The Sunken Bell_; _Elga_; _And Pippa Dances_, all translated by Mary
    Harned (_Poet Lore_, Boston, 1898, 1906, 1909).

  _The Weavers_, translated by Mary Morison (included in _Chief
    Contemporary Dramatists_ edited by Thomas H. Dickinson; Boston,
    1915).

  _Parsival_, translated by Oakley Williams (New York, 1915).

  _The Coming of Peace_, translated by Janet A. Church and C. E.
    Wheeler (Chicago and London, 1900).

  _The Fool in Christ: Emanuel Quint_, a novel, translated by Thomas
    Seltzer (New York, 1911).

  _Phantom_, a novel translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan (New York,
    1922).

  _Atlantis_, a novel translated by Adele and Thomas Seltzer (Huebsch,
    New York, 1912).

  _The Island of the Great Mother_, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir
    (Huebsch, The Viking Press, New York, 1925).

  _Gerhart Hauptmann: His Life and His Work_ by Karl Holl (London,
    1913).

  _Studies in Modern German Literature_ by Otto Heller (Boston and New
    York, 1905).

  _Glimpses of Modern German Culture_ by Kuno Francke (New York, 1898).

  _Naturalism in the Recent German Drama_, with special reference to
    Gerhart Hauptmann, by Alfred Stoeckius (New York, 1903).

  _Gerhart Hauptmann and John Galsworthy: a Parallel_ by W. R.
    Trumbauer (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1917).

  _Nature Background in the Dramas of Hauptmann_, by Mary Agnes Quimby
    (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1918).

  _A Study of the Modern Drama_ by Barrett H. Clark (New York, 1925).


RABINDRANATH TAGORE (1913)

  _Writings of Rabindranath Tagore_, 20 Vols. (The Macmillan Co.,
    London and New York).

  _Gitanjali_, translated by author, with introduction by W. B. Yeats
    (London and New York, 1913, 1916).

  _The Crescent Moon: Child-Poems_ translated from original Bengali by
    author (New York, 1913, 1916).

  _Japan; a Lecture_ (London and New York, 1916).

  _Nationalism in the West and Japan_ (London and New York, 1917).

  _My Reminiscences_ (London and New York, 1917).

  _Rabindranath Tagore: a Biographical Study_ by Earnest Rhys (New
    York, 1915).

  _Rabindranath Tagore: the Man and His Poetry_ by B. K. Roy (New York,
    1915).

  _Glimpses of Bengal_, selected from letters of Rabindranath Tagore
    (London and New York, 1921).

  _Mahatma Gandhi: The Man Who Became One with the Universal Being_
    (comparison of Tagore and Gandhi) by Romain Rolland, translated by
    Catherine D. Groth (New York, 1924).

  _The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore_ by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
    (London, 1918).


ROMAIN ROLLAND (1915: no award in 1914)

  Many of the novels and studies by Rolland are published by Henry Holt
    and Co., (New York).

  _Jean-Christophe_, 3 Vols., translated by Gilbert Cannan (London and
    New York, 1910, 1916).

  _The Fourteenth of July and Danton_, authorized translation by
    Barrett H. Clark (New York, 1918).

  _Pierre and Luce_, translated by Charles De Kay (New York, 1922).

  _Tolstoy_, translated by Bernard Miall (London and New York, 1911).

  _The People’s Theatre_, translated by Barrett H. Clark (London and
    New York, 1918, 1919).

  _The Wolves; a Play_, translated by Barrett H. Clark (Drama, 1917,
    No. 32).

  _The Life of Michael Angelo_, translated by Frederic Lees (London and
    New York, 1912).

  _Colas Breugnon_, translated by Katherine Miller (New York, 1919).

  _Clerambault: the Story of an Independent Spirit during the War_,
    translated by Katherine Miller (London and New York, 1921).

  _Liluli_, with wood engravings by Frans Masereel (New York, 1920).

  _Above the Battle_, translated by C. K. Ogden (Chicago, 1916).

  _Above the Battlefield_, with introduction by G. L. Dickinson
    (Cambridge, England, 1914).

  _The Forerunner_, a sequel to _Above the Battle_, translated by Eden
    and Cedar Paul (New York, 1920).

  _Some Musicians of Former Days_, translated by Mary Blaiklock (London
    and New York, 1915).

  _Annette and Silvie_ (_The Soul Enchanted: L’âme enchantée_)
    translated by Ben Ray Redman (New York, 1925).

  _Summer_, translated by Eleanor Strinson and Wyck Brooks (New York,
    1925).

  _Mahatma Gandhi: The Man Who Became One with the Universal Being_,
    translated by Catherine D. Groth (London and New York, 1924).

  _Romain Rolland: the Man and His Work_ by Stefan Zweig, translated by
    Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, 1921).


HEIDENSTAM (1916)

  _Sweden’s Laureate: Selected Poems_, translated with introduction by
    Charles Wharton Stork (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1919).

  _The Charles Men_, translated by Charles Wharton Stork, with
    introduction by Fredrik Böök (New York, 1920).

  _A King and His Campaigners_, translated by Axel Tegnier (London,
    1902).

  _The Soothsayer_, translated by Karoline M. Knudsen (Boston, 1919).

  _The Birth of God_, translated by Karoline M. Knudsen (Boston, 1920).

  _The Tree of the Folkungs_, translated by Arthur G. Chater (New York,
    1925).


HENRIK PONTOPPIDAN (1917)

  _Reisebilder aus Dänemark_ (1890).

  _The Apothecary’s Daughter_, translated into English by C. L. Nielson
    (London, 1890).

  _Emanuel or Children of the Soil_, From the Danish, translated by
    Mrs. Edgar Lucas (London, 1896).

  _The Promised Land_, From the Danish, translated by Mrs. Edgar Lucas
    (with illustrations by Nellie Ericsen) (London, 1896).

  _Hans Im Glück_, Ein Romane, ubersetzung von Mathilde Mann: I, II
    (Leipzig, 1906).

  _Der alte Adam_, zwei Roman, ubersetzung von Rich. Guttmann (München,
    1912).

  _Aus jungen Tagen_, ubersetzung von Mathilde Mann (Leipzig, 1913).


KARL GJELLERUP (1917)

  _Die Opferfeuer_, Ein Legenden-Stück (Leipzig, 1903).

  _Der Pilger Kamanita_, Ein Legendenroman (Frankfurt, 1907).

  _The Pilgrim Kamanita_, a legendary romance, translated by John E.
    Logie (London, 1911).

  _Das Weib des Vollendeten_, Ein Legendenroman (Frankfurt, 1907).

  _Reif für das Leben_ (Jena, 1916).

  _Der goldene Zweig_, Dichtung und Novellenkranz aus der Zeit des
    Kaisers Tiberius (Leipzig, 1917).

  _Minna_, a novel, translated by C. L. Neilson (London, 1913).

  _Die Gottesfreundin_ (Leipzig, 1918).

  _An der Grenze_, Roman (Leipzig, 1919).

  _Romulus_; ubersetzung von Margarete Böttger (Leipzig, 1924).

NOTE: the bibliographical lists above on Pontoppidan and Gjellerup
have been prepared for the compiler through the courtesy of the Royal
Library (the Danish National Library) of Copenhagen.


CARL SPITTELER (1919: no award in 1918)

  _Prometheus und Epimetheus_ (Jena 1881, 1924).

  _Balladen_ (Zürich, 1906).

  _Imago_ (Jena, 1906, 1919).

  _Olympian Spring_ (_Olympischer Frühling_) (Jena, 1900, 1911, 1920).

  _Two Little Misogynists_, translated by Mme. la Vicomtesse Le
    Roquette-Buisson, with decorations by A. Helene Carter (New York,
    1922).

  _Meine Frühesten Erlebnisse_: or _My Earliest Experiences_ (Jena,
    1914, 1920).

  Study of Carl Spitteler in _The German Classics_, edited by Kuno
    Francke (Vol. XIV: New York, 1914). With some translations.

  _Studies from Ten Literatures_ by Ernest Boyd (New York, 1925).

  _Carl Spitteler_: Monograph (in German) by Eugen Diederichs Verlag in
    Jena.

  _Contemporary Review_, January, 1920.


KNUT HAMSUN (1920)

  The writings of Hamsun, in American edition, are issued largely by
    Alfred A. Knopf (New York).

  _Hunger_, translated by George Egerton (pseudonym) with introduction
    by Edwin Björkman (London, 1899, New York, 1920).

  _Pan_, translated by W. W. Worster (New York, 1921).

  _Victoria_, translated by Arthur G. Chater (New York, 1923).

  _Children of the Time_, translated by J. S. Scott (New York, 1924).

  _Dreamers_, translated by W. W. Worster (New York, 1921). (English
    title, _Mothwise_, London, 1921).

  _Shallow Soil_, translated by Carl Christian Hylested (London and New
    York, 1914).

  _Growth of the Soil_, translated by W. W. Worster (London and New
    York, 1921).

  _Segelfoss Town_, translated by J. S. Scott (London, 1921, New York,
    1925).

  _In the Grip of Life_ (play), translated by Graham and Tristam Rawson
    (New York, 1924).

  _Knut Hamsun: a Study_ by Hanna Astrup Larsen (New York, 1922).

  _Knut Hamsun; His Personality and His Outlook upon Life_ by Josef
    Wiehr, _Smith College Studies in Modern Languages_ (Northampton,
    1922).


ANATOLE FRANCE (1921)

  The writings of Anatole France are appearing, in the Tours Edition,
    issued by Dodd, Mead & Co., New York.

  Another edition, already complete, by the same publishers, is the
    Library Edition (31 Vols.).

  Other volumes by same publishers, include:

  _At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque_, illustrated by Frank C. Pape
    (New York).

  _Honey Bee; a Fairy Story for Children_, translated by Mrs. John
    Lane, illustrated by Florence Lundborg.

  _Joan of Arc_, translated by Winifred Stephens; 2 Vols.

  _On Life and Letters_, Series I and II translated by A. W. Evans,
    Series III translated by D. B. Stewart, Series IV translated by
    Bernard Miall (London and New York, 1923-25).

  _Anatole France; the Man and His Work_ by James Lewis May (London and
    New York, 1924).

  _The Opinions of Anatole France_, recorded by Paul Gsell (London and
    New York, 1924).

  _Anatole France Himself: a Boswellian Record_ by Jean-Jacques
    Brousson (Philadelphia, 1925).

  _French Novelists of Today_ by Winifred Stephens (London and New
    York, 1908).

  _Egoists_ by James Huneker (New York, 1909).

  _Studies in Ten Literatures_ by Ernest Boyd (New York, 1925).

  _Those Europeans_ by Sisley Huddlestone (London and New York, 1924).


BENAVENTE (1922)

  _Plays_ by Jacinto Benavente, translated with introduction by John
    Garrett Underhill; four series, including his best plays (Charles
    Scribner’s Sons, New York: 1917, 1925).

  _The Bonds of Interest_ is reprinted in _Chief Contemporary
    Dramatists_, Series II, edited by Thomas H. Dickinson (Boston,
    1921), and, also, in _Representative Continental Dramas_, edited by
    Montrose J. Moses (Boston, 1924).

  _His Widow’s Husband_, translated by John Garrett Underhill, is
    reprinted in _Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays_, edited by Shay and
    Loving (Cincinnati, 1920).

  _Nobody Knows What He Wants_, or _The Dancer and the Doer_ (1925).

  _The Smile of Mona Lisa_, translated by John Armstrong Herman,
    _Contemporary Dramatists_ Series (Boston, 1915, 1919).

  _Jacinto Benavente_ by Walter Starkie (Oxford University Press, 1925).

  _Modern Drama in Europe_ by Storm Jameson (New York, 1920).

  _The Drama of Transition_ by Isaac Goldberg (Cincinnati, 1922).

  _Main Currents of Spanish Literature_ by J. D. W. Ford (New York,
    1919).

  _A Study of the Modern Drama_ by Barrett H. Clark (New York, 1925).


YEATS (1923)

  The writings of Yeats; plays, poems, essays and “controversies” are
    issued in varied editions by the Macmillan Co., London and New York.

  _John Sherman and Dhoya_, by Ganconagh (pseudonym) (London and New
    York, 1891).

  _Reveries over Childhood and Youth_ (New York, 1916).

  _Plays in Prose and Verse_, written for the Irish Theatre, and
    generally with the help of a friend (London, 1922; New York, 1924).

  _The Land of Heart’s Desire_ (London, 1894; Boston, 1894; Chicago,
    1894; Portland, Maine, 1913).

  _Responsibilities_ (London and New York, 1916).

  _Selected Poems_ (New York, 1921).

  _William Butler Yeats; a Critical Study_ by Forrest Reid (New York,
    1915).

  _Twenty-Five Years; Reminiscences_ by Katherine Tynan Hinkson (New
    York, 1914).

  _William Butler Yeats and the Irish Literary Revival_ by Horatio
    Sheafe Kraus (London, 1905).

  _Studies in Prose and Verse_ by Arthur Symons (London, 1904).

  _William Butler Yeats; a Literary Study_ by C. Wrenn (London, 1920).


REYMONT (1924)

  _The Peasants: Autumn; Winter; Spring; Summer_, translated by Michael
    H. Dziewicki (Knopf, New York, 1924-1925).

  _The Comedienne_, translated by Edmund Obecuy (Putnams, New York,
    1920).

  Tales by Reymont in Oxford University _World’s Classics_ (1921).

  Extracts from _The Promised Land_ in _Modern Slavonic Literature_,
    edited by Paul Selver (London, 1921).

  _Modern Polish Literature_; A Course of Lectures at King’s College,
    London, by Roman Dyboski Ch. III (Cambridge, England, 1924).




INDEX


  Abbey Theatre, The, 259

  _Above the Battle_, 185

  _Across the Prairies_, 266

  _Actions and Reactions_, 95, 101

  Adams, Mme. Juliette, 7

  _Adventures in Criticism_, 65, 66

  _After Bread_, 268

  Ahlsell, Karoline Henriette, 2

  Aix, 32

  Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 262

  _Alladine and Palomides_, 152

  _Always Ridiculous_, 245

  _Ame Enchantée, L’_, 186

  American-Scandinavian Foundation, 193

  _American-Scandinavian Review_, 198, 201, 202

  _Amethyst Ring, The_, 225, 233

  Anatole France, 25, 224-238, 264

  _Anatole France Himself_, 226, 227, 230

  _Anatole France: The Man and His Work_, 25, 229

  _And Pippa Dances_, 136, 145

  Andersen, Hans Christian, 197

  Anderson, Vilhelm, 198

  _Annette and Sylvie_, 186

  _Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature_, 270

  _Appointment, The_, 29

  Archer, William, 139

  _Ariadne and Blue Beard_, 157

  Ariosto, 33

  Arles, 36, 37, 39

  _Arme Heinrich, Der_, 143

  _Arne_, 20, 61, 62, 66

  _Arrabiata, L’_, 128, 130

  _Art of Versification, The_, 27

  _Assumption of Hannele, The_, 135, 139

  _Atlantis_, 146, 206

  _At the Gates of the Kingdom_, 219

  _At the Ghost Hour_, 129

  _At the Hilt of the Sword_, 240

  _At the Sign of the Reine Pédauque_, 225, 233

  _August_, 1914, 192

  _Autumn_, 270, 272, 273

  _Autumnal Roses_, 248

  Avignon, 32


  Baku, 2

  Balestier, Caroline, 93

  Balestier, Wolcott, 93, 94

  _Balladen_, 208

  Balzac, 129

  _Bankrupt, The_, 67, 68

  _Banquet of Wild Beasts, The_, 247

  Baring, Maurice, 30

  Barrès, Maurice, 235

  Barwell, Anna, 118

  Basel, 205, 206, 207

  _Baucis and Philemon_, 132

  _Bearers of German Idealism, The_, 54

  Beethoven, 173, 181, 203, 206

  _Before Dawn_, 134, 138

  _Belgium at War_, 156

  _Bellman Ballads_, 108

  _Bell Songs_, 211

  Benavente, Jacinto, 240, 247-252, 264

  Bennett, Arnold, 101

  _Benoni_, 214

  Bergson, Henri, 55, 157

  _Betrothal, The_, 154

  _Beyond Human Power_, 59, 69

  Bickersteth, G. L., 74, 75, 76, 84

  _Binding of the Hair, The_, 261

  Binion, S. A., 268

  _Birth of God, The_, 195

  Bismarck, 44

  Björkman, Edwin, 69, 70, 132, 197, 217, 219

  Björnson, Björnstjerne, 19, 20, 58-71, 87, 93, 193, 215, 253, 264

  Blake, William, 262

  _Blind, The_, 132, 152, 153

  _Bloom of Life, The_, 225

  _Blue Bird, The_, 153

  Bodö, 214, 215

  Bojer, Johan, 222

  Bologna, 72, 75, 82

  Bolpur, 162, 164, 174

  _Bonds of Interest, The_, 249, 251

  _Bonheur, Le_, 24, 25

  Boni, Albert, 28

  Boyd, Ernest, 206, 249

  Brahm, Otto, 138

  _Brand_, 199

  Brandes, Edward, 197, 199, 217

  Brandes, Georg, 61, 127, 133, 197, 201, 235

  Brattleboro, 93, 94

  Bréal, Michael, 178

  Breslau, 137

  _Broken Men, The_, 93

  Brooks, Van Wyck, 186

  Brousson, Jean-Jacques, 226, 236

  _Brushwood_, 217

  _Brushwood Boy, The_, 95

  Buchan, John, 45, 46

  Burckhardt, Jacob, 206

  _Burgomaster at Stilemonde, The_, 156

  Burns, Robert, 41

  _Butterflies_, 207, 211, 212

  _By the Grave (or Urn) of Shelley_, 78

  Byrne, Donn, 254


  _Cahiers de la Quinzaine_, 179

  Calderon, 126, 242

  _Calendau_, 37

  _Caligula_, 178

  _Can We Still Be Christians?_, 52, 55

  Cannan, Gilbert, 180, 181, 183

  _Captains Courageous_, 96

  _Captured_, 194

  Carducci, Giosuè, 72-84

  Carman, Bliss, 152, 153

  Carrington, H., 28

  Carter, A. Helene, 207

  _Cathleen ni Hoolihan_, 259

  Celtic revival, 253, 254

  _Celtic Twilight, The_, 261

  Chaitanya Deva, 174

  _Charles Men, The_, 193, 194

  Chater, Arthur G., 121, 189, 196

  Cheshire Cheese Club, 258

  Chesterton, Gilbert K., 86

  _Children of the Age_, 214, 220

  _Children of the Soil_, 267

  _Chitra_, 167

  Chopin, 265

  Christiania, 15, 60, 216

  _Christianity and the New Idealism_, 54

  _Christ Legends_, 116

  Clamecy, 176

  Clark, Barrett H., 138, 147, 179, 197, 239, 250

  _Classicism and Teutonism_, 194

  Claudel, Paul, 177

  _Clerambault_, 186

  _Clipped Wings_, 198, 199

  _Cloud that Lifted, The_, 156

  _Code of Statutes_, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14

  _Colas Breugnon_, 184

  _Colberg_, 131

  _Colleague Crampton_, 136, 138

  Colum, Padraic, 254

  Columbia University, 53

  _Comedienne, The_, 270

  _Comprehensive Lexicon of Ancient and Modern Provençal_, 40

  Conrad, Michael Georg, 211

  Copenhagen, 198, 199, 200, 217

  Coppée, François, 26, 232

  _Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum_, 45

  _Cradle Songs_, 195

  _Creative Philosophy_, 55

  _Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century_, 61, 65, 127, 128, 133

  _Creative Unity_, 169, 171

  _Crescent Moon, The_, 168, 169

  _Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, The_, 227-231

  _Critica ed arte_, 76

  _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, 255

  Curtin, Jeremiah, 267, 268


  Dalecarlia, 114

  Danish Royal Theatre, 197

  Dante, 76, 77, 126

  _Danton_, 178

  Darwin, Charles, 201

  Daudet, Alphonse, 40

  _Day’s Work, The_, 86, 95, 99

  _Death of Tintagiles_, The, 152, 158

  _Deirdre_, 259, 260

  _Deluge_, The, 266

  _Departmental Ditties_, 90, 91

  Devereux, Roy, 265

  _Doll’s House, A_, 249

  _Don Juan_, 202

  _Doubtful Virtue_, 251

  Dowden, Edward, 26

  Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 94

  _Dreamer, The_, 275

  _Dreamers, The_, 214, 221

  Dresden, 201, 203, 204

  Dreyfus case, 179, 233

  Dublin, 256, 257, 258

  Dunsany, Lord, 254

  Dyboski, Roman, 274, 275

  Dynamite, 4, 5

  Dynicwicz, C. W., 267

  Dziewicki, M. H., 270


  “Eagle’s Flight,” 200

  Echegaray, José, 13, 31, 239-246, 264

  _Eddas, The_, 201, 202

  _Editor Lynge_, 218

  _Editor, The_, 59, 67

  _Emanuel, or Children of the Soil_, 267

  _Emanuel Quint_, 146

  Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 150

  _Emigrants, The_, 223

  _Emperor of Portugallia, The_, 110, 111, 119

  _Endymion_, 193, 209

  _English Flag, The_, 88

  Erichsen, Nelly, 200

  Ericsson, John, 3, 4

  Ervine, St. John, 254

  _Essays in Little_, 92

  _Essays on Modern Dramatists_, 154

  _Essays upon the Fine Arts_, 27

  _Ethics and Modern Thought_, 55

  Eucken, Rudolf, 48-57

  Eugen Diederichs Verlag in Jena, 205, 211

  Evans, A. W., 26

  Expressionism, 250

  Extramundana, 207

  _Eyes of Asia_, 90, 100


  Farr, Florence, 259

  Fay, William, 259

  Fenger, Harald, 203

  Félibres, The, 32

  _Felice_, 131

  “Felix Tandem,” 206

  _Ferments_, 275

  _Field of Ermine_, 248, 252

  Fischer, Kuno, 51

  _Fisher Maiden, The_, 61, 66, 68

  _Five Nations, The_, 97

  Flach, Pauline Bancroft, 112

  _Florian Geyer_, 138, 141

  _Folly or Saintliness_, 241

  _For Daily Bread_, 268

  _Forest Murmurs_, 194

  Founder’s Day, 15

  France, Anatole (_see_ Anatole France)

  Francke, Kuno, 208

  Freeman, E. A., 45, 46

  French Academy, 22, 24, 39, 151, 211

  _French Mons_, 194

  _From a Swedish Homestead_, 112, 113

  _From Sea to Sea_, 195

  _From the Notebook of a Posen_, 266

  Frost, Mary A., 128

  _Fundamental Ideas of the Present Day_, 51

  _Further Adventures of Nils_, 116, 117


  Galdós, Pérez-, 239, 244

  _Gallery, A_, 101

  Galsworthy, John, 145, 146

  _Gandhi, Mahatma_, 185

  _Gardener, The_, 159, 163, 172, 174

  _Gauntlet, A_, 69

  _German Classics_, 208

  _Germinal_, 272

  Ghent, 149

  _Ghosts_, 199, 243

  Gibson, Lucy Judge, 54

  Gibson, W. R. Boyce, 54

  Gilkyson, T. W., 245

  _Girl from the Marshcroft, The_, 122

  _Gitanjali_, 164, 165, 172, 174

  Gjellerup, Karl, 13, 201-204

  _Gods and Fighting Men_, 255

  _Gods Are Athirst, The_, 233

  Goethe, 76, 132, 181, 210

  Gonski, Casimir, 267

  _Gora_, 173

  Gosse, Sir Edmund, 61, 62

  _Governor’s Wife, The_, 249

  Graham, James, 244

  _Great Galeoto, The_, 242, 243

  Gregory, Lady, 253, 254, 255, 256, 259, 260

  Groth, Catherine D., 185

  _Growth of the Soil_, 214, 220, 221

  Gsell, Paul, 225, 235

  Guedalla, Philip, 101

  Guiney, Dorothy Frances, 28

  _Gustav_, 207


  _Hadrian_, 131

  _Halta Hulda_, 67

  Hamsun, Knut, 213-223, 264

  _Hania_, 267

  _Hannele_, 139, 141

  Hannibal, 46, 47

  _Hans Alienus_, 193

  _Hans Lange_, 131

  _Happy Boy, A_, 20, 61, 63, 66

  Hardy, Thomas, 85, 272

  Harnack, Adolf, 55

  Harned, Mary, 145

  Harvard University, 53, 98

  Hauptmann, Gerhart, 133-147, 185, 240, 264

  Hearn, Lafcadio, 231

  Heidelberg, 206

  Heidenstam, Verner von, 87, 189-196, 254

  Heine, 76

  Heller, Otto, 135

  Henley, W. E., 258

  _Henry of Aue_, 143, 144

  _Heretic of Soana, The_, 146

  _Heretics_, 86, 87

  Hermann, E., 55

  Heyse, Paul, 124-133, 155, 240, 264

  Hinkson, Katherine Tynan, 258

  _Histoire comique_, 237

  _Histoire contemporaine_, 237

  _Historical Significance of the German People, The_, 54

  _History of Rome_, 44, 45, 46

  Hodge, Thekla E., 209, 211

  Holland, Maud, 82

  _Hombrecito, El_, 249

  _Hour-Glass, The_, 255, 259

  Hovey, Richard, 152, 153

  Howard, Velma Swanston, 105, 106, 111, 114, 122

  Huddlestone, Sisley, 238

  Hughes, Rupert, 271, 274

  Hugo, Victor, 24, 30, 244

  _Human Comedy, The_, 225

  Huneker, James, 237

  _Hunger_, 214, 217, 219

  Hyde, Douglas, 253, 254, 255, 259

  _Hymn to Satan_, 75


  Ibsen, Henrik, 58, 60, 65, 136, 199, 243, 249

  Idealism in literature, 10, 19, 21, 22, 49, 86, 105, 133, 205, 246,
        251, 253

  _Ideals in Ireland_, 253, 254

  _Ideas of Good and Evil_, 258, 261

  _If_, 87

  _Imago_, 208

  _Im Paradiese_, 129, 130

  _Independence_, 102

  _In Desert and Wilderness_, 269

  _In God’s Way_, 66

  _In Tartar Captivity_, 266

  _In the Grip of Life_, 220

  _In the Seven Woods_, 262

  _Intruder, The_, 152, 158

  _In Vain_, 269

  _Invisible Links_, 111, 112

  _Irish Melodies_, 203

  _Island of the Great Mother_, 146

  _Isles d’or, Les_, 38

  _Italian Influences_, 77


  Jameson, Storm, 239, 249, 251

  _Janko, the Musician_, 266

  Jasmin, Jacques, 32

  _Jean-Christophe_, 175, 177, 178, 180, 181, 182, 184

  Jena University, 51

  _Jerusalem_, 113, 114

  _John of Abyssinia_, 206

  _John Sherman_, 256

  Johnson, Lionel, 258

  _Joyzelle_, 153, 154, 155

  _Jungle Books, The_, 94, 96

  _Justice, La_, 24

  _Just So Stories_, 96


  _Karen Borneman_, 197

  Kasprowicz, Jan, 272

  Keats, John, 262

  Keller, Gottfried, 210

  _Kim_, 86, 96

  _Kinder der Welt_, 128, 132

  _Kingdom of the Dead, The_, 199

  _King of the Dark Chamber_, 172

  _King, The_, 67

  Kipling, Alice MacDonald, 89

  Kipling, Caroline Balestier, 94, 95

  Kipling, John Lockwood, 89, 97

  Kipling, Rudyard, 18, 85-103

  _Knights of the Cross_, 268

  Knudson, Karoline M., 189, 195

  _Knut Hamsun; A Study_, 216

  _Knut Hamsun: His Personality and His Outlook upon Life_, 214, 216,
        218, 222

  Kvikne, 59


  Lady Gregory (_see_ Gregory)

  Lagerlöf, Selma, 104-123, 254

  Lahore, 89, 90, 91

  Lamartine, 33, 38

  _Lame Hulda_, 67

  _Land and Sea Tales for Scouts_, etc., 87, 100

  _Land of Heart’s Desire, The_, 255, 259, 260

  Lang, Andrew, 92

  Lansing, Ruth, 239, 241

  Larsen, Hanna Arstrup, 216, 218

  _Last Centaur, The_, 131, 132

  _Last of the Vikings, The_, 223

  _Laughing Truth_, 207

  _Lay Down Your Arms_, 7

  _Lay of the Leader_, 275

  _Legendary Romance, A_, 202

  Letts, Winifred, 254

  _Let Us Follow Him_, 267

  _Library of the World’s Best Literature_, 35, 241

  _Life of Jeanne d’Arc, The_, 225, 233, 236

  _Life of the Bee, The_, 156

  _Life of the Spirit, The_, 52

  _Life’s Basis and Life’s Ideals_, 52

  _Life’s Handicap_, 86

  _Life’s Play_, 219

  _Liliecrona’s Home_, 118, 119

  _Liluli_, 185

  _Literary Ideals in Ireland_, 263

  _Little Pierre_, 225

  “Litwos,” 266

  Lofoden Islands, 214, 215

  _Lonely Lives_, 134, 136

  _Loups, Les_, 179

  Lowell Institute, 53

  Lucas, Mrs. Edgar, 200

  Lucerne, 207

  _Lucky Peter_, 199

  Lucretius, 24

  Lynch, Hannah, 239, 241


  _Mädchenfeinde_, 207, 208

  _Madman or Saint_, 241

  Madrid, 240, 243, 248

  Maeterlinck, Maurice, 148-158, 250

  _Magic of an Hour, The_, 248, 251

  _Magnhild_, 66

  _Mahatma Gandhi_, 170

  _Malquerida, La_, 248

  _Many Inventions_, 94

  _Mårbacka_, 105

  _Mariana_, 242, 244

  _Mary_, 70

  _Mary of Magdala_, 131

  _Mary Magdalene_, 154, 155

  Masereel, Frans, 186

  Massis, Henri, 235

  Mattos, Alex. Teixeira de, 157

  Maubel, Henri, 149

  Maud, Constance Elizabeth, 39

  May, James Lewis, 25, 225, 237

  McCabe, Joseph, 49, 55

  _Meaning and Value of Life, The_, 54

  Meltzer, Charles Henry, 139

  _Mémoires d’une idéaliste_, 177

  _Memoirs of Mistral_, 39

  Meredith, George, 35, 36, 85

  _Merlin_, 26

  _Mes origines_, 39

  Meyer, Conrad, 210

  Meysenburg, Malwida von, 177

  Miall, Bernard, 157, 177

  _Michael Kramer_, 135

  Michelson, A. A., 18

  Miller, Katherine, 184, 186

  Milnes, Turquet, 157

  “Mimosas,” 200

  _Minna_, 202, 203

  Mirabeau, Octave, 150

  _Miracles of Antichrist_, 111

  _Mireio_, 20, 31, 33-36, 93

  Mistral, Frédéric, 13, 20, 31-41, 72, 87, 93, 240, 253

  _Modern Book of French Verse, The_, 28, 29

  _Modern Drama in Europe_, 239, 249

  _Modern Polish Literature_, 274

  Mommsen, Theodor, 42-48, 79

  _Monna Vanna_, 155

  Monod, Gabriel, 176

  _Montespan, The_, 185

  Moore, George, 253, 259

  Moore, Thomas, 203, 204, 258

  Morgan, Bayard Quincy, 146

  Moses, Montrose J., 150, 151

  Muir, Edwin, 146

  Muir, Willa, 146

  Munich, 126, 130

  _Munken Vendt_, 219

  Münsterberg, Marguerite, 210

  _Musicians of Former Days_, 178

  _Musicians of Today_, 178

  _My Friend’s Book_, 225, 230, 232

  _My Reminiscences_, 160, 169

  _Mysteries_, 214, 218


  Napoleon III, 5

  _Naturalism or Idealism?_, 56, 57

  _Naulahka, The_, 93

  Nawench, A. M., 271

  _Necklace of Stars, The_, 249

  _Nero_, 268

  _Nerto_, 31, 38

  _Newly-Married Couple, The_, 67, 68

  _New Soil_, 217

  Nielson, C. L., 203

  _Nietzsche_, 205, 207

  _Nimäi_, 174

  _Niobe_, 178

  Nirdlinger, Charles, 239

  Nobel, Alfred, 1-20

  Nobel, Emanuel, 2, 3, 9

  Nobel Foundation, 10, 11, 12, 16

  Nobel, Ludwig, 2

  Nobel, Robert, 11

  Nobel, will of, 10-16, 17, 18, 21, 42, 57, 104

  _Nobody is a Prophet_, etc., 266

  _Northern Studies_, 60

  Norwegian Storthing, 11, 58

  _Nouvelle Revue_, 7

  Novalis, 150

  _Novellen_, 124, 125

  _Nuove poesie_, 76


  _Odi barbare_, 78, 79

  _Of American Culture_, 216

  _Old Bell-Ringer, The_, 266

  _Olivades, Les_, 39

  _Olympian Spring_, 205, 208, 209, 210

  _On Baile’s Strand_, 255

  _On Emerson and Other Essays_, 150, 151

  _On Life and Letters_, 26, 227, 232

  _On the Bright Shore_, 269

  _On the Field of Glory_, 268, 269

  _On the Scent_, 149

  _Opium Smokers_, 275

  Orkan, Ladislaw, 272

  Orsino, 178

  O’Shaughnessy, Arthur, 28, 29

  _Our Eternity_, 156

  _Outcast, The_, 120, 121

  _Over the Lofty Mountains_, 60

  Oxford University, 270


  _Pair of Shoes, A_, 251

  Palayo, Mendenez, 244

  Palmer, Arthur Hubbell, 63

  Pan, 214, 218

  _Pan Michael_, 266

  _Parisian Portraits_, 27

  Parker, Gilbert, 152

  Parker, W. B., 86

  _Parsival_, 135, 136, 144, 145

  _Passion Flower, The_, 248

  Passow, Irene, 51

  _Pastor Mons_, 202

  _Peasants in Exile_, 268

  _Peasants, The_, 269-272

  _Peer Gynt_, 198

  _Pelléas and Mélisande_, 150

  _Penguin Island_, 225, 233

  _People’s Theatre, The_, 178, 179

  _Pepita’s Wedding_, 193

  _Peter Pan_, 142, 260

  Phelps, M. Stuart, 51

  Phelps, William Lyon, 154

  Picard, Edmund, 149

  _Piedmont_, 80

  _Pierre Nozière_, 225, 226

  _Pilgrimage, A._, 223

  _Pilgrimages and Wander Years_, 190, 191

  _Pilgrim Kamanita, The_, 202

  _Pilgrim’s Way, A._, 87

  _Plain Tales from the Hills_, 90

  _Plays in Prose and Verse_, 255, 260

  Plessis, Frédéric, 26

  _Poème du Rhône, Le_, 40

  _Poems and Songs_, 63

  _Poland Reborn_, 265

  Polish Literature, 264, 265

  Pontoppidan, Henrik, 13, 197-200

  Porter, Noah, 51

  _Post Office, The_, 172

  _Pot of Broth, The_, 259

  _Power of the Dead_, 156

  _Prayers for Mother India_, 169

  Preston, Harriet Waters, 35, 37

  _Primo Vere_, 82, 83

  _Princess Maleine_, 150

  _Prometheus and Epimetheus_, 206

  _Prometheus Unbound_, 209

  _Promised Land, The_, 199, 270, 271

  _Puck of Pook’s Hill_, 96

  _Punch and Judy and Other Essays_, 30


  Quai Malaquais, 226

  _Que sais-je?_, 28

  Quiller-Couch, Arthur, 65

  Quimby, Mary Ayres, 146

  _Quo Vadis_, 267, 268


  _Recessional, The_, 95, 97

  _Red Lily, The_, 225, 233

  Redman, Ben Ray, 186

  Reid, Forrest, 257, 259, 260

  _Religion and Life_, 55

  _Reminiscences_, 258

  _Responsibilities_, 262

  _Revolt of the Angels, The_, 225, 233, 237

  _Revue Universelle, La_, 235

  _Rewards and Fairies_, 96

  Reymont, Ladislaw, 240, 264, 269-276

  Rhys, Ernest, 160

  Richards, T. W., 18

  _Riders to the Sea_, 260

  Rolland, Romain, 170, 175-188, 212, 254, 264

  Romsdale, 59

  Roosevelt, Theodore, 18, 41, 53

  Root, Elihu, 18

  Roumanille, Joseph, 32

  Roy, Basanta Koomar, 165

  Ruysbroeck, 150


  _Sacrifice and Other Plays_, 168

  _Sadhana_, 150, 166, 172

  _Saint Briggitta’s Pilgrimage_, 194

  _Sainte-Beuve_, 235

  _Saint George and the Dragon_, 194

  _Saint Louis_, 178

  _Salamander_, 127

  Sanborn, Alvan V., 179

  _Sandhya Sangit_, 163

  _Sapphics and Alcaics_, 73

  _Saturday Night_, 249

  Scheffel, Joseph Victor, 128, 129

  Schiller, 76, 210

  _School of Princesses, The_, 252

  Scudder, Vida D., 274

  _Segelfoss Town_, 220, 221

  Seltzer, Adele, 146

  Seltzer, Thomas, 146

  Selver, Paul, 270

  Serrano, Mary, 241

  _Seven Princesses, The_, 152

  _Seven Seas, The_, 94

  _Shadowy Waters, The_, 261

  Shakespeare, 101, 126, 177

  Shaw, George Bernard, 263

  _Shay’s 25 Short Plays_, 245

  Shelley, 78, 262

  Sienkiewicz, Henryk, 240, 264-269

  _Sigurd Slembe_, 59, 64

  _Sister Beatrice_, 157

  Sligo, 256

  Smith College, 53

  _Socialism; an Analysis_, 55

  Sohlmann, Ragnar, 9

  Soissons, S. C. de, 268

  _Soldiers Three_, 90, 93

  _Solitudes, Les_, 24

  _Some Eighteenth Century Byways_, etc., 45, 46

  _Song of the English, A_, 103

  _Song of the French Roads, A_, 88

  _Songs of Sunrise_, 163

  _Son of Don Juan, The_, 242, 243

  _Soothsayer, The_, 195

  Spanish Academy, 239, 248

  _Spiritual Life of Modern America, The_, 216

  Spitteler, Carl, 205-212

  _Spreading the News_, 260

  _Spring_, 270, 272

  _Stalky & Co._, 90

  _Stances et poèmes_, 23

  Starkie, Walter, 250

  Stephens, James, 254

  Stimson, Eleanor, 186

  _Stolen Child, The_, 255

  Stork, Charles Wharton, 189, 191, 192, 193

  _Story of Gösta Berling, The_, 105, 109, 110, 112, 119

  _Stray Birds_, 168

  Strettell, Alma, 39

  Strindberg, August, 190

  _Struggling Life_, 217

  _Studies from Ten Literatures_, 206, 249

  _Studies in Literature_, 26

  _Studies in Modern German Literature_, 135

  _Study of the Modern Drama, A_, 138, 197, 239, 249

  Sully-Prudhomme, René, 21-30, 240

  _Summer_, 186, 187, 270, 272

  _Sunken Bell, The_, 135, 140, 141, 142, 260

  _Sunset_, 219

  _Supplication, A_, 28, 29

  Suttner, Bertha von, 6, 7, 8

  _Sweden’s Laureate_, 189

  Swedish Academy, 11, 12, 16, 17, 43, 194, 197, 234, 236

  Symbolism, 152

  Symons, Arthur, 258

  Synge, John, 254, 255, 260

  _Synnöve Solbakken_, 61, 62, 63


  Tagore, Rabindranath, 18, 159-174, 254

  _Tales from a Mother of Pearl Casket_, 233

  _Test, The_, 23

  _Thaïs_, 225, 232, 233

  _That Third Woman_, 269

  _Theseus and Heracles_, 206

  _They_, 95

  Thibault, François Noël, 226

  Thibault, Jacques Anatole, 224

  Thompson, Vance, 5

  _Thora van Deken_, 198

  _Those Europeans_, 238

  _Thoughts in Loneliness_, 190

  _Three Poets_, 27

  _Thy Brother’s House_, 247

  _Tolstoy_, 177, 246

  _Traffics and Discoveries_, 97

  _Tragedies de la foi, Les_, 180

  _Treasure of the Humble, The_, 156

  _Treasure, The_, 121, 122

  _Tree of the Folkungs, The_, 196

  Trumbauer, Walter H. P., 145

  _Truth of Religion, The_, 52

  _Truth, The_, 248

  _Twenty-five Years_, 258

  _Two Little Misogynists_, 207, 208


  Underhill, John Garrett, 239, 245, 249, 250

  _Under the Autumn Star_, 215

  _Under the Deodars_, 90

  _Unknown Guest, The_, 156

  Upanishads, 166, 172

  Upsala, 64, 117

  Urbana, 165


  Valdes, 239

  Valera, 239, 244

  Varmland, 106, 108, 118

  Vega, Lope de, 242

  _Versunkene Glocke, Die_, 141, 142

  _Victoria_, 219

  Vigny, Alfred de, 229

  _Voices of Tomorrow_, 70, 132

  _Vraie religion selon Pascal, La_, 28

  _Vrais tendresses, Les_, 24

  Wackernagel, Wilhelm, 206

  Wagner, 178, 181, 202, 203

  Wallace, Elizabeth, 243

  _Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings, A_, 215

  Warsaw, 265, 266

  _Weavers, The_, 136, 138, 139

  _Wee Willie Winkie_, 91

  _What Do I Know?_, 28

  _What Will People Say?_, 274

  _When the New Wine Blooms_, 70

  _White Stone, The_, 233

  Whittier, J. G., 41

  _Wicker-Work Woman, The_, 233

  Widgery, Alban G., 56

  Widman, Joseph Victor, 210, 211

  Wiehr, Josef, 214, 216, 218, 222

  _Wife of the Avenger_, 240

  Williams, Oakley, 144

  Wilson, Woodrow, 18, 185

  _Wind among the Reeds, The_, 258, 261

  _Winter_, 270, 272

  _Winter Ballad, A_, 146

  _With Fire and Sword_, 266, 267

  _Without Dogma_, 267

  Wolf, Hugo, 181

  _Woman’s Victory_, 217

  _Wonderful Adventures of Nils, The_, 105, 113, 117, 195

  Worster, W. W., 221

  _Wrack of the Storm, The_, 156


  Yagna, 272, 273

  _Years Between, The_, 99, 100

  _Year 1794, The_, 275

  Yeats, William Butler, 18, 160, 253-263

  Young Poland, 269


  _Zacchæus_, 217

  Zeromski, Stephen, 275

  Zola, 272

  Zürich, 43, 206

  Zweig, Stefan, 175, 176, 181

       *       *       *       *       *




Transcriber’s note


Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.
Hyphenization was standardized where appropriate. Italization, and
spelling of proper nouns were also standardized.

In this version, the illustrations are placed differently on the page
than in the original.

Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following
changes:

  Page 65:  “is a concilatory mind”        “is a conciliatory mind”
  Page 178: “Original of the Modern”       “Origins of the Modern”
  Page 180: “falsit es and hypocrisy”      “falsities and hypocrisy”
  Page 180: “days, under title”            “days, under the title”
  Page 201: “accept my parish”             “accept any parish”
  Page 294: “zwie Roman, ubersetzung”      “zwei Roman, ubersetzung”
  Page 295: “_goldens Zweig_, Dichtung     “_goldene Zweig_, Dichtung
               und Novellenkrauz”             und Novellenkranz”
  Page 295: “_Frühesten Erlebmisse_”       “_Frühesten Erlebnisse_”
  Page 298: “Years; Reminiscencs”          “Years; Reminiscences”
  Page 311: “Vrai religion selon”          “Vraie religion selon”



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