Chapter III

The lyric inspiration of Tegnér early reveals itself as an innate tendency to enthusiasm for everything that stands out in bold relief from the gray and prosaic background of everyday life. All deeds of heroic valor; all brilliant honors, let them be gained as they may, attract him by their radiance, and he revels even in their tinsel. A strong respect for the great names of history, a decided disinclination to apply discriminating criticism to fame once established, form one of the deepest and most unchangeable traits of his character. It is the unusual climax attained by this fundamental tendency which impels him to write poetry. Indeed, it is this which makes him a poet. In order, however, the better to understand this tendency, we must go back to the sources of his inspiration, investigate what ideal he seeks, discovers, or creates, see in what sort of inner images he objectizes the natural peculiarities or intellectual attributes which correspond to the best of his native powers. He does not dream of Oehlenschläger's Aladdin form; he is neither unsophisticated enough nor bold enough to do so. Just as little is he inclined to mirror himself in a Hamlet or a Faust. The heroes of scepticism and of thought are far too abstract for his vigorous, boyish imagination; it dreams of sturdier ideals. Still less do his conceptions concentrate about a Manfred type. Guilt does not allure him, and the mysterious has for his frank nature no charm. Brought up and developed amid idyllic conditions, and surrounded by universal good-will in the little town which he himself named "an academic village," he could not possibly give way to the cosmopolitan prose pathos of the long repressed Schiller. The ideal which slowly shapes itself in his mind is a national and northern romantic ideal.

It is a luminous image of stormily progressive and remodelling power, partly of a warlike, partly of a civilizing nature. All of the forms which Tegnér, in the course of years, has shown marked preference for delineating, have been invested with it. In one of his university addresses, for instance, he undertook to give a characterization of Luther. In order to accomplish this he places his hero in the point of view from which it is his wont to consider men of action. First he emphatically declares that every word and action of Luther bore the stamp of "overwhelming vigor."

"There was something chivalrous, in fact, I might almost say, romantic, in his character, his every undertaking.... His action was like a battle completed, his word like one just begun. He was one of those mighty souls who, like certain trees, flourish only amid storms. His grand, adventurous life always seemed to me like a heroic poem, with its struggles and its final victory."

We are all the more strongly impressed with the character of the orator from this very one-sided treatment of a many-sided theme when we note that Tegnér has therein presented determining qualities which, with slightly altered attributes, he can apply a few years later, almost word for word, to King Gustavus III. of Sweden, whose personality differs as widely as possible from that of Luther. Scarcely any proof is needed to show that between the sturdy Saxon reformer and the theatrical, Gallicized, and skeptical monarch there was no other bond of union than that which Tegnér's admiration created for both. Tegnér said of Gustavus, "In his nature there was not only something grand, but at the same time something chivalrous; lofty heroic power was displayed in him, not with shield and sword, but with the lightest drapery of grace. He was a grand, romantic, heroic poem, with all its adventures and fascinations, but at the same time with the tenderest effusions of the heart and the most wanton gambols of joy."

Grandeur, strength, and adventurous romance, then, are the common fundamental qualities for both Luther and Gustavus; both are knights of chivalry, and the lives of both appear to Tegnér like a romantic epic poem. What else and what more could he say about Fridthjof? What else, in truth, has he said, when in his own characterization he called attention to the fresh life, the bold defiance, and the haughtiness of this hero and this heroic poem!

In this tendency we have the deepest, firmest foundation on which his conceptions of heroic ideals gradually came to rest.

There are some youthful, innocent odes dating from the period of Tegnér's sixteenth year, written on the occasion of the rumor of Bonaparte's death in Egypt. In them the poet glorifies Bonaparte as the hero of freedom, whose honor is not purchased through blood and tears, yet who will bring enlightenment and joy to the whole world. It is an echo from the refrain of the humanitarian period which rings from these childish lips. They hail Napoleon with a categorical "Live for humanity or perish!" The mature man views the subject differently. In the great religious, political, and literary reaction against the period of enlightenment, the anti-Gallican current which won Sir Walter Scott and Oehlenschläger, was wholly obnoxious to Tegnér. The reaction, however, struck an æsthetic chord which harmonized with his temperament. This was its contempt for utility as a measure for the worth of a deed. The fact was, ultra-utilitarianism, and the species of philanthropy interlinked with it, had opposed itself to the conception of the chivalrous and the romantic.

"The old chivalrous dream," says Tegnér, "of the honor of nations, was either declared point-blank to be a freak of the imagination, or else to be synonymous with their domestic welfare. Everything in history was estimated, as in a counting-house, according to its practical results; and no higher estimate placed on a house of correction, or a threshing-machine, than on Alexander's adventurous expedition to India, or the fruitless victory of Charles XII."

He does not exaggerate; poor Alexander the Great was ranked in Sweden, by an inspired enlightener of the people, as far inferior to that benefactor of mankind who invented the cheap and nutritious Brunswick mum.[1] Tegnér's youthful conceptions of virtuous, useful heroes now become modified by the prevailing controversies, and are brought into harmony with the protest of the entire romantic bent of his mind against the narrow-minded care for the welfare of humanity as a main essential. Moral considerations give way before the romantic-metaphysical adoration of the hero of fate.

"Wherefore scorn me thus forever,
Legions frail and transitory,
Shorn of will, devoid of might?
Catch the butterfly, but never
Stay the eagle, crown'd with glory,
As it seeks its mountain height.
* * * * * *
"Ask the storm, amid its wailing,
Ask the sky's majestic thunder,
When earth quails 'neath its alarms,
If the lily 'tis assailing;
Tho' the grove be thrilled with wonder,
If a loving pair it harms."

Thus he expresses himself in the poem entitled "Hjelten" (The Hero), 1813. These sentiments, to be sure, are far from being Tegnér's final views. Accustomed as he was to gaze upward to individual personality as the highest form of existence, he was only likely to be moved on some special occasion and in a half defiant way to give vent to such pantheistic notions as those in this poem. And, as a consciously reflecting spirit, he was much rather inclined not to believe in the unconscious than to overestimate it, making, for instance, a large number of polemic attacks on the doctrine of a blind poetic inspiration; yet his preference for the warlike stormy march of progress was so deeply rooted in his heart that he did not recoil from giving such bold expression to it as in the poem just cited.

Still more strongly than in the various lays to the honor of Napoleon, does he express his contempt for material gain as the result of deeds of heroism in his poem, "Alexander on the Hydaspes." The poet has chosen the moment when the exhausted and dispirited troops implore the great Alexander not to conduct them farther into Asia, but to lead his army homeward. The king replies scornfully: "Do you think that I, as a youth, came down from the Macedonian mountains to furnish you with gold and purple raiment? I seek honor; honor alone and nothing else!"--a reply which, in point of sharpness and precision, leaves nothing to be desired. The disregard of human life and human happiness evinced by the highly endowed and intrepid despot is represented as unconditionally justifiable.

It is therefore very easy to understand how Charles XII., whom the Swedish people, with justice, have never ceased to admire, could become a hero without reproach to Tegnér. He scarcely even deems it a stain upon Charles that, with all his brilliant qualities, he plunged Sweden into such depths that it has never since been able to regain its place among the great powers of Europe. It was no mere chance that it was Tegnér, among all the poets of Sweden, who wrote the glorious poem on this king, which, although composed merely as a poem for a special occasion, became the national song of Sweden. An impractical rushing into danger always fired his imagination; the stubbornness that, with gaze fixed upon a self-written code of honor, despised prudent actions, was in his eyes scarcely a fault, and consequently an indifference as to whether a deed would lead to victory or destruction, if it were only brilliant and noisy, was, in his estimation, a virtue.

"Northland's strength defies and never Death can conquest from us sever, For e'en should we fall at last, Life in battle's sport was past,"[2]

are the words his "Gerda," in the epos of the same name, addresses to Bishop Absalom.

The circumspection of the statesman and the lawgiver had no power to rouse his enthusiasm; but he loved the royal youth "before whose word the meshes of the statesman's wiles are rent asunder" (Tegnér's "Charles XII."). The long-considered plans of the military commander did not seem to him the true evidence of warlike genius; but he admired beyond measure instantaneous inspiration on the battlefield, and the courageous impetuosity which followed it.

This is apparent when Tegnér describes a hero so different from, and so vastly superior to, Charles XII., as the Deliverer of Protestantism, Gustavus Adolphus. What he commends in him is not so much his merits as a political leader and warlike commander-in-chief, as it is the qualities which place him, as much as possible, on a parallel with a soldier-general like Charles XII. He lingers with enthusiasm over the "sudden, lightning flashes of thought on the battlefield," which characterized him, as "every other warrior-like genius." He extols Gustavus because he loved danger for danger's sake, and delighted in toying with death. In short, he holds fast to the narrow old Norse measure of manliness, and endeavors to apply it even in cases where it is far surpassed by genuine greatness. For instance, he considers it almost ignominious in Wallenstein to have (for good reasons) declined the battle that Gustavus, "his chivalrous opponent," offered him at Nuremberg.

What gives this ideal of Tegnér its final _retouche_ is the candor he demands of his heroes. His own honest and sturdy nature mirrors itself therein. Of Wallenstein he says that he might have been called a great man "had he been noble and candid." Magnanimity will not suffice; candor is equally essential. The old Norse berserkers, in their martial fervor, flung their shields on their backs, and this mode of action found so much favor in Tegnér's eyes that he would gladly have seen it transported to the intellectual battle-field. Indeed, frankness seemed to him even a sort of guaranty for nobility of thought, and he regards the former with more warmth than the latter; for in his derogatory characterization of Wallenstein, he lays especial stress on his gloomy, reserved nature, without charging him with a single really ignoble trait. With him he contrasts Gustavus Adolphus, as the luminous, frank nature, endowed with a candor which was less doubtful in Tegnér himself than in the king who was, as a rule, retiring and little accessible.

Thus every form with which Tegnér's muse is occupied, receives a gentle pressure which moulds it into the form of the ideal hero, ever hovering before the poet's own mind.