CONTEMPORARY

SCANDINAVIAN

BELLES-LETTRES.

To say

THE first thing that strikes even a superficial observer of contemporary Scandinavian Belles-Lettres is its extraordinary productiveness. The united population of the three Northern kingdoms scarcely exceeds ten millions, being consequently less than one-fourth the population of France, or one-fifth that of the German Empire, yet the number of novels and poems published in Scandinavia is relatively greater than the number published in either of the great Continental countries, and its tendency is to increase. Equally remarkable is the excellent quality of most of the work produced. nothing of the veterans of Scandinavian literature, Björnson, Lie, Ibsen, Snoilsky, Drachman, and Schandorph, for instance, laureate classics who have already given the world their best, there are at the present moment in Scandinavia, at least ten rising writers of the first rank, and at least thirty more of incontestably superior ability. It is true that much of this young talent, abusing the almost unlimited licence conceded to letters in the North, has, too often, run amuck of decency and even sanity; but impudent exuberance and want of balance have ever been the characteristics of young talent, and signs are not wanting of a reaction in favour of good sense and good taste. From what has been said, it is obviously impossible, in a brief review, to do anything like full justice to so ample and complex a subject as current Scandinavian literature. At best I can but hope, broadly, to indicate its mair. features, and introduce, succinctly, some of its leading personalities. Let me add, too, that I advisedly omit all mention of

that illustrious trio: Björnson, Ibsen, and Lie. Those great writers have already been popularised among us, to some extent, by the suggestive causeries of Mr. Edmund Gosse, and the convincing translations of Mr. William Archer, and I would reserve my limited space for the younger men, who, with equal claims upon our attention, are still strangers to us.

Most interesting, perhaps, of all contemporary Scandinavian authors is the Norwegian, Arne Garborg. Reared in an entirely puritanical home, where amusement of any sort was regarded as devil-worship, his irrepressible artistic instincts first found an outlet in the columns of the Christiania Aftenblad, where he attacked the new tendencies in literature from a Christian standpoint. But his restless, ardent, and profoundly critical nature speedily drove him into the extreme radical camp, where he advocated absolute free thought with all the one-sided impetuosity of a new convert. It was during this period that he wrote his " Forteljingar og Sögur," a volume of very powerful peasant tales, of a darker, wilder, and uglier type than the Björnsonian tales; his great romance, "Bondestudentar," a blend of fine psychology, politics, and political economy, and the novel, "Hja ho Mamma," in which the trials of a young provincial girl are described with a fatiguing minuteness of realistic detail. Garborg's combative radicalism was, at this time, of the most extreme and uncompromising type. Thus, when the fanatical Hans Jæger's blasphemous and indecent book, "Fra Kristianias Bohêmer," was confiscated, and its author imprisoned, Garborg published the almost equally objectionable novel "Mannfolk," with the express object of provoking a prosecution. His ambition was disappointed, however, as the Government, very prudently, ignored the book altogether. He also threw himself, heart and soul, into the socalled social question, or relation of the sexes, which has been for the last fifteen years, and still is, a burning question in Scandinavia. Björnson, in the play "Handske," had, with characteristic dogmatism, propounded a preposterous system of morality, according to which every woman was to be the selfappointed censor of her future husband's prenuptial chastity. Garborg, whose sound common sense revolted against the would-be tyranny of emancipated womankind and her cham

pions, at once took up the gauntlet, and his contributions to this dreary and somewhat disgusting subject may still be read with profit. Briefly summarised, his remedy against the social evil is early marriage and free divorce, but every marriage is to be founded on love, "that great force of nature which none can violate with impunity."

But Garborg's splendid energies have been mainly directed to the Herculean labour of creating an artificial literary language out of the so-called maal (tongue) spoken in southwestern Norway, by way of patriotic protest against the use of the dominant official Danish language. The attempt naturally provoked a great deal of heated controversy and angry ridicule; but Garborg resolutely persisted, and at the present time, thanks entirely to his unwearying efforts, the once despised maal has its press and its publishers; a whole group of maalforfattere write books in the "New Norse" as it is called, which actually pay, and a professorship has even been founded to teach the dialect scientifically. Garborg himself has written most of his novels in the maal, besides enriching it with the unique cycle of poems entitled "Haugtussa."

Haugtussa" is an allegory, in fairy-tale form, of the ceaseless struggle going on in man and nature between the rival powers of Light and Darkness One winter's evening when the snow is falling light as eider-down through the soft still air, the heroine, Veslemoy, is lured away from the distaff in her granny's little cottage, "full of the grey. wool that none can take,"* and plunged into the midst of the mysterious realm of Trollheim (Gnomeland), where she is alternately fascinated and terrified by awful and beauteous visions of what has been and is to be. Every human note is struck in this noble collection of lyrics. We find grace and power, outbursts of wild anguish, laments full of mournful longing, tender childlike naïveté, solemn earnestness, and exquisitely beautiful descriptions of nature. One must always regret, however, the perverseness which has hidden away this rare carcanet of poetical gems in the all but inaccessible casket of an obscure and difficult dialect.

Le., smoke,

Garborg's latest development has caused his radical friends no small uneasiness. I allude to his famous novels, "Trætte Mænd" and "Fred." "Trætte Mænd" is obviously inspired by Huyssman's "En Route," and arrives at precisely the same conclusion--the utter vanity of life divorced from religion. In form it is the diary of a decadent man of letters, who oscillates perpetually between free love, suicide, and a mariage de convenance, till a sheer longing for peace drives him back to Christianity. The naturalistic standpoint is caricatured in the persons of the hero's two friends, the practical Yankee cynic Jonathan, to whom every love-story is simply a phase of the social question; and the scientific cynic, Dr. Kvaale, who regards "all religiosity" as "ungratified, overdeveloped, or perverted sexual instinct." The tone of the book throughout is fiercely iconoclastic. All the author's earlier political, social, and literary ideals are scathed by a ruthless irony worthy of Swift. It seems as if he could not sufficiently revenge himself upon them for having deluded him so long. "Truth," he exclaims in one place, with a side-thrust at the naturalists, "is, on the whole, so filthy a thing that finely spun natures ought to be spared it." Science is denounced as a systematic "We don't know," an excellent guide in things indifferent, but a veritable Dr. Helpless whenever the shoe pinches. Literature is nothing but an eternal I, I, I, my books, my publishers, and in the innermost recess of every author's heart there constantly crouches a "little gall-sick dwarf.” The hero is consumed by a longing to cast himself at the feet of someone or other, "a woman, a priest, a God, and howl, roar, confess, be whipped, cursed, damned, and finally folded securely in loving arms like a sick child." "Trætte Mænd" is not perhaps a very pleasant book to read, but its rugged power and pathos are irresistible. It fascinates, appals, and leaves haunting memories behind it. The later novel, "Fred," also deals with religious subjects. It has well been described as "a storm-dark story of soul-sickness," and is indisputably one of the deepest psychological studies the Norwegian literature possesses. But its tone is less self-surrendering than the tone of "Trætte Mænd," and gives one the impression that the inevitable struggle between Garborg's strong and supple

intellect and his deeply religious instincts is still to be fought out.

Garborg is most severe upon the so-called Decadents, those super-refined, neuræsthenic, cynical hedonists, with a languid penchant for the bizarre, the eccentric and the unclean, who "no longer believe in anything, or interest themselves in anything, or have energy enough to hold fast to anything; but simply lie supine and try to wring a drop or two of art out of their own jaded perceptions." The Decadents have been gaining ground in Sweden lately, and their chief representative there is Ola Hansson.

Ola Hansson was born, November 12, 1860, at Hösninge, in Scania, the most Danish province of Sweden; studied with distinction at the University of Lund, and immediately after finishing his academical course, devoted himself entirely to literature. His earliest works (" Digte" and "Notturno") were lyrics of melting sweetness, though clouded by a morbid melancholy. In his twenty-seventh year he published a small volume of prose tales entitled, "Sensitiva Amorosa," which shocked even the easy-going Swedish public, and brought about the ostracism of the author. Henceforth every door was closed against him; his friends were silent; the Press, almost unanimously, recommended his seclusion in a jail or a madhouse; no publisher would look at his MSS. ; and finally he was "obliged to quit the field of battle" and seek a refuge in the north of Germany, where, I believe, he still resides with his wife, Laura Marholm-Hansson, herself an author and critic of some repute. And, when all is said, this boycotting was not undeserved. "Sensitiva Amorosa" is an infamous production. No doubt grosser things are written and read every year, but the veiled, sublimated, and perfumed nastiness of this particular piece of pornography is infinitely more offensive than the nastiness of the French naturalists, just as the effluvia of a sick-room is more nauseating than the odour of the gutter. "Sensitiva Amorosa" is in fact saturated with morbid humours, and redolent of unspeakable foulness. And the book is as mad as it is bad. Whatever of talent it possesses (and talent of a peculiar kind is unmistakable throughout it) is overwrought, extravagant, hysterical, We hear of skeletons