Introduction: Björnson As A Lyric Poet

I lived far more than e'er I sang;
Thought, ire, and mirth unceasing rang
  Around me, where I guested;
To be where loud life's battles call
For me was well-nigh more than all
  My pen on page arrested.

What's true and strong has growing-room,
And will perhaps eternal bloom,
  Without black ink's salvation,
And he will be, who least it planned,
But in life's surging dared to stand,
The best bard for his nation.

A life seventy-seven years long and but two hundred pages of lyrical production, more than half of which was written in about a dozen years! The seeming disproportion is explained by the lines just quoted from the poem _Good Cheer_, with which Björnson concluded the first edition of his _Poems and Songs_. Alongside of these stanzas, in which the cause of his popularity and powerful influence is also unconsciously revealed, may well be placed the following one from _The Poet_, which discloses to us the larger conception of the mission that Björnson himself in all his work and life, no less than in his lyrics, so finely fulfilled:

The poet does the prophet's deeds;
In times of need with new life pregnant,
When strife and suffering are regnant,
His faith with light ideal leads.
The past its heroes round him posts,
He rallies now the present's hosts,
             The future opes
             Before his eyes,
             Its pictured hopes
             He prophesies.
   Ever his people's forces vernal
   The poet frees, --by right eternal.

"The best bard for his nation" is he who "does the prophet's deeds," who "rallies now the present's hosts," and "frees, --by right eternal." Poet and prophet Björnson was, but more than all else the leader of the Norwegian people, "where loud life's battles call," through conflict unto liberation and growth. It has been said that twice in the nineteenth century the national soul of Norway embodied itself in individual men,--during the first half in Henrik Wergeland and during the second half in Björnstjerne Björnson. True as this is of the former, it is still more true of the latter, for the history of Norway shows that the soul of its people expresses itself best through will and action. Björnson throughout all his life willed and wrought so much for his country, that he could give relatively little time and power to lyrical self-expression.

But Björnson strikingly represented the past of Norway as well as his contemporary age. He was a modern blending of the heroic chieftain and the gifted skald of ancient times. He was the first leader of his country in a period when the battles of the spirit on the fields of politics and economics, ethics, and esthetics were the only form of conflict,--a leader evoking, developing, and guiding the powers of his nation into fuller and higher life. In his many-sidedness Björnson was also in his time the first skald of his people, almost equally endowed with genius as a narrative, a dramatic, and a lyric poet; with talents scarcely less remarkable as an orator, a theater-director, a journalistic tribune of the people (his newspaper articles amounted, roughly estimated, to ten thousand book-pages), a letter-writer, and a conversationalist.

If, furthermore, we take into account also Björnson's labors and achievements in the domain of action more narrowly considered, it is no wonder that his _Poems and Songs_ make only a small volume. Examining the book more closely, we find that three-quarters of its pages were written before the year 1875, so that the lyrical output, here published, of the thirty-four years thereafter amounts to but fifty pages. From the year 1874 on in Björnson's life the chieftain supplanted the skald, so far as lyrical utterance was concerned. He was leading his nation in thought and action on the fields of theology and religion, of politics, economics, and social reform; he was tireless in making speeches, in writing letters and newspaper articles; his poetic genius flowed out copiously in the dramatic and epic channels of his numerous modern plays, novels, and stories.

That soon after 1874 Björnson passed through a crisis in his personal thought and inner life was probably, in view of the sufficient explanation suggested above, without influence in lessening his production of short poems. This crisis was in his religious beliefs. His father was a clergyman in the Lutheran State Church, and from his home in western Norway Björnson brought with him to Christiania in 1850 fervent Christian faith of the older orthodox sort. Here his somewhat somber religion was soon made brighter and more tender by the adoption of Grundtvig's teachings, and until past mid-life he remained a sincere Christian in the fullest sense, as is repeatedly shown in his lyrics. But in the years just before 1877 study of modern science and philosophy, of the history of the Church and dogma, led him to become an evolutionist, an agnostic theist. Nevertheless, he ever practiced the Christian art of life, as he tried to realize his ideals of truth, justice, and love of humanity. This large and simple Christian art of life, in distinction from the dogmas of the Church, he early sung in lines which sound no less true to the keynote of his later years:

Love thy neighbor, to Christ be leal!
Crush him never with iron-heel,
   Though in the dust he's lying!
All the living responsive await
Love with power to recreate,
   Needing alone the trying.

II

The quantity, then, of Björnson's short poems is small. Their intrinsic worth is great. Their influence in Norway has been broad and deep, they are known and loved by all. If lyrical means only melodious, "singable," they possess high poetic value and distinction. In a unique degree they have inspired composers of music to pour out their strains. When a Scandinavian reads Björnson's poems, his ears ring with the familiar melodies into which they have almost sung themselves.

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