Introduction: Björnson As A Lyric Poet

Here is not the place for technical analysis of the external poetic forms. A cursory inspection will show that Björnson's are wonderfully varied, and that the same form is seldom, if ever, precisely duplicated. In rhythm and alliteration, rhyme sequence and the grouping of lines into stanzas, the form in each case seems to be determined by the content, naturally, spontaneously. Yet for one who has intimately studied these verses until his mind and heart vibrate responsively, the words of all have an indefinable melody of their own, as it were, one dominant melody, distinctly Björnsonian. This unity in variety, spontaneous and characteristic, is not found in the earlier poems not included in this volume. So far as is known, Björnson's first printed poem appeared in a newspaper in 1852. It and other youthful rhymes of that time extant in manuscript, and still others as late as 1854, are interesting by reason of their contrast with his later manner; the verse-form has nothing personal, the melodies are those of older poets. It is in the lyrics of _Synnöve Solbakken_, written in 1857 or just before, that Björnson for the first time sings in his own forms his own melody.

Style and diction are the determining factors in the poetic form of lyric verse, along with the perhaps indistinguishable and indefinable quality of melodiousness. Of Björnson's style or manner in the larger sense it must be said that it is not subjectively lyrical. He is not disposed to introspective dwelling on his own emotions and to profuse self-expression without a conscious purpose. In general he must have some definite objective end in view, some occasion to celebrate for others, some "cause" to champion, the mood of another person or of other persons, real or fictitious, to reproduce synthetically in a combination of thoughts, feelings, similes, and sounds. In his verses words do not breed words, nor figures beget figures unto lyric breadth and vagueness. When Björnson was moved to make a poem, he was so filled with the end, the occasion, the cause, the mood to be reproduced, that he was impatient of any but the most significant words and left much to suggestion. Often the words seem to be in one another's way, and they are not related with grammatical precision. Thus in the original more than in the translation of the poem _Norway, Norway!_ the first strophe of which is:

                     Norway, Norway,
          Rising in blue from the sea's gray and green,
          Islands around like fledglings tender,
          Fjord-tongues with slender
          Tapering tips in the silence seen.
                    Rivers, valleys,
          Mate among mountains, wood-ridge and slope
          Wandering follow.  Where the wastes lighten,
          Lake and plain brighten,
          Hallow a temple of peace and hope.
                    Norway, Norway,
          Houses and huts, not castles grand,
                    Gentle or hard,
                    Thee we guard, thee we guard,
          Thee, our future's fair land.

Such abrupt brevity of expression, not uncommon among Norwegian peasants, was no doubt natural to Björnson, but was confirmed by the influence of the Old Norse sagas and skaldic poetry. The latter may also have increased his use of alliteration, masterly not only in the direct imitation of the old form, as in _Bergliot_, but also in the enrichment of the music of his rhymed verse in modern forms. Conciseness of style in thought and word permitted no lyrical elaboration of figures or descriptions; it restricted the poet to brief hints of the ways his spirit would go, and along which he wished to guide that of the hearer or reader. Herein is the source of much of the power of Björnson's patriotic songs and poems of public agitation. Those who read or hear or sing them are made to think, or at least to feel, the unwritten poetry between the lines. Scarcely less notable is this paucity in the expression of wealth of thought and feeling in the memorial and other more individual poems.

Björnson's diction corresponds to the quality of style thus briefly characterized. The modern Norwegian language has no considerable, highly developed special vocabulary for poetic use. From the diction of prose the poet must quarry and carve the verbal material for his verse. It sometimes seems, indeed, as if it were hard for Björnson to find the right block and fit it, nicely cut, into his line. In describing his diction critics have used the figures of hewing and of hammer-strokes, but then have said that it is not so much laborious effort we hear as the natural falling into place of words heavy with thought and feeling. Here it is that translation must so often come short of faithful reproduction. The choice of words in relation to rhythm and euphony is a mystery difficult to interpret even in the poet's own language. If we try to analyze the verse of great poets, we frequently find, beyond what is evidently the product of conscious design, effects of suggestion and sound which could not be calculated and designed. The verbal material seems hardly to be amenable to the poet's control, but rather to be chosen, shaped, and placed involuntarily by the thought and the mood. _The Ocean_ is a good example of the distinctive power and beauty of Björnson's diction.

Such, then, in melody, rhythm, style, and diction is the form of Björnson's verse: compact, reticent, suggestive, without elaborate verbal ornamentation, strong with "the long-vibrating power of the deeply felt, but half-expressed." It challenges and stimulates the soul of the hearer or reader to an intense activity of appropriation, which brings a fine reward.

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