SELMA LAGERLÖF

“In appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination, and spiritual perception that characterize her writings”

I confess to being an avid mystery reader.  There are a few authors the local library sets aside for me when they arrive.  Each is enjoyable in a special way.  Robert Parker writes excellent dialogue.  Janet Evanovich’s characters are vital and hilarious.  James Lee Burke’s stories keeps me riveted.  Selma Lagerlöf’s forte is landscape.  Her word pictures of the environment in which the stories play out put you there.  I long to go to Sweden and Sicily to see the countryside she describes in the two works I read.  Of course, in the case of some of her work that was the whole point.

By 1909 the Swedish Academy was ready to award the Nobel Prize in literature to a woman and one of their own.  Selma Lagerlöf’s family was landed from her mother’s side and well off by the standards of the day.  It was a happy family with a loving father and a practical mother.  Born with a malformed left leg, she compensated with a rich and powerful imagination.  All through her life mobility was a problem.   When others were more active she read and gathered folk tales and local stories.  Her family was able to travel, from which she gained additional perspective.  Soon she was viewed as the muse of the community, writing poems, speeches, and short stories commemorating local and family events.  It was a speech, in verse, composed for a local wedding that brought her to the attention of Eva Feyxell, a well known feminist.  She declared anyone with such talent should develop it to serve female emancipation.  It was arranged for her to go to a girl’s school in Stockholm.  A whole new world opened to this country girl.  She was an excellent student and when she completed her studies she took a teaching position at a girl’s school at Landskrona.  She soon established herself in the community and was constantly active with day and evening classes, militant feminist meetings and work for universal peace.  Secretly she spent every night writing.  When her father died in 1885 it was discovered there were extensive debts part of which was the cost of her education.  She began to publish for additional money.  Her life goal was to satisfy her debt and eventually save enough to buy back the farm where she grew up.  She succeeded in this and much more.

I choose her two best known works: The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and The Miracles of the Antichrist.  If seeking contrast, I could not have chosen better.  The Wonderful Adventures of Nils , written late in her career, was to be used by 9 to 11 year old students as an introduction to the history and geography of Sweden. The Miracles of the Antichrist, set on the island of Sicily, contrasts the humanistic miracles of socialism with the reality of Christianity. 

I have wanted to go to Scandinavia and now I am even more anxious.  The Wonderful Adventures of Nils very literally gives you a bird’s eye view of a beautiful and vibrant nation.  Nils is a scamp.   On this occasion he refuses to go to church so his father assigns Bible verses for him while the rest of his family worships.  Not particularly interested in the task, his attention is easily diverted by an elf that jumps from behind a cabinet.  Nils captures the elf in a butterfly net.  When he tries to extort more from the elf he becomes an elf himself.  Not only does he find himself much smaller, he can now understand the language of animals.  In the barnyard he finds the gander lured by the calls of wild geese migrating north to Lapland.  When the white goose rises to join his wild brothers Nils jumps on his back and goes along for the ride.  Not only does he see the country and its people, he is tested both physically and morally.  When the geese migrate south they stop at his home farm.  For good works he is converted into a taller, more knowledgeable, and wiser young man.  The piece is written in vignettes perfectly suited to the classroom.  It is a comfortable read.

One of the commentaries on Selma Lagerlöf claims Nils was inspired by Kipling’s Jungle Book.  The Miracles of the Antichrist was inspired by a trip to Italy where a tour guide explained that for many years homage had been paid to a counterfeit figure of the Infant Christ.  While reading the Introduction to this novel I kept thinking, “This must have been where Monty Python got the inspiration for The Life of Brian”.  Lagerlöf had parallel images of the Christ child, both able to perform miracles.  Monty Python had children born in adjoining stables, both inadvertently founding movements.  The parallels ended with the first book of this three book piece when it became a strongly stated piece of humanist literature.   From there on it reminded me of the “Stone Soup” story, in which a leader puts a stone in a pot of water and suggests the residents of the village add this and that until a delicious soup feeds the community.  In this case the goal is a railroad to a remote village on Mount Etna.  A local impoverished noble woman is able to inspire the poor people of her town to build the railroad by inspiring belief in a Christ child image which only we know is fake.  Lagerlöf sticks to her short passage style which makes for easy reading.  The Italian names and chopped format lead to need of a program to keep everybody in line but it is worth the effort.  The story is good, but the description of scenery around Mount Etna is thrilling.  It is not hard to visualize the white almond blossoms on the black lava fields or the sun rising over the mountain.  For that alone the book is worth reading.

For 1910 we go back to Germany.  Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse was a Prussian who lived in Bavaria and loved Italy.  He was extremely prolific but must not have been very enduring for I cannot find a translation of any of his poetry.  I did find two novellas and the Franklin and Marshall library has a translation of one of his plays.  An article I read said he did not like Wagner, who was very popular at the time.  As he was one to look back I will read him to Bach.  Rheine wine and sauerbraten might be just the thing for an obscure German writer from the Prussian nobility

RUDOLF EUCKEN

“In recognition of his earnest search for the truth, his penetrating power of thought, his wide range of vision, and the warmth and strength of presentation with which in his numerous works he has vindicated and developed an idealistic philosophy of life.”

Time to introduce a character almost lost to history.  Harald Hjärne, a history professor at the University of Uppsala, gave the presentation addresses at the award ceremony for the Nobel Prize in Literature on three occasions: as the director of the Swedish Academy in 1908, and as chair of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy in 1913 and 1919.  The vast majority of the early presentation addresses were given by C. D. AF Wirsén, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy.  It would appear Harald Hjärme advocated a literal reading of Alfred Nobel’s will, as on each occasion he emphasized “idealism”.   In his will Alfred Nobel established the Literature Prize for “excellence in works of an idealistic tendency.”   Hjärne made it clear in his Presentation Address that this should be the standard.  “This literature makes use of whatever art and science can offer, and from it mankind ‘profits the most’ precisely because it mirrors the ideal truth without any regard for the useful.”  From this quote you can assume that the winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize is the antithesis of his predecessor Rudyard Kipling.

Rudolf Eucken is not easy reading.  The two works I chose, Ethics and Modern Thought and The Meaning and Value of Life, required careful and repeated reading.  Eucken is concerned with the precise meaning of his words.  Two of his earliest works are History of Philosophical Terminology (1879) and Images and Similes in Philosophy (1880).  The first of these remained in print until 1960 and is still available among the 171 books by Eucken offered on Amazon.com.  There is an enormous body of work still in print from this thinker who continued to write until his death in 1926. 

I was captivated by the concept that true idealism is the process of defining and understanding the present.  The meaning of life is the struggle with the conditions in which the thinker finds himself.  When out of harmony with the way of life offered by his environment his choices are to retreat into the past or forge something new into the future, the latter Eucken defines as life.  In Eucken’s day naturalism was popular.  As practiced it was withdrawal from life into some environment seen to be of a more “pure” nature.  Eucken saw naturalism as the antithesis of idealism.  He believed there was “a spiritual life superior to man” which can be achieved through the experience of living.  He called what he taught “activism”.  Truth is to be found through the activity of living and the experience of life rather than pure intellect, as found in academe.  He had little time for dominate social institutions such as government and the Church.  He saw them as taking on a rigid form, reducing themselves to lifeless dogmas and observances.  Indeed, to him the word “civilization” mainly designates social order while “culture” is education “from within” by which man as a whole is uplifted.  Rudolf Eucken writes much about a “spiritual life” which is achieved through the process of living.  There is an inner process of life by which humankind is able to raise itself above itself and achieve a civilization which will continue to propagate itself.  I was deeply impressed and will value these small books. 

In Ethics and Modern Thought Eucken introduced me to the four types of morality from which I am asked to form my ethics.  First, there is “Religious Morality” which comes down from the past and is founded on a holy will, superior to the world.  Religion links humankind’s destiny with attitude to moral obligations.  Although a very powerful motivation to the moral life, in higher civilizations religious morality is supplemented by “The Morality of Reason” developed by society’s philosophers.  For them morality is based on humankind’s own reasonable nature which seems to demand recognition of a universal law and voluntary submission to it.  The morality of reason incites a proud independence of spirit which exalts humankind above everyday life.  It is to this morality we owe the rise of science.  “The Morality of Work”, a product of the Industrial Revolution, directs effort towards some object which must be perpetrated; it impels us to value the object for its own sake and treat it according to its own requirements.  Work has become a primary factor in education and culture, even, in our time, disrupting the structure of the family.  In the work culture the individual must subordinate himself completely to the demands of the whole.  There is no doubt the morality of the marketplace has a profound influence on our lives.  “Social Morality” proceeds from the immediate relation of human to human.  Once we were confined to geographic and religious communities which were homogeneous.   In our world we instantaneously share experience with millions of our brothers and sisters across the globe.  We become increasingly independent and interdependent at the same time.  It is the influence of this interdependence which needs to be understood.  There is a union and a commonality with every other human being.  Modern communications has expanded the concept “Social Morality” beyond anything Eucken could have imagined at the beginning of the 20^th Century.  If the concept of four moralities forming your ethics catches you like it did me I strongly recommend you find a copy of Ethics and Modern Thought to explore this brilliant thinker’s concept of the interweaving of them in our lives. 

I do not have the space to go into The Meaning and Value of Life in the kind of detail it deserves.  Instead, I list quotes from the book which struck me as profound.

1.     “… unless faith in some lofty ideal infuse zest and gladness into every department of our activity, we cannot realize the highest possibilities of life.”

2.     “Religion [in the traditional, ecclesiastical form] despite all it has effected, is for the man of today a question rather than an answer.”

3.     “The Yes may be much less obvious than the No, but without the Yes the No would be unthinkable.”

4.     “Freedom is essential if life is to have meaning.”

5.     “Thus all genuine spiritually involves an achievement – an achievement in which the whole life is engaged.  Life, from this point of view, is no mere unwinding of thread from a reel; it is a constant introducing of new material, a process of incessant creation.”

I hope this little taste whets your appetite sufficiently to send you to this thinker who has offered me many moments of quiet consideration.   He is well worth the effort.

I look forward to a big change; from a German philosophy professor seeking the meaning of life to a Swedish schoolmarm seeking to introduce the beauty and history of Sweden to her elementary school charges.  I think I will be able to stand the shock.  For background music it will be Wilhelm Stenhammer’s Serenade for Orchestra.  I will pass on the meatballs and try to make some blabärssoppa, a blueberry soup served cold.  As it is a beautiful Indian Summer Day, I will settle under the cherry tree in the back yard with Selma Lagerlöf’s The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. 

RUDYARD KIPLING

“In consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas, and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world famous author.”

The following characters are a vital part of me: Mowgli the man-cub and his friends Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the heroic mongoose, Dan and Peachey the men who would be kings, Kim, Harvey and Dan the captains courageous, and the best of all men Ganga Din.  If you have never met my friends please allow me to introduce you.  Rudyard Kipling’s characters are some of the most vivid in literature.  It is not an accident that Disney and other Hollywood studios have used them as the basis of films.  What is most remarkable about this creative genius is these characters are presented in different mediums.  The Jungle Book is children’s lit.  The Man Who Would Be King is a short story.  Ganga Din is a rhyming poem.   My introduction to Kipling was in elementary school.  Our teacher read the poem Boots as an example of Imagery Poetry.  The cadence of the poem mimicked the activity being described.  I could see lines of solders marching.  For reasons I cannot explain it stuck with me.  Kipling wrote short stories, children’s literature, rhyming verse, free verse, novels, autobiography, science fiction, hymns, and social commentary.  If there was a way words could be arranged this man was a master of the genus. 

Born in Bombay, India on December 30, 1865 to a family immersed in the arts he spoke the language of the porter and his ayah (nanny) more fluently than English.  His immersion in India, and more profoundly the British Empire, survived an education on the British Isles.  At the age of seventeen he returned to India where he first wrote for and then edited several newspapers.  As a reporter he traveled over the north of India absorbing the culture and observing people.  The Man Who Would Be King is as much about running a newspaper in India as it is great adventure.  It was during his tenure as newspaper editor that he was first published.  Departmental Ditties and Plain Tales from the Hills ,while popular in India, were greeted enthusiastically in England and his career as a writer was launched.  New found fame allowed him to leave India for England sailing east.  After a stop in Japan he traveled across the United States and on to London where he settled.  Never in good health; he particularly feared blindness as weak eyesight plagued him from childhood.  In 1892 he married a United States citizen and settled in Vermont.  Some of his most productive years were here.  Kim, The Jungle Books, and Captains Courageous all came from his time in the United States as did three children.   On returning to England he was accepted as the Empire’s most honored poet.  When offered the position of Poet Laureate and a knighthood Kipling refused.  It was at this time the family began spending English winters in South African summers.  In Cecil Rhodes, England’s most aggressive imperialist, Kipling found a kindred spirit.  During the Boer War he traveled over the war zone as a reporter.  He continued to the end of his life traveling and writing.  When his son John was lost without trace in World War I he became a member of the War Graves Commission and was personally the moving force behind the monument to the Unknown Soldier in Britain.  He died at the age of seventy on January 18, 1935.  His ashes are buried in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abby among the lights of English literature.  Rudyard Kipling is still one of the most read authors in the English language. 

Alfred Nobel was very specific in his will that, “prizes be awarded without considerations of nationality.”  He was naïve.  In a world arming for what would be World War I political considerations had to enter the Committee’s considerations.  Prizes had been awarded to two Frenchmen, a German, a Norwegian, a Spaniard, a Pole , and an Italian.  Since 1903 the English had been pushing Algernon Swinburne, in 1907 they made one last effort as their candidate was aging.  Much to everyone’s surprise the Nobel Committee rejected the British Society of Authors’ choice and selected Rudyard Kipling, the youngest person to ever receive the honor.   I willing admit I had never heard of Swinburne, the   Committee made a wise choice. 

As you may have noticed I am something of a fan.  Rudyard Kipling has been in my blood since childhood.  Among Rudyard Kipling’s friends was Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts.  It was from Mowgli that the Cub Scouts were named.  I once was a Wolf Scout.  Kipling’s work is all through the Scouting movement.  So vivid is his writing that the young mind cannot help but be caught up in the adventure.  With age comes appreciation of poetry and perspective.  As an adult I am impressed with Kipling’s presentation of the ugliness and futility of war.  He knew the common solder and vividly depicts the grim and painful life in the ranks.  It is ironic that we are again caught up in Afghanistan which provided the setting for many of his most powerful pieces.  Santayana was right, “Those who fail to learn from history will be forced to repeat it.”   Maybe on this subject all we need to do is read Kipling. 

Below is the poem Boots.  This is not the best of Kipling, nor is it my favorite.  It is an example of the creativity of this brilliant mind.  The first time I heard it and every time since I can see a column of soldiers marching across barren land to a destination unknown.  Please, if you have not read Ganga-din, Danny Deever, or Recessional spend the few minutes necessary to look them up.   For a short while you will be in the company of a great man in a pivotal time. 

We’re foot-slog-slog-slog-slogin’ over Africa

Foot-foot-foot-foot-sloggin’ over Africa

(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin’ up an’ down again!)

There’s no discharge in the war!

Seven-six-eleven-five-nine-an’ twenty mile today

Four-eleven-seventeen-thirty-two the day before

(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin’ up an’ down again!)

There’s no discharge in the war!

Don’t-don’t-don’t –don’t look at what’s in front of you

(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin’ up an down again)

Men-men-men-men-men go mad with watching em

An’ there’s no discharge in the war!

Try-try-try-try-to think o’ something different

Oh-my- God-keep-me from goin’ lunatic!

(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin’ up an’ down again!)

There’s no discharge in the war!

Count-count-count-count-the bullets the bandoliers

If-your-eyes-drop-they will get atop o’ you

(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin’ up an’ down again!)

There’s no discharge in the war!

We-can-stick-out-‘unger, thirst, an’ weariness

But-not-not-not-not the chronic sight of ’em

(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin’ up an’ down again!)

There’s no discharge in the war!

‘Taint –so-bad-by-day because o’ company

But night-brings-long-strings-‘o forty thousand million

(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin’ up an’ down again!)

There’s no discharge in the war!

I-‘ave-marched-six-weeks in ‘Ell an’ certify

It-is-not-fire-devils, dark or anything,

But boots-boots-boots-boots-movin’ up an’ down again!)

An’ there’s no discharge in the war!

In 1908 the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Rudolf Christoph Eucken.  I never heard of the guy, but gather he was a German philosopher.  This looks like a long haul; the score from Götterdammerung seems in order.  How much beer and how many bratwurst will it take to get through The Meaning and Value of Life?

GIOSUÉ CARDUCCI

“Not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces”

Giosué Carducci was a man of his time, very much a part of his historic context.  He was born in the northwest corner of Tuscany on July 27, 1835, at that time there was no such entity as Italy.  What is now Lombardy, Veneto, and the rest of the northwest corner of the boot was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under the rule of the Hapsburgs.   The rest was divided between seven different kingdoms; the most powerful, the Papal States, controlled Rome and a large chunk right in the middle of the peninsula.  Carducci’s father was an itinerate physician and an avid patriot.  Forced by economic circumstances to move about the country, he longed for the glory which was the Roman Empire.  Doctor Carducci was so outspoken in his contempt for the divided country he was viewed as a crank and was tossed about on the waves of change sweeping the country.  Finally tossed ashore in Florence he sent his hereto home-schooled son, just turned 14, to a Church run school.  The father must have been an excellent teacher for the son blossomed, passing all of his examinations with flying colors in record time.  A brilliant student, who often found university professors mediocre and pedantic; he immersed himself in Italian literature and began writing poetry.    In 1855 he qualified for his doctoral degree.  For a short time he taught in a secondary school during which time he published Rhymes a book of 25 sonnets, two ballads, and a eulogy for Italian patriots.  It was this work that earned him in 1860 an appointment as professor of rhetoric at the very prestigious Bologna University where he remained until retirement in 1904.  During all of this time his outspoken political views kept him in constant trouble.  From 1859 to 1879 his writings were closely linked to the causes of the republican, anti-clerical patriots.   He was a Latin and Greek scholar and viewed his country through the lens of the glory which was ancient Rome.  In his eyes the corruptor of his time, and surely the inhibitor of unity and liberty, was the Roman Catholic Church.  The pontiff at the time, Pius IX, sought to solidify his power when in 1864 he issued the encyclical Quanta Cura which censured nationalism, naturalism, socialism, freemasonry, and claimed the church’s complete control of education, culture and science.  In addition Syllabus errorum denounced freedom of conscience and worship and declared the Church’s completely independent of state control.  It was under this same pope the Vatican Council proclaimed the doctrine of papal infallibility.  Carducci became a Freemason and devout anti-cleric.  Indeed, so far did he go in this direction that some of the commentators I read called him a pagan and Satanist.  There is no doubt he flaunted his contempt for the Roman Church.  For many he stepped over the line with is poem Hymn to Satan.  This long poem is a product of his youth described by some as a toast rather than a hymn.  There is no doubt it is in the face of the Roman Church.  In the presentation address for the 1906 Nobel Prize the secretary of the Swedish Academy said, “In fact, Carducci’s Satan has an ill-chosen name.  The poet clearly means to imply a Lucifer in the literal sense of the word- the carrier of light, the herald of free thought and culture, and the enemy of that ascetic discipline which rejects or disparages natural rights.”  The poem is far too long to include in this essay.  The last two stanzas give the reader an idea.

All hail to thee, Satan!

Rebellion, all hail

Hail, power of reason,

Avenge and prevail!

To thee arise incense

And holy vows paid,

Thou, Satan, hast vanquished

The god by priests made.

This was a man who was willing to speak out for right of every person to freedom of thought and conscious.  He was in love with the ancient image of his homeland and adverse to any who would hinder its glory.   What he wrote and did glorifies the human state and the dignity of man, I see him as a humanist rather than a pagan or Satanists.  Of course, many in our time make no distinction between the three; I am sure this would make Giosué Carducci sad.

He lived to see his beloved country united.  And he lived to see his work honored by the Nobel committee, but only just.  In 1906 age and infirmity prevented his going to Sweden to receive the prize, a few months later he died.  The more I read of the man the more I liked him.  The more of his poetry I read the more I felt like an uneducated oaf.  The man is a classicist who makes constant reference to Roman and Greek history and mythology.  I am sure if I had the time and the inclination to spend hours over each poem delving into references book several times with each stanza I would have a greater appreciation for Carducci’s work.  I don’t and am not so inclined.  I appreciated that which I understood.  I particularly enjoyed The Ox and I offer three stanzas from Love’s Canticle.

Through crops that deck the plains with tender green,

Through vines that sloping terraces o’erclimb,

Through lakes and distant rivers’ silvery sheen,

Through woods that clothe the snowy peaks sublime;

Through cottage smoke gay curling in the sun,

Through clattering wheels of mills that full and grind,

Arise a thousand hymns in unison,

A thousand voices in one prayer combined:

“Hail, weary peoples of the human race!

Too much we suffer and too much we hate.

Nothing can die, though all things change apace:

Love! Fair is earth and holy future fate.”

Oh boy, Oh boy, Rudyard Kipling, a writer which I have know since I can remember.  I was in elementary school when I first read his poem Boots.  It stuck with me and although I know almost everything about Kipling is related to India, I have always associated him with South Africa.  So I will get out the Biltong and Rooibos and settle in for great adventure.   Kipling is the poet of the empire so it will be Edward Elgar on the CD player.

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ

“Because of his outstanding merits as an epic writer.”

When I was a kid I made a shield from plywood, grabbed a stick in the woods, and rode my imaginary steed, a knight of the Round Table in search of dragons to slay.  The old stories told by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Sir Walter Scott, and Alfred Tennyson, retold by Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Mary Stewart, and Bernard Cornwell, made chivalry and knighthood part of early reading.  To my young mind knights were in and around the British Isles.  Later Richard Wagner sang of knights in Germany.  But who ever heard of knights in Poland?  Henryk Sienkiewicz did and he wrote thousands of pages of brilliant prose to tell their story to the world. 

Henryk Sienkiewicz was born in 1846 not far from Warsaw.  His family was sufficiently prosperous to provide him an abbot tutor and a French governess.   His deep Christian faith was strengthened by challenges of professors and fellow students at Warsaw University.  Freed from studies words began to flow from his pen.  Most of his early work addressed the philosophical conundrums he saw about him.  Trips to Paris and across the United States to California broadened his scope.  Repeated attacks on and partitioning of his country sent his fellow Poles all over the world, providing subject matter for an observant young writer.  It was in the 1880’s that the moralist turned historian.  He saw the sad history of Poland with its dismemberments, struggles with neighbors, and uprising against oppressors as overshadowing its glory days.  His trilogy of historical fiction By Fire and the Sword, The Deluge, and Pan Michael celebrates the life and trials of Poland in the 17^th Century.  The Teutonic Knights takes us to Poland of the 14^th Century with all of the glory of knighthood, chivalry, and striving to maintain a national identity in a feudal society.  Henryk Sienkiewicz became the bard of the Polish people.  His pictures of the glory which was Poland made him the country’s great patriot, consoling the people, and giving them a faith in the future.

While in Rome he saw this inscription carved in a small chapel: “Quo Vadis, Domine?”  Translated, “Where are you going, Lord?” referring to the legend of Saint Peter who, fleeing the persecutions of Nero, met Jesus going toward Rome.  When Peter asked where Jesus was going he replied as Peter was shirking his duties as shepherd it would be necessary to be crucified again.  Quo Vadis? arrived at the perfect time, coinciding with the neo-Christian movement in Europe, known in the United States as “The Great Awakening”.  The reading public was thirsty for a tale in which faith in God would triumph over godless civilization.  In very explicit terms Sienkiewicz glorified the victory of the martyred Christian’s simple faith over the overwhelming power of the corrupt Roman Empire.  The book was an instant success, which when translated gave its author international status. 

It is a tribute to this 1905 Nobel laureate that 115 years later all of his books are for sale on Amizon.com and two copies of the film version of Quo Vadis? are available on Netflix.  I choose The Teutonic Knights which was written after Quo Vadis?  A copy was available in the local library.  In addition I read The Lighthouse –keeper and Yanko the Musician.  I bought a used copy of Quo Vadis?  published by a conservative Christian group.  I had already read the other works and the translation insulted the work of this brilliant writer.  I was further offended by a very clumsy attempt to insert dogma through annotation.  I do not need passages explained to me, especially in the light of a specific view of history.  I gave the book away and hope the recipient enjoys it.  Instead, like a high school English Lit student, I ordered the movie from Netflix.  I will watch it after I finish this article. 

The Teutonic Knights (also titled Knights of the Cross) is everything I expected.  The good guys, all Polish, are beyond reproach.  The bad guys, all German, are pure evil.  It is a true epic; the edition I read was 787 pages.  Written in at a time when Poland was partitioned by Russia, Austria, and German Prussia, The Teutonic Knights is a very obvious shot at the latter.  The subject is the fight of the Poles and Lithuanians against the Teutonic Knights who were originally charged with bringing Christianity to what was considered by Rome a pagan area of Europe.   Although the book shows pagan practice just under the surface, the Teutonic Knights had over stayed their welcome, corrupted by the easy life which power and property bought.  Full of chivalric love, acts of loyalty, and deeds of bravado the book ends in 1410 at the Battle of Tannenberg where the Teutonic Knights are repelled in bloody combat.  Of course, after many brushes with death and a constant adherence to his knightly code the hero, Zbyszko, marries the beautiful and faithful Jagienka, they have three sons, and live happily ever after.   Good stuff and very easy to get lost in.

 Occasionally the line between prose and poetry gets blurred.  Such is the case with the novella  The Light-house Keeper.  This short work sang to my soul.  Maybe it is because like the primary character I too have wandered and came to appreciate here only when I was there.  An old Pole applies for the position of lighthouse keeper in Aspinwall, near Panama.  All of his life he has wandered the world, mostly as a solder but also as miner, farmer, and whaler.  Life has not been good, some quirk of fate always forces him to move on.  He came to the absolute isolation of a lighthouse on an island to rest and here to die.  And for many months he delighted in the isolation, never failing in his duties.  Once, in a news paper he noticed the formation of a Polish-American Society and sent a small amount of his unneeded salary.  As a gift they send him books of poetry in his native language.  Through the language of his youth, which he had not heard in 40 years, he is transported to a place he had forgotten.  He filled with love of country which can only be felt by those who have been separated for a long period, he became so absorbed he forgot to light the lighthouse and a ship ran aground.  He lost his job in paradise but he found paradise in his soul where lay his heritage.  If you read nothing else by Sienkiewicz read The Lighthouse-Keeper. 

If Yanko the Musician doesn’t break your heart it is made of stone.  This tale is straight out of Charles Dickens.  A deformed child is born to poverty.  Rejected and abused, his only happiness is the music he hears everywhere.  One night he passes a tavern and hears a fiddle.  Overwhelmed, he makes an unsatisfactory replica from a piece of slate and string.  At the manor house the lackey has a fiddle which he plays for the waiting-maid.  Yanko hides to hear the music.  One night the lackey leaves the fiddle in the kitchen and Yanko succumbs to temptation to touch it.   He is caught and accused of theft.  As punishment the counsel turns him over to the thuggish night watchman who flogs him to death.  His last words are, “Mother, will the Lord God give me a real fiddle in Heaven?”  It is a real tear jerker. 

For a whole lot of reasons, including the length of his work, Henryk Sienkiewicz took six weeks to read and digest.  It was well worth it.  I hope in the future to get back to some of his other works.  He moved high on my list of favorite authors.  Please dear reader go to the trouble of finding The Lighthouse-keeper.  It is well worth the search. 

Now it is off to Northern Tuscany and the poet Glosué Carducci, time Gieacchino Rossini and pears and cheese with good strong coffee.  

FRÉDÉRIC MISTRAL

“In recognition of the fresh originality and true inspiration of his poetic production, which faithfully reflects the natural scenery and native spirit of his people and, in addition, his significant work as a Provençal philologist”

In this age of the European Union, international television, and the internet it is hard to believe within only a single generation before mine there were within Europe a vast array of languages.  Today in Africa, and many other parts of the world, a person will speak at least three languages: the tribal language in which they were raised, the national language, and the European language adopted by their country.  Such was the case in Europe at the end of the 19^th Century.  Provençal, the language of the south-east district of France called Provence, is a dialect of Occitan which was the language of the troubadours who took their music and literature over Europe in the 11^th and 12^th Century.  Catalan, the language of Catalonia a province of Mediterranean Spain, is closely related.  Even within Provence there are several dialects of Provençal.  During the 19^th Century France pushed hard to unite itself under one language.  Today, although Provençal is taught in schools and universities it is only spoken by about five hundred thousand older citizens.  Frédéric Mistral did much to preserve this ancient and beautiful language.

Not only did Mistral preserve a language, he preserved a whole culture and portrayed a time within it.   I choose to read the epic poem Miréio for which he is best known.  The poem is in 12 Canto (verses) and the edition I read had many footnotes.   The footnotes were necessary because throughout he introduced plants, animals, places, local legends, and folk customs unrecognizable to someone not native to Provence.  In so doing he introduces and preserves lore which could be lost.  Not only are the words beautiful, the poem is stuffed with interesting bits of information.  In Canto 11 we get a long explanation of just how Mary Magdalene, her sister Martha, their brother Lazarus and a host of those closest to Jesus left Palestine and came to live in Provence.  This legend is the theme of many books, most recently Dan Brown’s De Vinci Code.   Canto 4 describes in great detail the life and nature of a shepherd, a cattle rancher, and a horse breeder.  Cantos 2 and 3 show us the process of silk production as practiced in the 18^th Century.  All through the rest we are given glorious views of the countryside, bits of local poetry, and interesting vignettes of local lore all packed into a melodramatic story of ill fated love. 

Miréio is a beautiful young woman who lives with her parents on the prosperous Lotus Farm where she raises and harvests the cocoons of silk worms.  She was of an age to marry and suitors both rich and masculine arrived at her door.  One day an itinerant basket weaver arrived with his son Vincent and it was instant and enduring love.  Maréio’s father was outraged and a spurned suitor who is a cattle rancher takes out his rage on the hapless Vincent severely wounding him.  In desperation Miréio runs away from home hoping to find peace at the Shrine of the Three Maries.  She has just reached her goal when Vincent and her parents find her dying of exposure.  In her mind she rises in the boat with the three Maries to Paradise.   The story is one we know, it is the language and the color which paint this old tale anew.  Only occasionally does a piece of writing make me anxious to see the place where it is set.  This is one of those occasions. 

Canto VI

The Witch (first stanza)

The merry birds, until the white dawn showeth

Clear in the east, are silent every one

Silent the odorous Earth until she knoweth

In her warm heart the coming of the sun,

As a maiden in her fairest robes bedight

Breathless awaits her lover and her flight

I would encourage you to look up Frédéric Mistral.  The words flow and the work is full of color.   Now a look at José Echegaray, the Spanish playwright who shared the Nobel Prize in literature in 1904.  No doubt Manuel de Falla with sangria and fried squid. 

JOSÉ ECHEGARAY

“In recognition of the numerous and brilliant compositions which, in an individual and original manner, have revived the great traditions of the Spanish drama.”

We have to bear in mind that although these Nobel Prizes were awarded in the Twentieth Century the recipients were of the Nineteenth.   This is particularly obvious in the life and work of José Echegaray.  We have here another mathematician who turned his talents to politics and literature.  When, after the collapse of the monarchy for which he worked as director of public works, he was exiled to Paris he became enamored by the theater.  In his political career he was a liberal, strongly supporting freedom of religious belief in a Roman Catholic country, still he lived the mores of his time.  Honor and societal structure were an important theme of his work.  He loved to overdramatize the problems of conscience and moral conflict.  José Echegaray claimed to love mathematics, politics and literature equally.  In the latter case there was no one of his time who wrote with such conciseness of the classical tradition.

I choose two plays: The Great Galeoto and Madman or Saint?  After reading them I decided that if the societal rules presented were still in force most who work in Washington D.C. would either be dead as the result of duels or confined to mental institutions. 

The Great Galeoto has three primary characters: Don Julian, an older and prosperous aristocrat, Teodora, his much younger and very beautiful wife, and Ernest, the orphaned son of Don Julian’s closest friend and mentor.  The minor characters are Don Servero, a jealous younger brother, and his avarice ridden family.  As I was reading I kept coming across the word “calumny”.  I checked with Mr. Webster and got, “Calumny, 1. A misrepresentation intended to harm another’s reputation, 2. The act of uttering false charges or misrepresentations maliciously calculated to harm another’s reputation.”  Yup, that about sums it up.  Ernest, a poet and philosopher, lives with Don Julian and his wife.  Being closer to in age and sharing interests with Teodora, Ernest spends a lot of time with his patron’s wife, even standing in for Don Julian at social events and theatrical presentations.    Seeing an opportunity to be rid of both the young wife and the troublesome poet Don Servero and his family spread rumors of infidelity.  When Ernest accidently walks into a drinking bout where young military types are defaming his benefactor’s wife he strikes one and is promptly challenged to a duel which he cannot win.  When he hears of it, Don Julian, a much better swordsman, steps in and is mortally wounded in the conflict.  In the following scenes Don Severo and his wife Mercedes continue to push the falsehood until even the dying Don Julian condemns his wife and adopted son as traitors.  Earnest and Teodora are driven out of the house and the brother acquires both the position and the fortune.   To the end Ernest the philosopher questions his position and decries the injustice of the situation.

(From Act III scene vi) Ernest (considering revenge on the man who mortally wounded his friend): What does it matter?  What is the weight or value of such calumny?  The worst of it is that thought is degraded by mean contact with a mean idea.  From force of dwelling upon a crime, the conscience becomes familiar with it.  It shows itself terrible and repellent –but it shows itself- at night, in dark solitude!... I am myself; my name is an honorable one.  If I killed Nebreda (the person who challenged him to a duel) solely because of a lie, what would I not do to myself if guilt threatened to give truth to calumny?”

The joys of Madman or Saint? went beyond the reading.  I bought the book from an online book seller.  The slim volume was published in 1912 and the copy I held in my hands had never been read.  I knew this as the pages were uncut.  I found a particular tactual delight in slitting the pages as I read.

 In this play Lorenzo de Avendano, the primary character is a wealthy philosopher poet who dotes on his daughter Inez and wife Angela.  His parents died when he was a young man.  His beloved nurse was committed to a 15 year prison term for stealing a locket from the neck of her late employer.  Thomas, a friend and adviser, informs him the nurse has been released and is dying.  Lorenzo insists she be brought to his house.  On arrival she admits stealing the locket but only because a message inside led him to a letter left by his mother.  When the letter is retrieved it informs Lorenzo that he is not the natural child of wealthy parents.  His parents were unable to have children so they raised the child of the nurse as their own allowing him to inherit both title and wealth.  With tears in his eyes he recognizes his biological mother and, being an honorable man, resolves to give both wealth and title to their true heir.  This sends the family into a tizzy of self protection and everybody, including the nurse, conspires to prevent him from carrying out what they view as a self-destructive and totally mad plan.  The play ends with the hapless Lorenzo being carted off to an asylum all the while declaring he was doing what was right. 

(Act III, scene xiv, Lorenzo has discovered the proof of his birth has been destroyed by his biological mother, the nurse, and everyone in his family is convinced he is mad.  He is about to be committed)  Lorenzo:  … “My God! So be it! So be it! Conquered- basely conquered!  How they enjoy their triumph!  How they look at me in hypocritical sorrow.  And they pretend to cry!  They all pretend!  My heart – the illusions of my life – love – my child, my child!  Phantoms that speed and flee – flee forever!  And I believed it all!  How blue the sky was!  How pale Inez was!  And now what shall I believe in?  Now, you see, I don’t struggle, I yield; the victory is yours.  Why have those men come if I don’t resist?  I shall go where you like.  Good-by!”

You will notice that in the above quote there are only two periods.  All the rest of the punctuation is exclamation points or question marks, a good summation of the works of José Echegaray which I read. 

The winner of the 1905 Noble Prize in Literature was Henryk Sienkiewicz of Poland.  I was delighted when I actually recognized one of the sited works; Quo Vadis.  When I checked the local library system I found they had five different titles by this author on their shelves.  This is the first writer of historical novels to be a Nobel laureate and as this medium is a particular favorite of mine I am looking forward to a good read.  I have plenty of  Chopin in my CD collection now if I can only find some pierogi and Zywiec.

BJÖRNSTJERN BJÖRNSON

“As a tribute to his noble, magnificent, and versatile work as a poet, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit.”

To understand the work of this playwright, novelist, poet, and politician it is necessary to understand the times in which he lived.  The dawn of the 20^th Century was a heady time of change.   The Industrial Revolution was firmly established.  The middle class was feeling its power.  Workers were organized, demanding their fair share of the fabulous things being produced.  Universal franchise, organized labor, and Socialism were accepted goals among many.  The horrors of French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars were of a past generation.  The acid attacks of anarchists and the trenches of World War were in an unseeable future.  It was a time ripe for idealism; Björnstjern Björnson was right in the middle of it.

This son of a Norwegian pastor wrote literary criticism for newspapers until he found his muse in the theater.  Growing up in a lush rural area among the agrarian peasantry his lyrical dramas venerated Norse sagas, peasant tales, and country life.  Until 1905 Norway was under the political and cultural control of Sweden, a situation Björnson spent his life resisting and lived to see fulfilled.   His early work venerated Norway’s glorious history in the Middle Ages.  Later, with The Editor and The Bankrupt he was able to fulfill his dream of giving Norway an internationally respected dramatic literature.  His work made him the creator of Norwegian prose.  Björnstjern Björnson’s is Norway’s Francis Scott Key, his poem Ja, vi elsker dette landet is the lyric of the Norwegian national anthem. 

Cultural history, politics, and religion were a part of all of his works.  Between the Battles, Sunny Hill, King Snorre, Sigurd the Bad, and Sigurd Jorsalfar illuminate the cultural and political history of Norway.  The King, Beyond Our Power, and Paul Lange og Tora Parsberg present liberal political causes.  The Heritage of the Kurts proposes education reform.   Beyond Human Might, In God’s Way, and A Gauntlet challenge the Church and Christian dogma. 

I chose to read four works: The King, Beyond Our Power, In God’s Way and a collection of 31 of his poems.  

The King is the least of the four.  First, the subject is outdated.  When it was written (1877), with the exception of Switzerland, kings and queens ruled the countries of Europe.   At the end of the 19^th Century the institution of monarchy was brought into question.  By the mid 20^th Century you could count European monarchs on one hand; all strictly ceremonial.  The King shows the depth to which monarchy can affect a society.  Björnson’s hero is a young man who has just assumed the throne of an unnamed country.  Raised in the palace, he led a protected and isolated life.  After a debauched youth he is forced to reconsider his values when soundly rejected by the daughter of a republican dissenter his courts had imprisoned on a charge of treason.   On self examination he finds the charade of divine rule a fraud and resolves to change the system from within.  His first step is to woe Clara, the commoner governess who rejected him, to become his wife and help him humanize the monarchy.  It is disaster, too many have too much at stake to trust government to the populace.  A divine king is required to keep an order beneficial to the ruling class; the young king’s efforts are thwarted.   As in many plays of this era the primary characters wind up dead.

Beyond Our Power sounded familiar from the first words.  I was well into the play when it occurred to me, “This is George Bernard Shaw”.  A few years ago, inspired by My Fair Lady, I read a bunch of Shaw’s plays.  We will get to him as he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.  I would not be at all surprised if Björnson was one of Shaw’s inspirations.  Beyond Our Power is a dark play.  It opens deep in the bowls of a Norwegian community where desperate people live in caves.  Appropriately, the area is called “Hell”.  There is a general strike in process and leaders are rallying the people to hang on.  The primary characters are Elias and Rachel, siblings who have inherited some wealth.  Rachel, a practical idealist, uses the family mansion to establish a hospital which she runs for all in the community.  Elias, an anarchist, supports the strike by a desperate action; he dynamites a palace where the employers are meeting to organize against the strike.  Of the strikers only he stays in the palace to signal the proper moment.  The message is clear.  The employers are shown as callous and greedy; the employees pawns in the production process, cowed and in desperate need of leadership.  Three kinds of leadership are emerge: Rachel the persistent caregiver, Herre the local organizer, and Elias the all or nothing radical.  This play is one in a long line of early 20^th Century literary efforts to raise the general level of society by dignifying the status of labor.

In God’s Way is a different form with a different message.  As a novel Björnson is able to flesh out his characters and make the reader a part of the relationship.   Again we have siblings as primary characters.  Kallem and Josephine are brother and sister.  Edward Kallem is a medical doctor running a hospital which mostly treats tuberculoses, rampant at the time.  He is married to the beautiful and talented Ragni.  Josephine is a bright young mother whose husband is the Reverend Ole Tuft, local cleric.  Both husbands are deeply committed to their professions and both wives are struggling with their roles as professional wives.  The Reverend is very narrow in his views, today we would call him a Fundamentalist, which galls his wife.  When he insists she support him she rebels, challenging the dogma.  Dr. Kallem is consumed with the problems of his patients and asks his wife to support him by looking to some of the social needs of the families of the sick.  Ragni complies by taking under her wing a young man who shows promise on the piano, an instrument on which she is skilled.  The boy falls hopelessly in love with his mentor and the rumor mill makes it into something scandalous.  Ragni is so crushed by the gossip and the fear of her husband’s reaction she contracts tuberculoses and dies.  Dr. Kallem is infuriated that rather than crush the chatter his brother-in-law preaches a sermon on adultery which the community takes as confirmation.  Not long after the son of the minister and his wife comes down with a complicated illness requiring an operation which only Dr. Kallem can perform.  After saving their son the doctor maintains his distance.  Distressed by the separation from her brother and wishing to thank him Josephine tries to visit. When turned away by a servant she writes.  He replies by sending Regni’s correspondence showing how the gossip sucked the life from this vibrant woman.  Josephine blames herself for supporting her husband.   The distress of the death of Regni and the near death of their son forces the Reverend and his wife to take a second look at their faith.  They conclude that acceptance is more important than belonging.   The exclusivity of their faith becomes less important than the welfare of their fellow man.  By trying to impose their agenda they were getting in God’s way. 

Although I enjoyed In God’s Way I would recommend Morris West’s fiction and Karen Armstrong’s A Case for God as more contemporary and easier to read.  As I have said poetry is not a strong suite of mine.  I am including the following as that which most appealed to me.

THE TREE

Ready with leaves and with buds stood the tree.

“Shall I take them?” the frost said, now puffing with glee.

“Oh my, no, let them stand,

Till flowers are at hand!”

All trembling from tree-top to root came the plea.

Flowers unfolding the birds gladly sung.

“Shall I take them?” the wind said and merrily swung.

“Oh my, no, let them stand,

Till cherries are at hand!”

Protested the tree, while quivering hung.

The cherries came forth ‘neath the sun’s glowing eye.

“Shall I take them?” a rosy young girl’s eager cry.

Oh my, yes, you can take,

I’ve kept them for your sake!”

Low bending its branches, the tree brought them nigh.

I mentioned European politics becoming much involved in the Nobel Prize.  By 1904 it was there big time, so much so the committee decided to split the prize between a French poet and a Spanish playwright.  I will take Frédéric Mistral first.  I will have to look for a CD with the folk music of Provence.  That will go with fish soup and red wine while I enjoy the bard of Provençal.