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
