Here the poet
caught the first glimpse of a greater and freer life than moved within
the narrow horizon of the Norwegian capital. This gay and careless
student-life, this cheerful abandonment of all the artificial shackles
which burden one's feet in their daily walk through a bureaucratic
society, the temporary freedom which allows one without offence to toast
a prince and hug a count to one's bosom--all this had its influence
upon Bjoernson's sensitive nature; it filled his soul with a happy
intoxication and with confidence in his own strength. And having once
tasted a life like this he could no more return to what he had left
behind him.
The next winter we find him in Copenhagen, laboring with an intensity of
creative ardor which he had never known before. His striking appearance,
the pithy terseness of his speech, and a certain _naive_ self-assertion
and impatience of social restraints made him a notable figure in the
polite and somewhat effeminate society of the Danish capital. There was
a general expectation at that time that a great poet was to come, and
although Bjoernson had as yet published nothing to justify the
expectation, he found the public of Copenhagen ready to recognize in him
the man who was to rouse the North from its long intellectual torpor,
and usher in a new era in its literature.
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