The man who at forty assumes the child's attitude of mere
wondering acceptance toward the world and its problems, may, indeed, be
a very estimable character; but he will never amount to much. It is the
honest doubters, the importunate questioners, the indefatigable fighters
who have broken humanity's shackles, and made the world a more
comfortable abiding-place to the present generation than it was to the
past. There is unquestionably a strain of Danish romanticism in
Bjoernson's persistent harping upon childlike faith and simplicity and a
childlike vision of the world. Grundtvig, with whom this note is
pervasive, had in his early youth a great influence over him. The
glorification of primitive feeling was part of the romantic revolt
against the dry rationalism of the so-called period of enlightenment.
To account for the fact that so mighty a spirit as Bjoernson could have
reached his thirty-eighth year before emerging from this state of
idyllic _naivete_, I am inclined to quote the following passage from
Brandes, descriptive of the condition of the Scandinavian countries
during the decade preceding 1870:
"While the intellectual life languished, as a plant droops in a close,
confined place, the people were self-satisfied--though not with a joyous
or noisy self-satisfaction; for there was much sadness in their minds
after the great disasters [the Sleswick-Holstein War].
Pages:
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70