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Land of the Free: Bjornstjerne Bjornson's America Letters, 1880-1881 ed. and trans. by Eva Lund Haugen and Einar Haugen

1979; Volume: 7; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/saf.1979.0032

2158-415X

Clarence A. Glasrud,

Canadian Identity and History

Studies in American Fiction249 undertaking the onerous task of analyzing and evaluating the work of this fascinating and controversial writer, who continues to be both a prophet of despair and a celebrant of transcendence. No doubt other critics will continue the job that Grant has begun somewhat haltingly. Skidmore CollegeCharlotte Goodman Haugen, Eva Lund and Einar, eds. and trans. Land of the Free: Bjornstjerne Bjornson's America Letters, 1880-1881. Northfield: NorwegianAmerican Historical Association, 1978. 311 pp. Cloth: $15.00. Although Bjornson is not much read today, even in Norway, he remains the key figure who could be called (in 1880) "the founder of a national Norwegian literature" (p. 247). He was much more than a poet-dramatist and writer of considerable fiction: "Bjornson wished to be a Moses to his people, in America as in Norway" (p. 246). His "dominant passion was for greater freedom and opportunity for the common man," and he opposed the monarchy, the state church, and all special privilege. Nearly all of his writing and activity reflects this "dominant passion": he wrote the national hymn, was "Norway's most fiery orator and platform personality" (p. 3), edited newspapers, directed theaters, and threw himself into popular causes unstintingly, "opinionated and stubborn, impulsive and generous" (p. 3). He was Norway's "uncrowned king"; "to speak Bjornson's name was to hoist the flag of Norway" (pp. 2-3). Readers who know little about Bjornson will find the Haugens' "General Introduction " invaluable. In twenty-three pages Bjornson's cultural perspective is established: this succinct account, highly readable as well as scholarly, provides the essential information about his activities, writings, alliances and ideas—all that is needed to read this book with full comprehension. One part of this essay, "Bjornson's View of America," describes his change of heart in 1872 from an earlier nationalistic hostility to emigration to a new sympathetic understanding of "the seductiveness of the American frontier" (p. 8) and more attractive economic opportunities than Norway could offer. In that year, also, Bjornson discovered Walt Whitman, who "has given me a joy that no new man and book has brought with them for many years" (p. 8). The Haugens conclude: "Our purpose in this section has been to show the interrelationship of Bjornson with Wergeland and Ole Bull in his outlook on America . . ." (p. 13) . They also introduce Rasmus B. Anderson, who first met Bjornson that year and arranged his American tour eight years later. "American Views of Bjornson" begins with the early translations of his fiction, which impressed American critics, writers, and the reading public, despite the shortcomings of those translations in fidelity and grace. Whittier declared in 1874 that "he read anything he could obtain in English by Bjornson" and that "he was 'as well known to English readers as their own authors' " (p. 15). But the key figure, of course, was William Dean Howells, who "kept a close watch on European literature for authors who might revitalize American writing" (p. 15). Howells' enthusiastic reviews of the early Bjornson translations appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1870, when Howells was about to become that magazine's editor-in-chief and before his own novels had appeared. The Haugens think Howells' "spiritual kinship" with Bjornson "probably affected Howells' own writing when he turned to the novel" (pp. 15-16). 250Reviews But the passages the Haugens quote from Howells' 1870 review of Bjornson's Arne, The Happy Boy, and The Fisher Maiden are significant. Howells thought that these peasant tales "form an addition to literature of as great and certain value as any which has been otherwise made during the last two years." He preferred the "singular simplicity" of these tales to "the 'Trollopian' complexity of the Anglo-American novel, explained and circumstantiated , and analyzed, and made detestable with the intrusion of the author's reflections and comments!" Thus Bjornson satisfied Howells on technical grounds by keeping himself out of these stories, but the Norwegian subject matter also qualified as realism of the commonplace: "From him we can learn that fullness exists in brevity rather more than in prolixity; that the finest poetry is not ashamed of the plainest fact; that the lives of men and...