Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century: Literary Portraits. Georg Brandes

      NOTE.

      This volume is published by special arrangement with the author. At my request Dr. Georg Brandes has designated me as his American translator and takes a personal interest in the enterprise.

      To Auber Forestier, who kindly aided me in translating the stories of Björnstjerne Björnson, I have to express my cordial thanks for valuable assistance in the preparation of this translation.

      RASMUS B. ANDERSON.

      COPENHAGEN, DENMARK,

      July, 1886.

      AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

      It is a well-known fact that at the beginning of this century several prominent Danes endeavored to acquire citizenship in German literature. Since then the effort has not been repeated by any Danish author. To say nothing of the political variance between Germany and Denmark, these examples are far from alluring on the one hand, and on the other hand they furnish no criterion of the Danish mind. The great remodeler of the Danish language, Oehlenschläger, placed his works before the German public in German so wholly lacking in all charm, that he only gained the rank of a third-class poet in Germany. The success, however, which lower grades of genius, such as Baggesen and Steffens, have attained, was the result, in the first case, of a veritable chameleon-like nature and a talent for language that was unique of its kind, and in the second, of a complete renunciation of the mother-tongue.

      The author of this volume, who is far from being a chameleon, and who has by no means given up his native tongue, who stands, indeed, in the midst of the literary movement which has for some time agitated the Scandinavian countries, knows very well that a human being can only wield a powerful influence in the country where he was born, where he was educated by and for prevailing circumstances. In the present volume, as in other writings, his design has simply been to write in the German language for Europe; in other words, to treat his materials differently than he would have treated them for a purely Scandinavian public. He owes a heavy debt to the poetry, the philosophy, and the systematic æsthetics of Germany; but feeling himself called to be the critic, not the pupil, of the history of German literature, he cherishes the hope that he may be able to repay at least a small portion of his debt to Germany.

      The nine essays of which this book consists, and of which even those that have already appeared in periodicals, have been thoroughly revised, are not to be regarded as "Chips from the Workshop" of a critic; they are carefully treated literary portraits, united by a spiritual tie. Men have sat for them, with whom the author, with one exception (Esaias Tegnér), has been personally acquainted, or of whom he has at least had a close view. To be sure, the same satisfactory survey cannot always be taken of a living present as of a completed past epoch; but perhaps a picture of the present as a whole may be furnished, the general physiognomy may be arrived at, by characterizing as faithfully and vividly as possible, some of its typical forms.

      The mode of treatment in these essays is greatly diversified. In some of them the individuality of the author portrayed is represented as exhaustively as possible; in others, an attempt has simply been made to present the man in actual person before the eyes of the reader; some are purely psychological; others offer a fragment of æsthetics; others, again, are eminently biographical and historical. In all of them the characteristics of the individual are so chosen as to bring out the most important features of the author's life and works.

      Even the personalities described are of a very heterogeneous nature. They belong to not less than six nationalities. Common to all of them, however, there is a something which is more easily felt than defined; they are modern authors. By this I do not mean that they all, without exception, with full consciousness, and with their whole hearts, have paid homage to the "modern" in art and in thought, but merely that they, even though in a very unequal degree—which heightens the charm to the observer—represent the modern style of mind.

      GEORG BRANDES.

      CONTENTS.

       PAUL HEYSE HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN JOHN STUART MILL ERNEST RENAN ESAIAS TEGNÉR GUSTAVE FLAUBERT FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON HENRIK IBSEN

      PAUL HEYSE.

      EMINENT AUTHORS OF THE 19TH CENTURY.

       Table of Contents

      PAUL HEYSE.

      1875.

      "How does it happen," I asked recently of a distinguished portrait-painter, "that you, who formerly have made successful efforts in several other branches of art, have at last confined yourself wholly to portrait-painting?"

      "I think it is because it has given me the most pleasure," replied he, "to study and to perpetuate an object which has never existed before, and will never appear again."

      With these words he seemed to me strikingly to designate the interest which attracts a person to distinct individuality, that of the inner as well as that of the outer being. To the critic, too, the individual is an especially alluring object; to him, too, the execution of a portrait is a singularly fascinating occupation. Unfortunately, his means of communication are deplorably far behind those of the painter. What can be more difficult and more fruitless than the attempt to express in words that which is purely individual—that which in accordance with its very nature must mock at every effort of reproduction? Is not personality, in its uninterrupted flow, the true perpetuum mobile, which does not admit of being constructed?

      And yet these insolvable problems ever charm and attract anew. After we have gradually become familiar with an author, have come to feel ourselves perfectly at home in his writings, to perceive dimly that certain of their characteristics dominate others, and then happen to be by nature of a critical turn of mind, we can find no peace until we have rendered ourselves an account of our impressions, and made clear the indistinct image of the character of another ego that has arisen within our own soul. We hear or read criticisms on an author and find them absurd. Why are they absurd?

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