Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century: Literary PortraitsBrandes, Georg
History
Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century: Literary Portraits
Brandes, Georg
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- History and criticism
the Grecian peculiarities, and to the French studies of the antique,--a
relation which is not found in Byron, but which characterizes Tegnér.
Byron's art was employed in giving an organ to passion: Tegnér, like
the ancients, desired that passion might be clad in strict decorum, in
order to avoid a pathological effect. He had never liked reality, and
had as little fancy for metaphysics; but the ideal form he loved. The
inner schisms which he conceived to be the problem for art to solve
were not deep; at heart he did not wish to see more violent struggles
between body and soul, condition and desire, duty and happiness, etc.,
represented in poetry than could be reconciled with the harmony of
healthfulness. It was rather the pure, polished form that fascinated
him than the natural freshness of the Greeks, consequently the quality
which the French classic style had in common with the Grecian. All
these instincts brought him very near to the old school, and removed
him from the new.
His chief warfare against the latter was waged by the young instructor
(magister) in his great metrical speech delivered at Lund in 1820, the
celebrated "Epilog," in which he demanded of the young academicians the
banner-oath to the banner of light. The popularity of this poem was
so great that during the summer following its delivery no two young
students could talk together ten minutes without devoting at least five
of them to quoting and interpreting the "Epilog." Certain lines of this
speech have an almost proverbial force and truth.
"Heed not, tho' indolence to you may whisper,
That far too mighty is the strife for powers like yours,
That 'twill be fought as well without your aid.
Alone a general never wins a battle;
'Tis won for him by solid ranks of soldiers."
He ends by placing the Temple of Truth, as the ancients conceived it,
face to face with the Tower of Babel, erected by the adherents to
the romantic school, the heavy, barbaric structure, "whose obscurity
peeps through the narrow windows." If we pay strict heed, however,
to the architecture of the Pantheon, which he describes as that of
the ancients, we shall observe that its style, with its singular
mingling of Roman and Gothic, far from being antique, is an involuntary
reproduction of Tegnér's own personal art ideal, which is the fruit of
so many classic and romantic combinations.
"The ancients built to Truth a lofty temple,
A fair rotunda, glowing as the firmament.
The open dome let in from ev'ry quarter
A flood of light, while through the pillared forest
The winds of heaven with tender music frolicked,
But now our people build a Tower of Babel."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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