Essays on Scandinavian LiteratureBoyesen, Hjalmar Hjorth
History
Essays on Scandinavian Literature
Boyesen, Hjalmar Hjorth
Authors, Scandinavian; Scandinavian literature -- History and criticism
The second and third courses of lectures (printed, like the first, and
translated into German by Strodtmann) dealt with "The Literature of the
French Emigres" and "The Reaction in France." Here the critic is less
unsympathetic, not because he regards the mental attitude of the
fugitives from the Revolution with approbation, but because he has an
intellectual bias in favor of everything French. Besides having a
certain constitutional sympathy with the clearness and vigor of style
and thought which distinguish the French, Dr. Brandes is so largely
indebted to French science, philosophy, and art that it would be strange
if he did not betray an occasional _soupcon_ of partisanship. His
treatment of Chateaubriand, Benjamin Constant, Madame de Stael, Oberman,
Madame de Kruedener, and all the queer saints and scribbling sinners of
that period is as entertaining as it is instructive. It gives one the
spiritual complexion of the period in clear lines and vivid colors,
which can never be forgotten. Nearly all that makes France France is to
be found in these volumes--its wit, its frivolity, its bright daylight
sense, contrasting so strikingly with the moonshiny mysticism of German
romanticism. And yet France has its romanticism too, which finds vent in
a supercredulous religiosity, in a pictorial sentimentalized
Christianity, such as we encounter in Chateaubriand's "Genie du
Christianisme" and "Les Martyrs." It is with literary phenomena of this
order that "The Reaction in France" particularly deals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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