THE NEW DANISH NOVEL.*

Namara's criticism on Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister" that it re- sembled "a menagerie of tame animals," is more or less true of almost all the remarkable German and Danish novels with which we are acquainted. It is not that the characters depicted are in themselves always tame, they are often passionate and keen, but they are pre- sented in so diffuse and contemplative a form, so entirely steeped in the colours of the narrator's meditative memory or imagination, that we hardly sever them from the scenery of the writer's own mind. The poet seems to breathe around them a cloud of his own breath like that which the goddess mother shed round /Eneas and his fol- lowers when they were approaching the walls of Carthage ; and the warm imaginative atmosphere travels with them as they move. Seen through this cloud, the outlines of their characters are at once softened, magnified, and idealized. As compared with the sharply defined creations of our greatest British novelists, the figures of the German school seem almost like the offspring of reverie. There may be eager, passionate characters most delicately and truly painted among them, yet we are constantly aware that they come and go, not at their own pleasure, but according to the laws of the author's thought, the fibre and structure of which is visibly revealed to us at every step. We not only see them at second-hand, but we see the very changes of sentiment whichbringone or another figure before us. The fundamental element in the German school of novels is the development of the hero's own sentiments, and the pictures which succeed each other are all visibly subordinated to this law. Goethe, indeed, in "Wil- helm Meister" has laid down this as the true principle of the novel, not observing that he was laying down only the peculiar principle of the German school. "In the novel," he said, "it is chiefly aentiments and meats that are exhibited ; in the drama it is characters and deeds. The novel must go slowly forward ; and the sentiments of the hero, by some means or another, must restrain the tendency of the whole to unfold itself and to conclude. The drama, on the other hand, must hasten, and the character of the hero must press forward to the end ; it does not restrain but is restrained. The novel hero must be suffering, at least he must not be in a high degree active; in the dramatic one we look for activity and deeds." - And this appears to be—why, we can scarcely tell—the true law of the German, nod in a considerable degree also, of the Danish noveL The characters are all so tame, because they are kept under the lens of a contemplative and somewhat dreamily.. mind. The wildest animals once enveloped in the cloud of a "subjective German consciousness" would be mesmerized into a state of compa- rative torpor.

The Danish novelists are certainly not so deeply stamped with this characteristic type as the German. Andersen and Goldschmidt have more of action in their tales; less of the haze of "subjective" sentiment than Goethe. But still their tales are of the same type. And this tale is even more distinctly of that type than anything of Andersen's. The characters, delicately as they are sketched, are all bathed in the personality of the writer. You see their images dis- tinctly reflected in the moving waters of the author's mind ; but what you are thinking of is, primarily, the medium in which these figures are seen moving to and fro, and only secondarily the figures themselves. There is true genius, and yet exceedingly little talent in the tale; a real and delicate insight into the nature of man, and the individual characteristics of men; but no grasp of the whole that gives it any force or unity, except that straggling unity which is in- volved in an ideal autobiography. If worked'out with half as much ca- pacity for exhibiting narrative interest, as there is genius in the con- ception of the various characters, this would be a singularly powerful novel. As it is, the interest sometimes ceases almost entirely, and the development of character is almost as tardy as it would be in actual life. Following Goethe's dictum, M. Goldschmidt gives "the sentiments of the hero" such an excessive disposition "to restrain the tendency of the whole to unfold itself and conclude," that we are at last almost thankful for the young man's death, as there seems no other reasonable probability of his sentiments being other than obstructive in the matter.

The story is intended to delineate the homelessness of a poet's inner life,—the jars that he receives at the hands of a prosaic world, —his incapacity to take any practical part in that world without injury to his own essential nature, and yet the yearning to take such a part and its baneful effect on the fine interior balance of his soul. This is not a happy subject for a novel. It is a morbid subject; and .though the great griefs, and sins, and calarnities of men are fit enough for artistic delineation, we doubt whether the petty tempta- tions and weaknesses of sensitive and pliant youth are at all a fit theme for art. Artistic conceptions cannot properly involve a number of subtle and delicate moral problems; for these distract the attention and sympathy of the audience from the great features of the picture. Otto Kroyer, the poet whose "inner life" is traced from his child- hood to his death in early manhood, is a young Dane, the son of a small trader in a provincial seaport town, not very far from Copen-

• Homeless ; or, a Poet's Inner Life. By M. Goldschmidt, Author of "Jacob Bendizen," &c. Three vols. Hurst and Blackett.

linen. He is introduced to us at eight years old, already devoted with a kind of childish passion to Emilie Theilman, a neighbour's daughter, of about his own age, leading her, and being led by her, into many childish scrapes, but keeping through them all an enthusiasm of purpose and sentiment which is not understood even by his little playfellow. To our minds the German and Danish novelists are particularly skilful in delineating the simple romance of childhood. They seem to understand it better than they do the more developed stages of character in which we look for marked traces of voluntary life. In the whole three volumes before us there is no sketch more picturesque than that which winds up the first season of Otto's life, and determines his father to send him to school. It should be said that Otto is excessively attached to his mother, and that he has heard a good deal of the unkindness of the neighbours, and especially of the Theilmans, to his parents, whose prosperity has lately declined:

" Otto went out into the garden with Emilie. Perceiving that he was downcastt she spoke to him with unusual gentleness; and there was a strange mixture of the feminine tenderness which soothes and enlivens, and childishness in her manner and words, when she took his arm and said, You are going to be a student, they say, so you must leave us. But never mind, I will not engage myself to any one else. You must study, so as to become a Judge, and then you will come home. But then you must dismiss Green. I can't bear Green; he never leaves one the slightest chance of getting into the dovecot. When you are a Judge you will go to bulls in your red uniform, and on the King's birthday you will open the ball with me. And some morning you will go in to my father and tell him you want to marry me. I do not think my parents will object, nor your father either. But still there will be some trouble, for I don't think your mother likes me—and I do not like her.'

"Hardly had the words escaped her lips before the boy struck her in the face. At first she made a movement as though she would return the blow; but the next moment she turned away and walked quietly out of the garden. Otto remained as though fixed to the spot, following her with his eyes, and not until her light-coloured dress had vanished from his sight behind the currant-bushes did he perceive that evening had come on; and to him it seemed as though all

light and all sunshine had faded from the earth

"When the girls and boys next assembled to play 'the monk goes into the meadow,' it was evident to all that a wide breach had taken place between Emilie and Otto ; and, by passing observations on it, they widened it still more. In the game, Emilie always chose Christian Foss a great boy of fourteen ; and Otto laid hold of any girl who was nearest, so that it was not Emilie. In the evening of the same day there was a fight between Otto and Christian Foss: Otto was beaten. After the scuffle he was in a state of mind in which the ridiculous and the sublime bordered very near indeed on each other. He felt real anguish, a deep poignant sense of loneliness, but the pommelling he had received had as

i

great a share as his heart-sorrows n the confusion of mind under which lie was labouring. He was like a boat carrying too much sail ; his age was too tender to bear the weight of his emotions, and he staggered under them, like the boat under the press of the heavy canvas. He felt as if lie must commit some deed of violence ; and he turned towards the arbour in which Emilie had once kissed him, and in front of which he had mounted guard in chivalrous style. Who can account for what passes in such an overwrought young brain? He had always looked on this spot as sacred ; he had dreamed that a temple would one day be raised there, in which he and Emilie would be married. The grief and the anger which he had no means of expending on Emilie were now directed against the arbour, against his own dreams and his own enthusiastic hopes, of which by this time he felt quite ashamed. Entering his father's shop, he furtively possessed himself of a quantity of gunpowder; then digging a hole in the earth within the arbour, he placed the gunpowder in it, stamped it well down covered it over with stones, and set fire to it. The violent explosion thus produced, hurling stones and gravel about his head, caused him a strange sensation of satisfaction—so near to death bad Emilie brought him ! "However, Otto's evil star so willed it, that at the very moment he fired his mine a horseman was seen riding into his father's yard. The horse was hit by some of the falling stones, and, regardless of the rider's efforts, it reared, plunged, threw him, and rushed with wild speed down the street. The explosion had been heard in the house ; the horse without its rider was seen speeding along. and while Otto still stood in a state of mingled stupefaction and delight, called forth by the noise, the smoke, the danger, and the consciousness of being the victim of unrequited love, the garden became crowded with people headed by his father. When Kroyer saw the boy in his scorched clothes, surrounded by bits of burning paper and flaming bushes—for some of the branches had taken fire—he rushed towards him, and, with a violence his son had never before witnessed, shook him, struck him, and pulled his hair, exclaiming the while, You want to kill people! You want to kill people! Pll teach you to kill people!' The father's blows were dealt with such a heavy hand that apparently they shivered to atoms Emilie's image in the boy's heart ; for when Otto recovered from his confusion his first feelings were repentance, a sense of shame at his love, his excitement, and his exploded mine. He felt fully conscious of the ridiculous farce he had performed, he thought that every one present must have guessed his secret motives, that he would become the laughing-stock of the whole town, and would never be able to wash out this spot from his life."

This is a vivid and artistic sketch of the child's mind, but to at- tempt to carry this microscopic delineation of a sensitive temperament through the period of fermenting passion and maturing imagination is, in our opinion, a mistake. We do not deny the fidelity with which it is done, but we dispute the advantage and good taste of doing it at all. However, the intention appears to be to delineate the whole stream of events which are in any way touched and idealized by the oetic temperament of the hero, even when, as not unfrequently happens, this idealism is the germ of special feebleness or disease, instead of clearer or timer vision. Hence all that can be coloured by the imaginative temperament is touched upon at every period of life; the last appearance of his father, pale and death-like, to bid him farewell at school; the incidents of school rivalries ; the tropical passions of the West Indian family in which he boarded; his occa- sional glimpses of his early playmate, as year after year he returns home to find her changing more rapidly than himself, and beginning to value the strength of manly experience and self-possession above his own romantic but boyish affection; all these little winds in the stream of life are sketched with a warm and imaginative insight. The story begins at once to fall off and to deepen with his entrance on a college career. The students with whom he associates are mere passing figures, who really exercise but a very external influence upon him,

and whose prolix discussions seem substances foreign to the unity of the "inner life," which it is the scheme of the tale to develop. Being but loosely embodied in the substance of the story, and quite outside the emotions of the hero, the effect is much of the same kind as if the contemporary history of Europe in general had been narrated in order to indicate its influence on the hero's mind. In the case of these idealistic stories, there should clearly be a narrow limit to the range of the microscopic description, and nothing should be included that does not exercise the deepest influence on the central character.

But though the story becomes less perfect and harmonious as the elements are complicated, the portions of it which really affect Otto's own poetic character become also deeper. The various feminine in- fluences which touch him are sketched with wonderful delicacy. The strong revulsion of feeling with which he sees his old playmate, after discovering that she had given her heart in vain to another, but would not be unwilling to be consoled by him; the fascination exer- cised upon him by the elderly intellectual actress, who merely amuses herself with the lad's easily won devotion; the totally opposite charm which a refined, innocent, and childish beauty has for him, even at the climax of his worship for this fascinating but middle- aged lady ; and last, but most skilful of all, the power which the less refined and therefore more dangerous passion of a girl in a slightly lower class of society exerts for a time, and the sudden re- action in his heart produced in fact by satiety, but seeming to be produced by various little indications of want of refinement in the lady which he had never noticed before,—all these things are delicately and powerfully, if not always agreeably, portrayed. Pauline, this lower- class heroine, is the most powerful conception of the book, and has all the originality and charm of Goethe's inexpressibly skilful female pictures. Otto's guilty passion for her, and the fading of that passion, is far the finest and most tragic part of the book. The picture of Paulfne and of Pauline's mother—the bustling housekeeper, who "was so great a lover of cleanliness, that she spoke of it till it actually became repulsive and impure ; for she delighted in re- counting her great achievements, and this cannot be done properly without a detailed mention of the enemy's strength"—and of Otto's relation to both, is powerful and originaL In the following three lines a portrait of essential character is somehow conveyed "When Pauline was deeply moved, her usually open countenance seemed clouded; so likewise, when her mother scolded, she never answered ; and Mr. Belle would frequently say, 'Pauline puts on a face, and does exactly as she likes.'" And the whole relation, at its least painful crisis, is delineated with true genius in the following passage:

"On another occasion, when Pauline had, in a similar manner, awakened a yearning desire to know what was passing within her, and all Otto's searching Inquiries proved without avail, he exclaimed: "'I am afraid your uncommunicative character will make us both very un- happy ; reflect on this, Pauline.'

"The tone in which this was spoken alarmed her even more than the words; for she was herself filled with the kind of presentiment common to poetic minds ; there was in his soul a cloud, as it were, a cloud that affected her electri- cally." . . . . "'I dreamt the other night,' said she, that you broke off our engagement. At home I often feel as if a cloud were hanging over the house, threatening me with destruction.'

"'It is your reticence that is the cloud,' rejoined he, tenderly ; if you would but say what it is von fear, the cloud would vanish at once, and you would be surrounded by sunshine.' "'Your love is all the sunshine I require.'

" Ber words were tender and prettily expressed, but they showed that in their mutual relation she expected him to be everything. . . . .

"More frequently still, as could not but be expected, the absence of sympathy between Otto and Pauline's mother became apparent ; and as the latter had ob- served that a peculiar feeling of melancholy and a kind of suppressed enthusiasm took possession of him whenever his own relatives were mentioned, she became jealous of them, and concluded that it was they who, either secretly or openly, prevented Otto from attaching himself cordially to Pauline's kindred ; and when- ever any little jar occurred in the house, she never failed to make some allusion of the kind, in order to irritate him, and in the secret hope that, when matters were driven to a head, his love for Pauline would make him determine in favour of her relatives.

"On one occasion she asked him, ' Ifyou had to choose between Pauline and your brother, which would be your choice ?' She knew not what it was she asked; she knew not what significance his brother had in his eyes ; she knew not that in his imagination that boy represented his own future fame and liberty. The answer was,

" If you would follow friendly advice, Mrs. Belle, never put that question to me again.' "She went into another room, and sat down. The servant inquired if anything was the matter.

"'I was frightened by two eyes,' she replied. "Otto expected that Pauline, who had been present at the conversation, would pat some question to him on the subject, that might lead to mutual explanations. He was prepared to tell her what his brother represented in his eyes, and what she also ought to represent. But Pauline put on her impenetrable 'face,' and remained silent, as though the affair did not concern her."

It is obvious enough that such a relation as this will end tragically, and the issue of it is finely told. The least successful part of the book is the ideal heroine (Camilla) and the episode in Rome. The genius of the writer is so completely idealizing in itself, that it needs the check of minute observations, and of a somewhat earthly subject, to keep it to the truth of nature. In Camilla he soars after that vague kind of ideal which every novelist attempts, and which affects us as a mere shadow of unreal sentiment. The only masculine portrait which has much merit is that of the half-cynical and yet romantic satirist Scott. The gradual declension of his mind from the tone of.youthful enthusiasm, half ashamed of itself, to that of sensuous voluptuousness, forced to seek in the phy- sical influences of the narcotic hashish for the relief from dull and dreary common-place which his temperament needs, has a good deal of power in it, though it is fragmentary. Of the book, as a whole, we must repeat that it is the book of a man of genius, very inadequately endowed with executive talent. It is full of true psychologic subtlety, arid of delicate insight ; but it errs by want of concentration, pith, and manliness. It is original, in its kind, but of the same type as "Wilhelm Meister"—limp, straggling, and erratic. We might say of it, if we were inclined to find fault, what the irate man said of the preacher of a two hours' sermon : "It was very good of him to come to an 'end at all, for there was no reason why he should." Still, there are but few novels with so much true ore in them; and we will only say that if M. Goldschmidt would but sift and condense, he might produce a gem of the rarest beauty.