SOURCE: Larson, Laurence M. “Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen.” In The Changing West and Other Essays, pp. 82-116. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1937.

[In the following excerpt, Larson describes Boyesen's progress from amateur to professional as seen in his literature and criticism.]

Soon after his interview with Boyesen in July, 1871, W. D. Howells sent him a copy of Hans Christian Andersen's travel story, “A Poet's Bazaar,” to review for the Atlantic. The review was prepared and published in October of the same year. So far as the writer has been able to learn, this was the first contribution submitted by a man of Norwegian birth or blood that had been accepted by the editor of a journal of standing in the American literary world.¹

As was usual in those days, the review was not signed; but only four months later it was followed by a poem, “A Norse Stev,” which closed with the signature Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen. The larger part of this poem appeared later in Gunnar, from the manuscript of which it had doubtless been taken. The following year Howells published two other poems by the young author, “The Bride of Torrisdale” and “Saint Olaf's Fountain.”² A fourth poem, “The Ravens of Odin,” appeared in June, 1874. In all these excepting the first the author retold ancient legendary tales that he may have heard in his early boyhood days in old Sogn.

In April, 1873, Boyesen published a short story entitled “A Norse Emigrant” in the Milwaukee Monthly Magazine. It was indeed a “short” story, since it required only three printed pages to complete what it had to tell. Two months later Gunnar began to appear as a serial in the Atlantic. At first thought it seems strange that William Dean Howells, the major prophet of American realism, should have accepted Gunnar for publication. However, in 1871 he had not yet been converted to the new literary faith; in fact, he had not yet seriously begun to write fiction. He was still chiefly an editor, looking, as editors must, for fresh and possibly novel materials. No doubt he saw perfectly that Boyesen's novel was a decidedly amateurish production; at the same time he could not help seeing that, even if the plot was somewhat worn and thin, the narrative was exceedingly well written and, what was more interesting, it took the reader into an environment which was wholly new to the readers of the Atlantic Monthly.

“Gunnar was written merely to express my homesickness and longing for my beautiful native land during the first and second years of my sojourn in the United States.” This statement has been taken to mean that the story was composed amid the dreary surroundings of Urbana, “a featureless and monotonous little town of red brick and frame houses.” No doubt the novel was put into final form in that place.

I walked up and down along the railway track outside of the town by the hour and wrestled in thought with the successive chapters of that first romance of mine, Gunnar. For it was distinctly a romance; and I confess that I even contemplated the possibility of writing it in recess.³

The author's words may, however, also be taken to mean that the story was written, in some part at least, in Chicago, the beauty and loveliness of which, in 1870, was probably not exactly overpowering. Furthermore, there are indications here and there in the novel that it may have been written partly in Norwegian and later turned into English. That again may mean that the writing was begun before Boyesen had gained the mastery of the new language; but in such matters it is, of course, easy to be mistaken.

Gunnar appeared in book form in 1874. It was received in the East with loud acclaim. A reviewer in the Atlantic had evidently read it with rising enthusiasm:

Among the works of fiction printed in the English language this year, there can hardly be any so remarkable in some aspects as the idyllic story which Mr. Boyesen tells us … [The author is a] Norwegian thinking and expressing himself in our tongue with a grace, simplicity, and force and a sense of its colors and harmonies which we should heartily praise in one native to it.⁴

The reviewer further notes the fact that “Mr. Boyesen's citizenship is as new as the last election” (1874). Gunnar was soon out of print. An eighth edition was published in 1895.

In the Northwest, among Boyesen's countrymen, the acclaim was more subdued. The Norwegian reviewers thought they could see distinct traces of Bjørnson's art in the new novel. It cannot be denied that Boyesen was profoundly influenced by the great Norwegian author; still it would be a mistake to assert, as some critics actually did, that he was a clever imitator and nothing more.⁵ For Boyesen was an artist none the less. He was a master of written speech and had the sort of imagination that can visualize all the essential details of a given situation. But his scenes and environments are never wholly imaginary. “It is impossible for me,” he has written in one of his prefaces, “to write a novel without having a distinct and real topography in my mind.”⁶ In Gunnar the scene is laid in Mid-Sogn amid the much beloved haunts of old Systrand. One is therefore not surprised to find a consistency in topographical details, a consistency which is always characteristic of Boyesen's novels, even when the environment does not seem to provide all the needs of the plot.

In 1873, when Boyesen's friends were following the new serial in Howell's journal, the author was himself in Europe. His sojourn in Leipzig cannot have been long; but it was long enough to give him a clearer insight into some of the literary problems of the fatherland. As a romanticist he would naturally be interested in the origins and principles of the German romantic movement. Later, after his return to America, his studies in this subject were set in order and published in the Atlantic, to which he continued to be an almost regular contributor.

When Boyesen went to Leipzig he was still an adherent of the cult of romanticism, though his faith had been somewhat shaken by the study of Turgenev's great novel, Smoke. But the ideas and tendencies that he discovered in the writings of the romantic school must have surprised him and given him pause. Perhaps he could accept the new beliefs in the sovereignty of genius and in the identification of poetry with philosophy; but the pallid mysticism of Novalis, and Schlegel's demand for complete freedom, even within the marriage relation, could have no attraction for a man who, though somewhat critical of social conditions, was by no means ready to dispute the essential rightness of the social structure.

These ideas were discussed in the first of these essays, “Social Aspects of the German Romantic School.” “Novalis and the Blue Flower,” the second in the series, deals with the career and the writings of Friedrich von Hardenberg, who has been regarded as the patron saint of the romantic movement. The last of the three essays, which the author entitled “Literary Aspects of the Romantic School,” is a study in which he tries to bring into a clear light the literary faith of these great Germans; at the same time his own credo was changing: he was becoming an adherent of the new school of realism.⁷

If his faith in the ideals of romanticism had been shaken in Leipzig, it received an even more severe jolt in Paris. From the time of his first interview with Turgenev he continued an ardent admirer of his Russian friend. In his room in the Cascadilla dormitory in Ithaca he had on his bookshelves a set of Turgenev's works complete to date, some in French and some in German.⁸ A few of these were the gift of the author himself. A new, a mighty influence had come into the young professor's life.⁹

On Boyesen's return to the United States he was soon made aware of the fact that his literary friend, William Dean Howells, was also drifting away from the old moorings. Against these newer forces the older influence of the genial Bjørnson could no longer maintain its ascendancy in Boyesen's literary thinking. For that matter, the famous Norwegian had also begun to venture into the newer fields. Before long Boyesen's genius was to desert the misty realms of legend and find new subjects in the study of contemporary life. Soon the devotee of Norwegian romance was devoting his strength “to the task of brushing away all illusions and painting life as sterile and unpicturesque as it is in its meanest, most commonplace conditions.”¹⁰

The conversion to the new faith was not immediate; nor was the process completed without serious strains and stresses. The poet in Boyesen continued partial to romantic themes. But during the decade of the seventies he became deeply interested in the achievements and possibilities of science, and once more science proved to be a ruthless solvent of old views. Finally the poet, too, had to capitulate. In the writer's opinion one of Boyesen's finest efforts is the group of five sonnets that he calls “Evolution,” in which he glorifies life and all the mighty forces that have shaped the abode of man. One of these sonnets was published in May, 1878.¹¹

A notable product of the period of transition in Boyesen's literary life was his second novel, A Norseman's Pilgrimage, which he probably composed in Ithaca in 1874.¹² In some respects the Pilgrimage is distinctly autobiographical; at least the hero and the author have much the same background. Like Boyesen, Olaf Varberg was brought up in the house of a grandfather who had a judicial appointment in Sogn. “Not a hundred steps from his home stood King Bele's venerable tomb”; and it happens that the ancient king's grave was not far distant from the Hjorth estate at Systrand. Olaf's father had made it possible for him to spend a year in America. As in Boyesen's case his grandfather was strongly opposed to his leaving Norway. But soon after graduation he emigrated and became an enthusiastic American. Like Boyesen again, he revisited Europe after some years and spent a few months in Leipzig. Here he met Ruth Copley, a young woman from Boston, and the story was ready to begin.

Like Boyesen, Olaf Varberg was a poet who quite early in life developed aspirations in that direction. At the age of twelve he wrote poems which he read to his grandmother. One of these she wept over “for a whole day, and that he felt to be a great reward.”

Again like the author, the lonesome hero yearned for the beauties of his native land, “and in this dreary solitude Olaf sought refuge from the world in his old talent, that of song.” In this case, however, the product was a story. And that which he had undertaken “to ease an overburdened mind gradually grew under his hand.” Ultimately it found a publisher.¹³

In a novel where fact and fiction are woven together with only slight regard for plan or pattern, it is always difficult to determine which details may be accepted as factual. But since Boyesen always wrote with an actual setting in his mind, one may feel confident that the “white, stately mansion … on the green slope, close to the water,” was the residence of Judge Hjorth. One can also be reasonably sure that when he describes the great drawing room with its heavy, red curtains, its strange tapestries, its long row of ancestral portraits, he is describing the room where his grandparents entertained their visitors and friends.¹⁴

Another novel which some critics have regarded as a chapter from Boyesen's own experiences is Falconberg, which Scribner's brought out in 1879. The leading character in the story is Einar Finnsen Falconberg, the son of a highly self-centered but mediocre Norwegian bishop, who had destined Einar to official preferment in the church. A forged paper destroys the young man's chance to make a career in theology and he sees no escape from his difficulties except in flight to the New World. In his wanderings he comes to Pine Ridge, a Norwegian settlement in Minnesota, where his uncle, Marcus Falconberg, has a pastorate. Under the name of Einar Finnsen, the young immigrant makes a place for himself in the community, finally becoming editor of a new Republican organ, the Citizen. He forms a few close friendships, wins the love of a young woman of ability and character, and all seems to be well.

He has not been long in the settlement, however, before he incurs the ill will of his uncle, the local pastor. Marcus Falconberg is one of those inflated personalities who try to maintain their positions by domineering tactics. He has long been regarded as the orator ex officio at the annual Seventeenth-of-May celebrations; but this year the committee in charge chooses the young editor. That fact alone would be sufficient to stir the ecclesiastical ire, but worse is to come. In his address, Finnsen takes a position on the subject of Americanization which the pastor can regard only as the rankest heresy.

Here in this wondrous land a new and great people is being born; a new and great civilization, superior to any the world has ever seen, is in the process of formation. It would be a foolish and ineffectual labor if we were to try to preserve our nationality intact, if we were to cling to our inherited language and traditional prejudices, and endeavor to remain a small isolated tribe, forming no organic part of this great people with which our lot is cast.¹⁵

In the course of the ensuing conflict, the angry cleric discovers who Finnsen is, and when the editor refuses to come to heel, he informs the world of his nephew's crime. The community is properly shocked, but the editor's friends gather about him, his betrothed is loyal, and the story ends on a happy note.

A reviewer who had evidently read the book without much understanding seemed to see in the new novel a study in race antagonism. “The contact of slow conservative farmers from Scandinavia with the bustle and stir of Anglo-Saxondom in its American phase cannot fail to offer picturesque situations and these Mr. Boyesen has liberally used.”¹⁶

Unfortunately for this analysis, there are only two important American characters in the story, one an eccentric scholar with a Dutch name and the other an editor and politician of low principles and little character. The “stir and bustle” is chiefly evident in the Norwegian circle. Of racial antagonism there is scarcely a trace.

Boyesen had written the novel for a wholly different purpose. He wished to illustrate his belief that the Norwegian clergy, with their insistence on maintaining Norwegian culture, were impeding the development of the immigrants into normal American citizens. Furthermore, he wished to expose what he believed to be the essential viciousness of the priesthood, its hypocrisy, its bigotry, and its domineering instincts. And he therefore gives a character to Marcus Falconberg which must have been rare on this side of the sea.

One can readily understand that the book could not be received with much favor in the Norwegian settlements. It was generally regarded as a vicious caricature for which there could be no warrant or provocation. The author finally came forward with a reply to his critics in which he asserted that he had no intention to lampoon the immigrant citizen. What he had tried to do was to describe the conflict between “the spirit of liberty and ecclesiastical reaction.” It was quite true that the bolt was directed against the Norwegian Synod; but he believed that when one looked into the facts the charges would be found to be very mild. Falconberg was, after all, not half so ridiculous or papal as certain pastors who shared leadership in the Synod.¹⁷

Two years later he lifted his voice once more against the “reactionary” clergy in the West. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson spent the winter of 1880-81 in the United States lecturing to his countrymen in the Northwest. The great author was never famous for tact. He had become a “freethinker,” and, though he did not come into the West on a mission of propaganda, he was unable, perhaps unwilling, to keep his newer ideas under cover. It was only to be expected that the clergy would meet him with sword in hand and the expectation was not disappointed.

The anti-Bjørnson agitation irritated Boyesen, and he poured forth his wrath in a letter to the Critic: “The clergy, as usual the representatives of obscurantism and bigotry, began a fierce and determined warfare upon him the moment his arrival was announced.” He was sure, however, that the Bjørnson progress had been worth while; “he has roused to thought the great priest-ridden masses in the Scandinavian West.”¹⁸

The novel Falconberg shows clearly that Boyesen was entirely out of touch with the situation in the pioneer states. The conflict over the common school had died down by the time the novel was written. The work served therefore more as a historical statement than as effective propaganda. One wonders whether the author realized that in this story he was repeatedly guilty of hitting below the belt. Mean little egotists like the Reverend Marcus Falconberg no doubt held pastorates in Norwegian settlements but they probably did not keep them long. It is recorded that their congregations knew how to deal with them. Marcus Falconberg is an individual; he is not a type.

A critic might also object to the choice of environment within which the scene is laid. Lakes are common in Minnesota, but ravines and canyons are not. The setting seems rather to belong in the “finger lake” district in New York. These discrepancies do not, however, detract materially from the interest of the story. There is more strength and vigor in Falconberg than in any of Boyesen's earlier writings.

Sixty years ago there appeared the first in a series of novels which make up what we may call Norwegian-American literature. It was Tellef Grundysen's story of Minnesota life, Fra begge sider af havet.¹⁹Falconberg, the second in the series, was published two years later. Both dealt with life among the Norwegian pioneers in Minnesota. But though Boyesen was not the first in point of time to deal with the problems of immigrant life, we can at least say this much, that he was the first author of real distinction to enter this field.

Boyesen was young when he left Norway; he was only midway in his twenty-first year. It seems clear, however, that he had attained an intellectual maturity far beyond his years. He had drunk deep from the springs of Norsedom, and the riches, intellectual and emotional, that he had acquired in his native land he treasured carefully and used effectively in his literary profession. In spite of the fact that he had become wholly assimilated to the American intelligentsia, he remained to the end of his days something of a Norseman.

It is therefore not at all strange that such a considerable part of Boyesen's literary output is concerned with Norwegian themes. The three novels that have been discussed are all Norwegian in content, either wholly or in part. His Tales of Two Hemispheres is a group of six stories, all of which are Norwegian or have Norwegian backgrounds.²⁰ Other writings of the same class are The Modern Vikings, a group of short stories depicting life and sport in the Northland; Boyhood in Norway; Against Heavy Odds, a volume in which the author pays tribute to Norse heroism; and Norseland Tales,²¹ a collection that was published only a year before his death. The best of his poetry will be found in a little volume that he named Idylls of Norway and Other Poems.²² This list is far from being exhaustive; but it is sufficient to show that his fondness for Norwegian motifs continued throughout his career.

In 1886 Putnams brought out Boyesen's Story of Norway as a volume in the Story of the Nation series. In this work the romanticist had a final inning. The glamorous heroes of the Viking Age receive far more attention than the more commonplace actors of the modern stage. The book is consequently not outstanding as history; but it makes delightful reading and in the author's own day it enjoyed high favor.

In the field of literary history Boyesen's writings have a greater claim to serious consideration. Some of his essays in German literature, particularly his studies in the lives and works of Goethe and Schiller, are still read in college and university classes.²³ Of an even higher quality are his studies of the modern literature of his native land. As early as 1873 he published an important article on “Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson as a Dramatist.” He was also watching the rising star of Henrik Ibsen and published a “commentary” on Ibsen's dramas in 1894.²⁴ This was followed by a series of Essays on Scandinavian Literature.²⁵ The larger part of this work is devoted to the great Norwegian writers, Ibsen, Bjørnson, Kielland, and Lie; but Boyesen also discusses such diverse Danish writers as Hans Christian Andersen and Georg Brandes; his Swedish representative is the celebrated romanticist, Esaias Tegnér, whose influence Boyesen felt at a very early age. Attention has been called above to a course in Norwegian literature that he gave in his first year in Columbia; this was later broadened into a course in Scandinavian literature. He was scheduled to give such a course in the year of his death.

There has been no attempt in this paper to list everything that Boyesen wrote; some of his strongest productions have not even been mentioned. In twenty-one years he published twenty-four volumes: novels, collections of short stories, essays in literary criticism, poetry, and history. In addition he wrote a large number of articles and did a great deal of reviewing. The doors to all the important editorial offices in the land were open to him, and all the literary journals were glad to publish whatever came from his pen. When the first number of the Cosmopolitan came from the press, it was found that Boyesen had contributed a story and that it had the first place in the issue.

In appraising what he wrote, critics have not always been kind. He was not, some of them have thought, a good poet. A reviewer writing in 1883 expressed himself in these terms, “Still, we hardly think there is warrant in it [Idylls of Norway] for ranking Mr. Boyesen as anything more than a receptive mind, possessed of a true but not original poetic tendency, serving art with reverent hands and conscientiously.”²⁶ It is quite true that Boyesen's lines are often lacking in poetic grace, but the same can be said of most poets. And among the heavier lines are some that are worthy of a real master. The reviewer quoted above is willing to grant that the five sonnets to “Evolution” are poetry of a high order. The present writer would second this opinion and would like to add that in the sonnets to “Lillie” there are many lines that deserve unqualified praise.²⁷

Boyesen's verse may be heavy, but it is often energetic at the same time. The quality of his poetry is quite well illustrated in “The Minstrel at Castle Garden.”²⁸ The minstrel is a Norwegian violinist perched high on a heap of chests and pouring forth his changing mood on the quivering strings:

Through a maze of wildering discords,—presto and prestissimo—
Runs the bow—a wild legato rocking madly to and fro,
As if wrestled in the music, hope and longing, joy and woe.

Boyesen's prose is generally regarded as better than his verse. His stories are simple and direct; they hold the reader's attention, though they sometimes give the feeling of having been written in too great haste. This seems to be more generally true of his shorter stories than of his full-length novels. Boyesen evidently had his stories outlined to the closing episode, and when he began to write, his pen moved rapidly forward to the last line. With him the main thing was the story; and in his eagerness to tell the tale he rarely stopped to apply artistic touches. Perhaps, as a realist, he did not believe in doing so, since lavish embellishment is likely to dull the reader's sense of reality.

But if his tales have the appearance of lacking in finish, they are always wholesome. Rarely does Boyesen offend against good taste. Forty years ago his writings were widely read, and their popularity has not yet disappeared. A test of this popularity is the fact that they have also been read in other countries. There are translations of some of his more important works in German, Norwegian, Italian, and even in Russian. …

Notes

1. The Atlantic Monthly was at the time publishing articles, stories and poems by Longfellow, Whittier, E. C. Stedman, Celia Thaxter, Lucy Larcom, and others in the same class.

2. Atlantic Monthly, 29:210-211 (February, 1872) and 31:159-162, 418-419 (February and April, 1873).

3. Indianapolis News, September 30, 1893; cf. Book Buyer, 3:343.

4. Atlantic Monthly, 34:624 (November, 1874).

5. Erik L. Peterson, who was perhaps the most competent literary critic among the Norwegian-Americans of his day, admitted that some of Boyesen's scenes were reminiscent of Bjørnson, but held that what imitation there was was quite unimportant. See Budstikken (Minneapolis), December 21, 1880.

6. Preface to the Mammon of Unrighteousness [1891].

7. Atlantic Monthly, 36:49 ff., 689 ff. (July and December, 1875); 37:607 ff. (May, 1876).

8. Open Court, 10:4813.

9. He prepared an account of “A Visit to Tourguéneff” which was published in the Galaxy, 17:456 ff. (April, 1874). He saw Turgenev again in 1879. Critic, 1:81-82 (March 26, 1881).

10. Library of the World's Best Literature, 5:2273-2274.

11. Idylls of Norway and Other Poems [1882], 124-128; Atlantic Monthly, 41:565-567 (May, 1878).

12. New York, 1875.

13. The details cited above are from chapter 2.

14. See p. 214, 219. The story is the wooing and winning of Ruth Copley, a daughter of old Boston. There is a belief in Boyesen's family that he was at this time engaged to a young woman of the Longfellow family, though not a member of the Cambridge poet's household. Boyesen's “Elegy on A. G. L.” (dated December 15, 1876, and published in Idylls of Norway, 8-10) is believed to have been written in her honor. If these surmises are correct, Miss Longfellow may have been the original of Ruth Copley.

15. Boyesen, Falconberg, 134 (chapter 10).

16. Scribner's Monthly, 18:472 (July, 1879).

17. Budstikken, February 15, 1881. See also the issues of December 21 and 28, 1880 (sympathetic review of Boyesen's works by Erik L. Peterson), and February 1, 1881 (reply to Peterson by Ole O. Lien).

18. Critic, 1:58 (March 12, 1881) and 10:225-226 (March 7, 1887). In the latter article Boyesen speaks approvingly of Kristofer Janson's novel, Præriens saga, “in which he depicts in striking colors the obscurantism and the spiritual thralldom to which a majority of the Norse emigrants submit.”

19. See ante, p. 54 ff.

20. Boston, 1876.

21. New York, 1887, 1892, 1890, 1894, respectively.

22. New York, 1882.

23. Goethe and Schiller, Their Lives and Works (New York, 1879); Biographical Introduction to Schiller's Works (Philadelphia, 1883); Biographical Introduction to Goethe's Works (Philadelphia, 1885); Essays on German Literature (New York, 1892).

24. North American Review, 116:109-138 (January, 1873); Commentary on the Works of Henrik Ibsen (London, 1894).

25. New York, 1895.

26. Atlantic Monthly, 51:423 (March, 1883). For a somewhat similar appraisal see Benjamin W. Wells in Sewanee Review, 4:302 (May, 1896).

27. In Idylls of Norway. Lillie was the poet's wife.

28. First published in Century Magazine, 24:850-851 (October, 1882).