The following account of the work of Verner von Heidenstam is by Sven Söderman, Swedish Critic
In the constellation
of original artists who regenerated Swedish poetry at the end of the last century,
Verner von Heidenstam was the most brilliant star. He was the leader of the generation
of poets of 1890; he was the first to set forth in theory and also to realize
in his works the ideal of new Swedish generations. Even in his first poems he
opened new paths for imagination and form; and his later collections are in large
part pure masterpieces of the lyric art. Not less significant - but more impressive
because of its great dimensions - is his work in prose. Inspired by national subjects
from the very beginning, it succeeds in capturing the most genuine characteristics
of national life; it depicts the destinies of the Swedish people in epic poems,
which by the richness of their imagination, the sharpness of their contours, and
their composition, are works of the highest order in Scandinavian literature.
No competent and impartial judge has ever questioned the rare originality of his
genius, and Heidenstam has long been ranked among the masters of Swedish national
literature.
Born in 1859 into an old family of the Swedish nobility,
he first wanted to be a painter, but he abandoned the study of painting to devote
himself to his vocation as a poet. His first collection of poems, Vallfart och
vandringsår (1888) [Pilgrimage: The Wander Years], which contains
predominantly Oriental themes, marked an epoch in the modern literature of Sweden.
In truth it gave the final blow to the realistic school, enemy of all imagination,
which was then dominant in Sweden and which since 1880 had darkened literature
with its sadness and its gloom. This was the first manifestation of a new poetry
in which free individuals, led only by the logic of their imagination, worshipped
beauty for its own sake. This «renaissance», which a small polemical
work (Renässans, 1889) announced a little later, was already completely
realized in these poems, rich in colours and bold in form. They reaffirmed the
right of man to the naive pleasure of living and surprised with their new rhythms
and their poetic accents.
The Oriental poems which played so charmingly
with colours and forms had inaugurated a new era and had made the renewal of Swedish
poetry apparent to the eyes and to the imagination. In the great prose-poem intermixed
with verse, Hans Alienus (1892), the tragic Odyssey of an uprooted worshipper
of beauty, and especially in his Dikter (1895) [Poems] Heidenstam opens
perspectives to an inner life. The time of hymns to voluptuousness is past; gravity
and sadness are now persistent moods. Sentiment and duty are appreciated at their
just value and what is firmly rooted in the depths of the human personality finds
itself intuitively explained. What is characteristic in this conception of life,
born of noble and unhappy experiences, is a proud and tolerant virility which
constitutes the very essence of the suffering, the hope, and the intoxication
of the poet, and a newly acquired capacity to reach the spiritual world by renunciation.
An ample and profound imagination, genial sentiment, and pure humanity fill these
poems - which are also admirable in the sense of form - and make Heidenstam a
manly poet and a master of the lyric genre.
A new aspect of Heidenstam's
development appeared in his patriotic poetry. He had discovered early that love
for the ancestral hearth and for the home of one's birth is what most strongly
links man to life. To this love he gave an intense expression even in the poems
of his youth; this love henceforth linked him more closely to his country and
to his people and oriented his poetic genius toward the historic tales and memories
of Sweden. Compelled by such love, he summarized, in a cycle of poems, Ett
folk (1902) [One People], all that is Swedish into a unity with the
same rights and obligations for those who enter therein; and his love finally
suggested a patriotic dream of grandeur and called forth this passionate demand:
«No people may be greater than you; that is the goal, no matter what the
cost.» A whole series of great prose-poems bears witness to his patriotism.
In Karolinerna (1897-98) [The Charles Men] he describes, in the
form of separate narratives, the inevitable ruin of Swedish greatness through
the act of Charles XII; with a few quick strokes he sketches the tragic character
of this national hero and shows that in the end he was only the echo of an ancient
saga. In Heliga Birgittas pilgrimsfärd (1901) [Saint Bridget's
Pilgrimage] he gives a penetrating explanation of this remarkable woman, suggesting
that she quite conscously sought sainthood but that she attained it unconsciously
when of her on will she divested herself of her pride. Truly monumental are the
two volumes of Folkunga Trädet (1905-07) [The Tree of the Folkungs],
Folke Filbyter and Bjälboarvet [The BjäIbo Inheritance],
which constitute the trunk and lower branches of «the genealogical tree
of the Folkungs», a great historical prose epic in which he retraces the
character of a clan of chieftains and the destinies of the Swedes during a period
of the Middle Ages. Here the historical imagination of the author, sustained by
an inspiration forever fresh, follows all threads in weaving the fates of his
characters. His imagination, with its symbolic visions, glistens before the eye.
While Heidenstam was working on this epic about the life and character
of the Swedes, his cult for man was taking shape, and one finds traces of it in
the work. This cult often includes the necessity to renew life through sacrifice
and to aspire to a more elevated earthly existence, an idea which is opposed to
love and the cult of woman and results logically in the exaltations of stories
Sankt Göran och draken (1900) [St. George and the Dragon] and Skogen
susar (1904) [The Forest Whispers]. This collection contains, in particular,
the great prose-poem «Herakles».
Beside these works,
Heidenstam has published, among other things, stories and memories of a trip,
Från Col di Tenda till Blocksberg (1888) [From Col di Tenda to Blocksberg];
the novel Endymion (1889), Oriental to the core; the book of historical
lectures Svenskarna och deras hövdingar (1908-10) [The Swedes and
Their Chieftains]; and the collections Tankar och teckningar (1899)
[Thoughts and Notes] and Dagar och händelser (1909) [Days and Occurrences].
In this last book he has notably treated subjects of aesthetics and general culture.
The final aspect of Heidenstam's concept of life is offered us through
his Nya dikter (1915) [New Poems], a collection mainly of philosophical
poems of an elevated humanity, of a mellow wisdom, of a beauty of images strangely
serene. In loneliness men come to understand themselves; love is the bond which
should unite them, and creative humility is the great force which builds the world
and which raises statues of the gods.
«O Man, you will become
wise only when you reach the summit of the evening-cool heights where all the
earth is beheld.»
Biographical note on Verner von Heidenstam
The literary career of Verner von Heidenstam (1859-1940) practically came to an end with the publication of his Nya dikter. His only work of importance after this date was his idealized autobiography När kastanjerna blommade [When the Chestnuts Bloomed], which was published posthumously in 1941. His collected works in 23 volumes were published between 1943 and 1945.
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969
Verner von Heidenstam died on May 20, 1940.
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