Collected Works of Johan Ludvig Runeberg

by Johan Ludvig Runeberg

  In 1832, also, appeared a second collection of Runeberg’s Lyrical Songs. Two years later, 1834, appeared in his paper a piece, called The Wooer from the Country, a comic drama which, though it enjoyed considerable popularity and has been repeatedly played on the Finnish stage, the author persistently refused to admit to a place among his collected works. In 1836 appeared Hanna, a delightful idyll in hexameters, which describes happy love in happy summer-hours at a tranquil home in the wooded recesses of upper Finland.

  In 1837 our poet quitted the capital for Borga, some distance to the east of Helsingfors, at the Gymnasium of which town a Lectorat or Readership in Roman literature was conferred upon him. His poetical powers, exercising themselves here in a less wide range of activity, than while he sojourned at Helsingfors, centered now more inwards and manifested themselves in increasing creative strength and solidity of execution. Here appeared in 1841, the Russian tale Nadeschda, as well as the Finnish tale Christmas Eve, a story of Finnish military life. These were followed by a third issue of his Lyrical Songs in 1843 and, by his greatest epic poem King Fjalar. In the weirdest of metres and rhythms the poet sets forth the unavailing contest of all-victorious Fjalar against the weird will of Fate, which the prophet Dargar, familiar with the darkness of Night and the forbidding gloom of deep caves, announced in the weirdest of manners to the king, while banqueting with his warriors in his hall at Yule-tide. The prophecy points to the most fearful fatality that can befall a father’s son and daughter. At its announcement

  The hall was all hushed; there met

  The gazing eye such sight, as when showers of hail

  Storming have passed, and calm returning

  Chillingly sinketh over a whitened tract.

  The man of many triumphs with suppressed agony of heart orders his children, Hjalmar and Gerda, to be brought to him. After a terrible battle between paternal love and family pride, the king orders his daughter to be cast into the sea; an order, no sooner expressed than fulfilled. On this same Yule-eve there lies, in the shelter of Vidars Rock, near Fjalar’s burgh, a viking, Darg, who, Fate willing, saves Gerda. Afterwards this viking is overcome by Morannal, king of Morven in Erin, and is saved from his burning vessel, with a female child in his arms, to expire on board Morannafs ship after having implored his mercy for her. Oihonna, as Gerda henceforth is called, grows up, at Morannal’s court, and becomes far-famed in song and tale for her surpassing beauty, her hunting accomplishments and her highmindedness. Moranrial’s sons, Gall, Rurmar and Clesamor, all burn with love for her, but she scorns them, while avowing her sisterly admiration for their several great accomplishments. The latent cause of this indifference for the royal blood of Morven is, that the fame, which in song and tale flies abroad of Hjalmar, has inspired her heart with profound veneration and intensely ideal love for the unseen young hero. Song and rumour have made her familiar with him through the following facts: while yet young, he prayed his father for a viking-ship, that he might emulate by deeds of heroism on the sea the fame of his forefathers. His father, having then vowed perpetual peace for himself and his people, sternly refuses the son’s request. On being pressed, however, he yields to the son’s urgent prayer, by granting him, what he meant to be an effectual bar to all further importunity: a ship, which had stood on the shore since his first viking cruise:

  Its keel is cracked, grass up in its bottom grows,

  And through its sides the daylight is beaming;

  Up, take it, fly o’er oceans and seek thy name

  ‘Mong strange-sounding sounds, forgotten by me!

  Hjalmar calls on the now idle warriors of his father to follow him, and off the fast filling craft is swiftly urged over the trackless fields of the sea-king’s fame. Fjalar, hearing this, sets off to punish his son. He soon falls in with an escaped vessel of the fleet of the king of the Perms (Bjarmar, a Russian tribe), whom, on the previous day, Hjalmar had conquered. A fight for revenge soon follows, and Fjalar is at last reduced to a hopeless defence surrounded by his shield-burgh, or body-guard, when up comes Hjalmar, now steering the proud dragon which, the day before, had been commanded by the king of the Perms, renewing the fight with the escaped vessel, and finishing it with the slaughter of the last man on board. Still Fjalar’s errand, the chastisement of his son for his disobedience, was not done yet. He therefore ordered Hjalmar to approach. The latter, obeying, cast away his weapons, and knelt before the stern father, whose sword, as he deals with it a heavy blow at Hjalmar’s helmeted head, glances impotently off the casque. A furious order from the father next to uncover the head Hjalmar obeys unhesitatingly:

  Defenceless stood he, having no other ward,

  Than open and cheerful calm on his face.

  Yet lo! the old king faltered now. His sword,

  A death-blow aiming, fell on the victim,

  As faint, as if it had gone to rest upon

  The bed of the bright luxuriant locks.

  It was Hjalmar’s fate, that thus spake through the listless sword; the son was forgiven, and henceforth pursued his path of fame unhindered. —

  At last Hjalmar comes to Morven’s strand, to woo the far-famed Oihonna with his sword. On the day, that the fate of Morven is decided, Morannal first tells her the tale of her childhood, how she was picked up by Darg from the waves by Vidar’s rock, &c.

  Victorious Hjalmar now marries Oihonna with the sea-kings’ rites. She afterwards tells him her story as she learnt it from Morannal, and Hjalmar comes, soon afterwards, home to his father, telling him his fearful experience. Oihonna’s story, he relates, was immediately followed by this episode:

  “So she spake. Blanch not, oh, my father,

  Her own blood on my sword thou Seest.

  Morven’s maid, Oihonna, my bride on th’ ocean,

  Was thy daughter, King, was my sister too.

  “Die she would, yea die for me. I bring her

  Greeting.” Silent he grew. His steel,

  Like a lightning’s flash, in his breast was buried.

  On the rock he sank into death’s repose.

  Fjalar now bows before fate, and kills himself a vanquished believer. — It is no small accomplishment on the part of the poet, to have succeeded in making a subject like this really pure and healthy reading. Fate works the whole; the actors are fatally inspired, by no innate perversity, however, to act Fate’s tragedy; yet in the end so as, in a sense, to defeat Fate itself by atoning for involuntary guilt by their blood wilfully shed. In none of Runeberg’s other epics are the characters so plastically moulded and executed, the situations so statelily dramatic, or the whole action so compact. Depth of conception, too, as regards the general subject, and mastery of treatment, make this poem perhaps the greatest of its kind that Scandinavia can boast of in modern times. In mood and strain the poem bears distinct traces of the influence of Macpherson’s Ossian.

  In 1848 appeared the first series (followed in 1860 by a second) of Ensign Stal’s Tales, which became at once, and have remained ever since, Runeberg’s most popular work. It is impossible to describe the deep thrill which these wonderful romances sent through the heart of Swede and Fin alike, when they first appeared, and equally beyond description is the love of Runeberg’s patriotic muse which they have kindled and continue daily to kindle throughout the North. We cannot give an idea — an adequate one, at least — of this treasure of song; we will therefore content ourselves with only a few fugitive remarks. In form and spirit they range over a large region of poetic variety; from the drollest humour, as in Sven Dove, who could do nothing right at home, grew tired of scolds, and resolved to be a soldier, thinking that it was, perhaps, a less difficult task to fall for king and country than to work for an ever-fault-finding father on his farm; and on whose heroic death his commander, admiring the taste of the bullet that pierced his heart in preference to his head, transmitted his memory to posterity in the epitaph:

  A middling head had he, forsooth,

  His heart, howe’er, was good;

  to su
blime tragedy, as in The Cloud’s Brother, whose noble deeds of valour for his people and land are thus admirably apostrophised by his sorrowing maiden:

  More than living unto me was loving,

  More than loving is to die as he died.

  The whole is surrounded by a delightful atmosphere of sympathy with the people, under all aspects and in all circumstances of life. Three main currents, are especially noticeable as running through these songs: Finnish patriotism, Finnish highminded and generous valour, and Finnish intense love, which finds its noblest and purest expression in The Cottage Girl, who could not endure life after having satisfied herself that he, on whom she had bestowed her heart, was a coward. More, perhaps, than any other event in the history of Finland, these songs have done to fire the patriotism of the Fins, to brace up their power of resistance, and to make them realize their existence as a distinct nationality.

  In 1851 the poet saw, for the first and last time in his life, the country, in the language of which he had been singing Finland’s life and nature for twenty years — Sweden. His reception was exceedingly enthusiastic, and most of all so among the members of the Swedish Academy. His peculiar relations to the Academy made this brotherly frankness especially touching. Runeberg had repeatedly passed condemnatory verdicts on works and talents upon which the Academy had deigned to confer its golden honours. Despite his sledgehammer criticisms, by which he might be said to be periodically at open war with this institution, it had, much to its credit, of its own accord conferred its large gold medal on Runeberg in 1839, and now each member vied with the other in a fraternal reception of the revered antagonist. This visit, “full of pleasure, sympathy, and honour”, the Poet afterwards, while remembering it with great delight, used frequently to denote as an act of heaping burning coals upon his head.

  In 1853 Runeberg became a member of “The Hymnbook Committee of Finland”; the labours of this body resulted in the publication, in 1857, of A Draft of a Swedish Hymnbook for the Evangelical Lutheran Congregations of Finland, a work which was edited by Runeberg, and to which he alone contributed no less than 62 hymns. Though generally little noticed, it is a work of high merit. The deep devotion, the pure, fervid faith and childlike humility, which meets us in these hymns, in harmonious prayer, most simple in language, and most catholic in sentiment, render this Finnish hymnbook one of the best in the North.

  In 1864 appeared, besides Cannot, which he called a family picture, a sweet and simple drama, the last of Runeberg’s greater works, The Kings of Salamis, a tragedy in five acts, setting forth the struggle between the usurper, Leiokritos, and the dispossessed Eurysakes, the son of Ajax and Tekmessa, which terminates in the overthrow of the Pretender. In this work we admire the clearness of the characters, the unity of the dramatic action, the masterly drawn contrast between the nobleminded Leontes (Leiocritos’ son), and the loathsomely base Rhaistes, who eventually become each other’s banesmen, the nobly tragic endurance and touching womanliness of Tekmessa, and, last, though not least, the classical dignity of some of the characters in their bearing, and the deliberately measured language in which they give utterance to their feelings. One feels, in reading this tragedy, as if the poet were holding passion down all through with one hand while, with the other, giving to it a stately and graceful embodiment with features only expressive of passive and patient agony, nobly borne.

  Soon after this, Runeberg was struck with apoplexy, and remained ever afterwards a confirmed invalid until, on the afternoon of the 6th of May last, he passed away, leaving behind a widow and six sons, one of whom, Walter, is a sculptor of rapidly growing fame, now pursuing his studies at Rome.

  Runeberg’s greatness as a poet rests objectively on one main foundation: Patriotism. With a rare intensity of love and sympathy he lives himself into the life of his people, and with the keenest eye for nature, he lives himself into the natural phenomena of his country. To his nation are devoted almost all the noblest creations of his genius. Her joys and sorrows, her hopes and fears he has sung as few poets ever have sung the same or similar themes under the same or similar circumstances: a nature, grand of aspect, certainly, but relentlessly chary of cheer and comfort; and life, met in sparse clusters here and there, like oases in a barren desert, about the foreground of a vast region of moors, lakes, morasses and impenetrable wild-woods, itself so uniform that, for the outsider, one feature only seems to be unmistakeably recognizable: a cheerless stolidity. But subjectively he derives his fame, apart from his mighty poetic gifts, from his ethereal purity of sentiment, his vigorous healthiness of feeling, his dignified control of passion, his universal sympathy for all that is noble and righteous, his sound optimist philosophy and his enchanting melody of language. His name will long be cherished with love and admiration in the North, and through many a year to come will his own words on the departed Bard be applied to him: —

  But still his song flies over land and wave,

  Each heart still at his noble memory gloweth.

  CAMBRIDGE,

  E. M.

  St Valentine’s Day, 1878.

  TO FRANZEN.

  HAST thou then thy cherished voice uplifted

  Midst us for the last,

  Thou who, lark-like, with thy song hast drifted

  Forth from Autumn’s blast?

  Shall that land which saw thy morning’s flower,

  Saw thy noon-day’s gold,

  Not also thy coming evening’s hour

  Sunlit, sweet, behold?

  Dost forget in Sweden’s flowery valleys

  Native woodlands dear,

  And for songs of nightingales, the sallies

  Of the mavis here?

  Since thou went’st from us, full many a chilling

  Winter saw we pass;

  But though spring-time came and song-birds trilling,

  Cam’st not thou, alas!

  Yet within thy former groves was dreaming

  Night as sweet as aye,

  In the tiniest floweret’s eye still beaming

  Selfsame dewdrops lay,

  As when blissful erst that strand thou soughtest

  Where thy home-stream flows,

  Look’dst on midnight’s flame, in verses thoughtest,

  Or didst cull a rose.

  Say, when spring shall once again appear there,

  And its splendours burst,

  Would it not be sweet to shed a tear there,

  Where thou sangest erst?

  Aye, though Uhla’s ancient burgh is shattered,

  Though thou should’st but trace

  Dreary ruins, o’er thy birthplace scattered,

  O’er thy dwelling-place,

  It would yet be sweet to go, inquiring

  Where, in days of yore,

  Was the hut, and where the Muse inspiring,

  Which its flag-staff bore.

  Though in Aura’s schools the wild wind shrieketh,

  Come there without let!

  Many a memory there from ashes speaketh

  To thy bosom yet!

  Come thou back to that land, which embraces,

  Ah, so gladly thee!

  Midst our rocks where’er thy landing-place is,

  Flower-strown paths thou’lt see.

  As a yearned-for spring-day shall each dwelling

  Thee a greeting send,

  Echo hail thee, through the gray hills swelling,

  As thy childhood’s friend.

  THE OLD MAN’S RETURN.

  LIKE birds of passage, after winter’s days returning

  To lake-land home and rest,

  I come now unto thee, my foster-valley, yearning

  For long-lost childhood’s rest.

  Full many a sea since then from thy dear strands has torn me

  And many a chilly year; —

  Full many a joy since then those far-off lands have borne me,

  And many a bitter tear.

  Here am I back once more. — Great Heaven! There stands the dwelling

 
Which erst my cradle bore,

  The selfsame sound, bay, grove and hilly range upswelling:

  My world in days of yore. —

  All as before. — Trees in the selfsame verdant dresses

  With the same crowns are crowned;

  The tracts of heaven, and all the woodland’s far recesses,

  With well-known songs resound. —

  There with the crowd of flower-nymphs still the wave is playing

  As erst, so light and sweet;

  And from dim wooded aits I hear the echoes straying

  Glad youthful tones repeat.

  All as before. — But my own self no more remaineth,

  Glad valley! as of old;

  My passion quenched long since, no flame my cheek retaineth,

  My pulse now beateth cold. —

  I know not how to prize the charms that thou possessest,

  Thy lavish gifts of yore; —

  What thou through whispering brooks, or through thy flowers expressest

  I understand no more.

  Dead is mine ear to harp-strings which thy gods are ringing

  From out thy streamlet clear,

  No more the elfin hosts all frolicsome and singing

  Upon the meads appear.

  I went so rich, so rich from thee, my cottage lowly,

  So full of hopes untold,

  And with me feelings, nourished in thy shadows holy,