Afterward, when I bade Björnson good-by, he stooped down and kissed me on my forehead before the roomful of people.
When at last Dreyfus came into the room Björnson opened his arms.
Illustration: BJÖRNSON From a photograph taken in 1901.
Björnson gave a tea-party at his daughter's house in Passy, and invited us.
The dean turned aside, saying with a sigh: 'Has Björnson come to the Gausdal at last?
Eight years later, Björnson prefaced a new edition of this work with a series of reflections upon "Intellectual Freedom" that constitute one of the most vigorous and remarkable examples of his serious prose.
It is by these tales of peasant life that Björnson is best known outside of his own country; one may almost say that it is by them alone that he is really familiar to English readers.
But an intellectual renaissance was at hand, an intellectual reawakening with a cosmopolitan outlook, and, Björnson was destined to become its leader, much as he had been the leader of the national movement of an earlier decade.
Björnson was too near to his own country folk to commit such faults as these; he was himself of peasant stock, and all his boyhood life had been spent in close association with men who wrested a scanty living from an ungrateful soil.
When they reached Lie's lodgings, Lie went in to get some money, while Björnson sat in the cab as a hostage.
Brandes, to speak the name of Björnson in any assembly of his countrymen is like "hoisting the Norwegian flag.
Frits Thaulow, the painter, thus wrote to Björnson reminding him of a festive gathering of students: "The manager came in and announced with a loud voice that it was past twelve.
More interesting and more important than most of the performances which we have thus far considered is that of Henry IV in 1867, while Bjørnson was still director.
But it is not strange that Bjørnson will not admit his own failure.
Yet, granting that such revolutionizing of a masterpiece is ever allowable, it must be admitted that Bjørnson has done it with considerable skill.
The same is true of Goethe and Schiller, of Bjørnson and Ibsen in their earlier plays.
No great piece of research is to be recorded, but the stimulating criticism of Caspari, Collin, Just Bing, and Bjørnson is worth reading to this day.
Bjørnson obviously could not give both parts, and he chose to combine cuttings from the two into a single play with Falstaff as the central figure.
Bjørnson did not permit this attack to go unchallenged.
Bjørnson had strained the resources of the theater to the utmost to give the performance distinction.
The critic grants that the presentation may prove profitable but, on the whole, Bjørnson must feel that he has assisted at the mutilation of a master.
In spite of this unusual run it appears to have been only moderately successful, and when Bjørnson dropped it in the spring of 1866, it was to disappear from the repertoire for thirty-seven years.
Bjørnson's article in Aftenbladet is not merely suggestive as Shakespearean criticism, but it throws valuable light on Bjørnson himself and his literary development.
The lesser authors followed the lead of Björnson and Ibsen in their less happy vein and without their genius.
Björnson was perhaps the worst offender of all, and yet his preaching was salved by such a broad and warm humanity that his pedantry could be forgiven.
We have seen that Björnson had piqued Ibsen's vanity about Peer Gynt, and nothing exasperates a friendship more fatally than public principle grafted on a private slight.
But to the historical critic it is very interesting to see Björnson and Ibsen nearer one another in A Bankruptcy and The Pillars of Society than they had ever been before.
And when, shortly afterwards, still in America, Björnson was nearly killed in a railway accident, Ibsen broke the long silence by writing to him a most cordial letter of congratulation.
Ibsen and Björnson were how beginning to be recognized as the two great writers of Norway, and their droll balance as the Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat of letters was already becoming defined.
The luckiest man is the greatest man," says Bishop Nicholas in the play, and Björnson seemed in these melancholy years as lucky as Ibsen was unlucky.
Between the births of Vinje and Björnson there stretched a period of fourteen years, yet Björnson was a student before either Ibsen or Vinje.
Ibsen and Björnson occupied the centre of the dress circle, sitting uplifted in two gilded fauteuils and segregated by a vast garland of red and white roses.
There were thirteen years in which Ibsen and Björnson were nothing to one another, and these were not years of unmingled mental happiness for either of them.
These were The Editor and A Bankruptcy, in which Björnson suddenly swooped from his sagas and his romances down into the middle of sordid modern life.
This was followed by a superb ancient Norwegian air, to which Björnson had written the words, and this was succeeded by the proud national hymn.
He resumed his direction of the theatre, having engaged Björnstjerne Björnson as dramatic instructor, which gave the enterprise a strong and fresh impulse.
From that time there has been a succession of novels, short stories, and plays (Björnson on two occasions has been the director of a theatre) from his pen.
From the grammar school at Molde young Björnson went to the University of Christiania, and it was then that he began to write verses and newspaper articles.
Let us give as an example of this the scene between Sigurd and the Finnish maiden, one of the most beautiful scenes that Björnson has written.
The strong personality of Björnson gradually worked its way out of the swaddling-clothes of the national mind.
In spite of all this, Björnstjerne Björnson has his people behind him and about him, as perhaps no other poet, unless it be Victor Hugo.
Björnson says, 'The majority is always right,' and for a practical politician this is the proper thing to say.
Beyond his fatherland Björnstjerne Björnson is known as a great poet.
Björnson and Jonas Lie in this way have secured places in literature in no small part because of their characteristic Norwegianism; Kielland to some little extent has secured his place because of the want of it.
Björnson and Jonas Lie have always a sort of homely provincialism, inherent and characteristic, that is part and parcel of their literary personality, whose absence would be felt under the circumstances as a lack of necessary vigour.
And Björnson shows how much importance he attaches to the experience by introducing it, or something like it, time after time into his stories.
And never since has Björnson written a tale altogether of one piece.
Of three very personal and romantic writers, our own Stevenson escaped the pit into which both Björnson and Daudet stumbled.
For to produce a homogeneous story, either the acquired Zola or the native Björnson must have been cast out utterly.
To my mind, without any doubt, they and A Happy Boy are the best work Björnson has ever done in fiction, or is ever likely to do.
I speak, of course, as a foreigner, obliged to read Björnson in translations.
Björnson shows traces of the same influence in his Maria Stuart and Sigurd Slembe.
Whereas Ibsen is first and foremost a dramatist, Björnson is rather by instinct the novelist who casts his ideas in dramatic form, and is concerned to "round up" the whole.
Here Björnson spent the rest of his childhood, in surroundings of beauty and peacefulness, going to school first at Molde and afterwards at Christiania, to pass on later to the Christiania University where he graduated in 1852.
Björnson never published the recast version, and in the "memorial edition" of his works it is the present version that is given.
Ibsen is a stern judge; Björnson is, beyond that, a prophet of better things.
Björnson there and then, to the composer's great gratification, protested that he must write words to fit the air.
Corresponding to this love of the abstract idea in Ibsen, we have in Björnson the love of humankind.
Among his schoolmates during his last year of preparation at Heltberg's Gymnasium, in Christiania, were Björnstjerne Björnson and Henrik Ibsen.
But Björnson is so tremendously in earnest that he cannot afford to stop and note picturesque effect.
Björnson is a conciliatory spirit who wages war without bitterness.
I had the pleasure of accompanying Björnson on his first political tour in the summer of 1873, and I shall never forget the tremendous impression of the man and his mighty eloquence at the great folk-meeting at Böe in Guldbrandsdalen.
Björnson is, however, temperamentally averse to that modern naturalism which insists upon a minute fidelity to fact without reference to artistic values.
Only, Björnson rescues the victim, while the author of "The Heavenly Twins" makes her perish.
Though I doubt if Björnson has, in this type, caught the soul of a Norse woman of the saga age, he has come much nearer to catching it than any of his predecessors.
The chapter on Björnstjerne Björnson was in danger of expanding to similar proportions, and only the most heroic condensation saved it from challenging criticism as an independent work.
If Björnson could have fathomed the depth and complexity of the historical Mary Stuart to the extent that Swinburne has done, he would, no doubt, also have devised a more effective conclusion to his play.
Björnson has gazed deeply into the heart of Northern paganism, and has here reproduced the heroic anarchy which was a necessary result of the code permitting the individual to avenge his own wrongs.
The liberty for which he had yearned so long, Björnson found at the International Students' Reunion of 1856.
In spite of all this, Björnstjerne Björnson has his people behind him and about him as perhaps no other poet has, unless it be Victor Hugo.
It is only as dramatists that suspense of judgment between the two men is for a moment admissible; as a poet the superiority of Björnson is unquestionable, while his rank as the greatest of Norwegian novelists is altogether beyond dispute.
It is only necessary to bestow a single glance upon Björnson to be convinced how admirably he is equipped by nature for the hot strife a literary career brings with it in most lands, and especially in the combat-loving North.
Since 1870 Björnson has published little verse, although poems of an occasional character and incidental lyrics have now and then found their way into print.
Footnote 1: This song is borrowed by Björnson from the Danish poet B.
During all these years of writing for the stage Björnson did not, however, forget that he was also a novelist; and it is in fiction that he has scored the greatest of his recent triumphs.
Björnson first became famous as the delineator of the Norwegian peasant.
Since the period when Björnson began to merge the artist in the thinker and prophet, his work has given a strong impetus to progress in religious, educational, and political affairs.
But Björnson strikingly represented the past of Norway as well as his contemporary age.
His father was a clergyman in the Lutheran State Church, and from his home in western Norway Björnson brought with him to Christiania in 1850 fervent Christian faith of the older orthodox sort.
It is in the lyrics of Synnöve Solbakken, written in 1857 or just before, that Björnson for the first time sings in his own forms his own melody.
This, and with it the higher spiritual interests of the nation, seemed to Björnson to be endangered by the agitation in behalf of the Landsmaal (rural language).
The years just before and after 1870 were a time of intense conflicts, in all of which Björnson had a large part.
The power of truth to prevail is also set forth by Björnson in his later drama, The New System.
Björnson was a decided opponent of the whole system of decorations and orders, royal and other.
Andersen's genius was misjudged and condemned by the Danish critic Heiberg (see Note 7), but his very lack of the then prevailing Danish qualities made Björnson admire and sympathize with him.
Björnson throughout all his life willed and wrought so much for his country, that he could give relatively little time and power to lyrical self-expression.
Björnson attended a school in Molde from his eleventh to his eighteenth year.
Björnson maintained that the Pole as such was the devil himself as the Middle Ages had imagined him.
Brandes has said; "To speak the name of Björnson is like hoisting the colors of Norway.
Björnson and Ibsen, the two foremost men of Norway, were very closely associated throughout life.
Meantime, Ibsen and Björnson were becoming famous in Norway, and in 1865 Lie, perhaps in a spirit of emulation, decided to abandon law for literature.
Ibsen and Björnson may be better known in England, in America, and on the Continent of Europe, but Jonas Lie is dearer to the Norwegian heart.
Björnson and Ibsen, as we know, did not agree on a number of things.
In our time, Björnson in Norway was perhaps the only parallel figure, and he held his position as actual "father of his people" for very much the same reasons.
All that is pertinent to my present purpose is a remark in regard to Ibsen that Björnson flashed out one day, shaking his great white mane with earnestness, his noble face alight with the spirit of battle.
The Swedish brethren were pointed at by BJÖRNSON as the only enemy Norway had, and even in the schoolrooms and school-books their (Swedish) hereditary enemy was spoken of with curses.
The national sensitiveness, already considerable, became excited to the utmost under the influence of the suggestive eloquence of BJÖRNSON and other agitators.
Björnson was then still an Orthodox Protestant, and in many ways hampered by his youthful impressions; I myself was still too brusque to be able to adapt myself to so difficult and masterful a personality.
The last time Björnson was in Copenhagen he had written that article against me.
Eight years elapsed before the much that separated me from Björnson crumbled away.
Two other celebrated personages whom I met for the first time a little later were Björnstjerne Björnson and Magdalene Thoresen.
When Björnson attacked me (I was at the time his youngest contributor), he raised my scale of pay, unsolicited.
I became acquainted with Björnstjerne Björnson at the Nutzhorns, their son, Ditlev, being a passionate admirer of his.
Hauch had felt this scenery and the nature of these people, by virtue of his Norwegian birth and his gift of entering into other people's thought; Björnson had given unforgettable expression to the feeling of imprisoned longing.
Had its recipient known Björnson better, he would in this have found a foundation to build upon.
In a circle of younger people, Björnson was a better talker than conversationalist.
He loves Björnson as a poet, but he wants to have nothing to do with him as a politician.
In a letter to Brandes he writes: "Björnson says: 'The majority is always right.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "rnson" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
