Mysteries - Knut Hamsun [95]
All? The whole caboodle?
Just about. We did have one poet, namely, Bjørnson—at his best. He was our one and only, despite everything....
But wouldn’t most of his objections to Tolstoy also apply to BJørnson? Wasn’t Bjørnson also just a sermonizer, a preacher of virtue, an ordinary old bore, a professional pen pusher, or whatever it all was?
“No!” Nagel cried in a loud voice. Waving his arms, he defended Bjørnson with angry words. One just couldn’t compare Bjørnson and Tolstoy, partly because it went against everyone’s simple agronomical sense, partly because one’s basic humanity was bound to oppose it. First of all, Bjørnson was a genius23 just like Tolstoy. Nagel didn’t have a high opinion of the perfectly ordinary geniuses, those of average greatness—he should say he didn’t24—and it was to their level Tolstoy had risen, whereas Bjørnson far surpassed them. To be sure, that didn’t preclude Tolstoy from being able to write better books than many of Bjørnson’s; but what did that prove? Good books could, after all, be written even by Danish captains, Norwegian painters, and English housewives. Secondly, Bjørnson was a human being, an overmastering personality, not a mere concept. “He’s a vivid, thunderous presence on our planet and needs forty elbowrooms. He doesn’t sit there like a sphinx before the people, making himself great and mysterious,25 like Tolstoy on his steppe or Ibsen in his café. Bjørnson’s mind is like a windswept forest; he’s a fighter, always on the go, and does glorious damage to his own interests with the Grand Café clientele. Everything about him is on a grand scale; he’s a masterful spirit, one of the few commanders. He can stand on a platform and stop the first hint of booing with a wave of his hand. He has a perpetually fertile, teeming brain; he wins great victories and makes grievous mistakes, but does both with personality and spirit. Bjørnson is our only poet of inspiration, blessed with a divine spark. It begins like a rustle within him, as of grain on a summer’s day, and ends by his hearing nothing else, nothing but that; his soul lives and moves by the principle of the running start—the way of genius. Compared to the poetry of Bjørnson, that of Ibsen, for example, is simply mechanical routine. Ibsen’s verse largely consists of one rhyme hitting another with a smack; most of his plays are dramatized wood pulp. What the hell were people thinking of? ... Well, that’ll do; let’s drink to it all....”
It was two o’clock. Miniman is yawning. Sleepy after a hard-working day, sick and tired of Nagel’s endless chatter, he again gets up to leave. However, when he had said goodbye and was already at the door, something happened which made him stop, an insidious little incident which would be of the greatest importance long afterward: the doctor wakes up, flails his arm excitedly and, in his myopia, upsets several glasses. Nagel, who sat next to him, was drenched with champagne. He jumped up, shook his wet breast with a laugh and shouted hurrah with abandon.
Miniman at once played the menial, rushing up to Nagel with handkerchiefs and towels eager to dry him. His vest had taken the brunt of it—if only he would take it off for a moment, just one minute, it would be remedied at once! But Nagel refused to take it off. Awakened by the noise, the lawyer added his voice to the hurrahs without knowing what was going on. Once again Miniman asked if he could have the vest for a moment, but Nagel only shook his head. Suddenly he looks at Miniman, something occurs to him; he immediately gets up, pulls off his vest and hands it to him, greatly excited.
“There you are!” he said. “Wipe it clean and keep it; oh yes, you shall keep it, you don’t have a vest, after all. Sh-sh, no nonsense now! You’re more than welcome to it, my dear friend.” But as Miniman still protested, Nagel stuck the vest under his arm, opened the door and sent him off with a friendly nudge.
Miniman left.
This happened