Johan Bojer

“ And involuntarily the old man began to recall a number of bad things about Wangen; there was a kind of self-defence in feeling enraged with him.
The shadows of the fir-trees grew black, and the stars came out; while a fiery streak in the west glowed through the darkness and threw a glare upon the ice. It shone upon the plating of the harness and sledge, and cast long shadows of man and horse, that steadily kept pace with their owners. Scarcely a living being was to be seen on the desolate expanse. ”

“ They are the slaves of steel and fire, lashed onwards, never resting.
Is this the spirit of Prometheus? Look, the will of steel is flinging men up into the air now. It is conquering the heavens. Why? That it may rush the faster. It craves for yet more speed, quicker, quicker, dizzier yet, hurrying—wherefore?—whither? Alas! it knows not itself.
Are the children of the earth grown so homeless? Do they fear to take a moment’s rest? Do they dread to look inward and see their own emptiness? Are they longing for something they have lost—some hymn, some harmony, some God? ”

“ Winter came—and a real winter it was. Peer moved about from one window to another, calling all the time to Merle to come and look. He had been away so long—the winter of Eastern Norway was all new to him. Look—look! A world of white—a frozen white tranquillity—woods, plains, lakes all in white, a fairy-tale in sunlight, a dreamland at night under the great bright moon. There was a ringing of sleigh-bells out on the lake, and up in the snow-powdered forest; the frost stood thick on the horses’ manes and the men’s beards were hung with icicles. ”

“ Up there he was not a rich man dressed in furs. He was in a frieze suit, and went on ski through the forest; and the exercise and the fresh air did him good. He saw immense piles of timber, and it was his; he stopped now and again to look out over endless stretches of tufted fir-trees, sprinkled with snow and gilded by the sun, and they were his.
“If Wangen had even been a worthy antagonist,” he thought, as he leant upon his ski-staff and surveyed his wealth. “If it had been Herlufsen now.” But this man was down in the world, and did not own so much as the spoon he ate with. ”

“ And when we went out into the world we went with some echo of the hymn in our hearts, and we might curse Jehovah, but in a corner of our minds the hymn lived on as a craving, a hunger for some world-harmony. All through the busy day we might bear our part in the roaring song of the steel, but in the evenings, on our lonely couch, another power would come forth in our minds, the hunger for the infinite, the longing to be cradled and borne up on the waves of eternity, whose way is past all finding out. ”

“ But day by day the inquiry drew nearer, and he involuntarily began to grope about for a means of pulling through after all, if in spite of everything it should come to an inquiry.
But what he now had to get ready to say at the bar would be falsehoods again; and at this Norby stopped like a horse that will not venture upon an unsafe bridge. He pushed backwards; he was afraid; he was not accustomed to it.
No one is so much in the humour for philosophising as he who is suffering in secret. ”

“ Klaus sat up in his chair, a little anxious as to what was coming.
Ferdinand was still looking out over the lake. “You seem to despise your own trade—as engineer?”
“Yes,” said Peer.
“And why?”
“Why, I feel the lack of some touch of beauty in our ceaseless craving to create something new, something new, always something new. More gold, more speed, more food—are these things not all we are driving at?”
“My dear fellow, gold means freedom. And food means life. And speed carries us over the dead moments. Double the possibilities of life for men, and you double their numbers.” ”

“ Einar suddenly felt it was quite impossible for him to go back to town and be the old Einar Norby. He could never look his friends in the face. He would have to live with shame in his heart, and always bow his head and keep silence when mention was made of honesty and truth in the world. Could he ever have another happy day if Wangen were condemned? ”

“ But when January came, there was Peer in oil-skins, in the foc’s’le of a Lofoten fishing-smack, ploughing the long sea-road north to the fishing-grounds, in frost and snow-storms. All through that winter he lived the fisherman’s life: on land, in one of the tiny fisher-booths where a five-man crew is packed like sardines in an air so thick you can cut it with a knife; at sea, where in a fair wind you stand half the day doing nothing and freezing stiff the while—and a foul wind means out oars, and row, row, row, over an endless plain of rolling icy combers ”

“ It was near the middle of April, and the spring had begun to appear. One day the sun was shining warm upon the bare fields when Fru Wangen stood on the verandah looking out. The river was rushing by, yellow and foaming, often hidden by alder bushes that were beginning to show green buds. To the right lay the shining lake, reflecting soft, bright clouds.
“Let me see, mamma!” cried the two little girls, as they hung on to her skirts, both trying to climb up and see.
At that moment she heard a well-known cough down by the garden gate. It was her father. ”

“ Well, it does seem to me that the modern technician is a priest in his way—or no, perhaps I should rather call him a descendant of old Prometheus. Quite a respectable ancestry, too, don’t you think? But has it ever struck you that with every victory over nature won by the human spirit, a fragment of their omnipotence is wrested from the hands of the gods? I always feel as if we were using fire and steel, mechanical energy and human thought, as weapons of revolt against the Heavenly tyranny. The day will come when we shall no longer need to pray. ”

“ The fury of the country-side against Wangen only placed Norby in a better light. If one man took Wangen’s part, it stirred up twenty to range themselves on Norby’s side; and as the old man drove along in his single sledge, dressed in his fur coat, people bowed lower than before, and those who had hitherto never bowed did so now. And the old man would laugh silently to himself. “The beasts despise me for what I have done,” he thought, “but men respect me. Such is life!” ”

“ More and more knowledge, ever more striving to understand all things, to know all, to master all. But meanwhile, the tones of the hymn died within you, and the hunger for that which lies beyond all things grew ever fiercer and fiercer. You thought it was Norway that you needed—and now you are here. But is it enough?
Merle—is your name Merle?
There is nothing that can be likened to the first day of love. All your learning, your travel, and deeds and dreams—all has been nothing but dry firewood that you have dragged and heaped together. ”

“ It never occurred to Fru Thora that her opinion of Wangen’s guilt could be wrong, since she sat there and pitied him. From the very first this opinion had fostered a number of beautiful, charitable thoughts in her mind; and she therefore never considered how she had arrived at it. It was a view that had made her willing to make some sacrifice, for instance, to adopt one of Wangen’s children; and a conviction for which one sacrifices something, not only becomes a certainty, but grows so dear that it actually acquires a moral value. ”

“ And all that you could not understand—the relation between the spark of eternity in your soul and the Power above, and the whole of endless space—has all of a sudden become so clear that you lie here trembling with joy at seeing to the very bottom of the infinite enigma.
You have but to take her by the hand, and “Here are we two,” you say to the powers of life and death. “Here is she and here am I—we two”—and you send the anthem rolling aloft—a strain from little Louise’s fiddle-bow mingling with it—not to the vaultings of any church, but into endless space itself. ”