Alexander Lange Kielland

“ The little brook in the valley rushed foaming along, as brown as coffee, and all the men on the farm were taken up with tending the machine and carting corn and straw up and down the Parsonage hill.
The farm-yard was bestrewn with straw, and when the wind swirled in between the houses it seized the oat-straws by the head, raised them on end, and set them dancing along like yellow spectres. It was the juvenile autumn wind trying its strength; not until well on in the winter, when it has full-grown lungs, does it take to playing with tiles and chimney-pots. ”

“ If you’re going to let your new-born love be overgrown with prosaic calculations, what will be left of the ideal halo which love alone can cast over life? That a man should be alive to these considerations I can more or less understand—it’s in a way his duty; but for a sensitive, womanly heart, in the heyday of sentiment!—No, no, Marie; for heaven’s sake, don’t let these sordid money-questions darken your happiness.”
“Oh, no!” cried Miss Louisa.
“And, besides,” Mrs. Olsen chimed in, “your fiancé is by no means so badly off. ”

“ Ola did not dance much at any time, but to-day he was not at all in the humor. He occupied himself in observing Hans, who spent the whole evening in worshipping his lady-love. A spasm shot through Ola’s heart when he saw the light-green frock whirl away in his brother’s arms, and it seemed to him that they danced every dance together.
At last came the time for breaking up. Most of the older folks had already taken their departure in their respective carriages, the young people having resolved to see each other home in the delicious moonlight. ”

“ When the friends were together at gay supper-parties, Alphonse paid no particular heed to Charles. He kept no account of his own love-affairs, far less of those of his friend. So it might easily happen that a beauty on whom Charles had cast a longing eye fell into the hands of Alphonse.
Charles was used to seeing his friend preferred in life; but there are certain things to which men can scarcely accustom themselves. He seldom went with Alphonse to his suppers, and it was always long before the wine and the general exhilaration could bring him into a convivial humor. ”

“ And Miss Betty sighed as she gazed at the little strip of the fiord which she could see between the two high houses.—She gave no thought, as she sat there, to Cousin Hans; but he thought of Miss Schrappe as he passed with hasty steps up the street.
Never had he met a young lady who was less to his taste. The fact that he had been rude to her did not make him like her better. We are not inclined to find those people amiable who have been the occasion of misbehavior on our own part. ”

“ The man who is leaning with one hand upon her chair is beginning to understand that the situation is graver than he thought. He has done all he can to get the quarrel, so trivial in its origin, adjusted and forgotten; he has talked reason, he has tried playfulness; he has besought forgiveness, and humbled himself—perhaps more than he intended—but all in vain. Nothing avails to arouse her out of the listless mood into which she has sunk.
Thus it is with an expression of anxiety that he bends down towards her: “But you know that at heart we love each other so much.” ”

“ When they stood together on the hill beside the Parsonage, gazing forth over the surging sea, he would say: “Look, Rebecca! yonder is an image of life—of that life in which the children of this world are tossed to and fro; in which impure passions rock the frail skiff about, to litter the shore at last with its shattered fragments. He only can defy the storm who builds strong bulwarks around a pure heart—at his feet the waves break powerlessly.” ”

“ Two vigorous strokes with its pinions would bring the rope up taut, and it would fall back upon the sward. There it would lie by the hour, then shake itself and clamber up to its little perch again.
When it turned its head to watch the happy pair, Madame Tousseau burst into a fit of laughter at its melancholy mien.
The afternoon sun glimmered through the dense foliage of the interminable straight-ruled avenue that skirts the terrace. The young wife’s veil fluttered aloft as they sped through the air, and wound itself right round Monsieur’s head. ”

“ In the great sparrow-battle of the spring it had been in the very centre of the ball, and had pecked and screamed with the best of them. But it had sobered down since then; it thought of its wife and children, and reflected how good it was to have something in reserve against the winter.—Ansgarius looked forward to the winter—to perilous expeditions through the snow-drifts and pitch-dark evenings with thundering breakers. He already turned to account the ice which lay on the puddles after the frosty nights, by making all his tin soldiers, with two brass cannons, march out upon it. ”

“ She followed with the warmest sympathy the varying fortunes of the lovers in the books she read aloud during the winter evenings; her heart understood that love, which brings the highest joy, may also cause the deepest sorrow. But apart from the sorrows of ill-starred love, she caught glimpses of something else—a terrible something which she did not understand. Dark forms would now and then appear to her, gliding through the paradise of love, disgraced and abject. The sacred name of love was linked with the direst shame and the deepest misery. ”

“ The years passed, and with each of them heaven sent Sören a little golden-locked angel. After six years of marriage they had exactly five children. The quiet little town was unchanged, Sören was still the Sheriff’s clerk, and the Sheriff’s household was as of old; but Sören himself was scarcely to be recognized.
They tell of sorrows and heavy blows of fate which can turn a man’s hair gray in a night. Such afflictions had not fallen to Sören’s lot. The sorrows that had sprinkled his hair with gray, rounded his shoulders, and made him old before his time, were of a lingering and vulgar type. ”

“ Of course their means are not great, but what could that matter to two people who truly loved each other? for we know that happiness is not dependent on wealth. Is it not precisely in the humble home that the omnipotence of love is most beautifully made manifest?—And, besides, who can call these two poor? Has not heaven richly blessed them with healthy, sturdy children? These—these are their true wealth! And if their hearts had been filled with true, ideal love, then—then—”
Miss Ludvigsen came to a momentary standstill.
“What then?” asked a courageous young lady. ”

“ Sören’s young wife had clung faithfully to her husband through these six years, and she, too, had reached the same point.
The first year of her married life had glided away like a dream of dizzy bliss. When she held up the little golden-locked angel for the admiration of her lady friends, she was beautiful with the beauty of perfect maternal happiness; and Miss Ludvigsen said: “Here is love in its ideal form.”
But Mrs. Olsen’s “nest” soon became too small; the family increased while the income stood still. ”

“ With the exception of a rowan-tree, and a walnut-avenue in the Parsonage garden, these were the only trees to be found for miles round on the windy slopes facing the open sea. In spite of storms and sand-drifts, they had, in the course of time, reached something like the height of a man, and, turning their bare and gnarled stems to the north wind, like a bent back, they stretched forth their long, yearning arms towards the south. Rebecca’s mother had planted some violets among them. ”

“ He could not help smiling at himself, as he stood and wiped his face and neck, adjusted his necktie, and felt his collar, which had melted on the sunny side. But it was a blissful smile, he was in that frame of mind in which one sees, or at any rate apprehends, nothing of the external world; and he said to himself, half aloud, “Love endures everything, accepts everything.”
“And perspires freely,” said a fat little gentleman whose white waistcoat suddenly came within Cousin Hans’s range of vision. ”

“ Tired and dazed as Cousin Hans was, he could not help admiring the judicious course adopted by the military authorities towards Captain Schrappe, if, indeed, there was anything in Uncle Frederick’s story about the Order of the Sword.
For if the captain’s original manoeuvre was, strategically speaking, a stroke of genius, it was undoubtedly right that he should receive a decoration. But, on the other hand, it was no less clear that the man who could suppose that in a sham-fight it was in the least desirable to delay or embarass any one was quite out of place in an army like ours. ”

“ But it was not right of Marie to think thus, for she had been excellently brought up.
The view of life to which she had from the first been habituated, was the only beautiful one, the only one that could enable her to preserve her ideals intact. No unlovely and prosaic theory of existence had ever cast its shadow over her development; she knew that love is the most beautiful thing on earth, that it transcends reason and is consummated in marriage ”

“ On some scattered patches of drier soil there grew a little short heather and a few clumps of rushes. They were withered; but on their stiff stems there still hung one or two tufts—black, and sodden by the autumn rain. For the most part the soil was fine, black, and crumbling—wet and full of water-holes. Gray and twisted tree-roots stuck up above the surface, interlaced like a gnarled net-work.
The old raven well understood all that he saw. There had been trees here in the old times, before even his day. ”

“ From Kielland’s point of view, Norway is yet wrapped in the wintry winding-sheet of a tyrannical orthodoxy; and all that he dares assert is that the chains of frost and snow seem to be loosening. There is a spring feeling in the air.
This spring feeling is, however, scarcely perceptible in his last book, Jacob, which is written in anything but a hopeful mood. It is, rather, a protest against that optimism which in fiction we call poetic justice. The harsh and unsentimental logic of reality is emphasized with a ruthless disregard of rose-colored traditions. ”

“ Kielland’s third novel, Skipper Worse, marked a distinct step in his development. It was less of a social satire and more of a social study. It was not merely a series of brilliant, exquisitely-finished scenes, loosely strung together on a slender thread of narrative, but it was a concise, and well constructed story, full of beautiful scenes and admirable portraits. The theme is akin to that of Daudet’s L’Evangéliste; but Kielland, as it appears to me, has in this instance outdone his French confrère as regards insight into the peculiar character and poetry of the pietistic movement. ”

“ The only trouble in Norway, as elsewhere, is that the people will no longer consent to be shepherded. They refuse to be guided and ruled. They rebel against spiritual and secular authority, and follow no longer the bell-wether with the timid gregariousness of servility and irresolution. To bring the new age into the parsonage of the reverend obscurantist in the shape of a young girl—the fiancée of the pastor’s son—was an interesting experiment which gives occasion for strong scenes and, at last, for a drawn battle between the old and the new. ”

“ Charles followed him step by step with his sharp eyes; every blunder, every extravagance, every loss he knew all to a nicety, and he wondered that Alphonse could keep going so long.—They had as good as grown up together. Their mothers were cousins; the families had lived near each other in the same street; and in a city like Paris proximity is as important as relationship in promoting close intercourse. ”

“ They had never had such fun in their lives. There were no great people there—at any rate, none greater than themselves. As they did not know a soul, they smiled to every one, and when they met the same person twice they laughed and nodded to him.
They were charmed with everything. They stood outside the great circus and ballet marquees and laughed at the shouting buffoons. Scraggy mountebanks performed on trumpets, and young girls with well-floured shoulders smiled alluringly from the platforms.
Monsieur Tousseau’s purse was never at rest ”

“ Lintzow?” cried Miss Frederica, who had already taken her seat in the carriage.
The young man had for some time been eagerly searching for the daughter of the house. He answered absently, “I’m afraid it’s too late.”
But a thought seemed suddenly to strike him. “Oh, Mrs. Hartvig,” he cried, “will you excuse me for a couple of minutes while I fetch a bouquet for Miss Frederica?”—Rebecca heard rapid steps approaching; she thought it could be no one but he.
“Ah, are you here, Miss Rebecca? I have come to gather some violets.” ”

“ The courageous young lady felt ashamed of herself.
There was a pause, during which Miss Ludvigsen’s words sank deep into all hearts. They all felt that this was the truth; any doubt and uneasiness that might perhaps have lurked here and there vanished away. All were confirmed in their steadfast and beautiful faith in true, ideal love; for they were all maiden ladies.
WITHERED LEAVES.
You may tire of looking at a single painting, but you must tire of looking at many. That is why the eyelids grow so heavy in the great galleries, and the seats are as closely packed as an omnibus on Sunday. ”

“ Madame Virginie could converse with the young dandies who were always hanging about the buffet, and parry their witticisms, while she kept account with the waiters and had her eye upon every corner of the great room.
She was really pretty only from five till seven in the afternoon—that being the time at which Alphonse invariably visited the café. Then her eyes never left him; she got a fresher color, her mouth was always trembling into a smile, and her movements became somewhat nervous. ”