Ludvig Holberg, The Founder of Norwegian Literature and an Oxford Student

Title: Ludvig Holberg, The Founder of Norwegian Literature and an Oxford Student

Author: S. C. Hammer

Release date: August 23, 2011 [eBook #37177]

Language: English

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LUDVIG HOLBERG

The Founder of Norwegian Literature and an Oxford Student

BY

S. C. HAMMER, M.A.

OXFORD B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET MCMXX

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LUDVIG HOLBERG

The Founder of Norwegian Literature and an Oxford Student

BY

S. C. HAMMER, M.A.

OXFORD B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET MCMXX

LUDVIG HOLBERG

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The following lecture was delivered on May 23rd, 1919, at Magdalen College, Oxford, by invitation of the President, Sir Herbert Warren, and in the presence, among others, of the Norwegian Minister in London, Mr. Benjamin Vogt.

In revising the manuscript I have thought it necessary to enlarge it on a few points where I had to condense the lecture in order to keep it within the confines of an hour. I have also added a few supplementary footnotes and a brief reference to the bulky Holberg literature which may perhaps prove of interest to Holberg students in England.

In paying my respectful thanks to the President of Magdalen College and the distinguished audience for their kind reception I beg to sum up my feelings in the words of Holberg himself: Multis sane nominibus devinctum Oxoniensibus me fateor teneri.

S. C. H.

Christiania, Norway. December, 1919.

[5]

LUDVIG HOLBERG

Mr. President, Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I.

I propose to speak to you about my countryman, Ludvig Holberg, the most famous Norwegian student whose name was ever entered on the records of this University. If this had not been the case, I should hardly have ventured to ascend this platform, for I feel that here, if anywhere, it must be an indispensable condition that the subject should match the place. For just as Oxford is not primarily an institution of education, but through its traditions, its companionships, its achievements, the very embodiment of British genius, British chivalry and British aspirations, so Ludvig Holberg is, indeed, no author in the ordinary sense of the word. He is the founder of modern Norwegian and Danish literature, the greatest playwright, the first critical historian, the most human and most broad-minded moralist and philosopher of two nations; a man whose constant work was one of educating; who revolutionised the conception of life in two kingdoms and paved the way for the intellectual and political liberty of the future. For all this,

as I am going to show you, he is, next to his genius, highly indebted to England and, above all, to Oxford. To this place he made his way when he quitted Norway 213 years ago, imbued with a deep and early sympathy for England; from this place he went to Copenhagen, the joint capital at that time of Denmark and Norway, enriched by assets of the highest importance to his life-work. I, therefore, want to thank you for the opportunity you have given me to pay a joint tribute to Oxford and Holberg.

[6]Ludvig Holberg—Ludovicus Holbergius, Norvegus, as he signed his name in the Admission Index of the Bodleian Library—was born at Bergen, the present capital of Western Norway, on December 3rd, 1684. His father, who was a well-known officer in the Norwegian army, died when Lewis was an infant; his mother, when he was 10 years old. Lewis who was the youngest of twelve brothers and sisters, six of whom attained their majority, therefore very early became acquainted with the sterner aspects of life and grew up a lonely boy, deprived of the tender care of a parental home. It was at that time the custom in Norway to give pay to sons of officers and to initiate them at an early age in military tactics, the salaries they got being used to defray the expenses of their education. These petty officers were called corporals, and Lewis was now promptly appointed corporal in the "Upland Regiment," far away from his native town, in one of the midland districts.

This was a rather curious beginning for a man so decidedly anti-militarist as Holberg was throughout his life. In his autobiography, published in Latin in 1727,[1] he makes fun of the episode, describing his transformation from a petty officer into a professor of philosophy as "a sort of Ovidian metamorphosis which might expose me to the risk of being sent back from my professorial chair to the camp, if the authorities were disposed to question my qualifications."

Notwithstanding this, his appointment as petty officer was to become of importance to him. As soon as he got his commission he left Bergen for the midland counties—a remarkable journey at that time, by sea and land, through a great part of West and Mid Norway—until he finally arrived at the Fron Vicarage, one of the finest places in the valley of Gudbrandsdalen and at present one of our most popular tourist districts. The vicar of Fron, who was his relation on his mother's side, soon discovered his remarkable abilities, his passion for literature, in which he had already made some[7] trifling attempts, and last but not least, his gift for languages.

The two years which Holberg subsequently spent at Fron have, until a quite recent date, been practically unnoticed by Holberg students, but it is easy to see that they form an interesting link in the chain of events connected with his life. His schooldays at Fron were not pleasant to him, for the assistant master, who had to take care of the boys, was rather inferior as a teacher. His Latin was bad, his views narrow and pedantic, his chief instrument of instruction the birch, of which he made assiduous application. Holberg, who rather early reacted instinctively and strongly to all strokes of spontaneousness, very soon conceived a deep dislike and contempt for these pedagogic methods, and his power of reflection made its combinations and conclusions. Latin and pedantry became to a certain extent synonymous notions to him, and it was to be one of his pleasures as a writer to record and hand over to derision the whole system of travestied learning which was one of the characteristic features of his age.

This was the negative aspect of his sojourn at the Fron Vicarage. Its positive aspect was the time he spent in the library of the vicarage, where, among a number of Greek and Latin classics, he also found several modern foreign books, including some Bibles in English and French, an English and a French dictionary, a French grammar, and an English reader, with colloquial sentences—rather a curious collection of books for a Norwegian inland county towards the end of the seventeenth century. These books, as far as we know, were the first specimens of English and French literature which he ever saw, but he was fascinated by them. They were to him messages from the great marvellous world hundreds of miles beyond the mountains by which he was surrounded. Do you wonder that he was longing and dreaming, silent and solitary as he was by disposition?

But he was not dreaming only. Being a quick observer of things surrounding him, we may infer that he was deeply impressed by the customs and manners of the peasants[8] among whom he lived, their cool, unobtrusive way of behaving themselves, their sound judgment, their manual cleverness, their traditions, songs and fairy tales, and last but not least, their dialect, with its peculiar words and phrases, so decidedly different from his own Bergen tongue and way of speaking. Indeed, numerous passages in his works are stamped by obvious reminiscences from his Fron sojourn.

After an absence which, in more respects than one, ripened him above his age, Holberg, in 1698, returned to Bergen, where he resumed his studies under conditions which did not please him at all. During his absence the grammar school of the city had been subjected to a thorough reform by an able manager, who was himself an ardent admirer of the classics. Accordingly, Latin more than ever became the chief subject of instruction, the command of the language being laboriously aimed at by means of disputations which were at once linguistic exercises and a medium of theological and metaphysical fencing.

Holberg, who always felt himself alien to subtleties of this kind, was therefore quite agreeable when very soon after the heavy fire at Bergen in 1702, which stands out as one of the most remarkable events in the annals of the city, he was sent to the University of Copenhagen, where he passed his B.A. examination. He does not seem to have been favourably impressed in any particular degree either by the capital itself or by the conditions ruling at the University. Otherwise, in his reminiscences he would hardly have passed by his life as a student in absolute silence; on the other hand, Bergen, as she presented herself to him towards the end of 1702 after he had been away for some seven or eight months, was certainly no cheery place, being still under the gloom of the devastations of the fire. He therefore quite naturally availed himself of the earliest opportunity of getting away.

The two following years of his life, but for a short stay at Copenhagen, where he completed his theological studies and attained a high degree, he spent chiefly "in flogging his pupils and converting Norwegian boors." This is a humorous expression of his for the way in which he performed his duties[9] as a tutor to the children of the vicar at Voss—now one of the best-known districts on the Bergen-Christiania Railway—and occasionally replaced him in the pulpit. By his own saying he succeeded decidedly better as a preacher than as a tutor which, by the way, does not say very much, as he never excelled in either of these functions. The chief interest connected with his stay at Voss is the fact that it strengthened his early Fron recollections of the peasants.

We are entitled to infer from his famous Description of Bergen, which appeared thirty-five years later, that he has taken a special interest in Voss, and that he has studied the history and the topography of the district, and we hardly jump at conclusions in assuming that his popularity with the peasants was due, not to his sermons, but to the straightforward, unpretending way in which he approached them. He carried with him from Voss, as he had carried with him from Fron, favourable impressions of the Norwegian peasantry to the manly qualities of whom he often returns in his writings.

In 1704 Holberg set out on the first of the five famous journeys which he was to undertake to various parts of Europe within the next twenty-two years. I shall not spend many words on this particular journey beyond the fact that he visited West Germany and Holland, which at that time were under the spell of the operations on the Western Front, for, as you remember, we find ourselves at that time at the commencement of the Spanish War of Succession. It is sufficient to state that the journey lasted about a year, and that Holberg, in the meantime, had many chequered experiences; by way of example, that it is impossible for a man with literary talents to get on at Amsterdam, where, to use his own expression, "trade occupies every man's thoughts, where philosophy is at a discount, and where even men like Grotius and Salmasius have to give way to shipowners and merchants." He therefore ultimately had to return to Norway, arriving in an exhausted condition at Christianssand, where he was assisted by a friend, Mr. Brix, whom he

happened to meet there. This friend kindly recommended Holberg to several of the principal inhabitants, and he very soon got a reputation[10] as a teacher, especially in French, although—as he learnt on a later occasion in Paris—his French was not so perfect as the natives of Christianssand seemed to think.

Unfortunately he very soon happened to raise the feminine world of the town against himself. Full of irony as he was, and "delighted with everything which had an air of novelty"—as he describes himself—he was greatly amused one day by coming across an anonymous pamphlet in which the author endeavoured to prove, by sixty-four arguments, that women have no soul. He promptly learned the chief arguments by heart, and took every opportunity "of broaching the paradox and of defending it with an earnestness proportioned to the zeal or indignation with which it was opposed." Finally, of course, he had to submit and to renounce his heresy, after which peace was restored. Holberg, who was very musical, and played excellently on the flute, was subsequently introduced to some of the most respected families in the town, where he seems to have been very much appreciated. It will always be a matter of conjecture whether he contracted at Christianssand, however temporarily, what has been styled a "heart rheumatism"; but if so, the ladies of Christianssand

have had their revenge; their descendants may still be proud of the tribute which Holberg in his auto-biography pays to the accomplishments of their great-great grandmothers.

In the spring of 1706 Holberg left Christianssand, embarking for England at Arendal, the well-known neighbouring town, conspicuous even in those days for its sea-faring reputation. I may, perhaps, in this connection, take leave to observe that I am a native of that town, and often, when a boy, sailing out in my boat to the mouth of the harbour, where it opens towards the horizon far away, or resting on one of the many islets during the wonderful nights of the Norwegian summer, waiting for the early fishing hours at sunrise, I would remind myself that these rocks and skerries outside of my native town were the last part of Norway on which Holberg looked back when, under the press of a fair wind, his swift barque carried him away to England, the fairyland of his westward dreams.

[11] Adieu, adieu! my native shore Fades o'er the water blue; The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar, And shrieks the wild sea mew.

It was Norway's "Childe Harold"—the most solitary figure in our cultural history—who was taking leave of his country, never to see her rugged shores and her magnificent inland sceneries again. There was, indeed, nothing poetical about him, for—as you know—the age was a decidedly prosaic one, and Holberg, later in life, confessed that up to the age of 30 "he would yawn when he heard the finest piece of poetry read to him." Yet, as we can see him from our present vantage ground, he was at that moment the embodiment of the genius of the Norwegian nation, which once more, as in the saga period, hoisted its sails for Western Europe, bold, eager of adventures, fascinated at the very thought of getting away.

II.

I want to lay stress on the Norwegian origin and education of Holberg, on his stay among our peasantry in two characteristic parts of the country, and also on the fact that he was over 21 when he left Norway for ever. If these things were not indispensable for a fair conception of his lifework, I should certainly not have dwelt on them. Yet a few particulars are still wanted to give a finishing touch to his portrait.

He set out in life with a delicate figure and an extremely youthful appearance, but in return he was possessed of some solid, staunch qualities which moulded him into a first-rate character. From his mother, whose family is still numerously represented in Norway, he had inherited a sound realism which made him firmly resolved to get a position in life and to settle down comfortably on a fixed salary. From his father, of whose family no trace is left among us, he had inherited what has been called the itinerary element of his nature—his[12] passion for travelling, initiated by his early Fron journey, his eagerness to see foreign countries, to stroll about in the big cities, to pass along the high roads from one country into another, covering extraordinary distances—an energetic student, a haunter of libraries, always on the look-out for new books, but above anything else, always and everywhere, a keen observer of men and things, enriching himself with knowledge from the fresh, inexhaustible sources of life.

Besides this, he was a true son of Bergen, the most heterogeneous town of Norway—a sort of "Noah's Ark," according to his own expression—with a development of its own which, in the course of centuries, has made the natives of Bergen differ considerably in views and manners from the rest of their countrymen. Even in our days these differences still make themselves felt in some degree. All this you must bear in mind when you speak about Holberg. The remarkable influence exercised upon him by Bergen gives the clue to his personality—to his genius as a playwright, to his liberal views as an historian, to his clear, realistic reasoning as a philosopher. It is always Bergen, never Copenhagen, which is uppermost in his mind.

How excellently this young, highly-gifted Norwegian was prepared for a thorough appreciation of contemporary England!

During the forty-six years which had passed since the Restoration of 1660, England—as you will remember—had witnessed a period full of political and literary activity, but above all, remarkable for its prodigious advance in the field of science. This progress was, it is true, a matter of European rather than of English concern, but the inquiring spirit and the rationalist desire to get to the bottom of things which were the hallmarks of the age were in no country developed more strikingly than in England. Latin was still the language in which scientific works were written, but the Royal Society had already unfolded its national programme "of bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness as possible, and of preferring the language of artisans, countrymen and merchants to that of wits and scholars."

[13]The extraordinary events of the time also highly appealed to the receptive mind of Holberg. When he arrived at Oxford in the spring of 1706, in the company of his friend, Mr. Brix, England was in the midst of the Spanish War of Succession, of which—as we remember—he had got some experiences on his Dutch journey. During a sojourn of nearly two years, Holberg was a close observer of everything connected with the great war. It was not so easy at that time as during the recent Armageddon to get hold of the historical thread leading up to events and to explain the facts by way of arguments; but he was impressed by the dogged determination of the English in their heavy struggle against Louis XIV., and their unswerving belief in a victorious issue. He himself never doubted that they would win the war, thanks to their splendid resources no less than to the very principles for which they fought. In short, it is the prototype of the world's war by which we are confronted—the Spirit of the West, the representative of the political

and intellectual liberty of the future struggling against absolutism and all the reactionary powers of the past.

As a matter of course, Holberg was a staunch pro-ally, and besides this, he was also highly interested in the political events of the day. The Union between England and Scotland which took place during his stay at Oxford, strikes him as one of the most important acts of statesmanship in any age—an event of far-reaching consequences—and he never gets tired of commenting upon it and of subjecting it to new investigations.

I do not presume to think that I can tell you anything new concerning the conditions ruling at this University at the commencement of the eighteenth century, but some brief particulars in connection with Holberg's stay are of interest and importance for a fair understanding of the moulding influence of Oxford upon his character and genius.