Tales of Two Countries
Kielland, Alexander Lange, 1849-1906
English
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Below is a summary of Tales of Two Countries
TALES OF TWO COUNTRIES
BY ALEXANDER KIELLAND
TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN BY WILLIAM ARCHER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY H. H. BOYESEN
CONTENTS.
PHARAOH
THE PARSONAGE
THE PEAT MOOR
"HOPE'S CLAD IN APRIL GREEN"
AT THE FAIR
TWO FRIENDS
A GOOD CONSCIENCE
ROMANCE AND REALITY
WITHERED LEAVES
THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO
INTRODUCTION.
In June, 1867, about a hundred enthusiastic youths were vociferously
celebrating the attainment of the baccalaureate degree at the
University of Norway. The orator on this occasion was a tall,
handsome, distinguished-looking young man named Alexander Kielland,
from the little coast-town of Stavanger. There was none of the
crudity of a provincial dither in his manners or his appearance. He
spoke with a quiet self-possession and a pithy incisiveness which
were altogether phenomenal.
"That young man will be heard from one of these days," was the
unanimous verdict of those who listened to his clear-cut and
finished sentences, and noted the maturity of his opinions.
But ten years passed, and outside of Stavanger no one ever heard of
Alexander Kielland. His friends were aware that he had studied law,
spent some winters in France, married, and settled himself as a
dignitary in his native town. It was understood that he had bought
a large brick and tile factory, and that, as a manufacturer of
these useful articles, he bid fair to become a provincial magnate,
as his fathers had been before him. People had almost forgotten
that great things had been expected of him; and some fancied,
perhaps, that he had been spoiled by prosperity. Remembering him,
as I did, as the most brilliant and notable personality among my
university friends, I began to apply to him Malloch's epigrammatic
damnation of the man of whom it was said at twenty that he would do
great things, at thirty that he might do great things, and at forty
that he might have done great things.
This was the frame of mind of those who remembered Alexander
Kielland (and he was an extremely difficult man to forget), when in
the year 1879 a modest volume of "novelettes" appeared, bearing his
name. It was, to all appearances, a light performance, but it
revealed a sense of style which made it, nevertheless, notable.
No man had ever written the Norwegian language as this man wrote
it. There was a lightness of touch, a perspicacity, an epigrammatic
sparkle and occasional flashes of wit, which seemed altogether
un-Norwegian. It was obvious that this author was familiar with the
best French writers, and had acquired through them that clear and
crisp incisiveness of utterance which was supposed, hitherto, to be
untransferable to any other tongue.
As regards the themes of these "novelettes" (from which the present
collection is chiefly made up), it was remarked at the time of
their first appearance that they hinted at a more serious purpose
than their style seemed to imply. Who can read, for instance,
"Pharaoh" (which in the original is entitled "A Hall Mood") without
detecting the revolutionary note which trembles quite audibly
through the calm and unimpassioned language? There is, by-the-way,
a little touch of melodrama in this tale which is very unusual with
Kielland. "Romance and Reality," too, is glaringly at variance with
the conventional romanticism in its satirical contributing of the
pre-matrimonial and the pos-tmatrimonial view of love and marriage.
The same persistent tendency to present the wrong side as well as
the right side--and not, as literary good-manners are supposed to
prescribe, ignore the former--is obvious in the charming tale "At
the Fair," where a little spice of wholesome truth spoils the
thoughtlessly festive mood; and the squalor, the want, the envy,
hate, and greed which prudence and a regard for business compel the
performers to disguise to the public, become the more cruelly
visible to the visitors of the little alley-way at the rear of the
tents. In "A Good Conscience" the satirical note has a still more
serious ring; but the same admirable self-restraint which, next to
the power of thought and expression, is the happiest gift an
author's fairy godmother can bestow upon him, saves Kielland from
saying too much--from enforcing his lesson by marginal comments, _a
la_ George Eliot. But he must be obtuse, indeed, to whom this
reticence is not more eloquent and effective than a page of
philosophical moralizing.
"Hope's Clad in April Green" and "The Battle of Waterloo" (the
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