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their rocky nesting-places, and flying round in ceaseless circles
with no dominant lines. And to a mind that shranked [[** sic]] coldly from
the ardent longings that throbbed in this unchecked tumult
of rhythm, but grieved the more over every breach of approved
taste in artistic expression — to such a mind, a shapeless production
of ecstasy like this was only a monster in the world of poetry.
Wergeland’s fellow-poet and equal in age, Welhaven, gave
expression to this narrow-minded view in a few fiery stanzas,
concluding by according to the presumptuous poet «precedence among
the bedlamites of Parnassus».
Out of the exchange of epigrams to which this attack gave
rise, there soon ensued a regular battle all along the line between
the partisans of the two irreconcilable views of life that had
become personified in these two youthful poets. Echoes of the
July Revolution reached to the distant shores of Norway, and the
two political camps immediately engrossed the literary combatants.
Wergeland was heart and soul a democrat. He glorified the struggle
for liberty in dithyrambic poetic cycles, «Cæsaris» and »Spaniolen»
(The Spaniard), lashed his adversaries with wild farces (under the
pseudonym Siful Sifadda), blamed the authorities with tempestuous
eloquence for their weak national feeling when it was a question
of restraining the king’s desire to limit the influence of the national
assembly, and ardently incited his countrymen to free themselves
entirely from the tradition that still maintained, through their
civil servants, the old dependence on Danish culture. With
a sense of his mission as standardbearer [[** sic, intet bindestrek]] for the national and
democratic rising, he even undertook the editorship of an organ —
of hitherto bad reputation — of the extreme wing of the rising.
At the same time he gave up, in the fulness of his heart, time,
trouble and means, to practical plans for the instruction and
moral improvement of the common people. He never dreamed
of asking in return anything more than the love of the people;
but that reward he reaped in abundance. Wergeland became the
people’s hero.
Welhaven felt his severe taste offended by the noisy national
movement, and joined the bureaucrats — other aristocracy Norway
does not possess — in their claim for an even, continuous
development. Courageous and eager for battle as he was, he stepped
forward and defied the wrath of the enthusiastic nationalists by
a volume of teasing sonnets, «Norge’s dæmring» (The Dawn of
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