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48(5
iv. education and mental culture.
perfect. Like a true follower of Voltaire, he was a champion of civilization
and humanity, and with the sharp weapons of satire he fearlessly combated in
his newspaper "Stockholmsposten" all the pronouncements of ignorance, brutality,
and superstition. All kinds of prejudice, all egotism, and all abuse of power found
in him an enemy ever on the alert. Although Kellgren was French by education,
there was nevertheless a Germanic trait in him, which could not be entirely
effaced; and especially in his later poetry, a depth of feeling and tender sincerity
are evidence that this pre-eminent master mind of his time had finally perceived
the hollowness of a onesided intellectual enlightenment.
K. G. a† Leopold (1756—1829), the contemporary and rival of Kellgren, was
possibly superior to him in genius. Leopold’s letters, tales, and odes are
more elegant in form than Kellgren’s, but lack their warmth of feeling and
enthusiasm. In Anna Maria Lenngren (1754—1817),] the third propagator of the
ideas of this epoch, it is difficult to decide which to admire most — her noble
heart or her entertaining, and very often quite harmless satire. Her strength
lies in delicate and graceful genre painting.
In opposition to Voltaire’s philosophical ideas, arose a school, represented in
France by J. J. Rousseau and in Germany by the "Sturm und Drang" authors.
T. Thorild (1759—1808) was the representative of this tendency in Sweden; he
advocates with enthusiasm the rights of feeling and of nature, and in a powerful,
though often exaggerated way points out the limited perspective prevailing in
the Franco-classic taste. He also insists on the kinship of the Swedish nation
with the English and the German nations, which ought to induce Swedes to
take their models from them before all others. Nevertheless, though Thorild
was too obscure and paradoxical an exponent, yet he was a critic of genius.
On the other hand, he had too little of real poetic talent to be able to
vanquish the old school. Likewise was B. Lidner (1757—93) a poet of kindred
spirit, a personality too weak and too irregular of habit to be able to perform
such a task, though possessing unusually ample feeling, and a fertile but
unrestrained imagination.
For the space of a few years after the death of Gustavus III, the French
academical school ruled supreme over polite literature, and poetry degenerated
into abstract formalism without any corresponding feeling in the subject-matter,
a circumstance which proves that this tendency of taste had already seen its
best days. But there was a crop of gifted poets even during this period, though
their individuality and originality could not fully develop or mature under the
constraint of the Academy. Such was the case with the two Bishops F. M.
Franzén (1772—1847) and J. O. Wallin (1779—1839). Franzén, a gentle and
ardent poetic soul, created a simple, purely idyllic lyric, clear as a crystal spring,
innocent as the eyes of a child, and wistfully eager for supernatural purity.
Wallin, whose temperament was stronger and more gloomy, is the greatest
hymnologist of the country; his principal work is the hymnbook of 1819.
After the revolution of 1809 and the loss of Finland, a new spirit manifests
itself in Swedish literature. The Romantic School appears, and a violent struggle
commences between it and the Academic tendency. At the head of the
Romanticists we find the young P. D. A. Atterbom (1790 — 1855), the founder of
an association called "Auroraförbundet" (The Aurora Society), and the most
prominent of those poets who published their productions in the "Fosforos
(a periodical symbolizing the new light by its scarlet cover). Atterbom, who
received his earliest impulses from the German poets and philosophers, especially
from Tieck and Schelling, sought to endow poetry with the vague longing of
music, and also something of the meditative speculation of natural philosophy
on the essence of things. Although his poetry thus became somewhat obscure,
he nevertheless possessed superior poetical gifts, and his dramatic saga "Lyck-
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