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48(5
iv. education and mental culture.
Swedish national temperament, are generally considered — together with
Rune-oerg, who appeared somewhat later — as our national poets. In spite of all
their individual dissimilarities, they seem so much to belong to each other in the
3onsciousness of the people, that one of them can hardly be mentioned without
suggesting the other. They were both natives of the province of Värmland,
both were for some time members of "Götiska förbundet"’ (The Gothic Society),
ivhich had made it their task to strengthen patriotism and increase interest in
the past ages of the Northern Countries, in order thereby to incite the rising
generation to energy and resolute courage. Both were University professors,
Geijer at Uppsala, Tegnér at Lund (Tegnér being later made a bishop, for which
Jignity he was hardly suited); and both wrote poems on subjects from
ancient times. But it is only in these exterior traits that they resemble each
3ther. Geijer, who was also a philosopher and a composer, is above all the
greatest historian of Sweden. After having associated himself with Romanticism
for some time, he changed into the foremost defender of the liberal ideas of his
time. His poems, which are not numerous, possess a manly and national ring.
Tegnér, who had greater and more splendid poetical gifts, but a less
harmonious nature than Geijer, at first embraced academic ideas. His clear poetic
genius had been formed in the school of Voltaire and under the influence of
the poetic circle of Gustavus III; but he received yet stronger impulses from
ancient Greece and from Schiller, whose strong love of liberty he shared. Many
of his best poems and speeches seethe with indignation at the policy of the Holy
Alliance and the reaction in Europe. In the poetry of Tegnér there is a
blending of Greek and Northern features. In form, it is distinguished especially
by a dazzling wealth of metaphor. In general literature Tegnér is known
above all by his lyrical epic "Fritiofs Saga", which has been translated by some
fifty different hands into no less than eleven foreign languages.
The ideas of the Gothic Society found a more enthusiastic than critical
adherent in P. H. Ling (1776 —1839), the creator of Swedish gymnastics. He
strove in his lengthy epics and dramatic poems to imitate in rude strength the
ancient heathen bards of Sweden. The poetry of Ling is forgotten, but his
system of gymnastics survives.
K. J. L. Almquist (1793 —1866) is an exponent of romanticism in a state of
dissolution and about to change into radical subjectivism, rebelling against all
kinds of authority, be it the state, religion, or morality. He has given expression
to his moral scepticism in one of those paradoxes which he loved to scatter
around him: "Two things are white: innocence and arsenic." Almqvist is perhaps
the most universal of all Swedish authors; he attempted everything: history,
pedagogics, lexicography, mathematics, music, and all branches of poetic art. His
greatest importance is as a novelist. He has been the delineator of all periods
and of all lands, even the most exotic, and his pictures are painted with
astonishingly true colouring, both as regards time and place. His motto was, "Thus
1 paint, because thus it pleases me to paint". Almqvist may be called a
romanticist, but he was just as much a realist, a psychologist, and a symbolist
aalf a century before the idea of symbolism arose to conscious recognition. He
s the great "magician" in Swedish literature. His chief literary works are the
wo collections of "Törnrosens Bok" (The Book of the Wild Rose), which includes
i large part of his poetry, included in a common framework.
Just before the middle of the nineteenth century, literature entered a period
>f weakness; it is imitations of Tegnér and romanticism that dominate Swedish
etters. Among the poets of that period may be mentioned K. W. Böttiger
1807—78), a refined and gentle poetic spirit.
At this time people in Sweden, as in the rest of Europe, began to tire of
omanticism. Liberalism, which dates its origin from the July Revolution,
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