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48(5
iv. education and mental culture.
"Fänrik Ståls sägner" (Tales of Ensign Stål), a collection of songs depicting
the war of 1809. The poet here gives us a series of war-pictures, or rather,
a gallery of heroic types imbued with idealism, a profound moral view of life,
and so deep a patriotic love that both to Finns and Swedes the Tales of Ensign
Stål have come to be something more than mere perfect poems, their love for
them being inseparably linked to their love of their countries.
Among Finnish authors using the Swedish language should be mentioned also
Z. Topelius (1818 — 98), whose gentle lyre is much beloved in Sweden, and
whose "Fältskärns berättelser" (The Surgeon’s Tales) is the favourite book of
young Swedes.
Viktor Rydberg.
Portrait by A. Edelfelt.
Runeberg formed no school, though he has indubitably influenced several
prominent idealists since his day. He alone filled the great void in our
literature at the middle of the nineteenth century; and when, after 1850, his
lyre sounds but rarely, little remains to be said about the poetry of that period.
To be sure, Viktor Rydberg (1828 - 95) had, by the publication of his novel "Den
siste Atenaren" (The Last Athenian), attracted general attention, but it was only
gradually that he obtained the position as the intellectual leader in modern
Swedish literature which he afterwards attained. During the last fifteen years
of his life he was recognized as the foremost among living Swedish authors.
Rydberg was long known and admired as a writer on esthetics, mythology,
and religious philosophy, and as a champion of a noble humanity and an
undogmatic Christianity. It was only låte in his career that he appeared as a
lyrical poet, but his poems belong to the very jewels in the treasury of Swedish
poetry. Cast in a perfect plastic form and stamped with Germanic earnestness,
they contain meditations upon the deepest questions of life.
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