SPEECH TO THE NORWEGIAN STUDENTS SEPTEMBER 10th, 1874

Gentlemen:

WHEN during the latter years of my stay abroad it became more and more evident to me that it had now become a necessity for me to see my own country again, I will not deny that it was with considerable trepidation and doubt that I proceeded to put my journey home into effect. My stay here was, to be sure, intended to be only of short duration, but I felt, that however short it was to be, it might be long enough to disturb an illusion which I should like to continue to live in.

I asked myself: in what sort of spirit will my countrymen receive me? The favourable reception which the books I sent home have found could not quite reassure me; for the question always arose: what is my personal relation to my countrymen?

For it certainly cannot be denied that at several points there has been a feeling of animosity. So far as I have been able to understand, the complaints against me have been of a twofold nature. People have thought that I have regarded my personal and private relations at home with undue bitterness, and they have furthermore reproached me for having attacked occurrences in our national life which, according to the opinion of many, deserved quite a different sort of treatment than mockery.

I do not think I could use this day, so honourable and joyful to me, to better purpose than to make an explanation and a confession.

My private relations I have never made the direct subject of any poetical work. In the earlier hard times these relations were of less importance to me than I have afterwards often been able to justify to myself. When the nest of the eider duck was robbed the first and second and third time, it was of illusions and of great hopes of life that it was robbed. When at festival gatherings I have been sensible of recollections like the bear in the hands of his tamer, it has been because I have been co-responsible in a time which buried a glorious thought amid song and feasting.

And what is it then that constitutes a poet? As for me, it was a long time before I realized that to be a poet, that is chiefly to see, but mark well, to see in such a manner that the thing seen is perceived by his audience just as the poet saw it. But thus is seen and thus is appreciated that only which has been lived through. And as regards the thing which has been lived through, that is just the secret of the literature of modern times. All that I have written, these last ten years, I have, mentally, lived through. But no poet lives through anything isolated. What he lives through all of his countrymen live through together with him. For if that were not so, what would establish the bridge of understanding between the producing and the receiving mind?

And what is it, then, that I have lived through and written on? The range has been large. Partly, I have written on that which only by glimpses and at my best moments I have felt stirring vividly within me as something great and beautiful. I have written on that which, so to speak, has stood higher than my daily self, and I have written on this in order to fasten it over against and within myself.

But I have also written on the opposite, on that which to introspective contemplation appears as the dregs and sediment of one’s own nature. The work of writing has in this case been to me like a bath which I have felt to leave cleaner, healthier, and freer. Yes, gentlemen, nobody can poetically present that to which he has not to a certain degree and at least at times the model within himself. And who is the man among us who has not now and then felt and acknowledged within himself a contradiction between word and action, between will and task, between life and teaching on the whole? Or who is there among us who has not, at least in some cases, selfishly been sufficient unto himself, and half unconsciously, half in good faith, has extenuated this conduct both to others and to himself?

I have thought that when I say this to you, to the students, it will reach exactly its right address. It will be understood as it is to be understood; for a student has essentially the same task as the poet: to make clear to himself, and thereby to others, the temporal and eternal questions which are astir in the age and in the community to which he belongs.

In this respect I dare to say of myself that, during my stay abroad, I have endeavored to be a good student. A poet by nature belongs to the far-sighted. Never have I seen the fatherland and the actual life of the fatherland so fully, so clearly, and at a closer range than just from afar and during my absence.

And now, my dear countrymen, in conclusion a few words which are likewise connected with something I have lived through. When Emperor Julian stands at the end of his career, and everything collapses round about him, there is nothing which renders him so despondent as the thought that all which he had gained was this: to be remembered with respectful appreciation by clear and cool heads, whereas his opponents lived on, rich in the love of warm, living human hearts. This motive has proceeded from something that I have lived through; it has its origin in a question that I have at times put to myself, down there in the solitude. Now the young people of Norway have come to me here to-night and given me the answer in word and song, have given me the answer so warmly and so clearly as I had never expected to hear it. This answer I will take along as the richest result of my visit with my countrymen at home, and it is my hope and my belief that what I experience to-night is an inner experience which sometime shall find its reflection in a coming work. And if this happens, if sometime I shall send such a book home, then I ask that the students receive it as if it were a handshake and a thanks for this meeting; I ask you to receive it as the ones who have a share in it.