THE LITERATURE OF SWEDEN


Swedish literature is sublime and magnificent, like its history and
its scenery; it is simple and glad, as well as sad, like the lives of
its people. One of the great days in Sweden, or at least in Stockholm,
is the celebration, on the 26th of July, of the anniversary of the
birth, more than a century and a half ago, of the national poet
Bellman.

His songs are as household words throughout the land. To the Stockholm
born they speak of their daily life and surroundings, of the green
isles and shady banks of the Malar, the flowery woods of Haga, the
smiling park of Dijurgarden. Burlesque scenes of the life of the
people, street tragedies, drinking bouts, and country junketings;
broad humor and Nature's philosophy; lively fancies and exquisite
landscape painting--such are the themes of his song, which from one
generation to another has held the heart of the people spellbound.
Every man, woman, and child knows his favorite ditties by heart, has
sung or hummed them in moments of joy or sorrow. For his song is both
joyful and sad. His joy is the joy of the simple hearted, his gladness
a Dionysian gladness, the very enjoyment of existence; his sadness
that of sympathy with suffering humanity, of anguish at the
evanescence of life and happiness. His fancy oscillates between
constant extremes and ever-recurring contrasts. It makes of his song,
as Tegnér has so aptly defined it, "a sorrow decked in roses." Bright,
gay, enraptured, full of sunshine and glamour, like the summer day
around Stockholm, it is traversed by a strain of melancholy like
a smile through tears, the laugh which conceals a sob. There is