Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/251

Rh poem. It had a peculiar ring and rhythm such as had never before been heard in Denmark, and Steffens was at once compelled to acknowledge that the author was a genuine and truly great poet.

What Oehlenschläger now achieved is really astonishing. In the course of a few months he completed a volume of poems, the most of which bear evidence of the intellectual change which had taken place in him. The volume contains a great number of romances and the lyrical drama “St. Hans Aftenspil” (The Play of St. John’s Eve). The latter is one of the most marked of the author’s works; full of romantic passages and at the same time a bold challenge, overflowing with the proud consciousness of certain victory, against the narrow views of poetry and of life on the part of the old school of letters. These poems made the greatest sensation and many were highly enraged at Oehlenschläger, but, like an impetuous, irresistible torrent, they carried the whole young generation with them. All resistance was useless; and with this single daring stroke the poet gained the foremost place in Danish national literature. In 1805 there appeared two new volumes, “Poetiske Skrifter,” which, in addition to a number of poems and cycles of poems (like “Langelandsreisen” and “Jesu Christi gjentagne Liv i den aarlige Natur” ), also contains the deeply significant and symbolical “Vaulunders Saga,” the materials of which were borrowed from the ancient times of the North, and “Aladdin eller den forunderlige Lampe,” in which the legend of A Thousand and One Nights has been dramatized with a master’s hand, and which is one of the greatest masterpieces, not only in Scandinavian, but also in European literature.

In 1805 Oehlenschläger made a journey abroad. He first visited Steffens, in Halle, and thereupon he travelled from place to place in Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland, everywhere visiting the representatives of literature—Goethe, Tieck, Madame de Staël, and others. During this time Oeh-