Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/273

Rh where he lived by the sweat of his brow in very moderate circumstances until his death.

Nature and popular life found an excellent painter in Steen Steensen Blicher (1782-1848). As a preacher in one of the most desolate heath-regions of Jutland he had the best opportunity for studying the peculiarities of this region, so interesting in spite of all its monotony, as well as of its inhabitants. Endowed with a keen eye and splendid faculties of observation, he understood how to impart a charm to the most insignificant trifles and describe them with great vivacity and a rare dramatic power for his readers. In the beginning his literary activity had taken another direction. He translated Ossian (1807), wrote plays and poems and philanthropic and agricultural dissertations, but without any great success in any of these efforts. Then there appeared in 1824 the story, "En Landsbydegns Dagbog" (A village sexton's diary), and this was soon followed by a famous series of tales, in which he in so masterly and graphic a manner has described the life of the Jutland villagers, in whose midst he was living, that he forthwith became the favorite author of the Danish people. For a few stories Blicher selected his materials from social relations different from his own surroundings, but in these he was not very successful. A definite sphere of literary activity had been allotted to him, and he was not permitted to abandon it for any other. He felt at home, and could revel to his heart's content on the heaths and sand-downs of Jutland among their weather-beaten and frugal inhabitants. He was familiar with the roaring surf of the North Sea along the west coast of Jutland, with the ancient manors and the hunt through the fields, and with brushwood and boggy depressions; and his descriptions of this region are so faithful to nature and are filled with an aroma so subtle and poetical, that Blicher stands unrivalled in this field of composition. The most remarkable of all his works is unques-