Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/314

296 ciple, while its opponents, the so-called "Intelligence" maintained that art and culture should be developed on the basis of the old association, which had been formed during the long union between Norway and Denmark, and by which Norway had become connected with the great movements of civilization throughout Europe. The leader of the latter party was Welhaven.

was born in 1807. His refined æsthetic nature had been early developed, and when the war broke out between him and Wergeland he had already reached a high point of intellectual culture, and thus he was in every way a match to his opponent. The fight was inaugurated by a preliminary literary skirmish, which was at the outset limited to the university students, but it gradually assumed an increasingly bitter character, both parties growing more and more exasperated. Welhaven published a pamphlet "Om Henrik Wergelands Digtekunst og Poesie" in which he mercilessly exposed the weak sides of his adversary's poetry. Thereby the minds became still more excited. The "Intelligence" party withdrew from the students' union, founded a paper of their own, and thus the movement began to assume wider dimensions. In 1834 appeared Welhaven's celebrated poem "Norges Dæmring," a series of sonnets, distinguished for their beauty of style. In them the poet scourges without mercy the one-sided, narrow-minded patriotism of his time and exposes in striking and unmistakable words the hollowness and shortcomings of the Wergeland party. Welhaven points out with emphasis that he is not only going to espouse the cause of good taste, which his adversary has outraged, but that he is also about to discuss problems of great interest. He urges that a Norwegian culture and literature cannot be created out of nothing; that to promote their development it is absolutely necessary to continue the associations which have hitherto been common to both Norway and Denmark, and thus to keep in rapport with the general literature of Europe. When a solid