Page:Von Heidenstam - Sweden's laureate, selected poems of Verner von Heidenstam (1919).djvu/27

 its positive revelation of beauty; not of remote, ethereal beauty, however, but of the beauty of actual, or vividly imagined scenes and people; the beauty perceived by the artist, though it may seem inextricably mingled with ugliness.

Besides this, we are struck by an unusual dramatic sense. Heldenstam knows how to develop a stirring narrative up to an inevitable, but often unexpected conclusion. As in the novels of George Meredith, the climaxes are often apparent anti-climaxes, as when in "" the old poet is so overcome by the beauty of an oriental morning that he can only express it in weeping. The imagery is often daring, as when a negro's lips are compared to the crimson gash on a wine skin, but such realistic details are only used to verify the central idea. For instance, the negro just referred to is not made ultimately to forfeit our sympathy; he becomes for us not a comic or degraded man, but simply an actual man. Heidenstam, though one of the most daringly earnest of poets, is sufficiently an artist to relieve his style by touches of humor and of the deeper sort of romance.

The most frequent motive of the oriental poems and poetic-prose sketches is the duty of enjoying the moment, of living and not spending one's youth in getting ready to live. It is thus that Heidenstam interprets the text: Take no thought for the morrow! In "" he pictures Christ as ministering to the immediate wants of the disciples, while Judas hastens away, reflecting that with thirty