Tales of Two Countries

Tales of Two Countries

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Title: Tales of Two Countries
Author: Alexander Kielland
Release Date: August, 2005 [EBook #8663] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 30,
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Edition: 10
Language: English

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Produced by Nicole Apostola

TALES OF TWO COUNTRIES BY ALEXANDER KIELLAND
TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN BY WILLIAM
ARCHER WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY H. H. BOYESEN

CONTENTS.
PHARAOH THE PARSONAGE THE PEAT MOOR "HOPE'S CLAD
IN APRIL GREEN" AT THE FAIR TWO FRIENDS A GOOD
CONSCIENCE ROMANCE AND REALITY WITHERED LEAVES
THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO

INTRODUCTION.
In June, 1867, about a hundred enthusiastic youths were vociferously
celebrating the attainment of the baccalaureate degree at the University
of Norway. The orator on this occasion was a tall, handsome,
distinguished-looking young man named Alexander Kielland, from the
little coast-town of Stavanger. There was none of the crudity of a
provincial dither in his manners or his appearance. He spoke with a
quiet self-possession and a pithy incisiveness which were altogether
phenomenal.
"That young man will be heard from one of these days," was the
unanimous verdict of those who listened to his clear-cut and finished
sentences, and noted the maturity of his opinions.
But ten years passed, and outside of Stavanger no one ever heard of
Alexander Kielland. His friends were aware that he had studied law,
spent some winters in France, married, and settled himself as a
dignitary in his native town. It was understood that he had bought a
large brick and tile factory, and that, as a manufacturer of these useful
articles, he bid fair to become a provincial magnate, as his fathers had
been before him. People had almost forgotten that great things had been

expected of him; and some fancied, perhaps, that he had been spoiled
by prosperity. Remembering him, as I did, as the most brilliant and
notable personality among my university friends, I began to apply to
him Malloch's epigrammatic damnation of the man of whom it was said
at twenty that he would do great things, at thirty that he might do great
things, and at forty that he might have done great things.
This was the frame of mind of those who remembered Alexander
Kielland (and he was an extremely difficult man to forget), when in the
year 1879 a modest volume of "novelettes" appeared, bearing his name.
It was, to all appearances, a light performance, but it revealed a sense
of style which made it, nevertheless, notable. No man had ever written
the Norwegian language as this man wrote it. There was a lightness of
touch, a perspicacity, an epigrammatic sparkle and occasional flashes
of wit, which seemed altogether un-Norwegian. It was obvious that this
author was familiar with the best French writers, and had acquired
through them that clear and crisp incisiveness of utterance which was
supposed, hitherto, to be untransferable to any other tongue.
As regards the themes of these "novelettes" (from which the present
collection is chiefly made up), it was remarked at the time of their first
appearance that they hinted at a more serious purpose than their style
seemed to imply. Who can read, for instance, "Pharaoh" (which in the
original is entitled "A Hall Mood") without detecting the revolutionary
note which trembles quite audibly through the calm and unimpassioned
language? There is, by-the-way, a little touch of melodrama in this tale
which is very unusual with Kielland. "Romance and Reality," too, is
glaringly at variance with the conventional romanticism in its satirical
contributing of the pre-matrimonial and the pos-tmatrimonial view of
love and marriage. The same persistent tendency to present the wrong
side as well as the right side--and not, as literary good-manners are
supposed to prescribe, ignore the former--is obvious in