In the third Act of "Peer Gynt," Solveig joins Peer in the mountains. It is not only due to her fidelity and love that she feels compelled to come to him. It is the stifling atmosphere of the valley below which she cannot endure. It is this which has forced her to seek the glorious freedom of the mountains above. When Åse, upon her death-bed, refers to Solveig's love for Peer, she says that "there is somewhere here a maid who longs for the heights:"

Peer Gynt. Act III, Sc. 4.

Åse.

(smilende.)

De siger, her findes etsteds

en jente, som stunder mod højden.

It is striking that Åse should have employed the same general metaphor which Solveig herself used in the previous passage in question (when Solveig joins Peer in the mountains). This phrase "stunder mod højden" (longs for the heights) expresses the same longing which the hero of "Paa Vidderne" feels when he struggles to rise above the sorrows of his life. In fact the general symbol of the heights as the expression of a higher and better life runs throughout the whole poem as a vital essence. The relief from the narrow life and oppressive atmosphere in Gudbrandsdal which Solveig feels when she reaches the mountains may well be a reflection of this vital essence of the poem, "Paa Vidderne." Both Solveig and the hero of "Paa Vidderne" feel that the mountains above will bring them relief from the sorrows of the world below. They both are at home on the heights. This conception is repeatedly expressed by the hero of "Paa Vidderne." He says: "no deed has any worth in the valley below, here on the heights my thoughts grow strong, only here can I live;" and again, "winter life on the wild mountain plains steels my weakened thoughts, here no sentimental song of birds beats through the blood." The hero feels compassion for his aged mother and his betrothed who, as he says, "are groping in the valley below." He wishes them to share with him the better life upon the heights. Finally, it is on the heights that the hero

wins his battle of life. He has won the victory over self and thus rises supreme over his grief. The final moment has come when he realizes that the significance of human life is to live according to the best that God has given him. He has outlived his life in the lowlands but there is a better life on the mountains above where he is near to himself and to his God. But the others who are ignorant of such an exalted mission in life still grope blindly in the darkness below.

Peer Gynt, though an outlaw, returns to visit his mother. He risks his life to be able to stand once more by her bedside, (Peer Gynt. Act III, Sc. 4). So too with the hero of "Paa Vidderne;" the loneliness on the mountain plains, far from the sympathetic touch of human love is too great for him to bear. The memories of home and mother finally break his iron will and he returns to pay her a last visit, just as Peer Gynt does. Human sympathy gains a victory over his resolve to follow the dictates of a life of renunciation. He is in fact a moral outlaw, for it is morally impossible for him to live with his mother in the valley below as it is legally impossible for Peer Gynt to do so.

The beautiful description of Solveig in "Peer Gynt" is to a large degree a reflection of the fair Norwegian maid with whom the hero of "Paa Vidderne" is in love. When Peer Gynt first meets Solveig he describes those qualities in her which have won his heart. She is modest and dutiful, she looks down upon her shoes and white apron, she clings to her mother's side, she carries a hymn book in her kerchief, (Peer Gynt, Act I, Sc. 3). When the hero of "Paa Vidderne" first meets his beloved, she shows the same girlish modesty which Solveig does. She holds her eyes away from him, she looks down upon her shoes and trembles. When on the mountain plains the hero catches sight of his aged mother and his sweetheart in the valley below, they are on their way to church. The maid is bearing her bible in her kerchief just as Solveig does as she trudges along clinging to her mother's side.

The description of Åse's hut in "Peer Gynt" is very similar to that of the hero's home in "Paa Vidderne." Peer lives alone

with his aged mother in a small hut. In "Paa Vidderne" the hero refers to the little red hut where he spent the happy days of his youth alone with his mother. In Peer Gynt's home the old cat which both he and his mother seem to love as one of the family is an important member of the household. So too, in "Paa Vidderne" the cat belongs to the memories of the home. When the huntsman whom the hero has met upon the mountains cynically remarks, as the flames devour the little cottage in the distance:

"det brænder jo bare, det gamle hus,

med juleøllet og katten"

we see the picture of a home very much like that of Peer Gynt. Peer Gynt has been brought up on fairy tales. His whole life is a fairy tale. He can scarcely distinguish fancy from reality. His mother attributes his wild pranks to the many tales which she has told him when a child. So too in "Paa Vidderne," the hero tells how his mother sat by his bedside when a child, spun and sang until sleep bore him away into the land of dreams. But he cannot, like Peer Gynt, live upon dreams. Action must determine the course of his life.

When Åse passes away Peer stands by her bedside and bears. her soul aloft in a fanciful ride to heaven. Throughout the whole scene there is that humorous and farcical atmosphere which is peculiar to the two characters and to the whole poem. Yet there is a strain of genuine affection and of true love which gives the passage an exalted character and makes it one of Ibsen's greatest literary achievements. In "Paa Vidderne" the hero likewise expresses a deep love for his mother and at her death he has her tenderly borne aloft to heaven. When Peer Gynt arrives at the gates of heaven the sound of dance and song can be heard from without. So too in "Paa Vidderne" it is the joy of a Christmas festival in heaven to which the hero bears his mother. Unlike "Peer Gynt" the poem "Paa Vidderne" is entirely serious in tone and Ibsen has given a fitting expression to the love of this deeper and more serious character. In a few dignified words he praises his mother's life of self sacrifice. The

mach more condensed Gent's boyish attempts

sworld into a better

* Peer Gynt has persistently refused

vas significance of his own motto, "at ake command which Brand, written Over Gynt," follows out to its logical conComedy of Love" (1862), and in "The sect written between the time of composiand "Peer Gynt" the same philosophical na diferent form. In "The Comedy of cocalation is conceived as a divine mission The Pretender" the tragedy turns upon the failerpret this divine mission written within Vero" is Ibsen's first poetic expression of caceps (self-realization) and it is not strange ve boca strongly impressed with the setting of wer to developed the theme again under different Tver Gynt." In a critical analysis of the comcynt" the influence of the poem "Paa Vid

tut of consideration.

ALBERT MOREY STURTEVANT.

carly, December 6, 1909.

A STUDY OF THE KENNINGS IN ANGLO-SAXON POETRY.'

"I could tell you much," says Carlyle in a letter to Murray, "about the new heaven and new earth which a slight study of German literature has revealed to me." And one of his biographers, in commenting on this passage, remarks, "It is not, indeed, the case that direct translation from the German formed any important part of Carlyle's literary work. The benefit lay in the enlargement of his mental horizon by the discovery of a world of literature, and the suggestion how the literary forms of his own country, too narrow for his genius, might be rendered pliable by the infusion of this freer spirit.”* A somewhat similar comment might be made, I think, with regard to the influence of Christian Latin literature on the Anglo-Saxon poets. In their case, as in the case of Carlyle, direct translation did not form any important part of the literary product, but the benefit, such as it was, came from the exploration of that new world of literature which set forth in Latin the doctrines and hymns of the church, and told in quasi-epic style Bible stories and the lives of the saints, -that is, the Latin church literature and the Christian Latin poems of Juvencus, Sedulius, Avitus, Arator, Lactantius, and others. From the coming of St. Augustine to the arrival of William the Conqueror, the one great influence exerted upon. the vernacular literature from without came from the Latin,— not the Latin of the classic authors but the Latin of such inferior writers as those just mentioned. And, though this influence, so far as I know, has not yet been thoroughly studied in all its manifestations, it was in many ways as pervasive and definite as was the French influence exerted in the following 1 Continued from Journal of Eng. and Ger. Philology, vol. VIII, pp. 357-422.

2

* Life of Thomas Carlyle. Richard Garnett, LL.D., London, 1895, p. 27 f.