" marked a distinct step in
his development. It was less of a social satire and more of a social
study. It was not merely a series of brilliant, exquisitely finished
scenes, loosely strung together on a slender thread of narrative, but
was a concise and well-constructed story, full of admirable
portraits. The theme is akin to that of Daudet's "L'Evangeliste"; but
Kielland, as it appears to me, has in this instance outdone his
French confrere, as regards insight into the peculiar character and
poetry of the pietistic movement. He has dealt with it as a
psychological and not primarily as a pathological phenomenon. A
comparison with Daudet suggests itself constantly in reading
Kielland. Their methods of workmanship and their attitude toward life
have many points in common. The charm of style, the delicacy of
touch, and felicity of phrase, are in both cases preeminent. Daudet
has, however, the advantage (or, as he himself asserts, the
disadvantage) of working in a flexible and highly finished language,
which bears the impress of the labors of a hundred masters; while
Kielland has to produce his effects of style in a poorer and less
pliable language, which often pants and groans in its efforts to
render a subtle thought. To have polished this tongue and sharpened
its capacity for refined and incisive utterance, is one--and not the
least--of his merits.

Though he has by nature no more sympathy with the pietistic movement
than Daudet, Kielland yet manages to get psychologically closer to
his problem. His pietists are more humanly interesting than those of
Daudet, and the little drama which they set in motion is more
genuinely pathetic. Two superb figures--the lay preacher Hans Nilsen
and Skipper Worse--surpass all that the author had hitherto produced
in depth of conception and brilliancy of execution. The marriage of
that delightful, profane old sea-dog, Jacob Worse, with the pious
Sara Torvestad, and the attempts of his mother-in-law to convert him,
are described not with the merely superficial drollery to which the
subject invites, but with a sweet and delicate humor which trembles
on the verge of pathos.--From "Essays on Scandinavian Literature"
(1895).

II
BY WILLIAM H. CARPENTER

Alexander Kielland is the least Norwegian of all the Norwegian
writers, not only among his contemporaries, like Bjornson and Jonas
Lie, but among the newer men of the subsequent generation, like
Gabriel Finne, Knut Hamsun, and Vilhelm