colors of the day;
she cannot conceive of anything as dead.... But I am convinced that
all poetic treatment of a theme belonging to a past age demands its
modernization; and that everything antiquarian is here a mistake.
This holds good not only in regard to the northern tone but also in
regard to the Greek. Look, for instance, at Goethe's 'Iphigenie.'
Who does not admire the beautiful, simple, noble, Hellenic form?
And yet who has ever felt his soul warmed by this image of
stone?... No living spirit has been breathed into these nostrils;
the staring eyes gaze upon me without life and animation; no heart
beats under the Hellenically rounded marble bosom. The whole is a
mistake, infinitely more beautiful than 'Frithjof,' but fashioned
according to the game principles of art. The Greeks said that the
Muse was the daughter of Memory; but this refers only to the
material, the theme itself, which is everywhere of minor
consequence. The question, then, is as to the proper treatment.
Where it tends toward the antiquarian it misses the mark; it
represents, like 'Frithjof,' only a restored ruin."

This passage is by no means the only one in which Tegner, with an utter
absence of vanity or illusion, judged his work and found it wanting.
There is no mock modesty in his manly deprecation of the honors that
were showered upon him; but as a father knows best the faults of his
child whom he loves, so he knew the defects of his work, as measured by
his own high standard, and refused to accept any more praise than was
his due. Not even the fact that Goethe expressed his admiration of
"Frithjof's Saga" could persuade him that he was entitled to the
extravagant homage which his enthusiastic countrymen accorded him. There
were even times when he disclaimed the title of poet. Whether he was
forgotten a little sooner or a little later, he said, was a matter of
small moment.

"Speaking seriously," he writes in 1824 (accordingly before the
publication of "Frithjof"), "I have never regarded myself as a poet in
the higher significance of the word.... I am at best a John the Baptist,
who is preparing the way for him who is to come."

He is always just and inclined to be generous in his judgment of every
one except himself. It is necessary, however, after the year 1824, to
make due allowance for the terrible strain upon his mind which disposed
him to give viol