Bjornson 365 



a powerful drama, not strictly speaking historical, De, 

 Nygiftc (The Newly-Married Pair), En Hansl:c (A 

 Glove), Gcografi og Kjccrlighed (Love and Geography), 

 En Fallit, show him in a lighter vein. Some of the 

 dramas, Haltc Hulda, for instance, and some of tlie 

 novels, are interspersed with beautiful lyrics. We 

 have also from Bjornson a volume of Digte og Sange 

 (Poems and Lyrics), and Arnljot Gclline, a story in verse. 

 Of late Bjornson has come much under two influences; 

 first, that of the Naturalistic school of writers, and 

 next under that of Ibsen. Under these influences his 

 writinGis have become, not in the strict sense books 

 with a purpose, but what the Germans call Tendenz- 

 Schriften, books which illustrate certain particular lean- 

 ings or tendencies in human nature. One of his plays, 

 Eedaktoren (The Editor), is modelled on Ibsen's social 

 dramas, and his two latest novels Pact Guds Vcje (In 

 God's Way), and Det flager i Byen og paa Havnen 

 (Literally flags are flying in the town and harbour),^ are 

 books of tendency. Dd flager deals with the effects of 

 heredity, and shows how, by careful training, they may 

 be eradicated. It deals also, in a modern sense, with 

 the question of the relation of the sexes, the same 

 question which has exercised the pens of so many con- 

 temporary writers of fiction in the east and north of 

 Europe, as (for one instance) Tolstoi in the Krentzer 

 Sonata. It is the same question which reappears in 

 many of Ibsen's plays, as in 'Love's Comedy,' the 

 ' Doll's House,' and ' The Lady from the Sea.' 



1 Paa Guds Veje, the latest of Bjornson's novels, "iis heen translated 

 in Heinemann's Internatio'oal Library, A translation of Det flager is 

 promised for the same series. 



