THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN REV IE W 
373 
The Outcast. By Selma Lagerlof. Trans¬ 
lated from the Swedish by W. Worster, 
M.A. Garden City, N. Y., and Toronto: 
Doubleday, Page & Co. 1922. 
It is probable that of all contemporary 
Scandinavian novelists whose works are avail¬ 
able in English translations Selma Lagerlof 
has the widest appeal and possesses the great¬ 
est attraction for the general reader. Her 
talent is of a type which endures with a sort 
of steadfast permanence in the midst of a 
whirlwind of swiftly changing literary 
standards, of violent and strongly accented 
differences in critical estimates. Not a 
^writer who reaches to the ultimate heights of 
imaginative insight, or sounds the uttermost 
depths of the soul, she is blessed w r ith a genu¬ 
ine and irradiating sympathy, with a fine 
power to convey the sense of atmosphere, and 
with a real gift for portraying character. 
It seems unlikely that this latest novel, The 
Outcast , will equal in popularity the book 
which has apparently been firmly established 
as Miss Lagerlof’s masterpiece, Gosta Ber- 
ling’s Saga, but it is a profoundly moving 
and genuinely dramatic story, and already 
it has deeply impressed a large number of 
readers, readers of marked intelligence and 
discrimination. There is something in the 
pivotal incident of The Outcast and in its 
treatment which is reminiscent of the novels 
of Victor Hugo; Sven Elverssen, the “outcast” 
of the title, is a young man who has, as he 
supposes, committed a most repulsive offense 
against what would seem to be a basic in¬ 
stinct of all civilized mankind, a deed more 
repelling than any form of sin, a dreadful 
thing; he has, supposedly, under frightful 
conditions of temptation, eaten of human 
flesh. As one of an arctic exploring party, 
shipwrecked, and exposed to terrific suffer¬ 
ing, suffering so severe that one of their num¬ 
ber commits suicide rather than undergo 
any more, Elverssen is believed to have 
joined -with the other survivors in staying 
their torturing hunger on this dead man’s 
flesh. Elverssen had been ill and delirious at 
the time of this fearful occurrence and, as a 
matter of fact, had not been implicated in it, 
but, through his uncertainty as to what had 
actually happened, his companions made him 
believe in his own guilt in order that he 
might be unable to testify against them. He 
returns to the little island village of his birth, 
a doomed man, bitterly crushed by the sense 
of his own disgrace and humbly wishing to 
atone for it. He passes through a period of 
sheer tragedy; his imagination is fine and 
vivid, and he fully realizes the involuntary 
loathing which his mere presence inspires in 
those about him. He is sent forth from the 
village church, he is shunned by all. Un¬ 
daunted, Elverssen devotes himself to the 
service of humanity. He tries to save lives, in 
the literal sense of these words, and oppor¬ 
tunity comes to him in the land of many 
wrecks where he lives. He marries, his mar¬ 
riage itself being an act of mercy to another 
suffering soul. He finds a friend in the wife 
of the pastor, from whose church he has been 
excommunicated. Finally, through a coin¬ 
cidence which is frankly artificial and most 
improbable, the proof of Elverssen’s com¬ 
plete innocence comes to light. In a highly 
dramatic scene he is welcomed back to the 
love and esteem of his neighbors, an esteem 
which, we are led to believe, he would have 
gradually gained through his expiation, so 
visible to all men, even without the proved 
fact of his innocence. But Elverssen does 
not long survive this vindication; the slow 
sapping of his strength through years of men¬ 
tal torture has been too much for his body to 
sustain. 
It will be seen that this is a story charged 
with an atmosphere of an intense, and per¬ 
haps excessive emotionalism. The tone of the 
whole book is keyed to a point of extreme 
tension, and it is, for all its note of ultimate 
triumph, a profoundly saddening book. Miss 
Lagerlof relates her story with a fine and 
delicate artistry; the various characters who 
act and react on the central figure of Elvers¬ 
sen are drawn with a sure and steady hand, 
and the book abounds with pictures of the 
sea and of the Swedish village on its little 
island which are exceedingly beautiful and 
which strike the reader’s mental eye with a 
convincing reality. 
Mr. Worster’s translation, so far as can be 
judged by a reader unfamiliar with the orig¬ 
inal Swedish, is admirable; the dialogue espe¬ 
cially reads with notable ease and conveys 
the sense of the actual flow of natural talk, 
which seems a good test of success in the 
difficult and exacting task of rendering a work 
of fiction from one language into another. 
Elizabeth N. Case. 
