OAK ST. HDSF UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY, The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. University of Illinois Library L161 O-1096 JORN UHL JORN UHL BY GUSTAV FRENSSEN TRANSLATED BY F. S. D ELMER ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND COMPANY, LTD. 1905 Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty - I F 8 g 7 HOST s 2 A PREFATORY NOTE GUSTAV FRENSSEN, the author of Jorn Uhl, was born in the J =3 remote village of Barlt, in Holstein, North Germany, on October 19, 1863. His father is a carpenter in this village, and, according to the church register, the Frenssen family has lived there as long as ever such records have been kept in the parish. In spite of his father's humble circumstances, Gustav Frenssen managed to attend the Latin School at the neighbouring town of Husum, and in due time became a student of theology. He heard courses of lectures at various Universities, passed the necessary examinations, and finally, -after long years of waiting, was appointed to the care of souls in the little Lutheran pastorate of Hemme in Holstein. Here within sound of the North Sea, and under the mossy thatch of the old-fashioned manse, he wrote his first two books, Die Sandgrafin and Die drei Getreuen. These two novels remained almost unknown until after the publication of Jorn Uhl in 1902. This book took Germany by storm. ' . Its author, much to his own surprise, awoke one morning to find himself famous.' All Germany was asking who he was and where he lived. His homespun and drowsy con- gregation of rustics suddenly found themselves elbowed out of their little kirk every Sabbath to make room for the curious literary pilgrims that flocked there from all parts of the country to see this man who had so touched the heart vi JORN UHL of Germany, and the piles of letters that the village postman every day brought to the manse were almost a scandal in the simple hamlet. But Frenssen's books had aroused much hostility among the orthodox church party, and in 1903 the poet-preacher gave up his pastorate and retired to the beloved and homely Holstein village of his youth, henceforth a free man, to devote himself to literature. Little need here be said about the fierce battles of criticism that have raged round this book. The admirers of the French novel smile condescendingly at what they dub its ' ' deliciously superannuated style, looking upon its author as a kind of Richardson born by some freak of anachronism into the age of Ibsen and Hauptmann. 'But,' answer Frenssen's admirers, 'this book has sprung from the deep consciousness of modern Germany and utters the longings, thoughts, and aspirations of the German heart in a way that no other modern book has done. It is a living book; it is a book so throbbing with real life, passion, and poetry, that we overlook in it those epic liberties of narrative on account of which your pedantic critics so damn it.' Jorn Uhl, the peasant hero of this book, might stand for a great part of modern Germany, and that by no means the worse part. If Germany has anywhere a claim to autoch- thonous art in her modern literature, it is here. The book has, moreover, appealed to modern Germany in somewhat the same way as Dickens appealed to the England of his day, and it is the first time that this can be said of any German novel. That the impression made on the English reader will be equally strong is of course hardly to be the translator expected ; yet hopes that the English version of the book will not only prove interesting as a picture of a homelier, and, if you will, less pampered culture than that A PREFATORY NOTE vii of England, but that it will stand even in a translation as a book of real human worth, as a sincere criticism of life, and a poet's interpretation of the life of man and the wonder of the universe of God. A word of warning ought, perhaps, to be addressed to English readers of the book. After the tragic notes struck in the opening chapter there is a sudden and unexpected change to an altogether different key, which to many will no doubt prove disconcerting. The big effects are only reached towards the middle of the book, and needless to say a thorough enjoyment of them, even of the Tolstoi-like picture of the battle of Gravelotte, presupposes an acquaintance with all the foregoing chapters. A second reading will reconcile us to much that at first glance seemed arbitrary and inartistic in the development of the story. It is, indeed, as if Frenssen wantonly turns from the theory that a novel should be drama written out in full, and claims all the liberties of an epic poet in the treatment of his subject. One further remark may be permitted. For good or ill, throughout the whole book there run punning allusions to the names of the two Frisian families that play a part in the story the Uhls and the Grays. It must be borne in mind, therefore, that Uhl=owl, and Cray = crow. Although the Low German dialect is used but very sparsely in the original, the Doric note being chiefly felt in the general style the primitive use of the tenses, for example the translator has nevertheless taken the liberty of employing Scotch expressions here and there to suggest the provincial and rustic atmosphere of the story. F. S. D. BERLIN, 1905. JORN UHL CHAPTER I IN this book we are going to speak about Life, and Life's travail and trouble. Not the sort of trouble that mine host Jan Tortsen made for himself when he promised to set a wonderful Eider fish before his guests and couldn't keep his word, and then took it so to heart that he grew crazy and had to go into the madhouse. Not the sort of trouble, either, that that rich farmer's son went to, who, for all his stupidity, man- aged to learn to play ducks and drakes with his father's crown pieces to such good purpose, that he got through the whole of his inheritance in a single month. No, but of that sort of trouble shall we speak which old Mother Whitehead had in mind, when she came to tell of her eight children how three of them lie in the churchyard, and one in the deep North Sea, and how the other four live far away in America, and two of them haven't written to her for years and years. And of that labour and travail will we speak th'at filled Geert Dose's soul with its anguish, when, on the third day after Gravelotte, he could not yet come to die, in spite of that fearful wound in his back. But while we have in mind to tell of such things, things that many will say are sad and dreary, we nevertheless go about the writing of this book with a heart full of cheerful- ness, although our face be earnest and our lips compressed. For we hope to show in every nook and corner of it that all the labour and trouble the people in it go through are not gone through in vain. Wieten Penn, head maidservant at Uhl Farm, had been saying that a great gathering of folk would take place there this winter. ' ' But the strange thing about it is,' she said, that the people will come as though to some gay festival, and will go hence as though from a great funeral.' A 2 JORN UHL So spoke Wieten Penn. Her mind was of a strange, meditative cast, and she went by the name of Wieten 'Klook,' or ' Canny ' Wieten. Klaus Uhl, the big, stalwart marsh farmer, was standing in the doorway in his shirt-sleeves, and looking away out over the marshes awaiting his guests. A self-satisfied smile lit up the shining good-humoured face, for he was thinking of the jollification and the card-playing to come, and the punch- drinking, and all the spicy jokes they would crack that night. His slight little wife, with her worn, pale face, had just sat down in the chair that stood near the big white porcelain stove, and her eyes went wandering over the great rooms all made fine and gay for the guests. She was now expecting the birth of her fifth child, and was weary with the many things she had had to do. The three eldest lads big fellows who were soon to be con- firmed were standing there, long-limbed and ungainly, near one of the card-tables. Their heads were narrow, and covered with flaxen hair, and they had a peculiar domineering look about them. The youths had taken up a pack of cards that lay on the table, and were arguing in high, loud tones, with an about the rules of the at last now and again oath, game ; one of them snatched the pack out of the hands of Hans, the youngest, calling him a young blockhead. The door opened and the little three-year-old Jiirgen came to his mother. ' 're I running up Mother, they coming ; can see their carts.' ' Mother,' said Hans, who wanted to revenge himself on someone for the affront he had just suffered, 'Jorn looks quite different from the rest of us, doesn't he ? Why ! he looks just like you with that long face and those sunken eyes of his.' She stroked the little fellow's short-cropped flaxen head.