He was ecstatic,
unmeasured, a reckless improvisatore. In his ideas he was preposterously
humanitarian; a prodigious worker, his vigor of mind seemed never
exhausted by his labors; in theory an idealist, in his private life he
was charged with being scandalously sensual. He was so much the victim
of his inspiration that it would come upon him like a descending wind,
and leave him physically prostrate. In Wergeland we see an instance of
the poetical temper in its most unbridled form. A glance through the
enormous range of his collected works is like an excursion into chaos.
We are met almost at the threshold by a colossal epic, _Creation, Man
and the Messiah_ (1830); by songs that turn into dithyrambic odes, by
descriptive pieces which embrace the universe, by all the froth and roar
and turbidity of genius, with none of its purity and calm. The genius is
there; it is idle to deny it; but it is in a state of violent turmoil.
It is when the ruling talent of an age is of the character of
Wergeland's--
Thundering and bursting,
In torrents, in waves,
Carolling and shouting
Over tombs, over graves--
that delicate spirits, as in Matthew Arnold's poem, sigh for the silence
and the hush, and rise at length in open rebellion against Iacchus and
his maenads, who destroy all the quiet of life and who madden innocent
blood with their riot.
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