Martin Birck’s Youth quotes

Martin Birck was a little child, who lay in his bed and dreamed.

It was twilight of a summer evening, a green and tranquil twilight, and Martin went holding his mother’s hand through a big and marvelous garden where the shadows lay dark in the recesses of the walks.

“Lord in heaven what a clatter, and Heggbom lying at his death! Down out of the tree with you, you little ragamuffins!”

Heggbom had been sick in bed awhile ago, and his wife’s imagination often turned back to that comparatively happy time.

The boys had come down from the tree. Their mother took John by the hair and Willie by the ear to lead them in. But Mrs. Lundgren felt somewhat huffed; she had to a certain extent presided over the tumult.

If another boy had come to him and said such a thing, Martin would have thought him very stupid.

For it is just the same with children as with grownups: they often form the strangest conceptions of the world; but if anyone shows them the consequences of their ideas, they say he is very stupid, or that it is improper to joke about serious things.

At that period summer was different from now. There was a joy that filled the days and evenings, pressing even into one’s nightly dreams; and morning was joy personified.

… for on the middle of the table stood a cake which his mother had baked for him, a big dish full of wild strawberries which Maria had picked under the oaks, a twenty-five-öre piece from papa, and a package of stockings which mother had knitted.

Of all these things Martin cared most for the twenty-five-öre piece.

For he had come to realize that a pair of stockings was just a pair of stockings, and a cake was a cake, but a twenty-five-öre piece was an indefinite number of fulfilled wishes in any direction whatever up to a certain limit, and experience …

But he said he had thought of it himself. Father explained to Martin how dreadfully he had behaved, and Martin cried and was sent to bed. His mother cried too when she said prayers with him. She was frightened and wrought up.

For children’s offenses, like those of adults, are judged more according to the scandal they have aroused than according to their inner nature, and Martin’s misdeed had caused a terrible scandal.

The most beautiful days of summer were gone. In the daytime there was rain and wind, and the lake turned green. And at dusk the crows flapped around the slope with the oaks and the naked tree.

And the next time he met Franz on the street in front of the dyer’s gate, the latter tripped him so that he fell into the gutter, then gave him a bloody nose, tore his books apart, swore at him frightfully, and ran off.

He had not understood that he was supposed to be a noble redskin. But this Franz was not a rowdy of the usual sort; he was a thoroughly awful rowdy.

So year was added to year, and the new buried the old, while

Martin was slowly initiated into the twofold art of life, to learn and to forget.

For as the gambler in order to keep on till the last coin has run through his trembling fingers must forget his losses in the hope of future gains, so humanity, the gambler by compulsion, finds that the greatest art is to forget and that …

It was so hard for him to take it in full earnest. Whenever, contrary to his custom, he had distinguished himself in this or that subject, he was almost ashamed within himself, as if he had done something stupid.

As often as he was supposed to dig down into the paltry details in which textbooks delight, he felt himself as ridiculous as the man who, when his house was on fire, saved the poker.

Now that the poker was saved, however, he was so overjoyed that he could have sung; he felt that he was happy and free, as he hastened home with his white cap, home to the blossoming street of his childhood.

And when the townfolk passed his house on the way home from their evening toddy at the rathskeller, they would stop to point at his window and say: “There lives Martin Birck.

He has taught like a sage and lived like a fool, and he is very unhappy.

”

Martin suddenly heard a strange voice behind his chair.

“Very true,” said the voice, “very true. She doesn’t come when she’s invoked. An equally mournful and accurate observation!”

Martin turned in surprise. The stranger was a man carelessly dressed, with a student cap, a pale narrow face and black mustaches which hung down over his mouth so that it wasn’t easy to see whether he smiled or was serious.

If he is an atheist, he will be considered a shallow and superficial fellow, a poor sort, and he will have a hard time to borrow money.

No, a poet should believe in God, but in a god who is out of the ordinary run, something not yet existent, never before shown in any circus, that one can never really get hold of, for then the game would be up.

The pantheistic god is exactly the raw material needed for such a being. That is the ideal for a god.

“In formal style this god may be called the Allfather, in common speech the Lord.

As a matter of fact he doesn’t need any name, it is with him as with that star off there: no matter how one calls him, he won’t come.

”

You are accepted and may report tomorrow to begin your duties, if there is anything to do. Above everything, be honest! Goodbye.”

Martin assumed that this discourteous injunction was in accord with ancient custom and refused to be daunted.

He went to the office of the department, where he was given a place at a table and a thick ledger to inspect. He added up column after column. If the figures came out right, his duty was to put ticks in the margin;

He had observed that all who on any ground other than that of revelation preserved their belief in a life after this also assumed a life before this, and he found such an assumption both natural and logical.

Only that is eternal which has always existed.

What has come into being will sometime cease to be: such was the law for everything existent.

It was considered necessary in order that young men might preserve their health and good spirits and that young women of the better classes might preserve their virtue.

The young men accordingly drank punch, visited girls of the streets, became fat and florid, and succeeded not only in putting up with this life as with a sort of wretched substitute, but it appealed to them to such a degree that often even after they were married they did not scorn to make excursions to their old haunts, which had become so endeared.

The girls of the better class meanwhile were allowed to preserve their virtue and beyond that were not asked for their opinion, but for some of them their precious jewel became at last too heavy to carry. …

However, he was in very good humor when he was up here last alone, without her. He amused himself as well as he could, and I fear he was a bit unfaithful.

“A curious bird, happiness.⁠ ⁠…”

During these thoughts Martin had begun again to write. He wrote slowly and half in play, with an intention here and there yet without exactly knowing whither he was tending.

So it was she then, Sigrid Tesch, who was to be Henrik’s bride.

“Yes,” said Henrik, “isn’t it inexplicable that one can dare go into such a thing as love?⁠ ⁠… And yet.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes,” said Martin, “and yet. …”

And Martin was not new, his clothes were not new, nor were his thoughts.

He thought and knew nothing great other than that which others had taught him⁠—various old gentlemen in England and France who were now for the most part dead.

If these thoughts still brought him any joy, it was mainly because the times had seemingly forgotten them long ago, as if they had been written in running water.

Von Heringslake, who had by now eaten his roasted apples and resumed his place at the table next to Martin, turned on his chair and surveyed him mournfully.

“You have no heart,” he said.

It was after three o’clock; here and there the men were gathering up their papers and going off. Martin got up, took his coat and hat, put out his green lamp, and departed. He had crape on his hat, for his mother was dead.

But now, afterwards, I have begun to misdoubt that such a conflagration may rather be a bonfire to amuse the spectators than any real enjoyment for the chief actor.

Fire is, in any case, distinctly not my element. If a real spring sun were ever to come into my life, I should go rotten at once from being unused to the climate.

”