Pictures of Sweden: Ch. 11 - Diurgaerden

Ch. 11 - Diurgaerden

Diurgaerden is a large piece of land made into a garden by our Lord
himself. Come with us over there. We are still in the city, but before
the palace lie the broad hewn stone stairs, leading down to the water,
where the Dalkulls--i.e., the Dalecarlian women--stand and ring with
metal bells. On board! here are boats enough to choose amongst, all
with wheels, which the Dalkulls turn. In coarse white linen, red
stockings, with green heels, and singularly thick-soled shoes, with
the upper-leather right up the shin-bone, stands the Dalkull; she has
ornamented the boat, that now shoots away, with green branches. Houses
and streets rise and unfold themselves; churches and gardens start
forth; they stand on S�dermalm high above the tops of the ships'
masts. The scenery reminds one of the Bhosphorus and Pera; the motley
dress of the Dalkulls is quite Oriental--and listen! the wind bears
melancholy Skalmeie tones out to us. Two poor Dalecarlians are playing
music on the quay; they are the same drawn-out, melancholy tones that
are played by the Bulgarian musicians in the streets of Pera. We stept
out, and are in the Diurgarden.

What a crowd of equipages pass in rows through the broad avenue! and
what a throng of well-dressed pedestrians of all classes! One thinks
of the garden of the Villa Borghese, when, at the time of the wine
feast, the Roman people and strangers take the air there. We are in
the Borghese garden; we are by the Bosphorus, and yet far in the
North. The pine-tree rises large and free; the birch droops its
branches, as the weeping willow alone has power to do--and what
magnificently grand oaks! The pine-trees themselves are mighty trees,
beautiful to the painter's eye; splendid green grass plains lie
stretched before us, and the fiord rolls its green, deep waters close
past, as if it were a river. Large ships with swelling sails, the one
high above the other, steamers and boats, come and go in varied
numbers.

Come! let us up to Bystr�m's villa; it lies on the stony cliff up
there, where the large oak-trees stand in their stubborn grandeur: we
see from here the whole tripartite city, S�dermalm, Nordmalm and the
island with that huge palace. It is delightful, the building here on
this rock, and the building stands, and that almost entirely of
marble, a "Casa santa d'Italia," as if borne through the air here in
the North. The walls within are painted in the Pompeian style, but
heavy: there is nothing genial. Round about stand large marble figures
by Bystr�m, which have not, however, the soul of antiquity. Madonna is
encumbered by her heavy marble drapery, the girl with the
flower-garland is an ugly young thing, and on seeing Hero with the
weeping Cupid, one thinks of a _pose_ arranged by a ballet-master.

Let us, however, see what is pretty. The little Cupid-seller is
pretty, and the stone is made as flexible as life in the waists of the
bathing-women. One of them, as she steps out, feels the water with her
feet, and we feel, with her, a sensation that the water is cold. The
coolness of the marble-hall realizes this feeling. Let us go out into
the sunshine, and up to the neighbouring cliff, which rises above the
mansions and houses. Here the wild roses shoot forth from the crevices
in the rock; the sunbeams fall prettily between the splendid pines and
the graceful birches, upon the high grass before the colossal bronze
bust of Bellmann. This place was the favourite one of that
Scandinavian improvisatore. Here he lay in the grass, composed and
sang his anacreontic songs, and here, in the summer-time, his annual
festival is held. We will raise his altar here in the red evening
sunlight. It is a flaming bowl, raised high on the jolly tun, and it
is wreathed with roses. Morits tries his hunting-horn, that which was
Oberon's horn in the inn-parlour, and everything danced, from Ulla to
"Mutter paa Toppen:"[M] they stamped with their feet and clapped their
hands, and clinked the pewter lid of the ale-tankard; "hej kara Sj�l!
fukta din aske!" (Hey! dear soul! moisten your clay).

[Footnote M: The landlady of an alehouse.]

A Teniers' picture became animated, and still lives in song. Morits
blows the horn on Bellmann's place around the flowing bowl, and whole
crowds dance in a circle, young and old; the carriages too, horses and
waggons, filled bottles and clattering tankards: the Bellmann
dithyrambic clangs melodiously; humour and low life, sadness--and
amongst others, about

   "----hur �gat gret
     Ved de Cypresser, som str�ddes."[N]
[Footnote N: How the eyes wept by the cypresses that were strewn
around.]

Painter, seize thy brush and palette and paint the Maenade--but not
her who treads the winebag, whilst her hair flutters in the wind, and
she sings ecstatic songs. No, but the Maenade that ascends from
Bellmann's steaming bowl is the Punch's Anadyomene--she, with the high
heels to the red shoes, with rosettes on her gown and with fluttering
veil and mantilla--fluttering, far too fluttering! She plucks the rose
of poetry from her breast and sets it in the ale-can's spout; clinks
with the lid, sings about the clang of the hunting horn, about
breeches and old shoes and all manner of stuff. Yet we are sensible
that he is a true poet; we see two human eyes shining, that announce
to us the human heart's sadness and hope.

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