Jerusalem by Selma Lagerlöf


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Page 2

"Jerusalem" begins with the history of a wealthy and powerful
farmer family, the Ingmarssons of Ingmar Farm, and develops to
include the whole parish life with its varied farmer types, its
pastor, schoolmaster, shopkeeper, and innkeeper. The romance
portrays the religious revival introduced by a practical mystic
from Chicago which leads many families to sell their ancestral
homesteads and--in the last chapter of this volume--to emigrate in
a body to the Holy Land.

Truth is stranger than fiction. "Jerusalem" is founded upon the
historic event of a religious pilgrimage from Dalecarlia in the
last century. The writer of this introduction had opportunity to
confirm this fact some years ago when he visited the parish in
question, and saw the abandoned farmsteads as well as homes to
which some of the Jerusalem-farers had returned. And more than
this, I had an experience of my own which seemed to reflect this
spirit of religious ecstasy. On my way to the inn toward midnight
I met a cyclist wearing a blue jersey, and on the breast, instead
of a college letter, was woven a yellow cross. On meeting me the
cyclist dismounted and insisted on shouting me the way. When we
came to the inn I offered him a krona. My guide smiled as though he
was possessed by a beatific vision. "No! I will not take the money,
but the gentleman will buy my bicycle!" As I expressed my
astonishment at this request, he smiled again confidently and
replied. "In a vision last night the Lord appeared unto me and said
that I should meet at midnight a stranger at the cross-roads
speaking an unknown tongue and 'the stranger will buy thy
bicycle!'"

The novel is opened by that favourite device of Selma Lagerl�f, the
monologue, through which she pries into the very soul of her
characters, in this case Ingmar, son of Ingmar, of Ingmar Farm.
Ingmar's monologue at the plow is a subtle portrayal of an heroic
battle between the forces of conscience and desire. Although this
prelude may be too subjective and involved to be readily digested
by readers unfamiliar with the Swedish author's method they will
soon follow with intent interest into those pages that describe how
Ingmar met at the prison door the girl for whose infanticide he was
ethically responsible. He brings her back apparently to face
disgrace and to blot the fair scutcheon of the Ingmarssons, but
actually to earn the respect of the whole community voiced in the
declaration of the Dean: "Now, Mother Martha, you can be proud of
Ingmar! It's plain now he belongs to the old stock; so we must
begin to call him '_Big_ Ingmar.'"

In the course of the book we are introduced to two generations of
Ingmars, and their love stories are quite as compelling as the
religious motives of the book. Forever unforgettable is the scene
of the auction where Ingmar's son renounces his beloved Gertrude
and betroths himself to another in order to keep the old estate
from passing out of the hands of the Ingmars. Thus both of these
heroes in our eyes "play yellow." On the other hand they have our
sympathy, and the reader is tossed about by the alternate undertow
of the strong currents which control the conduct of this farming
folk. Sometimes they obey only their own unerring instincts, as in
that vivid situation of the shy, departing suitor when Karin
Ingmarsson suddenly breaks through convention and publicly over the
coffee cups declares herself betrothed. The book is a succession of
these brilliantly portrayed situations that clutch at the
heartstrings--the meetings in the mission house, the reconciliation
scene when Ingmar's battered watch is handed to the man he felt on
his deathbed he had wronged, the dance on the night of the "wild
hunt," the shipwreck, Gertrude's renunciation of her lover for her
religion, the brother who buys the old farmstead so that his
brother's wife may have a home if she should ever return from the
Holy Land. As for the closing pages that describe the departure of
the Jerusalem-farers, they are difficult to read aloud without a
sob and a lump in the throat.

The underlying spiritual action of "Jerusalem" is the conflict of
idealism with that impulse which is deep rooted in the rural
communities of the old world, the love of home and the home soil.
It is a virtue unfortunately too dimly appreciated in restless
America, though felt in some measure in the old communities of
Massachusetts and Virginia, and Quaker homesteads near Philadelphia.
Among the peasant aristocracy of Dalecarlia attachment to the
homestead is life itself. In "Jerusalem" this emotion is pitted on
the one hand against religion, on the other against _love_. Hearts
are broken in the struggle _which_ permits Karin to sacrifice the
Ingmar Farm to obey the inner voice that summons her on her
religious pilgrimage, and _which_ leads her brother, on the other
hand, to abandon the girl of his heart and his life's personal
happiness in order to win back the farm.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 29th Mar 2024, 7:36