They
give utterance to a few polite phrases, charitably accounting
for the deed by the easy attribution of insanity to the king,
and the curtain falls.
It may well be imagined that "The King" made a stir in
literary and social circles, and quite noticeably fluttered the
dovecotes of conventionality and conservatism. Such plain
speaking and such deadly earnestness of conviction were indeed
far removed from the idyllic simplicity of the peasant tales
and from the poetical reconstructions of the legendary past.
Eight years later, Bjornson prefaced a new edition of this
work with a series of reflections upon "Intellectual Freedom"
that constitute one of the most vigorous and remarkable examples
of his serious prose. The central ideas of his political faith
are embodied in the following sentences from this preface:--
"Intellectual Freedom. Why is not attention called over and
over again to the fact that for the great peoples, who have so
many compensating interests, the free commerce of ideas is one
condition of life among many others; while for us, the small
peoples, it is absolutely indispensable. A people numerically
large may attain to ways of thought and enterprise that no
political censure can reduce to a minimum; but under narrower
conditions it may easily come about that the whole people will
fall asleep.
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