Pelle the Conqueror by Martin Andersen Nexø (great novels to read .TXT) 📕

to Pelle in a feeling of elation, a desire to expand and burst all boundaries. He walked with his face toward the opening day, and had a feeling of unconquerable power. Whence this feeling came he knew not, but it was there. He felt himself as something immense that was shut into a small space and would blow up the world if it were let loose. He walked on quickly. Above his head rose the first lark. Slowly the earth drew from its face the wonderful veil of rest and mystery that was night.

Perhaps the feeling of strength came from his having taken possession of his spirit and commanding a view of the world. The world had no limits, but neither had his powers; the force that could throw him out of his course did not exist. In his own footfall he heard the whole future; the Movement would soon be concluded when it had taken in the fact that the whole thing must be included. There was still a little difficulty; from that side they still made it a condition for their cooperation that Pelle should demand a public recognition of his good character. Pelle laughed and raised his face to the morning breeze which came like a cold shiver before the sunrise. Outsider! Yes, there was some truth in it. He did not belong to the existing state of things; he desired no civil rights there. That he was outside was his stamp of nobility; his relations to the future were contained in that fact. He had begun the fight as one of the lowest of the people, and as such he would triumph. When he rose there should no longer be a pariah caste.

As he walked along with the night behind him and his face to the light, he seemed to have just entered into youth with everything before him⁠—everything to look forward to! And yet he seemed to have existed since the morning of time, so thoroughly did he know the world of darkness that he left. Was not man a wonderful being, both in his power to shrink up and become nothing, and in his power to expand and fill everything? He now understood Uncle Kalle’s smile on all occasions; he had armed himself with it in order that life should not draw too deep furrows in his gentle nature. The poor man had been obliged to dull himself; he would simply bleed to death if he gave himself up to stern reality. The dullness had been like a hard shell that protected the poor; and now they came with their heart quite safe in spite of everything. They could very well lead when times were good.

Pelle had always a vague feeling of being chosen. Even as a child it made him look with courage in the face of a hard world, and filled his bare limbs with elasticity. Poor and naked he came into the world, apparently without a gift of any kind; and yet he came as a bright promise to the elderly, work-bowed Father Lasse. Light radiated from him, insignificant and ordinary though he was; God had given him the spark, the old man always said, and he always looked upon the boy as a little miracle of heaven. The boy Pelle wondered a little at it, but was happy in his father’s pleasure. He himself knew some very different miracles at that time, for instance the calf of the fair with two heads, and the lamb with eight legs. He had his own demands to make of life’s wonderful riches, and was not struck with surprise at a very ordinary, big-eared urchin such as one might see any day.

And now he was just showing that Father Lasse had been right. The greatest miracles were in himself⁠—Pelle, who resembled hundreds of millions of other workmen, and had never yet had more than just enough for his food. Man was really the most wonderful of all. Was he not himself, in all his commonplace naturalness, like a luminous spark, sprung from the huge anvil of divine thought? He could send out his inquiring thought to the uttermost borders of space, and back to the dawn of time. And this all-embracing power seemed to have proceeded from nothing, like God Himself! The mere fact that he, who made so much noise, had to go to prison in order to comprehend the great object of things, was a marvel! There must have been far-reaching plans deposited in him, since he shut himself in.

When he looked out over the rising, he felt himself to be facing a world-thought with extraordinarily long sight. The common people, without knowing it, had been for centuries preparing themselves for an entry into a new world; the migration of the masses would not be stopped until they had reached their goal. A law which they did not even know themselves, and could not enter into, led them the right way; and Pelle was not afraid. At the back of his unwearied labor with the great problem of the age was the recognition that he was one of those on whom the nation laid the responsibility for the future; but he was never in doubt as to the aim, nor the means. During the great lockout the foreseeing had feared the impossibility of leading all these crowds into the fire. And then the whole thing had opened out of itself quite naturally, from an apparently tiny cause to a steadily ordered battle all along the line. The world had never before heard a call so great as that which he and his followers brought forward! It meant nothing less than the triumph of goodness! He was not fond of using great words, but at the bottom of his heart he was convinced that everything bad originated in want and misery. Distrust and selfishness came from misusage; they were man’s defence against extortion. And the extortion came from insecure conditions, from reminders of