ABSTRACT
The life of Arne Garborg was as full of change and turmoil as that of the characters he wrote about in his many novels, plays, and verse. His journalistic writing was polemical, and his early fiction was in the prevailing naturalist-realist vein, preoccupied with problems of daily life, with injustice, with hypocrisy and morality. Garborg’s rejection of realism in favor of an exalted lyricism and his fascination with the mystical side of nature were representative of what came to be known as Neo-Romanticism. The sense of mysticism in nature pervades the poems of Haugtussa. This mysticism is embodied by the various spirits which inhabit the countryside – the trolls and elves which the clairvoyant heroine perceives and understands, and with whom she has the power to communicate. Arne Garborg published Haugtussa in May 1895, and Grieg must have acquired a copy immediately, for by 14 June he had virtually completed twelve songs for treble voice and piano.
