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Christ
Before Pilate: An American Story
(Kristus
for Pilatus: en Norsk-Amerikansk Fortælling)
Waldemar Theodor Ager (1910)
(Presten Conrad Walther Welde) Aschehoug Publishing,
Kristiania (1912)
(Christ before Pilate: An American Story) Augsburg
Publishing House, Minneapolis (1924)
Translated by J. J. Skordalsvold
Perils
of idealism
The Norwegian poet Johan Sebastian Welhavn once summed up what
happens to an idealist:
Hvo
som gaar foran I en Alvorsdyst
Han seirer ei men falder
(He who takes the lead in battle
Will not conquer but perish)
According
to Ager biographer Einar Haugen, who summarized Christ before
Pilate in his ironically titled literary biography of Waldemar
Ager, Immigrant Idealist, Norwegian storytellers have
long been fond of the way in which idealists usually meet with
tragedy*, their ideals colliding with reality in tragic proportions.
Over in
the United States, Norwegian immigrant Waldemar Ager was no
exception. He runs the starry-eyed protagonist of this 1910
story through a mill, pouring in portions of pride, guilt, sin,
redemption, heart-broken mothers, factionalism, materialism
and even a sex scandal.
A
tale of two churches
Ager opens Christ before Pilate in a city not unlike
19th-century Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where there is a thriving
lumber trade and with it, a large community of Norwegian immigrants.
Conrad Walther Welde is the pastor of a large, well attended
Lutheran church in the town and third in his family line to
be a minister. A Christian idealist, he feels a constant, tacit
reproach from Reverend Mr. Mosevig, pastor of the smaller, shabbier
Lutheran church in town, from which Welde’s church attracts
much of its congregation. Mosevig found his calling after a
sinful and dissolute start, which he regards with particular
pride when compared to what he considers Welde’s high-church
airs.
Ager lays a broad mantle of guilt on Welde’s shoulders;
he feels guilty for his thriving parish, for the accident of
his birth, for the tradition of ministry in the family, for
his good looks and physical strength, for his beloved and absent
Maggie, for Mosevig’s threadbare, grumpy existence—for
nearly everything. And out of that sense of guilt, he goes out
of his way to make amends with people who lack his own good
fortune. In the end he is derided by everyone, even by the children
to whom he casually hands out candy.
Click for
large image of Munkácsy's
"Christ before Pilate"
Click
for large image of "Christ before Pilate" as it hangs
in the Ager House study today.
The continual
rebuff would be enough to discourage most people, but Welde
considers himself in lofty company. He has been studying a copy
of a painting hanging in his rectory, Munkáczy’s
“Christ before Pilate,” and identifies not only
with Christ standing there in judgment, but with Pilate. He
feels the two, as representatives of those with finer, more
altruistic sensibilities, should have stuck together against
the mob of purblind malcontents, in whom he imagines he sees
the distorted features of Mosevig.
Despite the martyr’s symbolism, much of the novel reads
like light satire from the pen of Garrison Keillor, known for
his depiction of the social and pious-minded cliques, cleavages
and squabbles common to churches and families in the Protestant
Midwest. But Ager strikes notes of deep pathos with, among other
things, a drunkard’s funeral and the plight of Mosevig’s
young daughter. And a protagonist who identifies with Christ
can not find his way to a happy resolution.
Outlandish
landmark
Kristus for Pilatus was Ager’s second novel after
I Strommen, penned in 1910, when the author was forty-one,
and a landmark novel for Norwegian-American literature. Within
a year, the novel was published again in Norway, by Aschehoug
publishing house—the first novel by a Norwegian-American
to be so honored. The title in Norway was changed to Presten
Conrad Walther Welde, apparently in order to avoid confusion
of the novel with a religious tract.
A lay minister in the states, a Mr. Overlid, made just that
mistake, however, and wrote to a Minneapolis paper, Folkebladet,
to caution readers to stay far away from the book. It “consists
of some invented popular tales written in a language that in
many instances oversteps the limits of common decency. It is
perhaps to be expected that W. Ager would publish a book of
made-up lies and comical sketches, with side thrusts at pastoral
and congregational work.”
Reprinting Overlid’s warning in Reform, Ager
found it worth a response. When Overlid complained that Ager
never really explained why Christ had to stand before Pilate,
Ager replied that he was not concerned with answering an elementary
lesson in every child’s religious instruction; he was
more interested in exploring the “raging desire of a good
many people to crucify anything that surpasses their own little
understanding and perception.”
A second aspect in which Christ before Pilate broke
ground was in its liberal use of anglicisms to reflect the natural
drift of immigrants’ language from that of the mother
country. Although Ager writes in relatively formal bokmål,
his characters occasionally refer to “store graesklaedte
Bluffer,” (great grass-clad bluffs), using the English
word for riverside bluffs rather than the Norwegian. In another
instance he refers to someone as an “en aabenbar Failure,”
(an obvious failure). Many other such instances are found, in
an era when formal written Norwegian differed little from Danish.
Reviews
come in
In the small Norwegian-American publishing community, hungry
for something other than pious church tracts, praise for new
literary output was often lavish and uncritical, although scattered
reviews of Kristus for Pilatus give the impression
of blind men feeling parts of the elephant. E. E. Løbeck,
a Minnesota state legislator and fellow temperance advocate,
liked the effort, but wrote, “I have never read a book
where so many people get their hides tanned.”
Another reviewer asserted that he’d never met a pastor
like Welde—most he knew were petrified theologians. A
new professor from St. Olaf College, Ole Edvart Rølvaag,
wrote to object that Ager’s depiction of a Norwegian Lutheran
congregation was “too dark,” but assured Ager that
“you have precisely the qualifications for describing
Norwegian-American cultural life.”
Reviews from Norway were generally favorable, summing it up
as a masterful depiction of Norwegian immigrant life, with universal
appeal. After noting his “delicate and intimately-made
observations,” the Copenhagen Extrabladet asked
“Who is Waldemar Ager?”
Writes Einar Haugen, “For all its objective weaknesses,
it is safe to say that the book not only launched Ager on a
career of literary importance, but also confirmed him in his
dream of a Norwegian-American literature, to which he himself
had offered the best and most effective testimony.”
Kristus for Pilatus won a 50-dollar prize in 1912 for
the year’s best Norwegian-American book. In the same year,
Ager became the first Eau Claire resident honored in Who’s
Who in America, and remained the sole Eau Claire resident
so honored for many years to come.
Kristus for Pilatus was eventually translated to English
by J. J. Skordalsvold and reissued by Augsburg publishing out
of Minneapolis in1924, as Christ before Pilate.
That version
is currently available in paperback from the Waldemar Ager Association.
Just contact Ev Krigsvold contact at (715) 835-871, and she
will help you with your purchase.
Excerpt: The Drunkard’s Funeral
[Pastor Welde] was getting ready for a funeral which was going
to take place that afternoon. The story of the deceased man was
very sad. He had been run over and killed while drunk. He had
lived the life of a profligate and had been a poor support for
his family. His old mother, who had come in from the country,
had, however, wished to have her son buried from the church, and
the minister had consented. [ . . .]
The pastor knelt by his office-chair and prayed God to give him
the strength and wisdom to speak the truth as it should be spoken—unvarnished
and in all its might.
When the large church-bell struck its dull tones on the afternoon
of a week-day and proclaimed that the earthly remains of some
fellow-being was to be carried to the cemetery, then there was
a bustle going on in many of the homes. Women dressed in black,
with hymnbooks and sometimes with a folded white handkerchief
about the book, hurried out the kitchen doors and waddled quietly
off by twos and threes. They seldom failed at funerals. There
was even a regular staff that never failed. They came prepared
to weep. The old minister had been especially fine at funerals.
When he addressed the mourners and spoke of the dear departed,
whose steps should no more be heard in this life, and the empty
place at the table, or in the cradle, if it was a child, and the
sad loss; then there was a copious weeping. He had a way of tearing
open the wounds that were still fresh so as to make them bleed
in the presence of the congregation. Every half-smothered cry
from the heart-broken mother or spouse brought out audible groans,
and the suppressed sobs gave, as it were, a necessary accompaniment
to his own voice, tearful as it was on such occasions.
Pastor Welde was different. He tried to make his sermon as short
as possible and tried to hold back when he touched the tender,
wounded hearts. He touched it so lightly that often the regular
weeping squad had no use for their handkerchiefs. Well, one could
not expect a young minister to have so much sympathy as the old
minister had, thought the women. But when they put their unused
handkerchiefs back in the bureau-drawer, it was with a blank feeling—as
if they had been cheated out of something which they were entitled
to. The
church was nearly filled with people when the minister arrived.
The friendly, old parish-clerk, anxious to be on the safe side,
told him again what kind of a man the deceased had been, and
he expressed a hope that the pastor would make use of the opportunity
to give a warning to the dead man’s comrades and others
like him. The pastor said it was his intention to do so.
Now the pall bearers came with the coffin. The mourners came
after. They were not many. The bell ceased tolling. It seemed
as if there was no ring in it, only the hard metal gave a sound.
The singing was not what it ought to be, either. It was merely
so much sound from so many vocal chords. The only thing which
sounded natural was the undertaker’s whispered directions
to the pall-bearers. The coffin was cheap, very cheap. The minister
noticed that.
At the sight of the cheap coffin a voice seemed to awaken within
him. He had his sermon ready. It seemed like a long thread that
he had to keep in order. “Drunkards shall not inherit
the kingdom of God.” That was the text. He clung to it.
“Such a plain coffin,” said the voice. “Drunkards
shall not inherit the kingdom of God—“ “Only
a couple of small wreaths—scarcely any flowers,”
said the voice. “Drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom
of God.” The minister forced himself to go on. “Here
we see the dreadful effect of sin.” – “They
must be very poor,” said the voice. [ . . .]
Welde turned half aside and closed his eyes. His sermon seemed
snatched away. In vain he tried to pick up the pieces. He could
have said a thousand things—if only the one woman would
stop her coughing and the other cease her weeping—and
if only the little girls had not been there—“to
hear you proclaim that their father is in hell,” said
the voice within him.
The pastor shrank from his task. He could probably have said
what he had intended to say if the coffin had been very expensive
and had been carried in by big-bellied, red-nosed saloon-keepers,
he thought.
The singing had ceased.
Mr. Welde stepped forward and offered a short, almost indistinct
prayer. When he was through, he stood a moment and stared helplessly
before him. Some small pieces of paper containing his notes
were crushed together in the hollow of his hand. He opened the
Bible and read, as it seemed, a chapter at random. It was about
Jesus who raised the widow’s son of Nain from the dead.
He read with an effort that was still more marked when he began
to preach.
“We
are gathered here,” he said, “to bury one of our
Norwegian countrymen, who was run over—or that we, I mean,
had the misfortune to run over, so we are in a way to blame
for his lying here in this cheap coffin, with only a few flowers--.
I for my part regret that I was not thoughtful enough to send
some flowers and—well, it is customary, when one has done
nothing for the person while he was living to send some beautiful
flowers to pace on the coffin. I should have brought a large
wreath, for I did not do a single thing for this man while he
still lived.”
The stillness of death reigned in the church. The old parish-clerk
was bringing a glass of water to the widow, who had a bad cough;
he stopped halfway, holding the glass in his hand.
Welde warmed to his subject. To us [Jesus] had said: “Judge
not!” When he did judge, he used a measure different from
that of men. The one who stood lowest would be bid to go up
higher. The one who was highest told to take the lowest place,
and the one who gave the least gave most. In a case like this
it was best for each and every one to repeat the Publican’s
humble prayer: “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”
Pastor
Welde grew eloquent. The old woman’s eyes shone with a
strange light as she turned them to the speaker. The widow sat
a little more erect, she wiped the tear-stained faces of the
children, and hushed the smallest one, who began to cry. The
pastor closed with an earnest warning to all to be prepared—not
to judge others, but to be judged themselves; for we must all
appear before the judgment seat of God; before the Father who
seeth in secret and rewardeth openly. Our greatest concern should
be to be ready when our time comes and the shades of night are
drawing nigh.
When the coffin was opened, Welde went down to see the corpse.
It nearly gave him a shock when he saw the hard features and
the broken nose. When the people had passed around the coffin
and the two women went over to it, the old woman put her bony
hand under the chin of her dead boy and stroked his cheek. “Goodbye,
my boy, good-bye. You must meet me at the gate. I’ll not
be long in coming.” The pastor had to turn away. The widow
wept silently. She had to be helped out. The two little girls
cried, and the little one that she carried on her arm also cried.
There were not many that went to the cemetery; but when the
church had emptied its contents into the street and the black
stream had filtered out to where it came from; then there was
a lot of talk about the minister’s sermon and about him
who lay in the coffin with the drunkard’s broken nose.
Here would have been an opportunity to give the drunkards a
proper warning—and it turned out almost the opposite,
one might say. Still he had spoken better this time than he
had two weeks ago, when one of the elders of the congregation
was buried.
How different from the old minister!
—Lizbeth
Ager, January 2008, Chetek, Wisconsin
*
For a man of the cloth’s opinion on how the idealism of
Waldemar Ager brought him to a melancholy end, read Clarence
Kilde’s master’s thesis: Dark
Decade: the Declining Years of Waldemar Ager.
Sources:
Ager,
Waldemar: Christ before Pilate. Translated by J.
J. Skordalsvold, Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, Minn.
1924
Haugen,
Einar: Immigrant Idealist: A literary biography of Waldemar
Ager, Norwegian American. The Norwegian American Historical
Association, Northfield, Minn., 1989
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