Jan van Huysum's flower piece - Henrik Wergeland

The painting "Vase with Flowers" by the Dutch artist Jan van Huysum was in a private collection just outside Christiania (now Oslo) when the Norwegian firebrand and poet Henrik Wergeland saw it early in 1840. The picure is 'metachronic': flowers from various seasons have been placed together in a combination that could not exist in reality. Exactly the same description can be applied to Wergeland's extraordinary tour-de-force, "Jan van Huysum's Flower Piece". The poem adopts a free attitude towards historical events and people, refers to fictitious works of art by real painters, and zigzags between verse and prose in a glorious rejection of conventional literary form. It is writing inspired by and derived from imagination alone, anchored only loosely in reality.Far from indicating a lack of research or ignorance on Wergeland's part, the poem represents the triumph of romanticism: the sovereign right of the work of art to rise above what is contingent. It is an ekphrasis and a meta-poem. Its main theme is the terrible price of beauty, the high existential cost of art.Plants that grow in ashes and blood, nourished by crumbling bones and watered by tears - these are what produce the loveliest of flowers. Wergeland, who died young after a troubled life, knew what he was talking about, and "Jan van Huysum's Flower Piece" is perhaps his confession. It is a principal work of Nordic romanticism.