Niels Lyhne

Niels Lyhne

To the student of Jens Peter Jacobsens life and works, Niels Lyhne has a value apart from its greatness as literature from the fact that it is the book in which the author recorded his own spiritual struggles and embodied the faith on which he came, finally, to rest his soul in death as in life. It tells of his early dreams and ideals, his efforts to know and to achieve, his revolt against the dream-swathed dogmas in which people take refuge from harsh reality, and his brave acceptance of what he conceived to be the truth, however dreary and bitter. The person of the hero is marked for a self-portrait by the description, Niels Lyhne of Lnborggaard, who was twenty-three years old, walked with a slight stoop, had beautiful hands and small ears, and was a little timid,though friends of Jacobsens youth declare that a little timid was far from describing the excessive shyness from which he suffered. He himself would sometimes joke about his North Cimbrian heaviness, for like Niels Lyhne he was a native of Jutland, where the people are more sluggish than the sprightly islanders. Like him, again, he had a mother who kept alive her romantic spirit in rather humdrum, prosaic surroundings, and who instilled into her sons mind from childhood the idea that he was to be a poet. It is [vi] Jacobsens own youthful ideal speaking through Niels Lyhnes mouth when he says: MotherI am a poetreallythrough my whole soul. Dont imagine its childish dreams or dreams fed by vanity.... I shall be one of those who fight for the greatest, and I promise you that I shall not fail, that I shall always be faithful to you and to my gift. Nothing but the best shall be good enough. No compromise, mother! When I weigh what Ive done and feel that it isnt sterling, or when I hear that its got a crack or a flawinto the melting-pot it goes! Every single work must be my best! Niels Lyhne never wrote the poems he had fashioned in his mind. On the intellectual side of his nature he remained always a dreamer, floundering around in a slough of doubt and self-analysis. Edvard Brandes, in his introduction to J. P. Jacobsens letters,[A] calls attention to the place dreams occupy in this book, which begins with the childish fancies of the three boys, in which the mother dreams with her son of the future and of distant lands, while Edele dreams her love, and Bigum dreams his genius and his passionhe who is put into the novel as a tragic caricature of Niels Lyhne himself, as he goes about dreaming, in the midst of people and yet far away from them. In his youth, Niels Lyhne never attained to anything but dreams of great [vii] deeds and of love.... Read Niels Lyhne, and on almost every page you will find the word dream! Read about Niels Lyhnes mother who dreamed a thousand dreams of those sunlit regions, and was consumed with longing for this other and richer self, forgettingwhat is so easily forgottenthat even the fairest dreams and the deepest longings do not add an inch to the stature of the human soul, and who goes on dreaming because a life soberly lived, without the fair vice of dreams, was no life at all. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 55389
Author: Jacobsen, J. P. (Jens Peter)
Release Date: Aug 19, 2017
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Larsen, Hanna Astrup, 1873-1945