Mogens and Other Stories

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She did not feel herself younger, but it seemed to her as if a fountain of tears that had been obstructed and dammed had burst open again and begun to flow. There was great happiness and relief in crying, and these tears gave her a feeling of richness; it was as if she had become more precious, and everything had become more precious to her—in short it was a feeling of youth after all. A wonderful illustration of this conflict, as well as Jacobsen's feeling of awe in the midst of nature, comes towards the end of "Mogens" when the title character is speaking to his future bride, Thora. Thora has a wonderful imagination and sees fantastic colonies of elves and other imaginary creatures acting as nature's transformative agents. She asks Mogens—after he expresses his disbelief in this type of fantasy—if perhaps he doesn't love nature, to which he responds: Like many others, I read it because it is recommended by Rainer Maria Rilke in his book - Letters to a Young Poet. My kindle version had 4 stories and not 6 and I liked 'Mogens' the most and then 'Mrs Fonss'. Let me tell you that I did not like the book for the stories but I loved it for the way it has been written. Jacobsen's writing style is highly poetic and he creates a scene with such a great beauty and with so minute details that you can visualize the whole scene exactly and would feel as if you are actually living it. Jacobsen was a Danish author (1847-1885) who sometimes took a month to write a couple of paragraphs. He insisted that the whole nature of the title story, “Mogens,” would change if the three opening words were switched to the usual “It was summer” instead of “Summer it was…” Disturbing, compelling and atmospheric, it will terrify and enthral you in equal measure’ M W Craven

It’s a relentless & original work of modern rural noir which beguiles & unnerves in equal measure. Matt Wesolowski is a major talent’ Eva Dolan Jacobsen's study of botany gave him a unique view of the world around him. During his childhood and time at the University, Jacobsen spent hours observing plants, wading in bogs to study algae, or cataloging new species of newly discovered plant life. For Jacobsen, there was a mystery simply in the natural world itself without the need for allegory or the supernatural elements often imposed during the Romantic period. Nature itself, observed fully and without recourse to embellishment, was sufficient as Alrik Gustafson writes of "Mogens:" Coustillas. Pierre ed. London and the Life of Literature in Late Victorian England: the Diary of George Gissing, Novelist, Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978, pp.156-7 and 211-2. Jacobsen is more than a mere stylist. The art of writers who are too consciously that is a sort of decorative representation of life, a formal composition, not a plastic composition. One element particularly characteristic of Jacobsen is his accuracy of observation and minuteness of detail welded with a deep and intimate understanding of the human heart. His characters are not studied tissue by tissue as under a scientist’s microscope, rather they are built up living cell by living cell out of the author’s experience and imagination. He shows how they are conditioned and modified by their physical being, their inheritance and environment, Through each of his senses he lets impressions from without pour into him. He harmonizes them with a passionate desire for beauty into marvelously plastic figures and moods. A style which grows thus organically from within is style out of richness; the other is style out of poverty.

Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference In fact, it was this dual passion for the scientific study of Nature and his poetic longing to express "Nature's eternal laws" that formed his unique writing style. Jacobsen comes at a time where the Romantic era of metaphoric and extravagant depictions of nature had run its course and the era of Realism was longed for. The historical novel Fru Marie Grubbe (1876, Eng. trans.: Marie Grubbe: A Lady of the Seventeenth Century, 1917) is the first Danish treatment of a woman as a sexual creature. Based upon the life of an authentic 17th century Danish noblewoman, it charts her downfall from a member of the royal family to the wife of a ferryman, as a result of her desire for an independent and satisfying erotic life. In many ways the book anticipates the themes of D. H. Lawrence. Mogens og andre Noveller and Niels Lyhne were both highly praised by Rainer Maria Rilke in his letters to Franz Xaver Kappus, translated as Letters to a Young Poet. [4] Poetry [ edit ]

The historical novel Fru Marie Grubbe (1876, Eng. transl.: Marie Grubbe: A Lady of the Seventeenth Century 1917) is the first Danish treatment of a woman as a sexual creature. Based upon the life of a 17th-century Danish noblewoman, it charts her downfall from a member of the royal family to the wife of a ferryman, as a result of her desire for an independent and satisfying erotic life. In many ways the book anticipates the themes of D. H. Lawrence.

In those days both soon noticed that however much they might have changed during the course of the years, their hearts had forgotten nothing.

Overshadowed by the later generations that were influenced by him, Jacobsen's works have fallen out of our literary consciousness. To counter this, I am launching my AU Series on "Weaving Jens Peter Jacobsen into the Fabric of Literary Consciousness" with this essay. He went from believing "in everything in which it was possible to believe" to descending into complete nihilism, refuting every bit of happiness in one's life as "a huge, rotting lie." Looking down from the mountaintop he states:Jens Peter Jacobsen writes like no other author I have read from his respective time period or country – not that I can think of another Dane that I’ve ever read. Yes there is great charactization and an interesting look at the time & place in which he lives but it’s the level of detail to which he is dedicated in describing things that really sets him apart. Atmosphere and having the place or setting be a character, if not the main character, is what really sets his work apart. They are types of the kind he has described in the following passage: “Know ye not that there is here in this world a secret confraternity, which one might call the Company of Melancholiacs? That people there are who by natural constitution have been given a different nature and disposition than the others; that have a larger heart and a swifter blood, that wish and demand more, have stronger desires and a yearning which is wilder and more ardent than that of the common herd. They are fleet as children over whose birth good fairies have presided; their eyes are opened wider; their senses are more subtile in all their perceptions. The gladness and joy of life, they drink with the roots of their heart, the while the others merely grasp them with coarse hands.” Firstly, everyone should be going to the Gutenberg Project to get loads of free e-books in a variety of formats. And if they’re not in a format you need it isn’t too hard to convert – thems the joys of the internet. Secondly, Mogens and Other Stories is a collection of novellas and short stories, that while not a normal thing for me to read was an excellent change. And yes I went through the entire book in a day but sometimes that happens.

During his lifetime, Jacobsen was, like Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche, a figure that inspired new ways of thinking about what it means to be human. He began as a botanist who was the first person to translate Darwin's works into Danish and, through a series of articles, illuminated Darwin's ideas to a budding Scandinavian generation. Conflicted between science and poetry, he eventually published his short story "Mogens" in a literary journal, taking Denmark—and later Europe—by storm with his pioneering of a new style of natural realism and the confrontation with what it means to be modern. Quoted in Jensen, A Difficult Death, xxii-xxiii in the translation by M. D. Herter of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, Norton (New York: W. W. Norton, 1954), 24-25. Then you really mean, that the whole affair is not so bad, that there is something bold in it, something in a sense eminently plebeian, which pleases your liking for democracy.” Mogens og andre Noveller and Niels Lyhne were both highly praised by Rainer Maria Rilke in his letters to Franz Xaver Kappus, translated as Letters to a Young Poet. Oh, more than enough sometimes—much too much! And when shape and color and movement are so lovely and so fleeting and a strange world lies behind all this and lives and rejoices and desires and can express all this in voice and song, then you feels so lonely, that you cannot come closer to this world, and life grows lusterless and burdensome."[6]

INTRODUCTION

Ibsen said of Ghosts that "in none of my plays is the author so completely absent as in this last one". Nine years later, when he was 61, Ibsen met an 18-year-old Viennese girl and fell in love. She asked him to live with her; he at first agreed but, crippled by guilt and fear of scandal (and perhaps impotence as well), he put an end to the relationship. Emilie became the "May sun of a September life" and the inspiration for the character of Hedda Gabler, even if Ibsen himself contributed many of her characteristics with his fear of scandal and ridicule, his apparent repulsion with the reality of sex, and his yearning for an emotional freedom. Endlessly inventive and with literary thrills a-plenty, Matt Wesolowski is boldly carving his own uniquely dark niche in fiction’ Benjamin Myers With the scientific and cultural developments at the end of the nineteenth century, such as the "radical shift in humanity's place in the universe" along with "the decline of religious authority, the rise of revolutionary politics, and the advent of evolutionary science," there was an existential reaction grasping at finding meaning in a life who's moral systems had been shattered.[8] They care [for] each other very much and very deeply. They have the same dreams and the same care with the family, with the grandkids, with each other. They have fun together. This is something. They have fun together! Can you imagine? They [have been] together for more than 40 years and they [are] still having fun together,” Sá says. What Goes without Saying: Collected Stories of Josephine Jacobsen, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.