Mogens and Other Stories | Page 2

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."
He himself was one of these, and in this passage his own art and
personality is described better than could be done in thousands of
words of commentary.
Jens Peter Jacobsen was born in the little town of Thisted in Jutland, on
April 7, 1847. In 1868 he matriculated at the University of Copenhagen,
where he displayed a remarkable talent for science, winning the gold
medal of the university with a dissertation on Seaweeds. He definitely
chose science as a career, and was among the first in Scandinavia to
recognize the importance of Darwin. He translated the Origin of
Species and Descent of Man into Danish. In 1872 while collecting
plants he contracted tuberculosis, and as a consequence, was compelled
to give up his scientific career. This was not as great a sacrifice, as it
may seem, for he had long been undecided whether to choose science
or literature as his life work.
The remainder of his short life--he died April 30, 1885--was one of
passionate devotion to literature and a constant struggle with ill health.
The greater part of this period was spent in his native town of Thisted,
but an advance royalty from his publisher enabled him to visit the
South of Europe. His journey was interrupted at Florence by a severe
hemorrhage.
He lived simply, unobtrusively, bravely. His method of work was slow
and laborious. He shunned the literary circles of the capital with their
countless intrusions and interruptions, because he knew that the time
allotted him to do his work was short. "When life has sentenced you to
suffer," he has written in Niels Lyhne, "the sentence is neither a fancy
nor a threat, but you are dragged to the rack, and you are tortured, and
there is no marvelous rescue at the last moment," and in this book there
is also a corollary, "It is on the healthy in you you must live, it is the
healthy that becomes great." The realization of the former has given,
perhaps, a subdued tone to his canvasses; the recognition of the other
has kept out of them weakness or self-pity.
Under the encouragement of George Brandes his novel Marie Grubbe
was begun in 1873, and published in 1876. His other novel Niels Lyhne
appeared in 1880. Excluding his early scientific works, these two books
together with a collection of short stories, Mogens and Other Tales,

published in 1882, and a posthumous volume of poems, constitute
Jacobsen's literary testament. The present volume contains Mogens, the
story with which he made his literary debut, and other characteristic
stories.
The physical measure of Jacobsen's accomplishment was not great, but
it was an important milestone in northern literature. It is hardly an
exaggeration to say that in so far as Scandinavia is concerned he
created a new method of literary approach and a new artistic prose.
There is scarcely a writer in these countries, since 1880, with any
pretension toward literary expression who has not directly or indirectly
come under Jacobsen's influence.
O. F. THEIS.

MOGENS

MOGENS
SUMMER it was; in the middle of the day; in a corner of the enclosure.
Immediately in front of it stood an old oaktree, of whose trunk one
might say, that it agonized in despair because of the lack of harmony
between its fresh yellowish foliage and its black and gnarled branches;
they resembled most of all grossly misdrawn old gothic arabesques.
Behind the oak was a luxuriant thicket of hazel with dark sheenless
leaves, which were so dense, that neither trunk nor branches could be
seen. Above the hazel rose two straight, joyous maple-trees with gayly
indented leaves, red stems and long dangling clusters of green fruit.
Behind the maples came the forest--a green evenly rounded slope,
where birds went out and in as elves in a grasshill.
All this you could see if you came wandering along the path through
the fields beyond the fence. If, however, you were lying in the shadow
of the oak with your back against the trunk and looking the other
way--and there was a some one, who did that--then you would see first
your own legs, then a little spot of short, vigorous grass, next a large
cluster of dark nettles, then the hedge of