“ On the second day in the hospital, Niels felt more and more oppressed by the heavy atmosphere in the room, and his longing for fresh air was strangely intertwined in his mind with the desire to live. After all, there had been so much in life that was beautiful, he thought, as he remembered the fresh breeze along the shore at home, the cool soughing of the wind in the beech forests of Sjaelland, the pure mountain air of Clarens, and the evening zephyrs of Lake Garda. But when he began to think of human beings, his soul sickened again. ”
J. P. Jacobsen
Biographical details
Jens Peter Jacobsen (1847–1885), known as J. P. Jacobsen, was a Danish novelist, poet, and scientist who pioneered literary realism in Denmark and contributed to the Modern Breakthrough. His work delves into naturalism, psychological complexity, and existential challenges, as seen in Fru Marie Grubbe (1876), which examines female independence, and Niels Lyhne (1880), tracing an atheist’s disenchantment.
A translator of Darwin’s works, Jacobsen combined scientific precision with poetic expression, influencing figures like Rilke and Thomas Mann. His brief yet profound body of work remains a cornerstone of Scandinavian literature, bridging science, philosophy, and humanist exploration.
Quotes by J. P. Jacobsen
J. P. Jacobsen,
Mogens, and Other Stories
“ The stalks of oats bowed downward, and the young clover trembled on the stubble-fields, and the wheat rose and fell in heavy billows; the roofs groaned, the mill creaked, its wings swung about, the smoke was driven back into the chimneys, and the window-panes became covered with moisture. There was a swishing of wind in the gable-windows, in the poplars of the manor-house; the wind whistled through tattered bushes on the green hill of Bredbjerg. Mogens lay up there, and gazed out over the dark earth. The moon was beginning to acquire radiance, and mists were drifting down on the meadow. ”
J. P. Jacobsen,
Marie Grubbe, a Lady of the Seventeenth Century
“ Ulrik Frederik was very much in love, but not with the stormy infatuation he had felt when Sofie Urne ruled his heart. It was a pensive, amorous, almost wistful sentiment, rather than a fresh, ruddy passion. Marie had told him the story of her dreary childhood, and he liked to picture to himself her sufferings with something of the voluptuous pity that thrills a young monk when he fancies the beautiful white body of the female martyr bleeding on the sharp spikes of the torture-wheel. Sometimes he would be troubled with dark forebodings that an early death might tear her from his arms. ”
