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Jacobsen has made a more profound impression on my heart than any other reading in recent years. (Sigmund Freud)
Product Description
Niels Lyhne is an aspiring poet, torn between romanticism and realism, faith and reason. Through his relationships with six women—including his young widowed aunt, a seductive free spirit, and his passionate cousin who marries his friend—his search for purpose becomes a yielding to disillusionment. One of Danish literature's greatest novels, with nods to Kierkegaard and a protagonist some critics have compared to Hamlet, Jacobsen's masterpiece has at its center a young man who faces the anguish of the human condition but cannot find comfort in the Christian faith. Tiina Nunnally's award-winning translation offers readers a chance to experience anew a writer deeply revered by Rilke, Ibsen, Mann, and Hesse.
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She had the black shining eyes of the Blid family, with fine, straight eyebrows; she had their strongly contoured nose, their powerful jaw and full lips. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
She had the black shining eyes of the Blid family, with fine, straight eyebrows; she had their strongly contoured nose, their powerful jaw and full lips. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I had never heard of Jacobsen when i was recommended this book, but the two quotes on the back are from Rilke and Hesse... so off to a good start!
As an enthusiast (not an expert), the best i can do to convey his writing style is this: you know how some authors will spend 3 pages describing every tiny detail of say, a view across the countryside? Well Jacobsen does this but with human thoughts, moods, and subconscious reactions to things...
I could therefore understand that many might not like his works - I mean, you've got to like that style to begin with to then enjoy it regardless of what is being illuminated.
But if you do, i think you'll find his insight into the human psyche quite astounding. There is such poetry in it all, too.
And it is all wrapped up in the journey of Niels Lyhne - from a young boy through to adulthood - exploring the threats to his happiness and peace of mind through love, faith, philosophy and psychology.
Hope you enjoy as i did!
As an enthusiast (not an expert), the best i can do to convey his writing style is this: you know how some authors will spend 3 pages describing every tiny detail of say, a view across the countryside? Well Jacobsen does this but with human thoughts, moods, and subconscious reactions to things...
I could therefore understand that many might not like his works - I mean, you've got to like that style to begin with to then enjoy it regardless of what is being illuminated.
But if you do, i think you'll find his insight into the human psyche quite astounding. There is such poetry in it all, too.
And it is all wrapped up in the journey of Niels Lyhne - from a young boy through to adulthood - exploring the threats to his happiness and peace of mind through love, faith, philosophy and psychology.
Hope you enjoy as i did!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A glorious account of a young thinker's exploration of life through his failure to become a poet and his engagement with a series of attractive women and their deaths and leavings (each in their very different ways). Life then; but relative to the period, an extremely modern view - no-one gives the answer - dreams wither rather than crush - the ideals are all between "inverted commas".
Jacobsen is a first-rate writer and the translating is good: if JPJ wrote 'feet of feathers' one can only suppose this was on 'purpose'.
Sometimes for the contemporary reader the language is arther Wolff-like - rather rich and indulgent and perhaps the suddenness of the reactions of the characters is overcooked, without the extremism of Strindberg and Dostoevsky (where of course this 'works'). Stuill those are elevated models and this is well, well worth reading.
Jacobsen is a first-rate writer and the translating is good: if JPJ wrote 'feet of feathers' one can only suppose this was on 'purpose'.
Sometimes for the contemporary reader the language is arther Wolff-like - rather rich and indulgent and perhaps the suddenness of the reactions of the characters is overcooked, without the extremism of Strindberg and Dostoevsky (where of course this 'works'). Stuill those are elevated models and this is well, well worth reading.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
38 of 38 people found the following review helpful
Rebuttal to Independent Publisher
2 Feb 1999
Format:Paperback
This is not a reprint, but a new translation by acclaimed translator and author Tiina Nunnally of arguably the finest novel ever to come out of Scandinavia. It had a huge influence on European writers, especially in Germany, where teenage boys would carry around a Danish dictionary in the vain hope of reading Jacobsen in the original, according to Stefan Zweig, and where the novel has been translated at least 6 times. Read it and see where Thomas Mann got his ideas for "Tonio Kröger." Jacobsen, who was a botanist as well as the translator of Darwin into Danish, fills the novel with flowers and plants, and he knows whereof he speaks. Dive headlong into this examination of creativity vs. lethargy, atheism vs. faith, and the seemingly infinite ability of the hero to misunderstand women!
20 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Bad translation, buy the Penguin Classic!
4 Nov 2007
Format:Paperback
It's a major drawback for publishers that Amazon's system links the reviews and promotional material for all versions of a book indiscriminately, so that an old, flawed, bowdlerized, and misleading translation such as this one from 1919 by Hanna Astrup Larsen is allowed to profit from the comments made for the new translation by Tiina Nunnally published by Fjord Press in 1990. With Fjord's demise this definitive and superior translation is now available from Penguin Classics -- buy it instead!
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
The Atheist's Progress
28 Jan 2009
Format:Paperback
When I was reading this book I had a variety of reactions. First, I was struck by the quality of the thinking and the prose. Second, I was seriously seriously annoyed by the endless Romantic Angst in the book. I really really wanted Niels Lyhne to go out, get a job, and stop whining. That second point inflected my entire reading of the book.
As I closed it, I thought: "I should have read this when I was 18."
And I still kind of think that. The point of view is more immediately relevant to someone just in the throes of figuring out The Meaning of Life.
But now, as I go through my notes and passages from the book, I believe that I did Jacobsen (and the novel) a real disservice. There's something more complicated going on here than the typical Sorrows of Young Werther Sturm und Drang.
I've now, in retrospect, come to see Niels Lynhe as a kind of rewriting of the Book of Job. Only, in the case of our protagonist, it is his atheism which is tested by life. It's an interesting idea, but also a confusing one-- the whole notion of being tested implies agency of some kind (and Lyhne certainly does seem to lead a complicated and cursed life) which throws the whole question of his atheism into a different light. Even the remarks of his friend as he lay dying seem to me to bring into doubt where Jacobsen sat in this debate. The idea that God rewards steadfastness rather than a particular point of view? I feel humbled by my own arrogance that I had reading the book, as I consider now that there is something quite subtle being questioned-- a very delicate point that I'm not sure that I understand even now.
So here's the value for me in doing these reviews and taking notes-- if I'd just left my experience of the book once I put it down, I believe that I would have missed part of the value in the reading experience. I'd recommend it in the end.
(I have no complaints about either the Penguin Classics edition or the Nunnally translation. The introduction wasn't particularly informative, but at least it wasn't tiresome either.)
As I closed it, I thought: "I should have read this when I was 18."
And I still kind of think that. The point of view is more immediately relevant to someone just in the throes of figuring out The Meaning of Life.
But now, as I go through my notes and passages from the book, I believe that I did Jacobsen (and the novel) a real disservice. There's something more complicated going on here than the typical Sorrows of Young Werther Sturm und Drang.
I've now, in retrospect, come to see Niels Lynhe as a kind of rewriting of the Book of Job. Only, in the case of our protagonist, it is his atheism which is tested by life. It's an interesting idea, but also a confusing one-- the whole notion of being tested implies agency of some kind (and Lyhne certainly does seem to lead a complicated and cursed life) which throws the whole question of his atheism into a different light. Even the remarks of his friend as he lay dying seem to me to bring into doubt where Jacobsen sat in this debate. The idea that God rewards steadfastness rather than a particular point of view? I feel humbled by my own arrogance that I had reading the book, as I consider now that there is something quite subtle being questioned-- a very delicate point that I'm not sure that I understand even now.
So here's the value for me in doing these reviews and taking notes-- if I'd just left my experience of the book once I put it down, I believe that I would have missed part of the value in the reading experience. I'd recommend it in the end.
(I have no complaints about either the Penguin Classics edition or the Nunnally translation. The introduction wasn't particularly informative, but at least it wasn't tiresome either.)
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