Books: Mogens and Other Stories
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Jens Peter Jacobsen >> Mogens and Other Stories
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MOGENS AND OTHER STORIES
(1882)
By JENS PETER JACOBSEN
(1847-1885)
Translated from the Danish By ANNA GRABOW
(1921)
Reprint of the 1921 ed.,
which was issued as v. 2. of The Sea gull library.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
MOGENS
THE PLAGUE AT BERGAMO
THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ROSES
MRS. FONSS
INTRODUCTION
In the decade from 1870 to 1880 a new spirit was stirring in the
intellectual and literary world of Denmark. George Brandes was
delivering his lectures on the _Main Currents of Nineteenth Century
Literature_; from Norway came the deeply probing questionings of the
granitic Ibsen; from across the North Sea from England echoes of the
evolutionary theory and Darwinism. It was a time of controversy and
bitterness, of a conflict joined between the old and the new, both
going to extremes, in which nearly every one had a share. How many of
the works of that period are already out-worn, and how old-fashioned
the theories that were then so violently defended and attacked! Too
much logic, too much contention for its own sake, one might say, and
too little art.
This was the period when Jens Peter Jacobsen began to write, but he
stood aside from the conflict, content to be merely artist, a creator
of beauty and a seeker after truth, eager to bring into the realm of
literature "the eternal laws of nature, its glories, its riddles, its
miracles," as he once put it. That is why his work has retained its
living colors until to-day, without the least trace of fading.
There is in his work something of the passion for form and style that
one finds in Flaubert and Pater, but where they are often hard,
percussive, like a piano, he is soft and strong and intimate like a
violin on which he plays his reading of life. Such analogies, however,
have little significance, except that they indicate a unique and
powerful artistic personality.
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.
In a letter he once stated his belief that every book to be of real
value must embody the struggle of one or more persons against all
those things which try to keep one from existing in one's own way.
That is the fundamental ethos which runs through all of Jacobsen's
work. It is in Marie Grubbe, Niels Lyhne, Mogens, and the infinitely
tender Mrs. Fonss.
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."
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 thorn with the big,
white convolvulus, the stile, a little of the ryefield outside,
finally the councilor's flagpole on the hill, and then the sky.
It was stifling hot, the air was quivering with heat, and then it was
very quiet; the leaves were hanging from the trees as if asleep.
Nothing moved except the lady-birds and the nettles and a few withered
leaves that lay on the grass and rolled themselves up with sudden
little jerks as if they were shrinking from the sunbeams.
And then the man underneath the oak; he lay there gasping for air and
with a melancholy look stared helplessly towards the sky. He tried to
hum a tune, but gave it up; whistled, then gave that up too; turned
round, turned round again and let his eyes rest upon an old mole-hill,
that had become quite gray in the drought. Suddenly a small dark spot
appeared upon the light-gray mold, another, three, four, many, still
more, the entire mole-hill suddenly was quite dark-gray. The air was
filled with nothing but long, dark streaks, the leaves nodded and
swayed and there rose a murmur which turned into a hissing--rain was
pouring down. Everything gleamed, sparkled, spluttered. Leaves,
branches, trunks, everything shone with moisture; every little drop
that fell on earth, on grass, on the fence, on whatever it was, broke
and scattered in a thousand delicate pearls. Little drops hung for a
while and became big drops, trickled down elsewhere, joined with other
drops, formed small rivulets, disappeared into tiny furrows, ran into
big holes and out of small ones, sailed away laden with dust, chips of
wood and ragged bits of foliage, caused them to run aground, set them
afloat, whirled them round and again caused them to ground. Leaves,
which had been separated since they were in the bud, were reunited by
the flood; moss, that had almost vanished in the dryness, expanded and
became soft, crinkly, green and juicy; and gray lichens which nearly
had turned to snuff, spread their delicate ends, puffed up like
brocade and with a sheen like that of silk. The convolvuluses let
their white crowns be filled to the brim, drank healths to each other,
and emptied the water over the heads of the nettles. The fat black
wood-snails crawled forward on their stomachs with a will, and looked
approvingly towards the sky. And the man? The man was standing
bareheaded in the midst of the downpour, letting the drops revel in
his hair and brows, eyes, nose, mouth; he snapped his fingers at the
rain, lifted a foot now and again as if he were about to dance, shook
his head sometimes, when there was too much water in the hair, and
sang at the top of his voice without knowing what he was singing, so
pre-occupied was he with the rain:
Had I, oh had I a grandson, trala,
And a chest with heaps and heaps of gold,
Then very likely had I had a daughter, trala,
And house and home and meadows untold.
Had I, oh had I a daughter dear, trala,
And house and home and meadows untold,
Then very like had I had a sweetheart, trala.
And a chest with heaps and heaps of gold.
There he stood and sang in the rain, but yonder between the dark
hazelbushes the head of a little girl was peeping out. A long end of
her shawl of red silk had become entangled in a branch which projected
a little beyond the others, and from time to time a small hand went
forward and tugged at the end, but this had no other result, further
than to produce a little shower of rain from the branch and its
neighbors. The rest of the shawl lay close round the little girl's
head and hid half of the brow; it shaded the eyes, then turned
abruptly and became lost among the leaves, but reappeared in a big
rosette of folds underneath the girl's chin. The face of the little
girl looked very astonished, she was just about to laugh; the smile
already hovered in the eyes. Suddenly he, who stood there singing in
the midst of the downpour, took a few steps to the side, saw the red
shawl, the face, the big brown eyes, the astonished little open mouth;
instantly his position became awkward, in surprise he looked down
himself; but in the same moment a small cry was heard, the projecting
branch swayed violently, the red end of the shawl disappeared in a
flash, the girl's face disappeared, and there was a rustling and
rustling further and further away behind the hazelbushes. Then he ran.
He did not know why, he did not think at all. The gay mood, which the
rainstorm had called forth, welled up in him again, and he ran after
the face of the little girl. It did not enter his head that it was a
person he pursued. To him it was only the face of a little girl. He
ran, it rustled to the right, it rustled to the left, it rustled in
front, it rustled behind, he rustled, she rustled, and all these
sounds and the running itself excited him, and he cried: "Where are
you? Say cuckoo!" Nobody answered. When he heard his own voice, he
felt just a little uneasy, but he continued running; then a thought
came to him, only a single one, and he murmured as he kept on running:
"What am I going to say to her? What am I going to say to her?" He was
approaching a big bush, there she had hid herself, he could just see a
corner of her skirt. "What am I going to say to her? What am I going
to say to her?" he kept on murmuring while he ran. He was quite near
the bush, then turned abruptly, ran on still murmuring the same, came
out upon the open road, ran a distance, stopped abruptly and burst out
laughing, walked smiling quietly a few paces, then burst out laughing
loudly again, and did not cease laughing all the way along the hedge.
It was on a beautiful autumn day; the fall of the foliage was going on
apace and the path which led to the lake was quite covered with the
citron-yellow leaves from the elms and maples; here and there were
spots of a darker foliage. It was very pleasant, very clean to walk on
this tigerskin-carpet, and to watch the leaves fall down like snow; the
birch looked even lighter and more graceful with its branches almost
bare and the roan-tree was wonderful with its heavy scarlet cluster of
berries. And the sky was so blue, so blue, and the wood seemed so much
bigger, one could look so far between the trunks. And then of course
one could not help thinking that soon all this would be of the past.
Wood, field, sky, open air, and everything soon would have to give way
to the time of the lamps, the carpets, and the hyacinths. For this
reason the councilor from Cape Trafalgar and his daughter were walking
down to the lake, while their carriage stopped at the bailiff's.
The councilor was a friend of nature, nature was something quite
special, nature was one of the finest ornaments of existence. The
councilor patronized nature, he defended it against the artificial;
gardens were nothing but nature spoiled; but gardens laid out in
elaborate style were nature turned crazy. There was no style in
nature, providence had wisely made nature natural, nothing but
natural. Nature was that which was unrestrained, that which was
unspoiled. But with the fall of man civilization had come upon
mankind; now civilization had become a necessity; but it would have
been better, if it had not been thus. The state of nature was
something quite different, quite different. The councilor himself
would have had no objection to maintaining himself by going about in a
coat of lamb-skin and shooting hares and snipes and golden plovers and
grouse and haunches of venison and wild boars. No, the state of nature
really was like a gem, a perfect gem.
The councilor and his daughter walked down to the lake. For some time
already it had glimmered between the trees, but now when they turned
the corner where the big poplar stood, it lay quite open before them.
There it lay with large spaces of water clear as a mirror, with jagged
tongues of gray-blue rippled water, with streaks that were smooth and
streaks that were rippled, and the sunlight rested on the smooth
places and quivered in the ripples. It captured one's eye and drew it
across its surface, carried it along the shores, past slowly rounded
curves, past abruptly broken lines, and made it swing around the green
tongues of land; then it let go of one's glance and disappeared in
large bays, but it carried along the thought--Oh, to sail! Would it be
possible to hire boats here?
No, there were none, said a little fellow, who lived in the white
country-house near by, and stood at the shore skipping stones over the
surface of the water. Were there really no boats at all?
Yes, of course, there were some; there was the miller's, but it could
not be had; the miller would not permit it. Niels, the miller's son,
had nearly gotten a spanking when he had let it out the other day. It
was useless to think about it; but then there was the gentleman, who
lived with Nicolai, the forest-warden. He had a fine boat, one which
was black at the top and red at the bottom, and he lent it to each and
every one.
The councilor and his daughter went up to Nicolai's, the
forest-warden. At a short distance from the house they met a little
girl. She was Nicolai's, and they told her to run in and ask if they
might see the gentleman. She ran as if her life depended on it, ran
with both arms and legs, until she reached the door; there she placed
one leg on the high doorstep, fastened her garter, and then rushed
into the house. She reappeared immediately afterwards with two doors
ajar behind her and called long before she reached the threshold, that
the gentleman would be there in a moment; then she sat down on the
doorstep, leaned against the wall, and peered at the strangers from
underneath one of her arms.
The gentleman came, and proved to be a tall strongly-built man of some
twenty years. The councilor's daughter was a little startled, when she
recognized in him the man, who had sung during the rainstorm. But he
looked so strange and absentminded; quite obviously he had just been
reading a book, one could tell that from the expression in his eyes,
from his hair, from the abstracted way in which he managed his hands.
The councilor's daughter dropped him an exuberant courtesy and said
"Cuckoo," and laughed.
"Cuckoo?" asked the councilor. Why, it was the little girl's face! The
man went quite crimson, and tried to say something when the councilor
came with a question about the boat. Yes, it was at his service. But
who was going to do the rowing? Why, he of course, said the girl, and
paid no attention to what her father said about it; it was immaterial
whether it was a bother to the gentleman, for sometimes he himself did
not mind at all troubling other people. Then they went down to the
boat, and on the way explained things to the councilor. They stepped
into the boat, and were already a good ways out, before the girl had
settled herself comfortably and found time to talk.
"I suppose it was something very learned you were reading," she said,
"when I came and called cuckoo and fetched you out sailing?"
"Rowing, you mean. Something learned! It was the 'History of Sir
Peter with the Silver Key and the Beautiful Magelone.'"
"Who is that by?"
"By no one in particular. Books of that sort never are. 'Vigoleis
with the Golden Wheel' isn't by anybody either, neither is 'Bryde,
the Hunter.'"
"I have never heard of those titles before."
"Please move a little to the side, otherwise we will list.--Oh no,
that is quite likely, they aren't fine books at all; they are the sort
you buy from old women at fairs."
"That seems strange. Do you always read books of that kind?"
"Always? I don't read many books in the course of a year, and the kind
I really like the best are those that have Indians in them."
"But poetry? Oehlenschlager, Schiller, and the others?"
"Oh, of course I know them; we had a whole bookcase full of them at
home, and Miss Holm--my mother's companion--read them aloud after
lunch and in the evenings; but I can't say that I cared for them; I
don't like verse."
"Don't like verse? You said had, isn't your mother living any more?"
"No, neither is my father."
He said this with a rather sullen, hostile tone, and the conversation
halted for a time and made it possible to hear clearly the many little
sounds created by the movement of the boat through the water. The girl
broke the silence:
"Do you like paintings?"
"Altar-pieces? Oh, I don't know."
"Yes, or other pictures, landscapes for instance?"
"Do people paint those too? Of course they do, I know that very well."
"You are laughing at me?"
"I? Oh yes, one of us is doing that"
"But aren't you a student?"
"Student? Why should I be? No, I am nothing."
"But you must be something. You must do something?"
"But why?"
"Why, because--everybody does something!"
"Are you doing something?"
"Oh well, but you are not a lady."
"No, heaven be praised."
"Thank you."
He stopped rowing, drew the oars out of the water, looked her into the
face and asked:
"What do you mean by that?--No, don't be angry with me; I will tell
you something, I am a queer sort of person. You cannot understand it.
You think because I wear good clothes, I must be a fine man. My father
was a fine man; I have been told that he knew no end of things, and I
daresay he did, since he was a district-judge. I know nothing because
mother and I were all to each other, and I did not care to learn the
things they teach in the schools, and don't care about them now
either. Oh, you ought to have seen my mother; she was such a tiny wee
lady. When I was no older than thirteen I could carry her down into
the garden. She was so light; in recent years I would often carry her
on my arm through the whole garden and park. I can still see her in
her black gowns with the many wide laces. . . ."
He seized the oars and rowed violently. The councilor became a little
uneasy, when the water reached so high at the stern, and suggested,
that they had better see about getting home again; so back they went.
"Tell me," said the girl, when the violence of his rowing had decreased
a little. "Do you often go to town?"
"I have never been there."
"Never been there? And you only live twelve miles away?"
"I don't always live here, I live at all sorts of places since my
mother's death, but the coming winter I shall go to town to study
arithmetic."
"Mathematics?"
"No, timber," he said laughingly, "but that is something you don't
understand. I'll tell you, when I am of age I shall buy a sloop and
sail to Norway, and then I shall have to know how to figure on account
of the customs and clearance."
"Would you really like that?"
"Oh, it, is magnificent on the sea, there is such a feeling of being
alive in sailing--here we are at the landing-stage!"
He came alongside; the councilor and his daughter stepped ashore after
having made him promise to come and see them at Cape Trafalgar. Then
they returned to the bailiff's, while he again rowed out on the lake.
At the poplar they could still hear the sounds of the oars.
"Listen, Camilla," said the councilor, who had been out to lock the
outer door, "tell me," he said, extinguishing his hand-lamp with the
bit of his key, "was the rose they had at the Carlsens a Pompadour or
Maintenon?"
"Cendrillon," the daughter answered.
"That's right, so it was,--well, I suppose we had better see that we
get to bed now; good night, little girl, good night, and sleep well."
When Camilla had entered her room, she pulled up the blind, leaned her
brow against the cool pane, and hummed Elizabeth's song from "The
Fairy-hill." At sunset a light breeze had begun to blow and a few tiny,
white clouds, illumined by the moon, were driven towards Camilla. For
a long while she stood regarding them; her eye followed them from a
far distance, and she sang louder and louder as they drew nearer, kept
silent a few seconds while they disappeared above her, then sought
others, and followed them too. With a little sigh she pulled down the
blind. She went to the dressing table, rested her elbows against her
clasped hands and regarded her own picture in the mirror without
really seeing it.
She was thinking of a tall young man, who carried a very delicate,
tiny, blackdressed lady in his arms; she was thinking of a tall man,
who steered his small ship in between cliffs and rocks in a
devastating gale. She heard a whole conversation over again. She
blushed: Eugene Carlson might have thought that you were paying court
to him! With a little jealous association of ideas she continued: No
one would ever run after Clara in a wood in the rainstorm, she would
never have invited a stranger--literally asked him--to sail with her.
"Lady to her fingertips," Carlson had said of Clara; that really was a
reprimand for you, you peasant-girl Camilla! Then she undressed with
affected slowness, went to bed, took a small elegantly bound book from
the bookshelf near by and opened the first page. She read through a
short hand-written poem with a tired, bitter expression
on her face, then let the book drop to the floor and burst into tears;
afterwards she tenderly picked it up again, put it back in its place
and blew out the candle; lay there for a little while gazing
disconsolately at the moonlit blind, and finally went to sleep.
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