Mogens and Other Stories

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But far down the road the blue one turns round once more toward the balcony, and raising his barret calls: "No, you are happy!" 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: 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. The poems of Jacobsen are more influenced by late romanticism than his prose. Many of them are wistful, dreamy and melancholic but also naturalistic. Most important is the great obscure poem "Arabesque to a Hand-drawing by Michel Angelo" (about 1875) the idea of which seems to be that art is going to replace immortality as the meaning of life. They significantly inspired the Danish symbolist poetry of the 1890s.

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. Matt Wesolowski brilliantly depicts a desperate and disturbed corner of north-east England in which paranoia reigns and goodness is thwarted … an exceptional storyteller' Andrew Michael Hurley 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. Flynn, T. (2007). The new encyclopedia of unbelief. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. "Danish atheists include the authors...Jens Peter Jacobsen."

THE PLAGUE IN BERGAMO

a b Jensen, Morten Høi (2017). A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. pp.xviii. ISBN 978-0300218930.

Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Gay Science: Book V, Section 343," in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), 447-48. The stories are startling too. The title story, Mogens, is a long short story [is that an oxymoron?] almost a novella. A groom loses his beloved in a tragedy. It has such an impact on him that it reshapes his personality and his life. He becomes “…obsessed with the idea that he has been personally insulted by life.” Jacobsen is also highly respected for her short fiction, which is collected in four volumes, including A Walk with Raschid and Other Stories(1978) and Adios, Mr. Moxley(1986). Set in such diverse locales as Baltimore, the Caribbean islands, Mexico, and Morocco, these books feature powerful examinations of loneliness, betrayal, oppression, illness, and dishonesty. Jacobsen’s stories often end unresolved, leaving the reader to speculate about the future of her characters. Critics attribute the impact of Jacobsen’s short fiction to her skillful characterization and evocative prose. A Walk with Raschidwas deemed “first rate” by a Choicecritic who also wrote, “the stories, conventional in form, emphasize plot and character. They are both moving and disturbing; their impact is wonderful.” In a review of Adios, Mr. Moxley, Stephen Goodwin wrote that Jacobsen is certain of “what is and is not important, and why. These stories, consequently, have a bracing rigor about them, a keen independence, and the clean ring of truth.” It’s a relentless & original work of modern rural noir which beguiles & unnerves in equal measure. Matt Wesolowski is a major talent’ Eva Dolan

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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] One character, an uneducated man, talks of his upper class girlfriend’s acquaintances: “There’s not a thing between heaven and earth that they can’t finish off with a wave of the hand: this is base and that is noble; this is the stupidest thing since the creation of the world, and that is the cleverest; one thing is so ugly…They all know the same things and talk the same way, they all have the same words and the same opinions.” the central idea in 'Mogens' is that nature in itself is sufficient unto the spiritual wants of man, that no romantic 'additions' to it are necessary or desirable. Jacobsen here rigidly rejects, as intellectually dishonest and spiritually superfluous, the supernatural existences with which Romantic poets had invested in their nature."[4]

Enter elusive investigative journalist Scott King, whose podcast examinations of complicated cases have rivalled the success of Serial, with his concealed identity making him a cult internet figure. In a series of six interviews, King attempts to work out how the dynamics of a group of idle teenagers conspired with the sinister legends surrounding the fell to result in Jeffries’ mysterious death. And who’s to blame… This event sent Mogens into a period of despair and debauchery. He lost all belief in love and refused to let anyone get close. Those that tried, he would simply tolerate for a little while before running off, never letting them capture his heart. His days were dark and lonely: Jacobsen was an open atheist at a time in which that was a radical sentiment. His works are a testament to the struggle one goes through when trying to live in a world whose moral systems differ from one's own and the difficulty in finding a new place to center one's sense of meaning.

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 open wider; their senses are more subtle 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." - Jens Peter Jacobsen. The quote is not from this book. I stole it from the introduction. The stories are way, way better than this because it's like there is this secret hand shake for us sensitive types. We should have one so we can recognize each other. Maybe the sweaty palms would be a dead giveaway? Or the leaves in the hair and grass stains on the trousers from sitting outside too long. It could be the dark circles under the eyes from sleeping for way too long, and not enough. You'll know them from the look in the eye. Whatever, there's unrest. 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. And, if you were an author, how would you like to have these other folks writing blurbs for you? Sigmund Freud: …Jacobsen has made a profound impression on my heart. Hermann Hesse: …powerful imagination…huge talent. Thomas Mann: Jacobsen had the greatest influence on my style… 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. The Ægypan Press edition of this work contained four short stories: Mogens, The Plague in Bergamo, There Should Have Been Roses, and Mrs. Fonss.