Mogens and Other Stories

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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.”

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. In those days both soon noticed that however much they might have changed during the course of the years, their hearts had forgotten nothing. The historical novel Fru Marie Grubbe (1876, Eng. trans.: Marie Grubbe: A Lady of the Seventeenth Century, 1917) is the first Danish treatment of a woman as a sexual creature. Based upon the life of an authentic 17th century Danish noblewoman, it charts her downfall from a member of the royal family to the wife of a ferryman, as a result of her desire for an independent and satisfying erotic life. In many ways the book anticipates the themes of D. H. Lawrence. To be of real value one 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.

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Mogens og andre Noveller and Niels Lyhne were both highly praised by Rainer Maria Rilke in his letters to Franz Xaver Kappus, translated as Letters to a Young Poet. Around this time, the discoveries of Charles Darwin began to fascinate him. Realizing that the work of Darwin was not well known in Denmark, he translated The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man into Danish. And now I will quote from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet": "Get hold of the little volume, "Six Stories," and in the first little volume begin the first story which is called "Mogens". A world will come over you, a happiness, a wealth, a world of inconceivable greatness. Live for awhile in these books, learn from them what seems to you worth learning, but above all, love them. This love will be repaid a thousandfold, and, whatever may become of your life will, I am convinced of it, run through the fabric of your being as one of the most important among all the threads of your experiences, disappointments and joys." 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] They care [for] each other very much and very deeply. They have the same dreams and the same care with the family, with the grandkids, with each other. They have fun together. This is something. They have fun together! Can you imagine? They [have been] together for more than 40 years and they [are] still having fun together,” Sá says.

Like many others, I read it because it is recommended by Rainer Maria Rilke in his book - Letters to a Young Poet. My kindle version had 4 stories and not 6 and I liked 'Mogens' the most and then 'Mrs Fonss'. Let me tell you that I did not like the book for the stories but I loved it for the way it has been written. Jacobsen's writing style is highly poetic and he creates a scene with such a great beauty and with so minute details that you can visualize the whole scene exactly and would feel as if you are actually living it. Unlike many of his colleagues Jacobsen did not take much interest in politics, his main interests being science and psychology. He is primarily an artist: his ability to create "paintings" and arabesque-like scenes both in his prose and his poetry (which has sometimes been criticized as "mannered") is one of the secrets of his art. It has been said that his novels are a presentation of various snapshots rather than tales of action. In My Love, intimacy doesn’t fade with age, rather it becomes more inosculated by the day. “I think that there’s going to be a lot of interesting similarities across the episodes of how people communicate love,” Elaine McMillion Sheldon, the director of the US-centered episode, tells the Guardian. Sheldon followed family farmers David and Ginger Isham of Vermont, who have been together for 59 years. During her time with the Ishams, she noticed an ingrained appreciation between the pair. “They certainly don’t have to agree on everything and they have such different ways of communicating,” she says. “But they both respect each other to the utmost level. I’ve never actually seen a couple that when each are speaking, they don’t talk over one another. When Ginger’s speaking, it’s like David hangs on every word, even if he’s heard that story a thousand times.” Standing, looking at Thora sleeping, "the last shadow of his past" disappears. The story ends with the two happy lovers disappearing into a field of grain, laughing with each other. Jacobsen vividly inserts us into this final scene through his powerful sense of natural imagery:But what joy can you take in a tree or a bush, if you don’t imagine that a living being dwells within it, that opens and closes the flowers and smooths the leaves? When you see a lake, a deep, clear lake, don’t you love it for this reason, that you imagine creatures living deep, deep below, that have their own joys and sorrows, that have their own strange life with strange yearnings?” (pg. 51-52).

He had changed, it is true, and he found it difficult to understand what he himself had been. But one never can wholly escape from one’s self, and what had been surely still was there. And now this innocent child had been given him to guard and protect. He had managed to get himself into the mire till over his head, and doubtless he would easily succeed in drawing her down into it too. No, no, it shall not be thus—no, she is to go on living her clear, bright girl’s life in spite of him. Friedrich Nietzsche realized that the blows to the moral framework of society would have serious repercussions. Nietzsche, when proclaiming that "God is dead," knew that without a replacement for religion the whole of humanity would descend into nihilism, pointing out that "our entire European morality" was "built upon [the Christian God]."[10] But far down the road the blue one turns round once more toward the balcony, and raising his barret calls: "No, you are happy!"Again I wish I was someone who could describe prose. If it is poetry to describe the world as if you could really live it. Intimate without suffocating. Gentle and harsh like a full body scrub from a mother you want to have outgrown. There was just something I really liked about these stories. It reminds me of my more fullfilling life moments of feeling like I actually get anything out of seeing people around me. That's what I like. And there's no way I can tell you about what it looked like and the smile on their face and the reflection it made on the other person who saw it and the walking after... Sighs. Sure wish I could. JPJ wrote it in this way that it was as easy as an unbidden expression. Yep, that's what I've got. Another major conflict that runs through Jacobsen's works—related to Mogens's expressions of loneliness "that you cannot come closer to this world"—is the feeling of isolation between the self—the individual—and society, a theme that would become ever more prevalent in European literature, especially that of Paris. Disturbing, compelling and atmospheric, it will terrify and enthral you in equal measure’ M W Craven Jacobsen commented in Contemporary Poets, “I don’t really value very highly statements from a poet in regard to her work. I can perhaps best introduce my own poetry by saying what I have not done, rather than defining what I have done. I have not involved my work with any clique, school, or other group: I have tried not to force any poem into an overall concept of how I write poetry when it should be left to create organically its own individual style; I have not been content to repeat what I have already accomplished or to establish any stance which would limit the flexibility of discovery. I have not confused technical innovation, however desirable, with poetic originality or intensity. I have not utilized poetry as a social or political lever. I have not conceded that any subject matter, any vocabulary, any approach, or any form is in itself necessarily unsuitable to the uses of poetry. I have not tried to establish a reputation on any grounds but those of my poetry.”