Jens Peter Jacobsen Quotes

"There is no God, and man is his prophet," replied Niels bitterly and rather sadly.
"Exactly," scoffed Hjerrild. "After all, atheism is unspeakably tame. Its end and aim is nothing but a disillusioned humanity. The belief in a God who rules everything and judges everything is humanity's last great illusion, and when that is gone, what then? Then you are wiser; but richer, happier? I can't see it."
"But don't you see," exclaimed Niels Lyhne, "that on the day when men are free to exult and say: 'There is no God!' on that day a new heaven and a new earth will be created as if by magic. Then and not till then will heaven be a free infinite space instead of a spying, threatening eye. Then the earth will be ours and we the earth's, when the dim world of bliss or damnation beyond has burst like a bubble. The earth will be our true mother country, the home of our hearts, where we dwell, not as strangers and wayfarers a short time, but all our time. Think what intensity it will give to life, when everything must be concentrated within it and nothing left for a hereafter. The immense stream of love that is now rising up to the God of men's faith will bend to earth again and flow lovingly among all those beautiful human virtues with which we have endowed and embellished the godhead in order to make it worthy of our love. Goodness, justice, wisdom — who can name them all? Don't you see what nobility it will give men when they are free to live their life and die their death, without fear of hell or hope of heaven, but fearing themselves, hoping for themselves? How their consciences will grow, and what a strength it will give them when inactive repentance and humility cannot atone any more, when no forgiveness is possible except to redeem with good what they sinned with evil."

It cannot be otherwise, for it is bitterly disheartening to see that which your inmost soul believes to be right and true, to see this Truth reviled and struck in the face by the meanest camp follower in the victorious army, to hear her called vile names, while you can do nothing at all except to love her even more faithfully, kneel to her in your heart with even deeper adoration, and see her beautiful face as radiantly beautiful as ever and as full of majesty, shining with the same immortal light, no matter how much dust is whirled up around her white forehead, no matter how thickly the poisonous fog closes around her halo. It is bitterly disheartening, and your soul suffers injury inevitably, for it is so easy to hate until your heart is weary, or to draw around you the cold shadows of contempt, or to be dulled by pain and let the world go its own way. — Of course, if there is that within you which makes you not choose the easiest way nor evade the whole matter, but walk upright with all your faculties tense and all your sympathies wide awake, taking the blows and stings of defeat as the scourge falls on your back again and again, and still keep your bleeding hope from dropping, while you listen for the distant rumblings that presage revolution, and look for the faint, distant dawn that some day — some time, perhaps ... If you have that within you! — but don't try it, Lyhne. Imagine what the life of such a man must be, if he is to be true to himself.

I don't understand you. I can't treat myself like a hurdy-gurdy from which I can take out an unpopular piece and put in a tune that everybody is whistling.

Ma c'erano anche dei momenti in cui la solitudine della sua grandezza gli si appesantiva addosso e l'opprimeva. Quante volte, ahimè, dopo essere stato ad ascoltare se stesso in religioso silenzio per ore e ore, e dopo essere di nuovo tornato a vedere e a udire la vita intorno a sé e sentendola estranea a sé, miserabile e fuggevole, s'era sentito uguale a quel monaco che, nel bosco del convento, aveva udito soltanto un trillo dell'uccello del paradiso e, ritornatovi, trovò ch'erano passati cent'anni! E se il monaco era solo in mezzo alla gente ignota che viveva fra le tombe note, quanto più solo era lui, i cui veri contemporanei non erano ancor nati!

I am not offended by your love, Mr.Bigum, but I condemn it. You have done what so many others do. People close their eyes to real life, they don't want to hear the 'no' it shouts at their wishes, they want to forget the deep chasm it shows them between their longing and what they long for. They want to realize their dreams. But life doesn't take dreams into account, there is not a single obstacle that can be dreamed away from reality, and so in the end they lie there wailing at the chasm, which has not changed but is the same as it has always been.

... Man's love is a course of drill. And we submit to it; even those whom no one loves submit—contemptible weaklings that we are!"
She rose from her recumbent position and looked threateningly across at Niels.
"If I were beautiful—oh, I mean bewitchingly beautiful, lovelier than any woman that ever lived, so that all who saw me were smitten, as if by magic, with the anguish of unquenchable love—how I should compel them by the power of my beauty to adore, not their traditional, bloodless ideal, but me, myself, as I lived and moved, every single inch of me, every corner of my being and every spark of my nature!

You have done what so many people do: they close their eyes to the realities and stop their ears when life cries 'No' to their wishes. They want to forget the deep chasm fate has placed between them and the object of their ardent longing. They want their dream to be fulfilled. But life takes no account of dreams. There isn't a single obstacle that can be dreamed out of the world, and in the end we lie there crying at the edge of the chasm, which hasn't changed and is just where it always was. But we have changed, for we have let our dreams goad all our thoughts and spur all our longings to the very highest tension. The chasm is no narrower, and everything in us cries out with longing to reach the other side, but no, always no, never anything else. If we had only kept a watch on ourselves in time! But now it is too late, now we are unhappy.

For he has faith enough, he feels, if he were really to delve into himself, faith enough to move mountains, but he cannot manage to put his back into it. Once in a while the need to create wells up in him, the longing to see a part of himself set free in a work by him, and for days at a time his being can be tensed with joyous, titanic efforts to mold the clay into his Adam. But he is never able to shape him into a semblance of his image, he does not have enough stamina to maintain the self-discipline that it demands. It make take weeks for him to give up the work, but he does give it up, and irritably asks himself why he should keep on: what more does he have to gain? He has enjoyed the pleasure of creation, the tedium of upbringing remains, to nurse, nurture, and support entirely - why? for whom? He is no pelican, he says. But whatever he says, he is still ill at ease and feels that he has not done justice to the expectations he has of himself. It doesn’t help him to confront these expectations and try to doubt that their demands on him are justified. He is faced with a choice, and he must choose; for life is such that when the first youth is gone, sooner or later - depending on the natural disposition of the person - sooner or later a day dawns when resignation comes to you like a seducer and tempts you, and you have to say farewell to the impossible and accept it.

He was weary of himself, of cold ideas and brain dreams. Life a poem? Not when you went about forever poetizing about your own life instead of living it. How innocuous it all was, and empty, empty, empty! This chasing after yourself, craftily observing your own tracks — in a circle, of course.

This sham diving into the stream of life while all the time you sat angling after yourself, fishing yourself up in one curious disguise or another! If he could only be overwhelmed by something — life, love, passion — so that he could no longer shape it into poems, but had to let it shape him!

Hvor ofte havde han ikke, næsten ydmygt, forundret sig over denne sin Sjæls vidunderlige Rigdom og over sin Aands magtsikre Guddomstryghed, thi Dagene kunde finde ham dømmende Verden og de Ting, som er i Verden, fra helt modsatte Standpunkter og finde ham betragtende dem, Verden og dens Ting, gjennem Forudsætninger, der var saa forskjellige fra hinanden som Nat fra Morgen, uden at dog disse valgte Standpunkter og valgte Forudsætninger, som han havde gjort til sine, nogensinde, selv blot et Sekund, gjorde ham til deres, ligesaalidt som Guden, der har taget Tyrens eller Svanens Skikkelse paa sig, et eneste øjeblik bliver Tyr eller Svane og ophører at være Gud.

But when he had served the god faithfully for eleven days, it sometimes happened that other powers gained the ascendancy over him, and he would be seized with a violent craving for the coarse enjoyment of gross pleasures. Then he would plunge into dissipations, feverish with that human thirst for self-destruction which yearns, when the blood burns as hotly as blood can burn, for degradation, perverseness, filth, and smut, with precisely the measure of strength possessed by another equally human longing, the longing to keep one's self greater than one's self and purer.

In these moments there was but little that was rough and coarse enough for him, and when they had passed, it was long before he could regain his balance; for in truth these excesses were not natural to him; he was too healthy for them, too little poisoned by brooding. In a sense, they came as a rebound from his devotion to the higher spirits of his art, almost like a revenge, as though his nature had been violated by the pursuit of those idealistic aims which choice, aided by circumstances, had made his own.

Happiness usually makes people good, and Niels strove earnestly to make their lives so beautiful, noble, and useful that there should never be any pause in the growth of their souls toward the human ideal in which they both believed. But he no longer thought of carrying the standard of his ideal out into the world; he was content to follow it. Once in a while, he would take out some of his old attempts, and then he would always wonder if it was really he who had written these pretty, artistic tilings.

Det, mente hun, var hendes egentlige Væsen, det, som de rette Omgivelser vilde gjøre hende til, og hun drømte tusinde Drømme om hine sollyse Egne og fortæredes af Længsel efter sit rette, rige Jeg, og glemte, hvad der ligger saa nær at glemme, at selv de fagreste Drømme, selv de dybeste Længsler ikke lægger en eneste Tomme til Menneskeaandens Vækst.

Parents, sisters and brothers, neighbors and friends — none of them ever said a word that was worth listening to. Their thoughts never rose above their land and their business; their eyes never sought anything beyond the conditions and affairs that were right before them.
But the poems! They teemed with new ideas and profound truths about life in the great outside world, where grief was black, and joy was red; they glowed with images, foamed and sparkled with rhythm and rhyme. They were all about young girls, and the girls were noble and beautiful — how noble and beautiful they never knew themselves. Their hearts and their love meant more than the wealth of all the earth; men bore them up in their hands, lifted them high in the sunshine of joy, honored and worshipped them, and were delighted to share with them their thoughts and plans, their triumphs and renown. They would even say that these same fortunate girls had inspired all the plans and achieved all the triumphs.
Why might not she herself be such a girl? They were thus and so — and they never knew it themselves. How was she to know what she really was? And the poets all said very plainly that this was life, and that it was not life to sit and sew, work about the house, and make stupid calls.

People close their eyes to real life, they don't want to hear the 'no' it shouts at their wishes, they want to forget the deep chasm it shows them between their longing and what they long for. They want to realize their dreams. But life doesn't take dreams into account, there is not a single obstacle that can be dreamed away from reality, and so in the end they lie there wailing at the chasm, which has not changed but is the same as it has always been. But they themselves have changed for with their dreams they have goaded all their thoughts and inflamed their passions to the highest pitch. Yet the chasm has not grown narrower, and everything in them longs to cross over it. But no, always no, never anything else. And only if they had watched out for themselves in time, but now it is too late, they are unhappy (pp 31)