Jens Peter Jacobsen Quotes

To learn is as beautiful as to live.
Do not be afraid to lose yourself in minds greater than your own. Do not sit brooding anxiously over your own individuality or shut yourself out from influences that draw you powerfully for fear that they may sweep you along and submerge your innermost pet peculiarities in their mighty surge. Never fear. The individuality that can be lost in the sifting and reshaping of a healthy development is only a flaw; it is a branch grown in the dark, which is distinctive only so long as it retains its sickly pallor. And it is by this sound growth in yourself that you must live. Only the sound can grow great.

He had reached the point where he had to choose, for when first youth is past — early or late in accordance with each person's individuality — then, early or late, dawns the day when Resignation comes to us as a temptress, luring us to forego the impossible and be content. And Resignation has much in her favor; for how often have not the idealistic aspirations of youth been beaten back, its enthusiasms been shamed, its hopes laid waste! The ideals, the fair and beautiful, have lost nothing of their radiance, but they no longer walk here among us as in the early days of our youth.

Jacobsen once jestingly compared himself to the sloth (det beromte Dovendyr Ai-ar) which needed two years to climb
to the top o f a tree. It was necessary for him to withdraw absolutely from the world and to retire, as it were, within the character he wished to portray before he could set pen to paper.

Hanna Astrup Larsen (Introduction to Marie Grubbe, New York 1917)

It is only when we have heard the door of destiny slam shut that we begin to feel the iron-cold talons of certainty digging into our breast, gathering slowly, slowly around our heart, and fastening their clutches upon the fine thread of hope on which our world of happiness hangs: then the thread is severed; then all that it held falls and is shattered; then the shriek of despair sounds through the emptiness.

In doubt, no one despairs.

A woman can't be pure, and isn't supposed to be — how could she? It is against nature! And do you think God made her to be pure? Answer me! — No, and ten thousand times no. Then why this lunacy! Why fling us up to the stars with one hand, when you have to pull us down with the other! Can't you let us walk the earth by your side, one human being with another, and nothing more at all? It is impossible for us to step firmly on the prose of life when you blind us with your poetic will-o'-the-wisps. Let us alone! For God's sake, let us alone!

She dreamed a thousand dreams of those sunlit regions and was consumed with longing for this other and richer self, forgetting — what is so easily forgotten — that even the fairest dreams and the deepest longings do not add an inch to the stature of the human soul.

One after another of his old friends and comrades fell back and vanished from his ken, for he lost interest in them when he saw less and less difference between these men of the opposition and that majority which they attacked. Everything seemed to him to melt together in one great hostile mass of boredom.

It seemed to Niels that he understood everything: the hardness in her, the dreary humility, and her coarseness, which was the bitterest drop in the whole goblet. By degrees he came to see also that his delicacy and deferential homage must oppress and irritate her, because a woman who has been hurled from the purple couch of her dreams to the pavement below will quickly resent any attempt to spread carpets over the stones which she longs to feel in all their hardness. In her first despair she is not satisfied to tread the path with her feet: she is determined to crawl it on her knees, choosing the way that is steepest and roughest. She desires no helping hand and will not lift her head — let it sink down with its own heaviness, so that she may put her face to the ground and taste the dust with her tongue!

Just so! I can take joy in every leaf, every twig, every beam of light, every shadow. There isn’t a hill so barren, nor a turf-pit so square, nor a road so monotonous, that I cannot for a moment fall in love with it.

After all, he was afraid in his inmost heart of this mighty thing called passion. This storm-wind sweeping away everything settled and authorized and acquired in humanity as if it were dead leaves. He did not like it! This roaring flame squandering itself in its own smoke — no, he wanted to burn slowly.

And yet this living on at half speed in quiet waters, always in sight of land, seemed so paltry. Would that the storm and waves would come! If he only knew how, his sails should fly to the yards for a merry run over the Spanish Main of life! Farewell to the slowly dripping days, farewell to the pleasant little hours! Peace be with you, you dull moods that have to be furbished with poetry before you can shine, you lukewarm emotions that have to be clothed in warm dreams and yet freeze to death! May you go to your own place! I am headed for a coast where sentiments twine themselves like luxuriant vines around every fibre of the heart — a rank forest; for every vine that withers, twenty are in blossom; for each one that blossoms, a hundred are in bud.

Oh, that I were there!

Det var en Foraarsaften, Solen skinnede saa rød ind i Stuen, den var lige ved at gaa ned. Vingerne af Møllen deroppe paa Volden drev deres Skygger over Ruderne og Værelsets Vægge, kommende, svindende, i ensformig Veklsen af Skumring og Lys: - een stund Skumring, to Stunder Lys.

Ved Vinduet sad Niels Lyhne og stirred gjennem Voldens bronzemørke Ælme mod Skyernes Brand. Han havde været udenfor Byen, under nyudsprungne Bøge, mellem grønne Rugmarker, over blomsterbrogede Enge; Alting havde været saa lyst og let, Himlen saa blaa, Sundet saa blankt og de spadserende Damer saa sælsomt smukke. Syngende var han gaaet henad Skovstien, saa blev Ordene borte i hans Sang, saa lagde Rhytmen sig, saa døde Tonerne bort og Stilheden kom som en Svimmelhed over ham. Han lukkede Øjnene, men endda mærkede han, hvordan Lyset ligesom drak sig ind i ham og flimred gjennem alle Nerver, medens den køligt berusende Luft ved hvert Aandedrag sendte det sært betagne Blod med vildere og vildere Kraft gjennem de i Magtesløshed dirrende Aarer, og der kom ham en Følelse paa, som om alt det Myldrende, Bristende, Spirende, Ynglende i Vaarnaturen om ham, mystisk søgte at samle sig i ham i eet stort, stort Raab; og han tørsted efter dette Raab, lytted til hans Lytten tog form af en uklar, svulmende Længsel.

Nu, han sad der ved Vinduet, vaagnede Længslen igjen.

What can it be, do you think? A hidden nerve that’s given way? Or something we have failed in or sinned against in ourselves, perhaps — who knows? A soul is such a fragile thing, and no one knows how far the soul extends in a human being. We ought to be good to ourselves —

I don't know how it is, but I am so tired of commonplace happiness and commonplace goals.