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.

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 PLAGUE IN BERGAMO

In the Plague in Bergamo, lascivious townspeople, having lost all moral compass while awaiting their deaths, take on a roving band of flagellants who espouse an interesting twist on Christianity.

If you’re looking for something from Denmark or turn-of-the century (19th to 20th) then Mogens and Other Stories is an excellent choice. Not only is it a good book, but it’s short, the stories are varied and as I said you can get the thing for free.Lccn 72004452 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL8205480M Openlibrary_edition 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. Jacobson was a botanist as well as a poet. "She was a botanist so I believed her." - Lee in Sam Shepard's True West. And a poet, it goes without saying.

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. There was a love, pure and noble, without any coarse, earthly passion; yes, there was, and if there was not, there was going to be one. Passion spoiled everything, and it was very ugly and unhuman. How he hated everything in human nature that was not tender and pure, fine and gentle! He had been subjugated, weighed down, tormented, by this ugly and powerful force; it had lain in his eyes and ears, it had poisoned all his thoughts. 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. Thora is unable to understand how someone can love nature without imagining a supernatural element behind it: A Difficult Death: The Life and Work of Jens Peter Jacobsen by Morten Høi Jensen, 2017, Yale University Press (978-0300218930)The story of "Mogens" itself is more than the revolutionary style of its prose. It is a touching look at the life of Man in the face of much pain and suffering. The main character, Mogens, lost both his parents before his adulthood, a bitter loss whose sting is felt throughout the story. He meets and falls in love with a beautiful young woman named Camilla. They are engaged and on the brink of a wonderfully happy life together. One evening, Mogens realizes there are flames coming from the street of Camilla's house. He runs, grabs a ladder, and hurries into the burning building to see if Camilla had made it out. Pinned to the floor by a beam, he is forced to watch the following horrible, poignant scene:[12]