I had this short book on my TBR pile for years and finally read it a few years ago after that blurb caught my eye. A few weeks ago I happened to be reading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and I saw that his detailed comments about Jacobsen were even more enthusiastic: As every interview unveils a new revelation, you’ll be forced to work out for yourself how Tom Jeffries died, and who is telling the truth. With the scientific and cultural developments at the end of the nineteenth century, such as the "radical shift in humanity's place in the universe" along with "the decline of religious authority, the rise of revolutionary politics, and the advent of evolutionary science," there was an existential reaction grasping at finding meaning in a life who's moral systems had been shattered.[8] But far down the road the blue one turns round once more toward the balcony, and raising his barret calls: "No, you are happy!"

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."

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Jacobsen's study of botany gave him a unique view of the world around him. During his childhood and time at the University, Jacobsen spent hours observing plants, wading in bogs to study algae, or cataloging new species of newly discovered plant life. For Jacobsen, there was a mystery simply in the natural world itself without the need for allegory or the supernatural elements often imposed during the Romantic period. Nature itself, observed fully and without recourse to embellishment, was sufficient as Alrik Gustafson writes of "Mogens:" 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. You can easily feel the author's love and passion for nature in his writing. There was something in this book that can't be put into words but that will surely make an impression on your heart.

In spite of his not very extensive oeuvre Jacobsen's international influence has been quite strong. In Germany both his novels and poems were widely read and they are known to have influenced Thomas Mann, as well as the Englishmen George Gissing and D. H. Lawrence. Gissing read the Reclam edition of Niels Lyhne in 1889 and again in 1890 when he wrote 'which I admire more than ever'. [5] Jacobsen's works also greatly inspired Rainer Maria Rilke's prose: in Briefe an einen jungen Dichter (trans. Letters to a Young Poet) (1929) Rilke recommends to Franz Xaver Kappus to read the works of Jacobsen, adding that Rilke always carried the Bible and Jacobsen's collected works. Further, Rilke's only novel Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (translated as The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge) (1910) is semi-autobiographical but is heavily influenced by Jacobsen's second novel Niels Lyhne (1880) which traces the fate of an atheist in a merciless world. 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).

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Down there home stood beside home. My home! my home! And my childhood’s belief in everything beautiful in the world.—And what if they were right, the others! If the world were full of beating hearts and the heavens full of a loving God! But why do I not know that, why do I know something different? And I do know something different, cutting, bitter, true... There is in his work something of the passion for form and style that one finds in Flaubert and Pater, but where they are often hard, percussive, like a piano, he is soft and strong and intimate like a violin on which he plays his reading of life. Such analogies, however, have little significance, except that they indicate a unique and powerful artistic personality.

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. Director Carolina Sá observed a similar dynamic when following Nicinha and Jurema in Brazil. “They, the generation of Nicinha and Jurema and especially in their relationship, they have this patience with one another. I don’t think we have this any more. We’re losing this.” Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2013-10-09 15:05:47.838439 Bookplateleaf 0004 Boxid IA1155308 City Freeport, N.Y. Donor

Thora is unable to understand how someone can love nature without imagining a supernatural element behind it: 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: Jacobsen's canon consists of two novels, seven short stories, and one posthumous volume of poetry—small, but enough to place him as one of the most influential Danish writers. She did not feel herself younger, but it seemed to her as if a fountain of tears that had been obstructed and dammed had burst open again and begun to flow. There was great happiness and relief in crying, and these tears gave her a feeling of richness; it was as if she had become more precious, and everything had become more precious to her—in short it was a feeling of youth after all.

Overshadowed by the later generations that were influenced by him, Jacobsen's works have fallen out of our literary consciousness. To counter this, I am launching my AU Series on "Weaving Jens Peter Jacobsen into the Fabric of Literary Consciousness" with this essay. 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… I appreciate a kind of unassuming influence like sitting in someone's presence and being influenced by their experiences. If it's a new world to feel as they feel... And also when it feels bad to do it. I can relate to this Jens Peter Jacobsen. Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference Jacobsen also influenced many other authors of the turn of the 20th century, including Henrik Ibsen, Sigmund Freud, Hermann Hesse, Stefan Zweig, and T. E. Lawrence, who all commented on his work. Thomas Mann once told an interviewer that "perhaps it is J. P. Jacobsen who has had the greatest influence on my style so far." [3]Then you really mean, that the whole affair is not so bad, that there is something bold in it, something in a sense eminently plebeian, which pleases your liking for democracy.” He closed his eyes; how vividly he saw [Thora]; he heard her voice, she bent down toward him and whispered—how he loved her, loved her, loved her! It was like a song within him; it seemed as if his thoughts took on rhythmic form, and how clearly he could see everything of which he thought! 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] 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.”