Customer Reviews

Niels Lyhne (Penguin Classics)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is not a reprint, but a new translation by acclaimed translator and author Tiina Nunnally of arguably the finest novel ever to come out of Scandinavia. It had a huge influence on European writers, especially in Germany, where teenage boys would carry around a Danish dictionary in the vain hope of reading Jacobsen in the original, according to Stefan Zweig, and where the novel has been translated at least 6 times. Read it and see where Thomas Mann got his ideas for "Tonio Kröger." Jacobsen, who was a botanist as well as the translator of Darwin into Danish, fills the novel with flowers and plants, and he knows whereof he speaks. Dive headlong into this examination of creativity vs. lethargy, atheism vs. faith, and the seemingly infinite ability of the hero to misunderstand women!

It's a major drawback for publishers that Amazon's system links the reviews and promotional material for all versions of a book indiscriminately, so that an old, flawed, bowdlerized, and misleading translation such as this one from 1919 by Hanna Astrup Larsen is allowed to profit from the comments made for the new translation by Tiina Nunnally published by Fjord Press in 1990. With Fjord's demise this definitive and superior translation is now available from Penguin Classics -- buy it instead!

When I was reading this book I had a variety of reactions. First, I was struck by the quality of the thinking and the prose. Second, I was seriously seriously annoyed by the endless Romantic Angst in the book. I really really wanted Niels Lyhne to go out, get a job, and stop whining. That second point inflected my entire reading of the book.

As I closed it, I thought: "I should have read this when I was 18."

And I still kind of think that. The point of view is more immediately relevant to someone just in the throes of figuring out The Meaning of Life.

But now, as I go through my notes and passages from the book, I believe that I did Jacobsen (and the novel) a real disservice. There's something more complicated going on here than the typical Sorrows of Young Werther Sturm und Drang.

I've now, in retrospect, come to see Niels Lynhe as a kind of rewriting of the Book of Job. Only, in the case of our protagonist, it is his atheism which is tested by life. It's an interesting idea, but also a confusing one-- the whole notion of being tested implies agency of some kind (and Lyhne certainly does seem to lead a complicated and cursed life) which throws the whole question of his atheism into a different light. Even the remarks of his friend as he lay dying seem to me to bring into doubt where Jacobsen sat in this debate. The idea that God rewards steadfastness rather than a particular point of view? I feel humbled by my own arrogance that I had reading the book, as I consider now that there is something quite subtle being questioned-- a very delicate point that I'm not sure that I understand even now.

So here's the value for me in doing these reviews and taking notes-- if I'd just left my experience of the book once I put it down, I believe that I would have missed part of the value in the reading experience. I'd recommend it in the end.

(I have no complaints about either the Penguin Classics edition or the Nunnally translation. The introduction wasn't particularly informative, but at least it wasn't tiresome either.)

I bought the 2009 General-Books.net edition, which unbeknownst to me was scanned, copied and printed by computers without humans checking the text. It is a shamefully error-filled book. Typos abound and entire paragraphs are frequently cut off. This book is in the public domain and can be read for free online, so a substandard printing is inexcusable, to say nothing of a printing with no standards at all.

Here's a sentence from the first paragraph of the text:

"It tells of his ekrly dreams and ideals, his efforts to know and to achieve, his revolt against the dreaniswathed dogmas in which people take refuge fromjTarsh. reality"

This was the book more fantastic that I had read!!!!! This tell us about how a soul fell itself when your love is not recompensed. It makes a psycological interpretation of your mind in these so sad and difficult situation. It is a sensitive book for sensitive people!