That is the fundamental ethos which runs through all of Jacobsen's
work. It is in Marie Grubbe, Niels Lyhne, Mogens, and the infinitely
tender Mrs. Fonss.
They are types of the kind he has described in the following passage:
"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 opened wider; their senses are more subtile 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."
He himself was one of these, and in this passage his own art and
personality is described better than could be done in thousands of
words of commentary.
Jens Peter Jacobsen was born in the little town of Thisted in Jutland,
on April 7, 1847. In 1868 he matriculated at the University of
Copenhagen, where he displayed a remarkable talent for science,
winning the gold medal of the university with a dissertation on
Seaweeds. He definitely chose science as a career, and was among the
first in Scandinavia to recognize the importance of Darwin.
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