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December, 1880, four years after Marie Grubbe. In the
latter, he had written of Renaissance types, sensual,
full-blooded, and impulsive; only in Sti Högh, who was always
cutting up the timber of life into thought-shavings, had he
foreshadowed that modern reflectiveness which Heidenstam
calls the curse of the nineteenth century. Niels Lyhne
is the embodiment of this spirit, and is generally accepted
as Jacobsen’s self-portrait, although the events of the story
are not those of the author’s life. F. Hansen calls it [1] “a
casting up of accounts with life by a man whom death had
marked. Thence its Pindaric elevation of thought and
expression. It is instinct with a spirit like a swan that rises
and rises, on broad, slow wings, till it is lost to sight.” It
expresses Jacobsen’s struggle, not only against the bodily
weakness that laid its paralyzing hand on his faculties, but
also against the sluggish, dreamy blood he had inherited,
which made all creative work an agonizing effort.
Niels Lyhne is an outsider from life. He seems never to
fill any particular place in his world. He has a poetic gift
and high artistic ideals, but never writes. Two women
leave him for other men less fine and lovable. Finally, he
returns to his old home and family traditions, to manage
his father’s estate, and to marry a sweet young girl, the
daughter of an old neighbor. She and her child are taken
away from him by death, and in her last illness she
forsakes the atheism he has taught her and turns to the old
religion, leaving Niels with a baffled sense that her spirit
has left him even before the parting in death. At last Niels
himself dies “the difficult death”—the closing words of
the book.
This is perhaps the place to say a few words about the
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