The New York herald., 1922-07-09

| throughout his work as it rang
throughout his life. When little
| Thora, the heroine, exclaims:
I'm longing live. in longing."
She voices the authors own long
ing. longing for beauty, for consum-
nation of his literary gift. Longing
for beauty. for love, for happiness.
| for fame enters into all his stories.
What is "Niels Lynne" but the rec
ord of life consumed in vague long
ing to live up to a certain ideal?
What is Marie Grubbe" but the
story of quest for the love that
would give restless heart content?
Even his last work. "Fru Fonss,'' is
the story of woman's late realiza-
ton of the love she had missed in
her youth.
This does not by any means in
dicate that his works voice a vague
and elusive idealism. Jacobsen was
| a child of his time. His reading of
life was uncompromisingly scientific
1t had estranged him from religion.
1t was thoroughly realistic. He
never forgot that the seekers for
ideals must inevitably collide with
the solid walls in which reality con-
fines them. But he also knew that
the tragedy of that quest for the
ideal is one of those problems which
always have and always will inspire
the artist. The full realization and
the philosophical acceptance of this
eternal conflict give his works an
indefinable individual touch.
Jacobsen was a slow and con-
scientious worker. Into each of his
stories went months of reflection.
Into the story of Marie Grubbe,"
which bore the subtitle Interiors
from the Eighteenth Century," went
months OF painstaking research into
all available historical data. The
book created a stir in the critical
circles of his country, for it did not
at all conform to the accepted mold
of novel. 1t was loosely con-
structed and told in the style of an
old time leisurely chronicle. But it
suggested the atmosphere of the friv-
olous. skeptical. brilliant life of the
period. The historical setting of the
story has the struggle between
Sweden and Denmark for a back
| ground. AS a note in Hanna Astrup
Larsen's able translation informs us,
Tjele Manor, the birthplace of Marie,
is still standing near Viborg. Besides
the archives with their data about
marriages. divorces and deaths, there
is the eighty-ninth epistle of the poet
Ludwig Holberg. who lived at the
last home of Marie, when he had fed
to the country to escape the plague
In Copenhagen:
| An example from the history of
our own time is a lady of the high
nobility, who had an invincible
loathing for her first husband, al
though he was first among all SUBJ
jects, and moreover the most gal
/ liant gentleman of the realm, and
this went on until it resulted in a
divorce. and after a second mar
riage, which was likewise unhappy.
she entered the married estate for
the third time with a common tar,
with whom, though he abused her
daily, she herself said that she
lived in much greater content than
| in her first marriage.
The key to the character of the
heroine who so puzzled her contem-
poraries is in the very first chapter.
The girl. growing up motherless on
the estate of the father, who scan
dalizes his neighbors by living with
a common peasant woman, with
draws from the vulgarity about her
into the world of romance, dreams
of Griselda, Brynhild. Grymhild. OF
the colorful prose of the story the
scene is an example. when Marie
| gathers her skirt full of roses and
spreads them on the stone table in
the arbor:
This bloom Of color. curling in
sheen and shadow. white blushing
to red and red paling to blue, moist
| pink that is almost heavy, and
lavender light as waited on air,
each petal rounded like q tiny
vault, soft in the shadow, but