English summary

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Henrik Pontoppidan (1857-1943), Danish prose writer and creator of the greatest novel-achievements of his country in the years 1880-1920, is generally looked upon as an extrospective naturalist, concentrated on depicting scenes of national life, lashing the weaknesses of his countrymen, satirizing various aspects of the social, political and religious conditions. This is not untrue, but it does not tell the whole truth about Pontoppidan, and, above all, it does not do justice to the depth and complexity of his work.

In a letter dating from his old age, he has written: "My production was, from the beginning to the end, a wholly private confrontation with myself." The stern critic, who never seized to scourge the tame and humble spirit of the Danes, their romanticism, traditionalism and devout clericalism, was, at bottom, harshest to himself. For him, this spirit was an intrusive reality, and deep down in his heart he recognized his "complicity".

He belonged to the generation coming after the breaking-through of the modern ideas inaugurated by the famous literary critic Georg Brandes. Some years after his first appearance in public (1881), he became friends both with Georg Brandes and with his brother Edvard, and for some time, he was, among Danish fictionists, the most prominent representative of the new "European" radicalism. But he could never escape the consciousness of being deeply rooted in Danish soil – he belonged to an old and distinguished family of clergymen, the members of which had preached in the churches all over the country since the Reformation. Furthermore, he grew up in a profoundly pious home where sixteen children were born and where his father, a vicar in Jutland, impressed his many sons with his independent and uncompromising character. Already as a boy Henrik revolted against the ecclesiastical tradition which was embodied in the personage of his father, and decided to be an engineer, the man of the new era. But soon after his father's death, when he was just up for his final examination, he broke with that career and began to write. In the mighty production he now started, the Christian aspects always maintained their predominant place.

The present study, which is greatly indebted to the late professor Vilhelm Andersen, sets out from the conviction that Pontoppidan's national satire is nearly always balanced by self-examination and self-criticism. He 464 was an ardent advocate of consistency and constancy, adopting in these respects the claims of Kierkegaard and Ibsen, but he became more and more aware of the fact that every matter could be looked upon under a double aspect. His intense interest in moral questions forced him to enter into the thinking and ideals of those whom he criticized most violently. Out of these discords he formed the essence of his work. There was in his writing a constant alternation between the outward criticism and the inward debate. Pontoppidan's dilemma consisted in constantly seeking the Absolute and being at the same time aware of the relativity of all human ideals. It is chiefly this split attitude the work here presented is intended to investigate.

The introduction of the treatise gives a brief outline of the general problems which the reader of Pontoppidan's novels has to face. It emphasizes the remarkable dissension among the critics both as to the quality and to the meaning of his works and settles the primary principles of the investigation to follow. The latter has been concentrated into five domains which were all of cardinal urgency to Pontoppidan.

The first chapter, Religion and Christianity, treats the lifelong anticlerical campaign in Pontoppidan's writings. He seems to have given up the Christian faith of his childhood very early, but nevertheless there is a poignant problem of theodicy in his pioneering social novels from the Eighties. The desperate conditions he witnessed among the crofters of North Sealand became another proof of the non-existence of a merciful God. The attitude of the clergy to the need of these people formed the basis of his criticism of the national church, both of the orthodox section and of the Grundtvigians. But towards the end of the decade, a reverse tendency seems to be manifested in his thinking. From the little and overlooked novel Spøgelser (Ghosts) he expresses his doubts as to the importance of things temporal and material. From now on he is intensely involved in the question of what could be the original meaning and essence of Christianity. The only form he can accept is the one which disclaims any connection with the world and its affairs. There are several signs pointing to his having a psychological disposition towards the ascetic ideals. Consequently, it is chiefly the secular and social ambitions of the church which become the butt of his accusations. Confronted with the unorthodox religiousness of liberal Christianity he, in the midst of his passionate anticlerical camping, shows a paradoxical sympathy for the old, absolute creed, which does not compromise with the world.

The second chapter, Inheritance and Destiny, principally deals with Pontoppidan's great novel Lykke-Per (Lucky Per) which is a remarkable 465 hybrid between a national satire and a personal account. It is the history of a clergyman's son who tries to emancipate himself from the traditions, but who is forced to surrender to the powers against which he once revolted. It is shown that the belief in Fortune, which is implied in the title and which forms the outstanding irony of the book had a very intimate background. Peter the fortunate who seeks success all over the world ends as a hermit. In his desolate existence in a God-forsaken part of Jutland he ultimately finds the great luck he has hunted all his life. It has been considered that this finale is ironical, but should this be so, there is probably a great deal of self-irony in it. A fatalism connected with that of Lykke-Per is found in the last of Pontoppidan's grand novels De Dødes Rige (The Realm of the Dead), where it is reflected in some of the principal figures, first of all in Torben Dihmer, the sick proprietor who is cured of his disease by a miracle drug but who later on renounces this remedy because he does not want to struggle against his destiny.

The third chapter calls attention to the very complicated and fundamental problem "nature versus civilisation" in Pontoppidan's life and writing. There was a constant, fruitful interaction between these two forces. In fact, nature played a more considerable part to Pontoppidan than perhaps for any of his contemporaries in Denmark. To him it was not only a scenery but a problem which he discussed in a series of books. The religious background can be found here too; Pontoppidan's religiousness finds a most remarkable expression in his sensibility to the voice of nature. He had sparkingly rallied rousseauism and nature-worship in the Danish upper classes, but the question was imbued with a personal conflict: in his young days he himself had been a believer in the healing force of nature. After the collapse of his studies he had moved out into the country and had married a peasant girl. It turned out an illusion, and Pontoppidan returned to Copenhagen, where he was engaged in journalistic labour in a Brandes paper, under the pen-name of Urbanus. This development is reflected in Det forjættede Land,1 which is at the same time a tragedy, a national satire and a self-analysis, just as Lykke-Per. In the continuous rivalry between romanticism and realism which constitutes one of the characteristics of Pontoppidan's production, nature and civilisation are engaged as two opposite poles.

Pontoppidan was in many respects a man of two minds, alloying in his work bitter scepticism with lofty idealism. How this psychologically puzzling process worked can be studied fruitfully in what he wrote about man and woman. The forth chapter investigates his love fiction from this point of view. It is shown here, how mockery and irony conceal a deep 466 earnest. His contributions to the very active Scandinavian discussion of these questions were generally written in opposition against the leading thoughts of the age, especially those expressed by the great Norwegian authors Ibsen and Bjørnson. He was certainly deeply impressed by his mighty predecessors, but he nevertheless opposed their dominating influence in Denmark all his life. This reaction was another of the characteristics of Pontoppidan: what he attacked had very often played a positive part in his own life. – In his young days he wrote the comedy and the tragicomedy of love, aiming his shaft at public morality and satirizing the cult of the high-pitched feelings; contrasting the prose and the poetry of life in a bewildering way. But he could never free himself of the adventurous dreams of his youth, the great expectations of the fullness of life and love. So his satires are never unmingled, they always contain elements of sympathy and fellow-feeling with those satirized.

Pontoppidan's erotic psychology more and more concentrated upon the matrimonial institution and its social, individual and ethical implications. In this essay it is shown how he developed his thesis of the attraction of the contrasts. Discreetly but affectingly he confessed the background of his idea in Det forjættede Land, in the history of Emanuel Hansted and his bride, the peasant girl Hansine. In a series of small stories, where the author's keen unconventionalism is evidenced, the death of love in marriage is the heart of the matter. In one single book, Det ideale Hjem (The Ideal Home), Pontoppidan operated with revolutionary alternatives which might replace marriage and establish a new form of cohabitation, but mostly his tragical and sceptical temperament dominates, leaving no way out of the dilemma.

The main purpose of the concluding chapter is to investigate how Pontoppidan's complex nature reacted to the artistic tendencies of the age in which he lived. When he made his debut he was quite on a line with the most advanced literary technique of this period, the refined and elaborated styles of J.P. Jacobsen, Herman Bang and Alexander Kielland. But gradually he becomes more and more negligent of the artistic code, indeed a light element of parody and pastiche enters his small novels of the late Eighties. He came to literature from a materialistic and matter-of-fact adolescence, and in many respects he remained something of an outsider, observing his belletristic colleagues with an ironic glint in his eye.

Pontoppidan had been the initiator of the social naturalism in Denmark – with books as Landsbybilleder (Village Sketches) and Fra Hytterne (From the Huts), but almost at the same time he had puzzled his readers with stories of a melancholy and lyric tune, certainly not 467 without a mystifying irony, but indicating that the author was much of a romantic. How this intermediate position between romanticism and realism was manifested theoretically during the change of climate in Danish literature about 1890 is examined in a following part of the chapter.

The anti-aesthetic tendencies culminate in the above-mentioned great novels, which were written in the years 1891-1917, bringing the author a part of the Nobel Prize in 1917. Now, his years of training have come to an end, now he emancipates himself from many of the literary trends of his age, forming a simple, straightforward diction, which renounces every coquetry and embellishment. This style, which became more and more transparent, was often reproached for being old-fashioned and inartistic, but was considered by others to be the model of an adequate epic style. The stylistic simplicity and openness of these novels, however, are neutralized by the noteworthy balance kept up between those performing, their ideas, ideals and outlooks on life. In Pontoppidan's case the purely stylistic viewpoints prove more than generally insufficient as a quality-criterion.

 
[1] Det forjættede Land: i.e. "The Promised Land". tilbage