Niels Lyhne Book

This novel will not help you sleep at night. I haven't felt this kind of despair over literature since Proust's Recherche. Jacobsen despises his characters so tenderly. Or is it that he loves them ruthlessly? I finished it nearly ten hours ago, but an oppressive sadness is still lingering. It's not a cathartic sorrow, either -- not in the least bit; it's too stonily troubling for tears. In part, this can be blamed on my Christian upbringing, but I won't let my background take away any credit from Jacobsen's wrenching prose: parsing down his characters with such coldly precise understanding, then passionately coloring their delusions of beauty, making it seem like their adversities matter -- each time, I almost believe them, until he reminds me again I should know better.


I wasn't expecting this extent of comfortless tragedy from one of Rilke's recommendations, but it's added another dimension to my appreciation for his poetry.