Niels Lyhne

by Jens Peter Jacobsen

even the fairest dreams and the deepest longings do not add an inch to the stature of the human soul.

He longed for the firm support of the commonplace under his feet, as a fish, suffocating in hot air, languishes for the clear, fresh coolness of the waves.

Lyhne, in his inmost self, was no whit different from the people she used to live among. She had merely been deceived by the very ordinary fact that his love, for a brief moment, had invested him with a fleeting glamor of soulfulness and exaltation—a

Over his little cradle they would meet in a common hope, a common joy, and a common fear; of him they would think, and of him they would talk, each as often and as readily as the other, and each was grateful to the other for the child and for all the happiness and love he brought.

She sank back into the dreams of her girlhood, but with the difference that now they were no longer illumined by hope.

for a life soberly lived, without the fair vice of dreams, was no life at all—life had exactly the value that dreams gave it and no more.

She was no more a human being like any one else, but an exalted creature, divine by virtue of her strange, mystic beauty. His heart throbbed with rapture in merely looking at her, kneeling to her in his heart, crawling to her feet in abject self-effacement.

Those eternal truths and makeshift lies that were woven ring in ring to form the heavy armor he called his principles, what were they against his love?

What did she care about eternal truths? And the mighty visions, how did they help him? Thoughts that plumbed the unfathomable, could they win her? All that he possessed was worthless.

Even though his soul shone with the radiance of a hundred suns, what did it avail, when his light was hidden under the ugly fustian of a Diogenes’ mantle?

Bigum knew very well what an unfavorable impression he made and how hopeless his love was, but he knew it as we know a thing when we hope with all the strength of our soul that our knowledge is false. There is always the miracle left; and though miracles do not happen, they might happen. Who knows?

It is only when we have heard the door of destiny slam shut that we begin to feel the iron-cold talons of certainty digging into our breast, gathering slowly, slowly around our heart, and fastening their clutches upon the fine thread of hope on which our world of happiness hangs: then the thread is severed; then all that it held falls and is shattered; then the shriek of despair sounds through the emptiness.

Oh, if language held a word that combined the cringing admiration of the slave, the ecstatic smile of the martyr, and the gnawing homesickness of the exile, with that word I could tell you my love.

For the first time his mind grasped the fact that when life has sentenced you to suffer, the sentence is neither a fancy nor a threat, but you are dragged to the rack, and you are tortured, and there is no marvellous rescue at the last moment, no awakening as from a bad dream.

But when truth had conquered, and she had become like him, he saw that the victory was too complete, that he had loved her as she was, with her illusions and prejudices, her dreams and her errors, and not as she had now become.

The door to the past was barred, and he stood outside, empty-handed and alone; whatever he needed and desired he must win for himself—new

May all the world stand open to you, all but one little door, one single little door, however much you knock and try to open it—but otherwise everything as fully and widely as it is possible to wish it.”

It seemed as though I had come into a safe haven again; everything was so peaceful and well ordered, and I had only to bind myself to it to be properly happy ever after. And so I let them bind me, Niels.”

The individuality that can be lost in the sifting and reshaping of a healthy development is only a flaw; it is a branch grown in the dark, which is distinctive only so long as it retains its sickly pallor.