And, if you were an author, how would you like to have these other folks writing blurbs for you? Sigmund Freud: …Jacobsen has made a profound impression on my heart. Hermann Hesse: …powerful imagination…huge talent. Thomas Mann: Jacobsen had the greatest influence on my style… What Goes without Saying: Collected Stories of Josephine Jacobsen, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

the central idea in 'Mogens' is that nature in itself is sufficient unto the spiritual wants of man, that no romantic 'additions' to it are necessary or desirable. Jacobsen here rigidly rejects, as intellectually dishonest and spiritually superfluous, the supernatural existences with which Romantic poets had invested in their nature."[4]Oh, more than enough sometimes—much too much! And when shape and color and movement are so lovely and so fleeting and a strange world lies behind all this and lives and rejoices and desires and can express all this in voice and song, then you feels so lonely, that you cannot come closer to this world, and life grows lusterless and burdensome."[6] Jacobsen lived, like Franz Schubert, a relatively short life due to his contraction of tuberculosis which left him weak and mainly homebound for the last decade of his life. But, whereas Schubert completed over 1,500 works in his 31 years, Jacobsen only completed a collection of short stories, two novels, and a collection of poems in his 38 years (he admits to having been plagued by laziness!). Jacobsen is unique in that he had such a strong influence with such a small output. Jacobsen's short stories are collected in Mogens og andre Noveller (1882, translated as Mogens and Other Tales, 1921, and Mogens and Other Stories, 1994). Among them must be mentioned "Mogens" (1872—his official debut), the tale of a young dreamer and his maturing during love, sorrow and new hope of love. "Et Skud i Taagen" ("A Shot in the Fog") is a Poe-inspired tale of the sterility of hatred and revenge. "Pesten i Bergamo" ("The Plague of Bergamo") shows people clinging to religion even when tempted to be "free men". Fru Fønss (1882) is a sad story about a widow's tragic break with her egoistic children when she wants to remarry. But what joy can you take in a tree or a bush, if you don't imagine that a living being dwells within it, that opens and closes the flowers and smooths the leaves? When you see a lake, a deep, clear lake, don't you love it for this reason, that you imagine creatures living deep, deep down below, that have their own joys and sorrows, that have their own strange life with strange yearnings? And what, for instance, is there beautiful about the green hill of Berdbjerg, if you don't imagine, that inside very tiny creatures swarm and buzz, and sigh when the sun rises, but begin to dance and play with their beautiful treasure-troves, as soon as evening comes." Yes, I can't explain it, but there is something in the color, in the movements, and in the shapes, and then in the life which lives in them; in the sap which rises in trees and flowers, in the sun and rain that make them grow, in the sand which blows together in hills, and in the showers of rain that furrow and fissure the hillsides. Oh, I cannot understand this at all, when I am to explain it."

She did not feel herself younger, but it seemed to her as if a fountain of tears that had been obstructed and dammed had burst open again and begun to flow. There was great happiness and relief in crying, and these tears gave her a feeling of richness; it was as if she had become more precious, and everything had become more precious to her—in short it was a feeling of youth after all. The weight of his influence was felt even in his own lifetime but took on a greater wave for the generations immediately following his death. Thomas Mann claimed that Jacobsen had the greatest effect on his early style and Jacobsen's works were praised by James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Robert Musil, Stephan Zweig, Hermann Hesse, Sigmund Freud, and Franz Kafka among many others. Perhaps the strongest influence was made upon Rainer Maria Rilke who found Jacobsen's works to be "indispensable" in shaping his life:[2] Friedrich Nietzsche realized that the blows to the moral framework of society would have serious repercussions. Nietzsche, when proclaiming that "God is dead," knew that without a replacement for religion the whole of humanity would descend into nihilism, pointing out that "our entire European morality" was "built upon [the Christian God]."[10]I had this short book on my TBR pile for years and finally read it a few years ago after that blurb caught my eye. A few weeks ago I happened to be reading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and I saw that his detailed comments about Jacobsen were even more enthusiastic: Like many others, I read it because it is recommended by Rainer Maria Rilke in his book - Letters to a Young Poet. My kindle version had 4 stories and not 6 and I liked 'Mogens' the most and then 'Mrs Fonss'. Let me tell you that I did not like the book for the stories but I loved it for the way it has been written. Jacobsen's writing style is highly poetic and he creates a scene with such a great beauty and with so minute details that you can visualize the whole scene exactly and would feel as if you are actually living it.

Around this time, the discoveries of Charles Darwin began to fascinate him. Realizing that the work of Darwin was not well known in Denmark, he translated The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man into Danish.The historical novel Fru Marie Grubbe (1876, Eng. trans.: Marie Grubbe: A Lady of the Seventeenth Century, 1917) is the first Danish treatment of a woman as a sexual creature. Based upon the life of an authentic 17th century Danish noblewoman, it charts her downfall from a member of the royal family to the wife of a ferryman, as a result of her desire for an independent and satisfying erotic life. In many ways the book anticipates the themes of D. H. Lawrence. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 244: American Short-Story Writers since World War II, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001. Jacobsen was born in Thisted in Jutland, the eldest of the five children of a prosperous merchant. He went to school in Copenhagen and was a student at the University of Copenhagen in 1868. As a boy, he showed a remarkable talent for science, in particular botany. In 1870, although he was already secretly writing poetry, Jacobsen adopted botany as a profession. He was sent by a scientific body in Copenhagen to report on the flora of the islands of Anholt and Læsø. Another major conflict that runs through Jacobsen's works—related to Mogens's expressions of loneliness "that you cannot come closer to this world"—is the feeling of isolation between the self—the individual—and society, a theme that would become ever more prevalent in European literature, especially that of Paris. You can easily feel the author's love and passion for nature in his writing. There was something in this book that can't be put into words but that will surely make an impression on your heart.