PONTOPPIDAN HENRIK

Escrita a caballo entre el siglo XIX y el siglo XX, nos sumerge de lleno en la crisis cultural y social que sacude al continente con la irrupción de la modernidad y que no es sino un preámbulo de la crisis de identidad del hombre actual. Por la maestria en la diseccion de toda una epoca, la novela de Pontoppidan es solo comparable a las del aleman Thomas Mann, pero la complejidad de sus personajes y la furia con que se debaten contra su destino la emparentan sobre todo con la obra de Dostievski, el gran novelista ruso.

La otra gran novela de Pontoppidan (que muchos críticos prefieren a Per el afortunado) donde el premio Nobel danés aborda, con el telón de fondo de la modernidad en Dinamarca, la angustia personal de un pastor de la iglesia en la encrucijada de las luchas sociales en el medio rural y la aparicion de diversos caudillos y mesianismos.

Escrita a caballo entre el siglo XIX y el siglo XX, nos sumerge de lleno en la crisis cultural y social que sacude al continente con la irrupción de la modernidad y que no es sino un preámbulo de la crisis de identidad del hombre actual. Por la maestria en la diseccion de toda una epoca, la novela de Pontoppidan es solo comparable a las del aleman Thomas Mann, pero la complejidad de sus personajes y la furia con que se debaten contra su destino la emparentan sobre todo con la obra de Dostoievski, el gran novelista ruso.

A Nobel Prize-winners unforgettable novel about a man who sheds the stifling country life of his childhood for the excitement of Copenhagen.This masterpiece of Danish literature, admired by the likes of Georg Lukacs and Ernst Bloch, is now available in a new English translation.A Fortunate Man tells the story of Per Sidenius, a Lutheran pastors son who revolts against his family and flees the backwaters of Jutland for Copenhagen. Per is handsome, ambitious, and hungry for the technological future of the twentieth century. He studies engineering and draws up plans for a new port and new canals, for harnessing wind and wave energy to transform Denmark into a commercial giant. Fully persuaded of his own genius, Per first repels and then attracts Jakobe Salomon, a young Jewish woman whose family is eager to underwrite his plans. They fall in love and get engaged; gradually Jakobe opens Pers eyes to the wider world. Meanwhile, he also falls under the spell of Dr. Nathan, a popular philosopher who rails against the conservative powers that be. But ultimately these powers win out, Pers relationship with Jakobe founders, and he goes home to Jutland and marries a pastors daughter. Though fortunate, he is never happy.One of the last great nineteenth-century novels and Henrik Pontoppidans masterpiece, A Fortunate Man anatomizes and skewers Danish society, from the small towns to the metropolis. Paul Larkins dazzling translation brings out the wide range and full force of a novel admired by Georg Lukacs and praised by Ernst Bloch as "one of the foundational texts of world literature."This translation was funded in part by a grant from the Danish Arts Foundation.

Love, faith, and the political mingle in these two short novels by a Nobel Prize-winning Danish author. One about a young couple making a new life in Rome, the other about a priest who goes to live among native peoples in Greenland, both books explore the reaches of the human heart through their complex and unforgettable characters.Henrik Pontoppidan, the Danish Nobel laureate, is admired for the concentrated force of his novellas as much as for long, populous, world-encompassing novels like A Fortunate Man, and here are two of those novellas, newly and brilliantly translated by Paul Larkin.The White Bear follows the fate of the odd, gangly, red-bearded Thorkild Muller. Born in rural Jutland and destined for the ministry, Thorkild proves to be a poor student and is assigned to a remote Inuit tribe in Greenland. There, with his mythic-looking staff and dogskin skullcap, he becomes known as the White Beara beloved legend among the locals and a freewheeling embarrassment to his fellow priests. Grown old, he returns to Denmark, where again his flock adores him while his fellow men of cloth try to tame the "whirling dervish in their midst." In the end Thorkild mysteriously disappears, presumably back to the snow wilderness of Greenland.The Rearguard, on the other hand, is a marriage story. Newlyweds Jrgen Hallager and Ursula Branth are as different as night and day. The brash son of a poor village teacher, Jrgen is an avowed socialist whose revolutionary beliefs translate into his work as a painter of social realism; Ursula comes from a conservative, upper-middle-class family. At first, as they start their married life in Rome, they each try to change the others worldview with arguments and threats, but as time wears on and they wear each other down, it becomes clear there can be no reconciliation. It is a tragic tale of art and idealism, individuality and love.This translation was funded in part by a grant from the Danish Arts Foundation.

El reino de los muertos fue la última gran obra de Henrik Pontoppidan, premio Nobel en 1917 y uno de los grandes nombrs de la literatura nórdica. A Henrik Pontopiddan (1857-1943) se le conoce por dibujar a sus personajes a "tres pasos de distancia" y por presentarlos llenos de extraordinarios matices. En El reino de los muertos cada uno de ellos ofrece luces y sombras. en ningun momento sabemos si reir o llorar. Sus personajes literarios son tan modernos, fuertes y vulnerables como cualquiera de nosotros.

La otra gran novela de Pontoppidan (que algunos críticos prefieren a Per el afortunado, también publicada por Ediciones de la Torre) donde el premio Nobel danés aborda, con el telón de fondo de la modernidad en Dinamarca, la angustia personal de un pastor de la iglesia en la encrucijada de las luchas sociales en el medio rural y la aparicion de diversos caudillos y mesianismos.