Novel
Arvingen
Not translated into English
Meyer Aron Goldschmidt · 1865
Opening lines
Jeg troede, det var let at fortælle, hvor man er født, og hvorledes Ens Barndom hengik; men idet jeg vil erindre tilbage og om mulig gribe det Første, jeg kan huske, mærker jeg, hvor frugtesløst det vilde være at forsøge mig paa en Opgave, der trænger sig frem […]
I thought it was easy to tell where one was born and how one's childhood passed; but as I try to remember and if possible grasp the first thing I can recall, I feel how fruitless it would be to attempt a task that presses forward […]
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from tekster.kb.dk
Synopsis
Axel tells his own life. Son and heir of a Danish estate, as a child he sees his father fall victim to a swindle and keeps a wound that does not close. When very young he loved Astrid, who marries another and becomes an adoptive mother. Having gone abroad, he feels torn between the ideal image he keeps of her and a soulless desire: in Paris, a famous actress nearly turns his head, and it is a painting by Ary Scheffer, Paolo et Francesca, that brings him back to his love. From then on he clings, against all reason, to the hope of finding Astrid again.
Context
The novel appeared in the last months of 1864, dated 1865, as the third volume of its author's Tales and Pictures and as a separate printing. The preface warns that the title is the publisher's: the man who narrates his own life had not given it one. The book grew out of the Roman stay of 1863, where the woman he had loved in his youth gave him back the impulse to write; there he takes up the plot of his great previous novel under the sign of Nemesis. Axel's swindled father is the author's own, ruined by a fraud on a ship's insurance. It is the first Danish novel to make divorce its subject.
Who it is for
About two hundred and fifty pages in the modern edition, in the first person. No French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
Critics of the time praised the restrained fervour of its love story, calmer than in its author's other books.
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The pages consulted to check this page.