Jenny

Sigrid Undset

Description

From the Nobel Prize winning author of Norway’s beloved Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, Jenny is a classic romance novel that chronicles the haunting story of a young, aspiring painter as she makes her way through life.

Jenny Winge is a talented young Norwegian woman who dreams of professionalising her passion for painting. After moving to Rome to pursue her artistic goals, Jenny’s newfound freedom and friends, quickly slip from her grasp as she falls in love with a questionable character. In her desperation to experience a real connection, she betrays her own aspirations of becoming a professional artist. Will her newfound romance bring her the happiness that she desperately seeks?

First published in 1911, Jenny is a heartbreakingly realistic novel. Exploring themes of love, ambition and morals, Segrid Undset’s literary breakthrough continues to be as compelling and reflective of modern life as it was in the early 20th century.

Read & Co. Books has republished Jenny in a beautiful new edition, which features an excerpt from Six Scandinavian Novelists by Alrik Gustafrom. This volume would be the perfect gift for fans of the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy and collectors of Sigrid Undset’s work.

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Thriller
• Romance historique
• Fiction
• Romance
• Historical
• 20th Century

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 26 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528790390
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

JENNY
A NOVEL
By
SIGRID UNDSET
WITH AN EXCERPT FROM Six Scandinavian Novelists BY ALRIK GUSTAFROM

First published in 1911


Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Books
This edition is published by Read & Co. Books, an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk


Contents
SI GRID UNDSET By Alr ik Gustafrom
PART ONE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
PART TWO
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
PART THREE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII



SIGRID UNDSET
By Alrik Gustafrom
To a casual observer a photograph of Sig rid Undset is at first misleading. The face that we behold is heavy, full-formed, almost placid in its lack of striking lines or marked, sculptured features. The mouth is full, with a heavy under-lip, the nose regular, though rather large than small, the eyes far-off, dreaming, meditative, under a somewhat low yet well-formed brow, the hair dark, luxuriant, hanging low and full over roundly slanted temples. In no feature of this face does an offhand examination catch the steady, penetrating intensity of mind and feeling that is the most characteristic trait of Sigrid Undset's genius. A second, more careful, examination of those features, however, causes one to pause—the eyes, though dreaming, are not soft, they have a certain moody, piercing quality, especially suggested by a sharp, very dark iris, and the generous fullness of lip and nose are not without their intimation of a scarcely slumbering sensuousness. It is these qualities of feature—on first glance not particularly arresting—that reveal to the discerning observer the Sigrid Undset that is to be found everywhere in the pages of her novels.
Sigrid is a moralist, first of all, though she is certainly not by temperament an ascetic. She has a profound, brooding awareness of the domination of the flesh in the average human life, the central place of passion in the average human destiny. To Sigrid Undset the immediate, as well as the ultimate, truth about purely human life is the central reality of sex, and in the recognition of this truth she is one with not a few of her contemporaries. Still she does not—as do some modern authors—accept the actual dominance of sex in human life as essentially a blessing, for which man must be grateful, or as a primarily constructive fact of human existence, upon which an adequate positive philosophy of life may be built. Through sex is to her of central importance, the free, natural functioning of sex is not looked upon by her as an unmixed blessing. It is, rather simply a fundamental condition of human existence which has in it much of evil, simultaneously with some good—and man never attains the complete, the good life by means of it alone. Hers is, in the last analysis, a severe, a high morality between the flesh and the spirit there exists a constant, intensive strife—and the spirit must eventually triumph over the flesh if man is to be good. This is the dominant theme of Sigrid Undset's two greatest works, the historical novels Kristin Lavransdatter (1920-1922) and The Master of Hestviken (1925-1927), as well as her novels dealing with contemporary life which have appeared after The Master of Hestviken , and the theme is more or less explicit in the long series of early stories which came from her pen before the composition of Kristin La vransdatter .
It is perhaps largely in consequence of such a rigid, uncompromising morality that the picture of the world which we come upon in the pages of Sigrid Undset is so heavy, so unyieldingly realistic, so essentially tragic in most of its immediate implications. No Scandinavian author of first importance—with the single exception of Amalie Skram—has given us a more consistently sombre portrait of life than has Sigrid Undset. Strindberg's naturalistic dramas have provided us with more starkly concentrated visions of human tragedy than are to be found in Sigrid Undset's novels. But we remember—to mention only two of Strindberg's other works—that he escapes entirely from the note of bitterness and of tragedy in such a fairy-piece as Swan-white (1902) and in the dominantly humorous peasant novel The People of Hemso (1887), and it is not to be forgotten that in general Strindberg's work is reasonably buoyant and elastic in tone despite his temperamental misanthropy and his intermittent flirting with theoretical pessimism. Ibsen has brought to us sufficiently powerful and disillusioning tragedy in such plays as Ghosts and Rosmersholm , but his work on the whole certainly does not have that sheer, brutally consistent accumulation of tragic detail and tragic theme which we find in Sigrid Undset's novels. Many of Ibsen's plays contain a vein of humor approaching pure comedy, and in nearly all of his important dramas he employs forms of irony which are certainly not to be confused with the tragic muse in its most sombre dramatic manifestations. If one wishes to find consistent parallels in Northern literature to Sigrid Undset's intently massive gloominess of spirit one must turn to the women novelists of her c ountry. . .
. . . Sigrid Undset's vision is no less intense than was that of Amalie Skram. She might also, in consequence, have been driven to madness or to suicide had a fundamentally idealistic urge in her temperament not early asserted itself and had she not finally identified her idealism with the positive contents of Christian faith as represented in the Catholic Church. The story conversion is a long and involved one, her actual entrance into the Church not taking place until 1925. The details of her religious development must be taken up later, for they are intimately bound up with her literary development. Here we can only pause long enough to offer one central generalization her ultimate conversion is to be looked upon simply as the final, inevitable step in a severe moral discipline growing naturally and directly out of her realistic view of human life. Sigrid Undset found life too intricate, too complicated, too fundamentally evil in many of its dominant manifestations to be possible of living without a dogmatic religious faith. God—the God of the Catholic church—became to her a necessary postulate of existence. Thus, as we shall see, was becoming increasingly apparent to her long before 1925. That year simply marks the final, public acceptance of "the Church" as the ultimate source and guide in her religious thought. Her preoccupation with the Middle Ages in her two most important novels, Kristin Lavransdatter and The Master of Hestviken , no doubt played its part in Sigrid Undset's final "conversion", and the novels dealing with contemporary life which appear after The Master of Hestviken are for the most part thinly veiled propaganda novels, whose primary purpose seems to be "a dissemination of the Faith."
An e xcerpt from Six Scandinavian Nov elists , 1940



JENNY


PART ONE
I
As Helge Gram turned the corner into Via Condotti in the dusk a military band came down the street playing “The Merry Widow” in such a crazy, whirling time that it sounded like wild bugle calls. The small, dark soldiers rushed past in the cold afternoon, more like a Roman cohort intent on attacking barbarian hosts than peaceful men returning to their barracks for supper. That was perhaps the cause of their haste, Helge thought, smiling to himself, for as he stood there watching them, his coat-collar turned up for the cold, a peculiar atmosphere of history had pervaded him—but suddenly he found himself humming the same tune, and continued his way in the direction where he knew th e Corso lay.
He stopped at the corner and looked. So that was the Corso—an endless stream of carriages in a crowded street, and a surging throng of people on a narr ow pavement.
He stood still, watching the stream run past him, and smiled at the thought that he could drift along this street every evening in the dusk among the crowds, until it became as familiar to him as the best-known thoroughfare of his own city—Christiania. He was suddenly seized with the wish to walk and walk—now and all night maybe—through all the streets of Rome, for he thought of the town as it had appeared to him a while ago when he was looking down on it from Pincio, while the sun was setting.
Clouds all over the western sky, close together like small pale grey lambkins, and as the sun sank behind him it painted their linings a glorious amber. Beneath the pale skies lay the city, and Helge understood that this was the real Rome—not the Rome of his imagination and his dreams, but Rome as she a ctually was.
Everything else he had seen on his journey had disappointed him, for it was not what he had imagined at home when he had been longing to go abroad and see it all. One sight at last was far beyond his dreams, and th at was Rome.
A plain of housetops lay beneath him in the valley, the roofs of houses new and old, of houses high and low—it looked as if they had been built anywhere and at any time, and of a size to suit the need of the moment. In a few places only a space could be seen between the mass of housetops, as of streets. All this world of reckless lines, crossing each other in a thousand hard angles, was lying inert and quiet under the pale skies, while the setting sun touched the borders of the clouds with a tinge of light. It was dreaming under a thin veil of white mist, which no b