JACOBSENIANA - J. P. Jacobsen Selskabet - Aarhus Universitet

ceptions and functions of the same work of literature, thus pro-
ducing a permanently changing disjunction between work and
history.
From this perspective it becomes obvious that “body” is a suit-
able metaphor for the permanent reappearance of the same discur-
sive figure or entity, but in changing occurrences, a transhistoric
mode concerning genres, literary forms, and ontological topoi.
The changes of this “body” of literary history are very slow, exist-
ing beyond history, if history is to be conceived of as an act of
chronology and time-development (Doody 1996). By comparison,
“mind” is then a suitable metaphor for disruptive or singular mo-
ments of radical change in our ways of understanding the formal
and referential elements of a given work of literature due to its
more or less radical reorientation of genres, literary forms, ideas,
or ontological topoi. “Mind” also, in this Jacobsenian sense of the
word, finds itself in a position beyond history. These two non-
historicist modes of literary history point, in my opinion, to the
complex interplay between “body”, conceived of as tradition, and
“mind”, conceived of as modernity (Erslev Andersen 2004).
THE LACKING RED ANCHORING ROPE
It is obvious, that there is no main thread in Jacobsen’s portrait of
Marie Grubbe. Neither is it possible to find main threads in his
potraits of the main characters in the short story “Mogens” and
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