JACOBSENIANA - J. P. Jacobsen Selskabet - Aarhus Universitet

Jørn Erslev Andersen
The Fashionable J.P. Jacobsen 1900 and 2000
To be honest, I really don’t think the Danish
author Jens Peter Jacobsen ever belonged to
the fashionable world. Not by his way of
living, that is. He surely was no Dandy, and
when portrayed the only remarkable thing is
not his clothing but his rather extraordinary long and carefully
waxed moustache and the fancy pince-nez.
But he has always been considered a bit kinky. He was a
bachelor and had some more or less secret relations to a couple of
rather fashionable women. This is however not the reason for cal-
ling him kinky. The reason is due to his writings. From the mo-
ment he published his first novel Fru Marie Grubbe (1876) he
was considered a bit of a failure of a Brandesean Naturalist. He
was also considered a very talented writer, and, of course, due to
the core of the novel, something of a kinky man with great ability
with regard to female sexuality and sado-masochism. In the offi-
cial Scandinavian, especially Danish, literary history this under-
standing of J.P. Jacobsen, as belonging to the early Scandinavian
Naturalism and his to a certain extent too stylish écriture, has
been immensely persistent. In this sense he shares a kind of lite-
26