There was a desperate need of such
men in Denmark in the seventies, when the little kingdom was sinking
deeply and more deeply into a bog of patriotic delusion and spiritual
stagnation. An infusion of new blood was needed--a re-establishment of
that circulation of thought which keeps the whole civilized world in
vital connection and makes it akin. No country can cut itself off from
this universal world-life without withering like a diseased limb. The
man who undertook to bring Denmark again into _rapport_ with Europe was
Dr. Georg Brandes, whom I have characterized at length in another essay.
It was his admirable book, "The Men of the Modern Transition"
(translated into German under the title _Moderne Geister_) which
impelled me, some years ago, to make the acquaintance of the three
authors who represent whatever there is of promise in contemporary
Danish literature, viz., Sophus Schandorph, Holger Drachmann, and J. P.
Jacobsen. The last named, who died (1884) in the flower of his young
manhood, is, perhaps, not in the strictest sense contemporary.
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