Niels Lyhne

by J. P. (Jens Peter) Jacobsen

"Niels Lyhne" by J. P. Jacobsen is a novel written in 1880. This Danish work follows its title character through his renunciation of faith, personal losses, and growing disillusionment. Considered part of the Scandinavian Modern Breakthrough movement, the novel examines individual struggle, artistic ambition, and the helplessness of the individual. It depicts both the failures of atheism and faith, offering a naturalistic portrait of an atheistic bourgeois intellectual confronting life's disappointments and, ultimately, death.