In the Spiritual No Man's Land

- on Martin Andersen Nexø's early oeuvre

By : Knud Bjarne Gjesing

The following excerpt is from a special number of the periodical Nordica 11/1994, discussing Nexø's writings before Pelle Eroberen (Pelle the Conqueror) – the period which the later Communist Nexø denigratingly referred to as a "spiritual interregnum."

The most important vestiges of Nexø's work in this "spiritual interregnum" is his debut collection of short stories Skygger (Shadows) (1898), the novels Det bødes der for (The Price to be Paid) (1899) and En Moder (A Mother) (1900), the short stories in Muldskud I (Molehill I) (1900) and the novels Familien Frank (The Franks) (1901) and Dryss (Waste) (1902).
A Mother and Waste tell of a circus performance in which, as a finale, a woman wrestler challenges women from the audience to "throw her" (see, respectively, pp. 248 & 125ff.). Likewise, in The Price to be Paid, A Mother, and Waste, a suicide or suicide attempt by hanging, prompted by sexuality, occurs (see, respectively, pp. 128, 89-93, & 26/214-15). The name "Aage" seems to be associated with physical strength and erotic power (A Mother, p. 64 and Waste, p. 28).
   Other recurring themes appear to be connected with the stuff of deeper, more personal memories. For instance, "Lotterisvensken" ("The Swede's Lottery") in Shadows deals with an alcoholic father, just as alcoholism and alcoholic fathers also appear in several other short stories and novels and is a prominent theme in The Franks and Waste. Likewise, in these earlier books, Nexø returns with a curious partiality to the theme of a young man, taken in by a single mother and her daughter. As a youth, the protagonist in The Price to be Paid prefers to stay with plain-spoken laundry woman Stine, who lives alone with her daughter Flora, while her man travels the country as an itinerant journeyman. The delicate Karl Bauder in Waste is a lodger with Dortea Hansen and her daughter Else, who also makes a living as a laundry woman. Just like Stine, Dortea purposefully refuses to marry the father of her daughter, even though he regularly turns up to renew his proposal: "I'm human being, after all!" (p. 110) Similarly, in A Mother, the failed aesthete Halvor Purgsenius sponges off the widow Anna Berg and her daughter Helga. As is often the case in Martin Andersen Nexø, it is clearly evident that women bear the load of the family and society ("The Swede's Lottery" and The Franks). Of course, this constellation of characters of a young man together with a mother and her daughter has its source in Nexø's own memories of his life with Mathilde Molbech, widow of the late Romantic poet Christian K. F. Molbech, and her daughter, who like the mother bore the name Mathilde (née Snabe). With great generosity, these two women allowed the young Nexø to live in their home in Askov free of charge for long periods of time during the 1890s. They looked after him, when he was ill, encouraged his artistic ambitions, and even found money for him to travel to southern Europe 1894-96. In particular, A Mother can be read as a roman à clef about this special and close relationship. For example, the widow Molbech's home had the name Villa Spurvely (Sparrow Haven), just as the women in the novel live at Villa Stærkassen (Starling's Nest). The book was so obviously a roman à clef that one cannot blame the widow Molbech for feeling somewhat aggrieved, when the widow in the novel is attributed such lines as: "There was something pleasant about having a sort of educated slave around, who could provide spiritual servicing, when one was bored" (p. 172), and when, at the novel's conclusion, she seizes the opportunity to seduce her young lodger and win him from her own daughter! Of course, Nexø's relationship with the Molbech women was quite complicated, but Henrik Yde, in Det grundtvigske i Martin Andersen Nexøs liv (Grundtvigean Influences in the Life of Martin Andersen Nexø) (1991), seems to be altogether too kind to the author, when he interprets A Mother as "one of Nexø's many tributes (. . .) to the matriarchy and to female naturalness" and as "a remarkable declaration of faith and love to both women." In all fairness, it must be added that Nexø later made amends for his youthful disrespect to these warm-hearted, magnanimous friends by painting a beautiful portrait of them in his memoirs, Vejs Ende (End of the Road) (1939).

Translated by Russel Dees