Reviews about Steen Steensen Blicher

"...Blicher´s fame rests primarily on his short stories and short novels. His best-known work, the novella Brudstykker af en landsbydegns dagbog (1824; "Fragments of the Journal of a Parish Clerk"), is written in masterful prose and shows Blicher´s psychological insight into the Jutlanders´ character. In his stories he ranges from resignation to humour to irony. The general feeling of his narrative style is realistic; life is seen as the great shatterer of illusions since it never keeps its promises..."

Encyclopaedia Britannica

DARK AND DANISH: "These stories offer the hallucinatory vision of a part of Denmark that existed in the last century but is now largely vanished. The people of Copenhagen today no doubt characterize as quaintly "Blicheresque" these goings-on in a Jutland of the past, much as we say "Dickensian". They owe much of their dourness to the author´s feeling for Scotland, which he admired but never actually visited. The life of the countryside is presented as a struggle in which love and humour are hard put to survive, and a grim form of religion the only consolation. The author tells the truth as he sees it, while evoking a great deal of poetry from his land of bogs and brown moorland... The special Blicheresque quality of the stories is well expressed by the broodingly dark illustrations of Povl Christensen and by Paula Hostrup-Jessen´s skilful translation which carefully recreates the author´s clear intentions."

David Arkell in PNReview Jan. 1997

"With their publication of Herman Bang´s Tina few years ago, Athlone took a step in the direction of publishing Danish classics in the UK– and they have now repeated the performance with these seven stories by Blicher. They are the stories one could expect, the core of Blicher´s oeuvre, and it is good to see them in an English version. And Athlone have clearly set out to draw attention to the venture in furnishing the volume with an incisive Introduction by Margaret Drabble.... Blicher is a splendid short story writer who seriously deserves to be better known than he is, for the non-specialist for his innate qualities, and for the specialist because of his significance for Danish literature in general. Had he written in a more widely read language, he would doubtless have had an international reputation – a comment that has been made about more than one Danish writer.
The translator of a work of this age is faced with the problem that it is virtually impossible – even if were desirable – to recreate Blicher´s language. The best approach is probably to produce a linguistic patina rather than attempt to write the language of Blicher´s day – and this in fact is what Paula Hostrup Jessen has done. This is undoubtedly a good translation, which often carries the genuine flavour of the original, without ever becoming a pastiche... The translation is sufficiently sensitive to incorporate the slight, but significant and often overlooked variation in the song in "The Hosier´s Daughter"... A translation which reads well and recreates the mood, feel and rhythm of the original. Blicher in a good English version must be welcomed."

Glyn Jones in Scandinavica 1997 vol. 36 no.1