Henrik Pontoppidan - Other Works

Other Works

Pontoppidan's last large novel Mands Himmerig (1927, "Man’s Heaven") is an almost desperate description of the crisis of a Danish intellectual at the time of the outbreak of World War I.

Pontoppidan also wrote many short novels and long tales in which he discussed political, psychological and sexual themes. Isbjørnen (1887, "The Polar Bear") describes the confrontation between an outspoken vicar from Greenland and his narrow-minded Danish provincial clergymen. Mimoser (1886, Engl. transl. The Apothecary’s Daughters, 1890) is an ironic-tragic tale about the exaggerated intolerance of unfaithfulness. Nattevagt (1894, "Night Watch") deals with a courageous and revolutionary artist who is nevertheless a frustrated failure as a husband. Den gamle Adam (1894, "The Old Adam") deals with both men’s fear of women and of sexuality as a whole. "Borgmester Hoeck og Hustru" (1905, Engl. transl. Burgomaster Hoeck and His Wife, 1999) portrays a tragic marriage dominated by the husband's jealousy and dislike of his wife's joy in life.

A central theme in most of these tales is the difficulties of handling the new tolerance, open-mindedness and democratisation which are introduced by both the transition of society and by literature. Another theme is the conflict between the introverted and closed male nature and the vitality of the woman. Behind all this lies the classic naturalist theme of heritage and milieu against which man has to rebel without quite denying their existence. In his later works he sometimes seems to become a mixture of a castigator of society and a prophet of doom.

Between 1933 and 1943 Pontoppidan wrote two different versions of his Memoirs, in which he tried to define his own view of his personal development. Though handicapped by blindness and deafness in later life, he continued to take an interest in politics and cultural life until his final years.