The relationship between Strindberg and Jens Peter Jacobsen is probably not among the most relevant when considering Strindberg's Western canon. Nonetheless, Jacobsen's presence in Strindberg's works has been investigated more than once by scholars (e.g. Stensgård 1960; Bergholz 1972; Vinge 1985), whose suggestions have been at times surprising, as we will soon see.

The quotation I have chosen for my paper's title appears in a letter to Edvard Brandes on July 25, 1881, and, as far as I know, it is the only passage where Strindberg mentions both of Jacobsen's novels. Despite its conciseness, this document—which is not the first on Jacobsen, rather one of the last—displays some important features regarding Strindberg's reception of Jacobsen's work. First, his relation with the Danish author was mediated by Edvard Brandes, a key figure in Strindberg's experience of Danish culture and society: as we know, together with his brother Georg, he was one of the most prominent and innovative intellectuals in Denmark at that time (in 1884, he was among the founders of the pioneering social liberal newspaper Politiken); on the contrary, we do not have letters between Strindberg and Jacobsen. Second, it is Fru Marie Grubbe (1876) the work—or, more precisely, the character—whose literary potential Strindberg seems to perceive, whereas Niels Lyhne (1880), Jacobsen's most famous and appreciated creation until now, is left aside. Finally, we could reflect on the different, quite contrary connotations given by Strindberg to Jacobsen's works: if his first novel turns into a sort of epiphany, and this “vision” might even express the sense of an incomplete experience, Niels Lyhne, on the contrary, is not as pleasant, and it rather reveals all its limits in the protagonist's inner contradictions. I would already dare say that Strindberg's attitude towards Jacobsen generally varies between these two antithetical reactions. By the way, words like “söndring” (fragmentation) or “skef” (crooked) appeared in the first Swedish reviews of Niels Lyhne, certainly read by Strindberg.