Pelle the Conqueror

BOYHOOD

by Martin Andersen Nexö

Translated from the Danish by Jessie Muir.

NOTE

When the first part of “Pelle Erobreren” (Pelle the Conqueror)appeared in 1906, its author, Martin Andersen Nexö, was practically unknowneven in his native country, save to a few literary people who knew that he hadwritten some volumes of stories and a book full of sunshiny reminiscences fromSpain. And even now, after his great success with “Pelle,” verylittle is known about the writer. He was born in 1869 in one of the poorestquarters of Copenhagen, but spent his boyhood in his beloved island Bornholm,in the Baltic, in or near the town, Nexö, from which his final name is derived.There, too, he was a shoemaker’s apprentice, like Pelle in the secondpart of the book, which resembles many great novels in being largelyautobiographical. Later, he gained his livelihood as a bricklayer, until hesomehow managed to get to one of the most renowned of our “people’shigh-schools,” where he studied so effectually that he was enabled tobecome a teacher, first at a provincial school, and later in Copenhagen.

“Pelle” consists of four parts, each, except perhaps the last, acomplete story in itself. First we have the open-air life of the boy in countrysurroundings in Bornholm; then the lad’s apprenticeship in a smallprovincial town not yet invaded by modern industrialism and still innocent ofsocialism; next the youth’s struggles in Copenhagen against employers andauthorities; and last the man’s final victory in laying the foundation ofa garden-city for the benefit of his fellow-workers. The background everywhereis the rapid growth of the labor movement; but social problems are neverobtruded, except, again, in the last part, and the purely human interest isalways kept well before the reader’s eye through variety of situation andvividness of characterization. The great charm of the book seems to me to liein the fact that the writer knows the poor from within; he has not studied themas an outsider may, but has lived with them and felt with them, at once aparticipant and a keen-eyed spectator. He is no sentimentalist, and so rich ishis imagination that he passes on rapidly from one scene to the next, sketchingoften in a few pages what another novelist would be content to work out intolong chapters or whole volumes. His sympathy is of the widest, and he makes ussee tragedies behind the little comedies, and comedies behind the littletragedies, of the seemingly sordid lives of the working people whom he loves.“Pelle” has conquered the hearts of the reading public of Denmark;there is that in the book which should conquer also the hearts of a widerpublic than that of the little country in which its author was born.

OTTO JESPERSEN,
Professor of English in the University of Copenhagen.

GENTOFTE, COPENHAGEN.
April, 1913.