E-text prepared by Clare Boothby, Jim Wiborg,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

ONE OF LIFE'S SLAVES

BY JONAS LIE

AUTHOR OF "THE VISIONARY," ETC. ETC.

TRANSLATED FROM THE NORWEGIAN BY

JESSIE MUIR

LONDON HODDER BROTHERS 13 NEW BRIDGE STREET, D.C.
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. London & Edinburgh

1895

PREFACE

In a review which appeared in the Athenæum, of a translation of one ofJonas Lie's earlier works—"Den Fremsynte" ("The Visionary")—thereviewer expressed a hope that I would follow up that translation with"an English version of Lie's 'Livsslaven,' that intensely tragic andpathetic story of suffering and wrong." It is in accordance with thissuggestion that the present volume makes its appearance.

In taking Christiania life for the subject of "Livsslaven," Jonas Lieattempted for the second time to break down the preconceived opinion ofcritics, that such a subject did not come within his province. They wereaccustomed to have tales of sea-life from his pen, and could not readilybe persuaded that another sphere of life might afford equal scope forhis talent. "Thomas Ross," published in 1878, had treated of Christianialife, and had attracted but little attention; and now, in the spring of1883, appeared this "story of a smith's apprentice, with his strugglesfor existence and his ultimate final failure owing to the irresistibleindulgence of a passionate physical instinct." At first this too seemedto be a failure. To use the words of Arne Garborg, a Norwegian authorand critic, Lie "had spoken—cried out in the passion or agony of hissoul, and people stood there quite calm and as if they had heardnothing;" there seemed to be a total lack of sympathetic comprehensionon the part of the public. In the end, however, the book found its wayto the hearts of its readers, and, to quote Mr. Gosse's words on thesubject, "achieved a very great success; it was realistic and modern ina certain sense and to a discreet degree, and it appealed, as scarcelyany Norwegian novel had done before, to all classes of Scandinaviansociety."

Lie himself, in speaking of this work, says that a writer should "aim atpresenting his subject in such a way that the reader may see, hear,feel, and comprehend it with the utmost possible intensity." Thisprecept he has certainly put into practice in the present instance, forthe subject is treated with such power and so full a grasp, that inreading the book one feels an actual anxiety, an oppression as ofapproaching disaster. This, at any rate, is the case with the original,and I trust that its power has not been altogether lost in the processof rendering into another language, but that the stamp of genuineness,the author's leading characteristic, may to some extent be found also inthis translation.

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