Jens Peter Jacobsen: "They were new, bitterly new, new to a fault..."

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In addition to Mrs. Boyce's pale niece they met a number of young people there - promising poets, painters, actors, and architects - all artists by virtue of their youth more than their talent, all full of hope, courageous, eager to fight, and exceedingly easy to fill with enthusiasm. There were probably among them a few of those quiet dreamers who bleat sorrowfully for the bygone ideals of a bygone time, but most of them were filled with what was new at the time, intoxicated with the theories of the New, wild with the power of the New, and dazzled by its morning clarity. They were new, bitterly new, new to a fault, and perhaps not least because deep within there was a strange, powerfully instinctual yearning that had to be stifled, a yearning that the New could not suppress, even as Universal as the New was: encompassing all, having power over all, enlightening all.

- Jens Peter Jacobsen, Niels Lyhne



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