Lie, Jonas

(1833-1908)

   A Norwegian novelist and short story writer, Lie was raised mostly in the northern Norwegian town of Tromsø, where his father was a government official. He later attended school in Bergen and took a law degree at the University of Oslo, after which he was a businessperson for several years. Speculation in lumber led to a bankruptcy in 1868, however, and Lie, who had already published a poetry collection in 1866, decided to become a writer in order to make enough money to pay off his debts. Drawing on his experiences in Nordland, his first serious work was the novel Den Fremsynte eller Billeder fra Nordland (1870; tr. The Visionary, or Pictures from Nordland, 1894), which, while structurally convoluted, offered a striking psychological portrait as well as the love story of its protagonist, a man gifted with clairvoyance. But equally impressive are the nature descriptions, which, on account of Lie's eye for detail, in power and freshness rival those of Petter Dass, and the book was considered a major achievement. Lie followed it up with Tremasteren'Fremtiden" (1872; tr. The Barque"Future," 1879), which is also set in the north and is considered Norway's first novel about business affairs.

   Lie's next novel, Lodsen og hans Hustru (1874; tr. The Pilot and His Wife, 1876), is also set in a coastal community, but this time in the south of Norway. It combines a description of life at sea with a penetrating analysis of jealousy in marriage. The following two novels, Thomas Ross (1878) and Adam Schrader (1879), are psychologically interesting but less successful. Rutland (1880), on the other hand, combines two ofhis favorite themes, the sea and marriage, into a first-rate story. Gaa paa! (1882; Forge Ahead) follows up its success by portraying a small community that is a microcosm of Norway, where the youth and their new ideas are in conflict with the old and the conservative.

   Lie was primarily a realist and motivated by a desire to improve society through his art. In Livsslaven (1883; tr. One of Life's Slaves, 1895), however, he tends toward naturalism as he presents the fate ofa young man ofillegitimate birth. There is also social criticism in Familjen paa Gilje (1883; tr. The Family at Gilje, 1920), which has the 1840s as its setting and debates the right of women to follow their hearts in matters of love and marriage. In En Malstrøm (1884; A Maelstrom) he returns to the subject of business ethics and the evils of speculation, while Kommandørens Døtre (1886; tr. The Commodore's Daughters, 1892), the title of which self-consciously evokes Camilla Collett's Amtmandens Døttre, is another discussion of forced marriage. Et Samliv (1887; A Life Together), another novel of married life, shows that internal forces constitute the greater threat against love. Maisa Jons (1889) constitutes a return to the theme of social conditions and offers a portrait of the seamstress as a social type suspended between her lower-class origins and the attractive life of her middle-class employers.

   While Lie, who spent most of his writing career abroad, largely kept himself aloof from the literary fashions of the time, there is a correlation between the concern with individual psychology that is a hallmark of Norwegian literature in the 1890s and his next works. The novel Onde Magter (1890; Evil Powers), which outwardly is a novel of business affairs, is also a study of those forces ofthe mind that lead to the destruction of human relationships. His next two books, two collections of stories about the dark powers of the mind entitled Trold (1891-1892; tr. Weird Tales from Northern Seas, 1893), contain masterful symbolic explorations of these forces within.

   Lie's later novels are also strongly psychological. Niobe (1893; tr. 1897) deals primarily with the relationship between parents and children, while Naar Sol gaar ned (1895; When the Sun Sets), like some of Lie s earlier works, explores jealousy in marriage. Dyre Rein (1896) is a study of the irrational forces that lead a young man to commit suicide the day before he is to be married. Faste Forland (1899), like the earlier novel En Malstrøm, probes the mind-set that leads to wanton speculation in business, while Naar Jerntæppet falder (1901; When the Iron Curtain Drops) explores people s reactions under stress. The passengers on an ocean liner learn that a bomb has been planted on board and is set to go off in precisely an hour. The bomb threat is subsequently revealed to be a hoax, but not before the experience has shaken many of the characters out of their long-standing habits of thought. Ulfvungerne (1903; The Ulfvung Family) takes greed and the lust for power as its theme, while Østenfor Sol, vestenfor Maane og bagom Babylons Taarn (1905; East of the Sun, West of the Moon, and Behind the Tower of Babylon) explores the theme of professional jealousy.