| This dissertation is concerned with nihilism, the concept of universal nothingness, as manifested in the modern Danish novel. The emphasis is on defining the concept in its historical, philosophical, and cultural aspects, and demonstrating its relevance to the novel, using the ideas of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Camus. Each thinker defines nihilism and offers an ethical response to the threat of defeatism and pessimism. Jacobi sees nihilism as the consequence of abstract idealism and advocates faith in God; for Kierkegaard, abdication of personal responsibility through conformism in the "crowd" is a nihilism which must be overcome by individual ethical and religious commitment; Nietzsche defines nihilism as the end of absolute and immutable truth and purpose in the universe and calls for a return to the tragic humanism of the pre-Socratic Greeks; Heidegger views nihilism as a technological alienation which can only be overcome by a new revelation of "Being;" finally, Camus considers nihilism to be the result of the attempt to implement absolute political and cultural values and insists on the necessity for a recognition of the authentic limits and possibilities of mankind in an ultimately absurd world. These responses are used to analyze the positions of the principal characters in three Danish novels. In Jens Peter Jacobsen's Niels Lyhne (1880), nihilism is seen as the impossibility of reestablishing absolute values (Nietzsche) and the futility of conformism (Kierkegaard) after the "death of God." Tom Kristensen's Haervaerk (Havoc, 1931) explores the nihilism of an aesthetic, Dionysian existence (Nietzsche) and the necessity of ethical commitment (Kierkegaard). Peter Seeberg's Fugls fode (Chicken Feed, 1957) describes the situation of the contemporary nihilist who is alienated from Western culture (Heidegger) and the need for a recognition of the limits and possibilities of mankind in the age of nihilism (Camus). The situation of the protagonist of the novels is seen to parallel the concerns of the philosophers--both seek "truth," "meaning," and affirmation of life through lived experience in the context of universal nothingness. Exploring this parallel between philosophical reflection and literary form is the principal aim of the study. |
