The Visionary by Jonas Lie, Fiction, Classics, Literary

A contemporary of both Ibsen and Bjornson, Lie first aspired to a seafaring life, but his eyesight made such a career impossible. He turned then to poetry and journalism, finally producing in 1870 this first novel, "a tragedy in which resistless Fate hurries its victims to destruction. The hero, David Holst, is one of those unhappy beings who seem doomed to a more than ordinary share of the ills of life. He has inherited from his mother at least a tendency to insanity and he lives in fear of being involved in a terrible catastrophe, from which he only saves himself by strong efforts of will and by the recollection of the lost love of his youth . . ."

I know many people who have felt the same inclination that sometimes comes over me, to choose bad weather to go out in. Men who have passed from a childhood lived in the open air of the country, to an occupation which entails much sitting still and for whom the room sometimes seems to become too narrow and confined-or else they are poets.