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    Doctor Glas
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    Doctor Glas
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    Doctor Glas
    Ebook188 pages2 hours

    Doctor Glas

    By Hjalmar Soderberg and Tom Rachman

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Stark, brooding, and enormously controversial when first published in 1905, this astonishing novel juxtaposes impressions of fin-de-siècle Stockholm against the psychological landscape of a man besieged by obsession. Lonely and introspective, Doctor Glas has long felt an instinctive hostility toward the odious local minister. So when the minister’s beautiful wife complains of her husband’s oppressive sexual attentions, Doctor Glas finds himself contemplating murder. A masterpiece of enduring power, Doctor Glas confronts a chilling moral quandary with gripping intensity.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCounterpoint
    Release dateJun 1, 2015
    ISBN9781940436227
    Unavailable
    Doctor Glas

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    Reviews for Doctor Glas

    4/5

    228 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Read for one of my Nordic literature courses in University, it's a book that has stuck with me for some time. Written in first person from the perspective of Doctor Glas, the narrative is a steady, contemplative route through the doctor's thoughts and musings in a similar fashion to his going about his day. The book also contains one of my favourite literary quotes. If you're in the mood for a thinker, it's a good book to pick up.
    • 5/5
      Doctor Glas is a Swedish classic that I hated when I had to read in high school. Now I think it is absolutely fantastic with memorable quotes inserted in the text. The daydreaming doctor who take disgust towards his patient's husband. So bad that he plans to murder him so his wife can escape him. The novel is a unique classic with its melancholy, but thoughtful language.
    • 5/5
      I read it for my swedish literature course in high school. It turned out to become my favourite book of all time. I must warn the average reader that in 150 words, one gets a relatively slow-moving plot but at the same time fantastic charater development (and interesting monologues if you´re into that stuff) and insight into human morals - simply fantastic.
    • 5/5
      Another rare source for my voracious reading machine is the occasional mention in a novel of another novel. Most often these are made up, but every once in a while one turns out to be a published novel. Such was the case with Swedish author Hjalmar Söderberg mentioned several times by Fredrik Backman in My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry. Söderberg’s short novel, Doctor Glas turned out to be a very popular novel by an acclaimed author. According to the blurb on the paper back version, Söderberg lived from 1869 to 1941, He is considered one of the greatest writers in the Swedish language. Doctor Glas, his third novel, was first published in 1905.The novel has the expected Spartan language, along with a healthy amount of introspection, topped off with some serious angst. Doctor Glas is a young physician in Stockholm. One of his patients is a local parish priest, Gregorious, who is about 20 years older than his lovely young wife, Helga. She comes to Glas for a solution to her unhappy marriage. The doctor falls seriously in love with Helga. Meanwhile, a number of women come to the surgery for help with an abortion, which is illegal in Sweden at the time. He refuses each time, despite some pretty desperate pleas for help. When a couple of feeble attempts at freeing Helga, Glas begins to toy with the idea of “rescuing” Helga by murdering her ageing husband.In this passage, Glas agonizes in his journal over failed love. He writes, “No, I don’t understand it. Why must it be? Why does it always have to be like this? Why does love have to be faerie gold that on the next day turns into withered leaves, or dirt, or gruel? From the human longing for love a whole branch of culture has sprung up – everything, indeed, that does not immediately pertain to quieting hunger of vanquishing enemies. Our sense of beauty has no other source. All art, all poetry all music has drunk from it. The tawdriest modern history painting no less than a Rafael Madonna and Steinlen’s little worker women, Dödens ängel no less than the “Song of Solomon” and the Buch der Lieder, church chorales and Vienna Waltzes, indeed every piece of ornamental plaster in this modest house where I live, every design on the wallpaper, the shape of the porcelain vase over there and the pattern on my cravat – everything that would decorate and embellish, whether it succeeds or fails, derives from it, though sometimes remotely and circuitously. And this notion is no nocturnal whimsy of mine, but has been demonstrated a hundred times. // But the true name of that source is not love, but the dream of love” (17-18).Another example of his introspection is his musing on happiness. Glas writes, “And I often wonder what sort of environment I’d choose for myself if I’d never read a book and never seen a work of art – maybe then it’d never even occur to me to choose at all; maybe the archipelago with its little hillocks would be good enough for me. Most likely all my dreams and thoughts about nature are founded on impressions I’ve taken from art and fiction. From art I’ve learned my longing to wander aimlessly among old Florentine flower meadows and rock upon Homer’s wine-dark sea and bend my knee at Böcklin’s Sacred Grove. Oh, what would my own poor eyes see in the world, left to their own devices, without all these hundreds and thousands of teachers and friends from among those who’ve written and thought and seen for the rest of us! In my youth I often thought: But that I might join them! But that I might be capable of joining them, those who for once could give, not just forever receive! It is so desolate to walk alone with a fruitless soul; you never know how you might manage to feel that you are something, that you have some significance, and gain a little respect for yourself. It’s most likely a great boon that the majority are so undemanding in this regard. I wasn’t, and long has it pained me, though I think the worst is over now” (53-54).I enjoyed this clever little novel. Now all I have to do is figure out how Söderberg’s Doctor Glas fits in with Backman. 5 stars--Jim, 3/27/16