My experience of ‘Martin Birck’s Youth’ was dominated not by the actual words in the book, but by my appreciation of the edition I was reading. I found it in the stacks of the University Library and was astounded to discover it is a first edition from 1930. I must say, it is looking very good for an 86 year old. It has one of those lovely resilient hardback bindings (which looks hand-sewn) and thick, uneven-edged paper. The endpapers are orange, with an abstract deco pattern in white. The typeface is much heavier than is typical today, Bondoni apparently. A scattering of woodcut illustrations are included, printed in contrasting vivid red. The book is thus a sensual delight; it also has that wonderful scent of Old Book Stored Carefully. I feel very lucky to have access to such volumes. Here's a photo: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2e2eWGihXL1d25pXzlsTlhSQ0E

In keeping with its age, the translation is accompanied by an amusingly patronising preface that begins, ‘It is a sad thought that everyone cannot enjoy Söderberg, that this master of delicate and incisive realism, this price of humorists, is - for Anglo-Saxons at least - an acquired taste.’ This is a very similar tone to the introduction in the 1963 edition of [b:Doctor Glas|789497|Doctor Glas|Hjalmar Söderberg|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320478015s/789497.jpg|1473531] I read. The preface then mentions [b:Niels Lyhne|456977|Niels Lyhne|Jens Peter Jacobsen|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347998800s/456977.jpg|445510], which is also name-checked in the narrative as a favourite book of Birck’s. All three novels seem to fall within the school of plot-light realism that discusses atheism and sexual morality. ‘Martin Birck’s Youth’ has no central mystery or dilemma. It is a biographical narrative in three parts: childhood, late teens, and twenties-edging-into-thirties. Martin Birck is not distinguished by any great talent, wealth, or ambition. He has a good sense of irony and a poetic sensibility, however. These sometimes combine pleasantly, for instance when he envisages his future as a poet:

Or perhaps it was unnecessary that his life should end so tragically. When he thought it over more carefully, this seemed to him a trifle banal. He might just as well move to a small town, to Strengness or Grenna. There he could live alone with a parrot and a black cat. He might also have an aquarium with goldfish. Behind closed shutters he would dream away the day, but when night came he would light candles in all the rooms and pace back and forth, meditating on the vanity of life. And when the townfolk passed his house on the way home from their evening toddy at the rathskeller, they would stop to point at his window and say: “There lives Martin Birck. He has taught like a sage and lived like a fool, and he is very unhappy.”

The narrative is for the most part mundane and speckled with description, with periodic interludes in which religion or sexual mores are critiqued. Such criticisms were doubtless shocking when the novel was first published in 1901, and even when this translated edition was released, but don’t merit a raised eyebrow today. I did like that Birck’s mistress was given a voice with which to lament the unfairness of having to conduct an illicit affair because marriage is too expensive. Via this unnamed mistress, Söderberg laments the ways that women are condemned and punished for daring to feel sexual desire. Although I appreciated the candid treatment of these issues, the writing style left me largely unmoved. I would also argue that the translator did not need to start so many sentences with ‘But’, a habit that got on my nerves.

The preface likens Söderberg’s writing to that of Anatole France. Comparing [b:The Gods Will Have Blood|346023|The Gods Will Have Blood|Anatole France|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1173925617s/346023.jpg|2069122], which I adored, to [b:Doctor Glas|789497|Doctor Glas|Hjalmar Söderberg|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320478015s/789497.jpg|1473531] and ‘Martin Birck’s Youth’ suggests that the French style of realism is more to my taste. Admittedly, that’s a small sample size. Nevertheless, I undoubtedly enjoyed this book more as an object than as literature. ( )