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daughters: Jakobe and Nanny. Per has a brief relationship with the younger daughter, Nanny, before he falls in love with the older daughter. Their relationship is motivated both by love and by the fact, that the
Salomon family are able to sponsor Peter's project. Jakobe is young and passionate and not inhibited by Per's Protestant sense of guilt at indulging in the pleasures of life – but Per is unable to set his own passions free. They are engaged for a while, but Per calls off the engagement, which marks the end of his relation with the Jewish family. Per also meets the charismatic Dr. Nathan, a fictionalized version of the intellectual
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is afraid that he will damage them like his father did to him. He lives the last years of his life in ascetic contemplation in western
Jutland while carrying out the dreary work of a civil servant. Just before his death, he reconciles with Jacobe and in his last will and testament, he donates his meager fortune to the charity work she has started since they last saw each other.
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gain support through his contacts to the bank world, The
Salomon Family, who turn out to be more progressive and are willing to financially support his project. Nonetheless the project eventually fails due to opposition from Per's enemies in the national-conservative circles, and Per's own inability to compromise.
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Per returns to
Jutland, where he again embraces his Christian roots for a while. He marries the daughter of a priest, Inger, and they have three children. In the end, he has to leave them too, when Peter realises that he treats his children the same way as his father did to him. He does so because he
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In
Copenhagen he comes into contact with the Modern as a revolutionary force in the form of the natural sciences and technology, but also the cosmopolitan and intellectual circles of the wealthy Jewish milieu in Copenhagen. He becomes a friend of the banker Philip Salomon, where he meets Philip's two
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Per conceives a large scale engineering project and plans the construction of a series of canals and harbor systems in his native
Jutland, and starts lobbying for its construction with the political and academic establishment. When academia dismisses the idea as unfeasible, he nonetheless manages to
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The novel tells the story of Per
Sidenius, a self-confident, richly gifted man who breaks with his religious family and the constraints of his heritage and social background in order to become an engineer. However, at the height of his success, they at last catch up with him and force him to give up
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Peter
Sidenius, often just called Per, is a young aspiring engineer from a devout Christian family in Western Denmark. His father is a stern man who expects that his sons will be priests like himself. He renounces his faith and travels to Copenhagen to study at the Polytechnic University and to
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can mean both happiness as well as good luck or fortune. While Per initially considers happiness to be the result of success and the achievement of projects and goals in the mundane world, he eventually realizes that happiness can be achieved independently of the luck that leads to success. For
69:, who considered it "a cosmopolitan masterpiece of epochal sweep and a profound social, psychological, and metaphysical anatomy of the modernist transition". While it had been translated into 11 languages before the end of the 20th century, the first English translation was published in 2010 by
108:, who influences Per with his progressive ideals of bringing the future to Denmark. Although sympathetic, Per eventually rejects Dr. Nathan's influence, as he comes to see him as a representative of a purely humanistic intellectualism with no interest in science and technological progress.
73:, titled "Lucky Per". A new translation by Irish author and translator Paul Larkin was published in October 2018 by the Museum Tusculanum Press. Larkin's translation, titled 'A Fortunate Man', is based on the 1905 version of Pontoppidan's text. Danish director
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Pontoppidan, Per's withdrawal from the bustling scene of
Copenhagen is therefore not to be understood as defeat, but as a victory over the very circumstances that define his success.
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121:"When, in spite of all the good fortune that had come his way, he wasn’t happy, it was because he had not wanted to be happy in the general sense of the word."
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Albert, Judith Strong (2012). "Henrik
Pontoppidan. Lucky Per. Translated from the Danish with Notes and Afterword by Naomi Lebowitz ".
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published in eight volumes between 1898 and 1904. It is considered one of the major Danish novels, and in 2004 it was made part of the
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his career, leaving him lonely. For the character of Per Sidenius, Pontoppidan drew on his own history as a
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achieve his personal objective of becoming "a conqueror". In doing so he cuts ties to his family.
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A major theme of the story is the relation of "luck" to "happiness," as the Danish word
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in its English language version and was released in the late summer of 2018.
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Lebowitz, Naomi (2006). "The World's Pontoppidan and His Lykke Per".
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The novel was well received by German literati such as
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339:"Kulturkanon", PDF Copy of the Website from 2006
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77:'s film adaptation of the novel is also called
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347:Jameson, Fredric (October 20, 2011).
334:. Naomi Lebowitz (trans). Peter Lang.
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181:Den Store Danske Encyklopædi 2013
293:"Sindets landskaber – Lykke-Per"
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330:Pontoppidan, Henrik (2010).
297:Den Store Danske Encyklopædi
50:vicar's son who traveled to
230:"lykke — Den Danske Ordbog"
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171:Retrieved January 13, 2013
16:Book by Henrik Pontoppidan
158:"Om kanon for litteratur"
353:London Review of Books
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379:Danish Culture Canon
319:Scandinavian Studies
40:Danish Culture Canon
389:1900s Danish novels
349:"Cosmic Neutrality"
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368:Categories
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332:Lucky Per
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234:ordnet.dk
141:in 2018.
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