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Henrik Pontoppidan: Lykke-Per (Lucky Per)

The eponymous lucky Per – clearly based, at least in part, on the author – is Peter Andreas Sidenius, son of Pastor Sidenius, a man whose family has a long tradition as pastors. Initially, Pastor Sibenius is initially looked down upon by the locals, more used to a well-off, well-dressed pastor and one who is friendlier and more approachable. Apart from his character, Pastor Sibenius has a sickly wife and she is therefore unable to carry out the social functions expected of a pastor’s wife. Given that the couple have eleven children, you can sympathise with the poor woman. The children are obedient and well-behaved, with one exception – Peter Andreas, whom I shall henceforth refer to as Per.

Per was trouble at school and generally disobedient. When he was older he was part of a gang that stole apples and the owner of the apples was not amused. His parents were concerned and his siblings excluded him from their games, driving him further away from the family. Indeed, he wondered whether he was in fact an adopted orphan and not one of the family. He would sneak out at night and hang out with unsuitable girls.

The tradition in the family was that the boys would become pastors and the girls would marry pastors or similar religious men. Signe, the oldest daughter had been unable to marry as she has to take the place of her sickly mother running the household. The two oldest boys had already gone off to Copenhagen to study with a view to becoming pastors. Per was not going to follow in their footsteps. He was determined to be an engineer and had some support from his maths teacher. At sixteen he was sent to the Polytechnic in Copenhagen. While he gets on with his landlord, a former boatswain and his wife, he is lonely, having no contact with his brothers.

Per does not enjoy his course. For some time, Per had realised that a proficient engineer was, in any case, no longer a proud fairy tale hero striding through the world, as he had once deceived himself into believing, but a common bureaucrat, a meticulous recording machine, a living tabulator, chained to a drafting table. On his own he was working on a fjord alignment project. However, he eventually discovers the bohemian side of Copenhagen and mixes with artists and poets.

Ivan Salomon is a young Jew, son of one of the richest men in the city. He is eager to discover budding geniuses and he identifies Per as one and latches on to him. His view is that Per had Aladdin’s luck and God’s legend on his brow.

Per continues with his project and shows it to his teacher who finds a key mistake in it which somewhat, but only somewhat discourages him. Meanwhile he has a messy love life and learns that his father has cancer, though does not return to see him. In many respects he is a typically rebellious youth – moving away from his family and their traditions, thinks he knows it all and interested in the opposite sex.

He develops another, more ambitious civil engineering project. He submits it to a engineering magazine but is again rejected. You need, first and foremost, to gain a better understanding of what you lack. At twenty-two, is there any worthier ambition than to learn more?
He now feels that he needs to go abroad as Denmark is too limited. Why keep clinging to a doomed country that, in the course of one man’s life, had fallen into ruin, wasted away to a pale and flabby limb on Europe’s body swelling with power?

All this time he has, of course , been struggling financially but inherits from a friend who kills himself, which helps him. Ivan is still supporting him and introduces him to his family, about whom he learns a lot. There are two daughters and he is interested in first one and then the other. Neither his family (anti-Semitism is a key theme in this book) nor hers approve of the relationship. However her family accept the inevitable and help him out financially, enabling him to travel (to Germany and Austria) to learn more about civil engineering abroad. However he does go home just before his father’s death.

While abroad he starts to worry about what we might call the meaning of life and reads books of philosophy to help him. At the same time, we learn that things are changing in Denmark – Other daring dreamers who secretly were preparing themselves to seize positions of leadership in their country and his project starts to attract some interest.

Per has many issues. Here is a young man who has followed but not completed a university course in civil engineering, never worked as a trainee/apprentice and, indeed, never worked professionally in this field, though he has studied various projects in Denmark and abroad. So when a group of bankers come up with proposal for implementing his grand project, he rejects them forcefully, as they do not want to do exactly what he wants to do. We know his project is not perfect, even by his own admission. When he showed it to his teacher, the teacher found errors, which he corrected. After his grand tour, he has learnt that the project once again is far from perfect and makes changes. In short his arrogance is excessive. He does get some support, particularly from the ever loyal Ivan, so he perseveres.

As well as his professional life, his love life is also decidedly messy as he is unsure whom he wants and why and is unfaithful both in thought and deed. After his father’s death, most of his family move to Copenhagen but he avoids them.

He continues his complex life, engaged to a rich woman whom he is not sure he loves, struggling to get any recognition for his major civil engineering work and also trying to develop a tidal energy project and more or less ignoring his family.

But then it all changes. He is completely unsure of himself and his life . He hadn’t shaken off the nightmare that imprisoned his thoughts in his sleep and drained his blood, courage, energy. He abandons his project and his fiancée , tries to recover his faith and repair relations with his family and become a better. man. I am like a hungry man who cannot be satisfied , a sick man who will not call for the doctor.But it is not straightforward. . He had sold his soul, with full foresight, for earthly treasure. His pact with Luck he had been living by was a pact with the Devil, with Satan. However That evening and night he broke decisively with his past. The whole night he lay sleepless, and when he reviewed his life, he felt more and more guilty.

Looking at Per’s life from the perspective of a normal reader and, in particular, a normal twenty-first century reader, you can only wonder at some of his decisions. Yes, breaking with one’s family, particularly a very religious family might seem understandable even if somewhat excessive but pursuing. career as technical as civil engineering without the basic training and some sort of apprenticeship and then expecting the world at large to accept and welcome his ideas, when still a very young man was, frankly, unwise. Again his behaviour towards the opposite sex can be highly criticised though he was by no means the first or last man to behave the way he does. A great part of his trouble is that he often is not sure what he wants and, when he thinks he does know ,he does not knpw how to go about achieving his aims in a sensible manner. Despite or, perhaps, because of this, Pontopiddan gives us a long and detailed portrait of a very troubled man which makes for fascinating reading.

Publishing history

First published 1998-2004 (four separate volumes) by Det Nordiske Forlag
First published in English in 2010 by Peter Lang
Translated by Naomi Lebowitz