The Labyrinth by Jens Baggesen. New York. 2025. Oxford University Press. 9780192898517. Oxford World's Classics. 1 black-and-white map. Translated by Jesper Gulddal. Edited by Henrik Blicher. 512 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Jens Baggesen's The Labyrinth (1792-93) is a genre-bending and highly personal travel book that follows the young Danish author's journey, made in 1789, from Copenhagen through Germany to the Swiss border at Basel. In its outer form, it follows the conventions of travel writing: describing the cities, landscapes, and notable people encountered on the route, while also offering critical commentary on art, architecture, theatre, and literature, mixed with reactions to the unfolding French Revolution. However, Baggesen finds contemporary travel writing to be pedantic and dry and is determined to make his own account as engaging and personal as possible. Based on the principle that 'nothing is more necessary in a volume of travels than a traveller', the narrative eschews a focus on prescribed sights and instead foregrounds his individual responses to the places and people he encounters. Baggesen's account of his journey is not simply sentimental, but rather moves through an array of different, often conflicting affective and intellectual register: from dejection to wit, whimsy, and ebullient joy, including enchanted observations of nature as well as cosmopolitan reveries about the brotherhood of nations. Similarly, the prose style of the book---always acknowledged as a key feature--is determinedly eclectic. A richly varied compendium of literary styles, attitudes, and philosophical ideas, brought to life in a new English translation by Jesper Gulddal, The Labyrinth offers a rare glimpse into the mind of an endlessly thinking, feeling, and imagining traveller at a pivotal moment in European history.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jens Immanuel Baggesen (15 February 1764 – 3 October 1826) was a major Danish poet, librettist, critic, and comic writer. "Baggesen's Oak" (Baggesens Eg) at Christianssæde manor on Lolland in Denmark, which inspired the poet's Landforvandlingen. Baggesen was born at Korsør on the Danish island of Zealand on February 15, 1764. His parents were very poor, and he was sent to copy documents at the office of the clerk of Hornsherred District before he was twelve. He was a melancholy, feeble child, and he attempted suicide more than once. By dint of indomitable perseverance, he managed to gain an education; in 1782, he entered the University of Copenhagen. His first work—a verse Comical Tales broadly similar to the later Broad Grins of Colman the Younger—took the capital by storm and the struggling poet found himself a popular favorite at age 21. He left Denmark in a rage and spent the next years in Germany, France, and Switzerland. In 1790, he married at Bern and began to write in German. He published his next poem Alpenlied ("Alpine Song") in that language, but brought the Danish Labyrinten ("Labyrinth") as a peace offering upon his return to Denmark in the winter. It was received with unbounded homage. Over the next twenty years, he published volumes alternately in Danish and German and wandered across northern Europe before settling principally in Paris. His most important German work during this period was the 1803 idyllic hexameter epic called Parthenais. Upon his 1806 visit to Copenhagen, he found the young Oehlenschläger hailed as the great poet of the day and his own popularity on the wane. He then stayed, engaging in one abusive literary feud after another, most with the underlying issue that Baggesen was determined not to allow Oehlenschläger to be considered a greater poet than himself. He finally left for Paris in 1820, where he lost his second wife and youngest child in 1822. Suffering a period of imprisonment for his debts, he fell at last into a hopeless melancholy madness. Having slightly recovered, he determined to see Denmark once more, but died en route at the Freemasons' hospital in Hamburg on October 3, 1826. He was buried at Kiel.
Jesper Gulddal is Professor of Literary Studies at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Holding a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Copenhagen, he has published books, edited collections, and journal articles on European literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing particularly on intercultural perceptions and questions of mobility and movement control. Most recently, he has helped develop a new global approach to crime fiction. He is also an experienced translator between Danish, German, and English. Henrik Blicher is Associate Professor in the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen. A literary historian specialising in Danish literature 1600-1900, his work focuses particularly on textual scholarship and editing. In addition to edited books and numerous journal articles, his publications include an acclaimed Danish edition of Jens Baggesen's The Labyrinth. He is also the editor of the complete works of Danish Romantic poet A.W. Schack von Staffeldt.
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