THE AMERICAN-SCANDINAVIAN REVIEW 
277 
Several of the minor characters are painted with a sure descrip¬ 
tive touch. There are no deep studies of psychology; in fact, Nexo is 
not an analyst, but we know all the characters so well that we feel cer¬ 
tain of immediately being able to recognize them, should we some day 
meet any of them in actual life. 
Sophus Michaelis last year published three books. A volume of 
poems entitled Springtime in Rome (Romersk Foraar, Gyldendal) 
enhances the impression gained by his readers that Michaelis’s talent is 
primarily that of a painter. In Springtime in Rome he strikes many 
chords, even enters the realm of dreams and mvsticism, and while 
Michaelis has shown that he is a master in the art of description, it 
would be incorrect to regard him as a poet for whom—to use a well 
known phrase of Gautier—only the visible world exists. Here as in 
The Palms (Paimerne) and in Wistaria (Blaaregn) , the two most im¬ 
portant of his former lyric productions, Michaelis gives not only splen¬ 
did and distinct pictures of the reality that can be grasped through our 
senses but also intimations of that which exists in our dreams and imag¬ 
ination. 
His novel The Judge (Dommeren, Dansk Litersert Forlag) can¬ 
not be fully estimated until it is completed; the book now published is 
only the first volume of a trilogy. In this work Michaelis deals with a 
number of problems within the criminal law and suggests a radical 
change in the method of punish¬ 
ing offenders. It is the plea of a 
brilliant and, in the best sense of 
the word, liberal man for a cause 
that is of great significance to so¬ 
ciety. In addition hereto the book 
contains other values, poetic de¬ 
scriptions of the erotic life in ad¬ 
olescence, bitter and keen an¬ 
alyses of the moral decadence 
that may be wrought in human 
life by indulging in all impulses 
of passion. 
Also Michaelis’s large novel 
The Heaven Ship ( Himmelshi - 
bet, Gyldendal) is the work of a 
great thinker and poet. It is a 
utopian work which relates how 
a soldier, dying on the battlefield, 
in his delirium travels through 
the firmament up to Mars. While 
the descriptions from Mars are 
chiefly of an ideological character 
Sophus Michaelis 
