Doctor Glas: A Novel
by Hjalmar Soderberg
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hjalmar SoderbergEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-08-13
ISBN: 0385722672
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Doctor Glas: A Novel
Book Review: A minor classic
Summary: 5 Stars
For a novel written in 1905, DOCTOR GLAS is remarkably modern. As aptly stated by William Sansom, and quoted by Margaret Atwood in her excellent introduction, "In most of its writing and much of the frankness of its thought, it might have been written tomorrow."
Tyko Gabriel Glas is a young (30-ish) Swedish doctor, who to outward appearances is a successful bourgeois doctor in Stockholm. But something is askew in his world and his psyche. He had a traumatic childhood. Moreover, he is not married, and he likes to think that he is not loved. As he observes in his diary, "Nothing so reduces and drags down a human being as the consciousness of not being loved." And: "We want to be loved; failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others." But in applying those aphorisms to himself, he overlooks the attentions from a female admirer, Eva Martens. Something else clearly is at the root of his existential malaise.
Perhaps it is that he thinks too much. As Glas listens to the Overture to Lohengrin, the leit-motif speaks to him: "'Thou shalt not ask!' And to this mystical sequence of notes, and these four words, I fancied I descried a sudden revelation of an ancient and secret wisdom. 'Thou shalt not ask!' Not go to the bottom of things: or you yourself will go to the bottom. Not seek truth: you won't find it, only lose yourself."
Among Glas's existential difficulties are that he is a romantic and that he is sexually repressed. He takes a fancy to a younger woman, Helga Gregorius, who is married to the local Vicar, a physically repulsive (to both Glas and Helga) 57-year-old man who insists on his marital rights, to the distress of Helga, so much so that she goes to Glas for help. And Glas, out of romanticism and his own repressed sexual longing for Helga, commits himself to helping her -- first by telling Rev. Gregorius that Helga has a medical condition that makes sexual intercourse unhealthy for her, and when that no longer forestalls Gregorius's advances, by telling Gregorius that he himself has a heart condition that makes intercourse unwise for him, and when that no longer works, . . . well, I can't reveal that much of the plot.
Throughout the novel, which is written in the first person in the form of Dr. Glas's diary, there is discussion and exploration of various themes or concepts -- including abortion, euthanasia, suicide, dreams, and morality -- making the novel very much one of ideas, in addition to being a novel of moderate suspense (How will Glas deal with Gregorius? Then, what will happen to Glas?). In tone and in ambiguous existential ambiance, there are some similarities to Kafka. To repeat, DOCTOR GLAS is a remarkably modern novel, and it is a minor classic.
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