Melanholija 1-2

The famous 19th-century Norwegian artist Laš Hertervig painted stunning landscapes, suffered from mental illness and died in poverty in 1902. In Melancholy I, Fose masterfully delves into Hertervig's mind during his student days, when he suffered a severe nervous breakdown. As a student at the Dusseldorf Academy, Hertervig was paralyzed by paranoia and madly in love with Helene Vinkelman, the fifteen-year-old daughter of his landlady. Due to his obsession with a minor girl, full of lyrical voluptuousness and unbridled sexual hallucinations, Hertervig ends up on the street. Exposed to taunts, he desperately tries to get back into the Vinkelmans' apartment. In the end, he ends up in a mental hospital, where the doctor sees excessive masturbation as the cause of his problems. In the last section of the first part, at the beginning of the nineties of the 20th century, we meet the also disturbed writer Vidme, who, inspired by Hertervig's painting "Sa Borgeje", like Fose himself, wants to write a novel about the painter. Melancholy II is set in 1902 and told from the perspective of his fictional sister Ulina. Although this novel was originally published in two volumes, today the author insists that it is a whole that does not suffer from separate editions. Jun Fose is considered one of the most important world authors today, and Melancholia is his best novel, based on which even an opera was written.