Umdlené duše

First published in Norway in 1891, Weary Men is a novel written in the form of one man's diary about his life, his loves, his aesthetic and religious beliefs, and what he sees as the decline of European society at the turn of the century. With its angst-ridden, pleasure-seeking hero, Weary Men invites comparison with classic European decadent novels of the period -- Huysmans' Against the Grain and Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray -- but unlike those novels, Garborg's hero is treated with a strong admixture of irony. And while Weary Men is in some respects a brilliant novel of ideas, it has proved fascinating to its readers primarily because of the acuity with which it explores its central character's psychological makeup. That so many issues in this book -- including science versus religion, decadence versus the new spirituality, moral and metaphysical nihilism versus the affirmation of life -- parallel issues that are topics of public discussion today, makes Weary Men, though written over one hundred years ago, read like a contemporary novel.