A Glimpse of Danish Literature [Part 4]

Around the mid-1920s, the debate about worldviews reached its peak. A new generation of lyric poets emerged.

Modern literature period (2)

The period between World War I and World War II:

Beginning: After the disaster of World War I, a wave of lyric poetry arose praising the joys of life, love, and modern women liberated from social conventions and the rhythms of technocratic life.

Poet E. Bonnelycke.

E. Bonnelycke (1893-1953) praising in his fiery verses (the collection Asphalt Songs) the fullness of life. Poet and writer Tom Kristensen (1893-1974) passionately expressed the joy of living, the wonders of technology, the coming revolutions, but even in his passion there was still a hint of anxiety.

O. Gelsted (1888-1968) was the first poet to denounce the emptiness of modern life, Americanization, noise and overwhelming advertising, which made people unable to concentrate on thinking. Sympathetic to Marxism, he denounced the German Nazis who invaded the country (poem Dark Birds , collection Poems in Exile ).

While Gelsted criticized modern civilization, J. Paludan (1896-1975) also criticized but turned back to the past. He spoke of the harmful effects of Americanization that JV Jensen praised. In the novel Western Roads, he exposed the phenomena of degeneration of American capitalist society. The two-volume novel Jorgen Stein is a great work of Danish critical realism; the author describes the development of society after World War I (from 1919 to 1933) and criticizes Americanization. He romanticizes bourgeois society before 1914.

Interlude: Around the mid-1920s, the debate about worldviews reached its peak. A new generation of lyric poets emerged. The spiritual crisis paused.

JA Schade (1903-1978) wrote humorous, surrealist poetry, expressing cosmic and subjective feelings about life. He praised sex (also in novels).

Paul La Cour (1902-1956) had the ambition to reach out to all living beings, to sympathize with all people. His poetry combined intellectual instinct, irrationality and rationality.

Poet Per Lange (1901-1991) rejected religion and adopted a stoic attitude in the direction of ancient philosophy. His writing style is clear and classical.

Gustaf Munch Petersen (1912-1938) died in the Spanish war against fascism, had socialist tendencies.

The period of ideological conflict: Marked by restlessness and nihilism. The most typical example is Nis Petersen (1897-1943). His novel The Street of the Shoemakers, set in ancient Rome, depicts the confusion of a society whose values are constantly changing (the book was translated into ten languages).

Hans Kirk (1898-1962) collaborated with the communist press from 1930. His political and social novels and stories depict class struggle, anti-capitalism and anti-fascism. The Fishermen depicts the development of a social group, not individual characters.

Lek Fischer (1904-1956) wrote plays and novels depicting the social anxiety of the 1930s, when Nazism was approaching. M. Klitgaard (1906-1945) used the techniques of American novels to describe the life of the capital. J. Niesen (1902-1945) wrote novels about his locality of Jutland, with a critical attitude towards provincial life. A. Dons (born in 1903) specialized in psychological novels. Together with Kirk, he was the most famous Marxist writer of that period. He wrote detective novels to describe bourgeois society with a satirical style. K. Becker (1891-1974) wrote a long novel depicting Danish society with a critical pen.

Theatre: Journalist Carl Erik Soya (1896-1983) wrote satirical plays of a psychoanalytic nature, exposing the deceptions of everyday life. K. Abell (1901-1961) modernized Danish theatre. He opposed bourgeois and petty bourgeois stereotypes and was anti-fascist. He tended to incorporate symbolic elements into his plays, leading to abstract humanism (especially influenced by existentialism).

The pinnacle of prose: During the period between the two World Wars, a number of writers reached their peaks. Karen Blixen (1885-1962), a landowner of aristocratic descent, was the owner of a coffee plantation in Kenya (Africa), where she lived from 1931 to 1941. She had a general humanitarian outlook, often contrasting good and evil. Her first collection of short stories in English, Seven Gothic Stories , published in the United States (1934), used a parody style, recreating the style of a bygone era in an ironic and engaging way. Memories of Africa were the material for the simple and touching stories - The African Farm (1937).

Like Blixen, HC Branner (1903-1966) was skeptical and liberal about contemporary ideological, moral and social systems. He addressed the psychological and social conflicts during the German occupation. His humanistic view was that preserving personal morality was more important than reforming society. His novels depicted human alienation and loneliness in capitalist society.

Martin A. Hansen (1909-1955) wrote novels and short stories. Initially he wrote critical realism; in a few books in the 1940s he turned towards religion and anti-naturalism. His anti-communist tendencies became more pronounced. His radio novel The Liar (1950) was a bestseller in 1999, and a daily newspaper ranked it third among Danish novels.

Literature of the Faroe Islands: The islands have been an autonomous region of Denmark since 1948. There has been a long tradition of Faroese oral literature. Two of the most famous Faroese writers in Northern Europe wrote in Danish. Jorgen-Frantz Jaconsen (1900-1938) left behind poems and a novel, Barbasa (1939), about life in the islands in the 18th century. W. Heinesen (1900-1991) wrote poetry with a cosmic feel. His stories and novels were a reaction to social conditions and had a touch of folk poetry and romantic mysticism. He wrote in Danish, except for one Faroese play.

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