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Karl Gjellerup (1857-1919) |
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Karl Gjellerup was a Danish poet and novelist
who
together with his compatriot Henrik Pontoppidan
won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1917. In Denmark the award was
received with little enthusiasm: Gjellerup had been regarded long as
a German writer. Because Sweden was neutral during World War I, the
divided prize did not create political speculations about partial
decision, but showed on the other hand cultural allegiance between the
Nordic neighbors. Buddhism played an important part in Gjellerup's
oeuvre. Some author or other—I should even say, were I asked, a very famous one—has said, that in hours of sorrow nothing is so sad as the remembrance of happy days. Of course I have not the courage to dispute the truth of his words, especially as the have been so often repeated that they are almost proverbial, otherwise I should have thought that, in such hours, it would be still sadder if one had no happy moments upon which to look back. And in this frame of mind I will recall, as well as I can, the days of Rathen and those which followed. (from Minna by Karl Gjellerup, translated by C. L. Nielsen, London: William Heinemann, 1913, pp. 3-4; original title: Minna, 1889) Karl
Gjellerup was born in Roholte, in southern Zealand. Like Pontoppidan,
he was the son of a clergyman. His father, Pastor Carl Adolph
Gjellerup, died when Karl
was three years old. He was brought up in Copenhagen by his mother's
(Anna Fibiger) cousin, the minister and poet Johannes Fibiger. While
still at school, Gjellerup began writing. After graduating from
Haerslevs Grammar School he wrote the tragedy Scipio Africanus and the
drama Arminius. Gjellerup was expected to follow in the footsteps of his father and have a career in church. In 1874 he
entered the University of Copenhagen, where he studied theology,
graduating in 1878. However, under the influence of Darwinism (Gjellerup called Darwin as "the hero
of our time"), Herbert Spencer, and the critic Georg
Brandes,
he had already started to feel attraction to atheism before taking the
degree. Brandes's university lectures arouse much attention – he
advocated free development of the individual and naturalism in
literature. Both of Gjellerup's first books, En idealist (1878, An Idealist) and Det evige strid (1878, The eternal
strife) were published pseudonymously. The paper Arvelighed
og moral (1881, Heredity and morality) received the University
of Copenhagen Gold Medal in 1881. When Brandes criticized his ode to
the memory of Darwin, Aander og
Tider (1882, Spirits and Times)
as pompous and pretentious, Gjellerups enthusiasm with the school of
Brandes vaned. Moreover, Brandes found him unworthy of receiving the
Nobel Prize. ('Translation and Transition: The Danish
Literary Response to Darwin' by Mathias Clasen, et al., in The Literary and Cultural Reception of
Charles Darwin in Europe, Volume 3, edited by Thomas F. Glick
& Elinor Shaffer, 2014, pp. 120-121) Although Darwin's The Origin of Species was
not
against
religion, its argumentation did not support the account of the creation
in the Bible. Gjellerup's break with Christian faith was the subject of
his early novels. Later he turned his interested in Buddhism and
other Oriental religions, but he never became an orthodox Buddhist
disciple. And he was an ardent Wagnerian. The literary scholar Paul Houe has called Gjellerup as an
"intellectual borderliner". ('The Resistance to Modernism in Karl Gjellerup's Germanernes Laerlig (1882) by Paul, in Legacies of Modernism: Art and Politics in Northern Europe, 1890-1950, edited by Patrizia C. McBride, Richard W. McCormick, and Monika Žagar, 2007, p. 44) Det unge Danmark (1879,
The Young Denmark), published under his own name, was a polemical novel about an atheist, whose
proposal of marriage to a merchant's daughter is rejected. En idealist portrays a young intellectual, who denounces theology and religion. With Rødtjørn (1881, Red Thorn) Gjellerup presented himself as a freethinking poet. August Strindberg praised the collection in a letter to Brandes, who had guided Gjellerup's writing. It was followed by Germanernes lærling (1882, The Apprentice of the Teutons).Written under Brandesian realism, it told of a young teacher, Niels Hjorth, who undergoes similar crisis as Gjellerup, his increasing alienation from Christian faith. The story is set in the frame work of parliamentary elections between 1872 and 1877. Brynhild (1884), about the fate of the Nordic warrior
maiden, featured the most important valkyrie figure in the Volsunga
saga. This verse drama, dedicated his future wife Eugenia, was
inspired by Wagner's Der Ring der
Nibelungen, and earned Gjellerup a state pension for life. Thamyris
(1887) drew on ancient Greek mythology. The swastika, a pagan symbol, appeared in the front page of Den ældre Eddas gudesange (1895), illustrated by Lorenz Frølich. With the help of a small inheritance, Gjellerup travelled in
1883 and 1884 in Italy, Greece,
Germany,
Russia, Switzerland, and Sweden. While in Rome, he studied watercolor
painting under the Swedish artist Julius Kronberg. From 1885 to 1887
Gjellerup lived in
Dresden, Germany. Dissatisfied with the limitations of naturalism, Gjellerup
published En klassisk maaned (1884) and Vandreaaret
(1885), in which he began to formulate his new aesthetic. He was
influenced by Goethe's and Friedrich Schiller's humanism and idealist
philosophy with its views that what would normally be called "the
external world" is somehow created by the mind – physical world does
not exist independently of the human mind. These thoughts, his combination of the demand for truth with
an idealism, were developed in two novels: Minna (1889), a
love story set in the Germany of his day, and The Pilgrim Kamanita
(1906), set in India and examining the idea of reincarnation. Lord
Buddha revisists the "City of Five Hills" and encounters the young
pilgrim. "India is
indeed the land where even the robber must philosophise, and
occasionally become strange saints, and where even the Guardians of
Hell remain "polite until the last step up the gallows,"" said
Gjellerup in his note to the first edition. (Kamanita: A Legendary Romance
by Karl Gjellerup, translated from the German by John Logie, edited by
Amaro Bhikkhu, second edition, 2008, p. xiv)
This book appeared
in
German in 1906, and was translated into English in 1912. Like many
other German intellectuals interested in Buddhism, Gjellerup integrated
its ideas quite freely into his writings. The 1913 German edition of Der Pilgrim Kamanita
had a swastika on its cover, drawn three decades before the Nazis rose
into power. However, Gjellerup's work and Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha were on the reading list of the Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler. In Minna the title character is contrasted with the frivolous artistic circles of the times. Her character is revealed largely through letters. Dresden offers the backgroud to the story. Den fuldendtes hustru (1907, The Wife of the Perfect One) was on Siddhartha's wife, Yasodhara, and her Path of Purification to attain perfection. "When my first book appeared forty years earlier, it had been influenced by German idealism. Just three years later (in the thesis awarded the gold medal) I was a follower of English naturalism, after which I returned to a position under those elevated signs of the zodiac which constitute my rightful habitat, only this time the guiding star was not Hegel as in En idealist, but Kant and Schopenhauer." ('Autobiography' by K. Gjellerup, in Nobel Lectures: Literature, 1901-1967, edited by Horst Frenz, 1999, pp. 152-153) Gjellerup married in 1887 Eugenia Bendix (née Heusinger), a
cousin of
Georg Brandes; her first husband had been the Danish musician Fritz Bendix.
For a period the couple lived in Hellerup. In
1892 Gjellerup moved with his family to Dresden, the native city of his wife, and
with her help began to write in German. A Nietzschean contempt for the masses
appeared in some of Gjellerup's plays in the 1890s. Also Fyodor Dostoevsky and
Ivan Turgenev were important writers for him – their influence was
especially seen in the novels dealing with ethical problems. Møllen (1896),
a story about crime and passion, was inspired by Emile Zola. Although it was not considered among Gjellerup's major works,
the dramatized version of the melodrama was popular on stage. The novel
was made into a film by the Swedish director John W. Brunius (released
in 1921). Gjellerup's
later works include Die Opferfeuer (1903) and
Die Weltwanderer (1910, Verdensvandrerne), about Buddhist concepts of rebirth and soul's wandering
towards nirvana. The book has been used as part of the Thai high school
curriculum. Christian themes were dealt in Der goldene Zweig
(1917). Writing never made Gjellerup rich, he lived a modestly and withdrawn. At the beginning of World War, he supported Germany's war efforts, Denmark remained neutral. Gjellerup died on October 13, 1919, at home in Villa Baldur, which he had bought with the Nobel Prize money. His grave is in the Old Cemetery near Klotzsche; Gjellerup spent there the final period of his spiritual exile. Eugenie died in 1940. Although Gjellerup was much admired at the height of his literary career, his posthumous reputation is undeservedly diminished. For further reading: 'En læsning Af Karl Gjellerups Pastor Mors Med Udgangspunkt I Schopenhauers Filosofi' by L. Nyeng Hemicke, Aktualitet - Litteratur, Kultur Og Medier, Volume 17, Number 1 (2023); 'The Resistance to Modernism in Karl Gjellerup's Germanernes Lærling (1882) by Paul Houe, in Legacies of Modernism: Art and Politics in Northern Europe, 1890-1950, edited by Patrizia C. McBride, Richard W. McCormick, and Mokika Žagar (2007); Grænsegængeren, en belysning af Karl Gjellerups forfatterskab med særlig henblik på idealisme by Jesper Jørgensen (2004); Karl Gjellerup - ein literarischer Grenzgänger des Fin de Siècle by Olaf C. Nybo (2002); Neighbouring Nobel, the History of Thirteen Danish Nobel Prizes by Keld Nielsen (2001); 'Autobiography' by K. Gjellerup, in Nobel Lectures: Literature, 1901-1967, edited by Horst Frenz (1999); Karl Gjellerup - en biografi by Georg Nørregård (1988); 'Gjellerup, Karl,' in Nobel Prize Winners, edited by Tyler Wasson (1987); 'Gjellerup, Karl' by S.H.R. [Sven H. Rossel], in Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature, ed. by Jean-Albert Bédé and William B. Edgerton (1980); 'Karl Gjellerup: A master of expression of Indian thought' by Nicolae Zberae, in Indo-Asian Culture 19:1 (1970) Selected works:
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