Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler (24 April 1845 – 29 December 1924) was a Swiss poet who was awarded theNobel Prize for Literature in1919 "in special appreciation of hisepicOlympian Spring". His work includes bothpessimistic andheroic poems.
Spitteler was born inLiestal. His father was an official of the government, being Federal Secretary of the Treasury from 1849 to 1856. Young Spitteler attended thegymnasium atBasel, having among his teachers philologistWilhelm Wackernagel and historianJacob Burckhardt. From 1863 he studied law at theUniversity of Zurich. In 1865–1870 he studied theology in the same institution, atHeidelberg andBasel, though when a position as pastor was offered him, he felt that he must decline it. He had begun to realize his mission as an epic poet and therefore refused to work in the field for which he had prepared himself.[1]
Later he worked inRussia as tutor, starting from August 1871, remaining there (with some periods inFinland) until 1879. Later he was elementary teacher inBern andLa Neuveville, as well as journalist for theDer Kunstwart and as editor for theNeue Zürcher Zeitung. In 1883 Spitteler married Marie op der Hoff, previously his pupil in Neuveville.
Under the pseudonymCarl Felix Tandem, Spitteler published the allegoric prose poemPrometheus and Epimetheus in 1881, contrasting between ideals and dogmas through the mythological figures ofPrometheus andEpimetheus. This 1881 edition received an extended psychological exegesis byCarl Gustav Jung in his 1921 bookPsychological Types. Spitteler later reworked the poem asPrometheus der Dulder (Prometheus the Sufferer), published in 1924 under his true name.
In 1882 he published hisExtramundana, a collection of poems. He gave up teaching in 1885 and devoted himself to a journalistic career in Basel. Now his works began to come in rapid succession. In 1891 there appearedFriedli, der Kalderi, a collection of short stories, in which Spitteler, as he himself says, depicted Russian realism.Literarische Gleichnisse appeared in 1892, andBalladen in 1896.[1]
In 1900–1905 Spitteler wrote the powerful allegoric-epic poem, iniambic hexameters,Olympischer Frühling (Olympic Spring). This work, mixing fantastic, naturalistic, religions and mythological themes, deals with human concern towards the universe. His prose works includeDie Mädchenfeinde(Two Little Misogynists, 1907), about his autobiographical childhood experiences, the dramaticConrad der Leutnant(1898), in which he show influence from the previously opposed Naturalism, and the autobiographical novellaImago (1906), examining the role of theunconscious in the conflict between a creative mind and the middle-class restrictions withinternal monologue.
DuringWorld War I he opposed the pro-German attitude of the Swiss German-speaking majority, a position put forward in the essay "Unser Schweizer Standpunkt". In 1919 he won the Nobel Prize. Spitteler died atLucerne in 1924.
Carl Jung claimed his idea of the archetype of theAnima was based upon what Spitteler described as 'My Lady Soul'. MusicianDavid Bowie, who famously described himself as Jungian, wrote the 1973 song "Lady Grinning Soul".[2]
