Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam (6 July 1859 – 20 May 1940) was a Swedishpoet,novelist andlaureate of the1916 Nobel Prize in Literature.[1] He was a member of theSwedish Academy from 1912.[2] His poems and prose work are filled with a great joy of life, sometimes imbued with a love ofSwedish history and scenery, particularly its physical aspects.
He was at once greeted as a poet of promise on the publication of his first collection of poems,[5]Vallfart och vandringsår (Pilgrimage: the Wander Years, 1888). It is a collection of poems inspired by his experiences in the orient and marks an abandonment of naturalism that was dominant then inSwedish literature.[6]
His love for beauty is also shown by the long narrative poemHans Alienus(1892).Dikter ("Poems", 1895) andKarolinerna (The Charles Men, 2 vols., 1897–1898), a series of historical portraits of KingCharles XII of Sweden and his cavaliers, shows a strong nationalistic passion.[7][8] English translations of short stories fromKarolinerna can be found in theAmerican-Scandinavian Review (New York), May 1914, November 1915, and July 1916.[5] The two volumes ofFolkunga Trädet (The Tree of the Folkungs, 1905–07) are the inspired, epic story of a clan of Swede chieftains in the Middle Ages.
In 1910, a controversy was waged in Swedish newspapers between a number of Swedish literary men on the topic of the proletarian “degradation” of literature, the protagonists of the two opposing camps beingAugust Strindberg and von Heidenstam. Professors Lidforss and Böök also took part. von Heidenstam's chief contribution was the pamphlet, directed chiefly against Strindberg, "Proletärfilosofiens upplösning och fall" ("The Decline and Fall of the Proletarian Philosophy").[9]
von Heidenstam's poetical collectionNya Dikter, published in 1915, deals with philosophical themes, mainly concerning the elevation of man to a better humanity from solitude.
^Facos, Michelle (1998).Nationalism and the Nordic Imagination: Swedish Art of the 1890s. University of California Press, p. 63.
^Barton, H. Arnold (2002). "The Silver Age of Swedish National Romanticism, 1905-1920,"Scandinavian Studies74 (4), pp. 505–520.
^Gustafson, Alrik (1940). "Nationalism Reinterpeted: Verner von Heidenstam." In:Six Scandinavian Novelists. New York: Biblo & Tannen, p. 169.
^Here the author advocates a sort of artistic exclusiveness; Heidenstam appears as the champion of the classic spirit, which he considers essentially aristocratic, as opposed to the Germanic attitude which he considers democratic and reprehensible.
