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Novelist Henrik Pontoppidan is considered Denmark's foremost prose author.
Background
Henrik Pontoppidan was born July 24, 1857, in Fredericia—located on the Jutland Peninsula of Denmark. . His father, Dines Pontoppidan, was a Lutheran clergyman, one in a long line of family ministers, and an advocate of fanatic spiritualist N. F. S. Grundtvig.
Pontoppidan's mother, Marie Kirstina (Oxenböll), was the daughter of a Danish government official.
The fourth of sixteen children, Pontoppidan was expected to carry on the theological tradition for the family, but surprised everyone and disappointed his father when he decided to pursue engineering instead.
Education
In 1874, at the age of 17, Pontoppidan was accepted to the Polytechnic Institute at the University of Copenhagen to study engineering.
In 1877, at the age of 20, he dropped his studies just short of receiving a degree, certain that he was being called to a life of writing.
Career
Initially, Henrik Pontoppidan hoped to expand his understanding of the peasant class by becoming one of them.
He tried to immerse himself in that life, even marrying a peasant woman, Mette Marie Hansen, in December of 1881.
He detested the lyric and romantic writing styles of the times, and this showed up in his own writing.
He stated that readers should beware of writing that was pretty and emotionally manipulative.
He wrote a second short story collection titled Skyer in 1890, berating farmers for not taking a stand against abuse, and criticizing society for mistreating the laborers.
His next novel cycle, Lykke–Per—eight volumes released from 1898 to 1904 and translated Lucky Per—was an autobiographical account of the ways in which a strict Protestant upbringing can shape an individual.
Its atheist protagonist, Per Sidenius, discontinues his pursuit of an engineering degree to become a writer.
Quoted on the Kirjasto Website, Marxist critic George Lukacs identified the irony in this novel as lying "in the fact that he lets his hero succeed all the time, but shows that a demonic power forces him to regard everything he has gained as worthless. "
Lykke–Per was never translated into English, but is still considered by many to be Pontoppidan's "magnum opus.
"His last novel cycle, De Dødes Rige—five volumes released from 1912 to 1916 and translated The Realm of the Dead—are considered by many scholars, critics and readers to be "the greatest novels in the Danish language. "
Both pragmatic and contemptuous in tone, his pessimism and criticism grew from cycle to cycle, making a convincing storyline that, nevertheless, was not very complimentary to Danish character.
He criticized the people of Denmark for being complacent in the face of what he viewed as governmental oppression and prejudice. This perspective and outspoken chastisement peaked in his 1927 novel Mands Himmerig (Man's Heaven), which tells the tale of a corrupt man trying to benefit from the suffering of others in wartime.
It was his memoirs—five volumes written from 1933 to 1940—that helped readers better understand his rigidly moral stance.
He stated that his creed was a belief in "the clarity of thought and the masculine balance of mind. "
"In 1917, Pontoppidan was awarded a joint Nobel Prize for Literature with fellow Danish author Karl Gjellerup.
Pontoppidan's "profuse descriptions of Danish life" were cited as the impetus for the prestigious award.
Due to the difficulties of life during World War I, no formal ceremony was enacted, and the recipients did not give speeches.
Sven Soderman, a Swedish critic, wrote an essay to commemorate the moment.
In his History of Scandinavian Literature, Sven Rossel praised Pontoppidan's "clear style, which 'de–lyricizes' language, " adding that "No other modern Danish author has been able to paint so precisely a complete picture of his time—its intellectual movements and its people. "
Although he was best known for his novel cycles, Pontoppidan was a versatile author, composing short fiction and plays under the pseudonyms "Rusticus" and "Urbanus" and four volumes of memoir that spanned the time period from 1933 through 1940.
Achievements
Henrik Pontoppidan shared with Karl Gjellerup the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1917 for "his authentic descriptions of present-day life in Denmark. "
Henrik Pontoppidan was a man of many paradoxes: a clear liberal in his time, but a stern patriot, an anti-clerical puritan, a disillusioned fighting nature, collaborating with socialists but always from an independent and individualist position.
Connections
Henrik Pontoppidan married Antoinette Cecilia Caroline Elise Kofoed on April 9, 1892.
