Karl Gjellerup was a Danish-born author, freethinker, who explored different truths through his poetry and novels, covering theology, atheism, and Darwin's doctrine of evolution, as well as Buddhism and reincarnation.
Background
Karl Gjellerup was born on June 2, 1857, in Roholte, Denmark. Gjellerup, whose parents on both sides belonged to ecclesiastic families, passed his matriculation exam (Studentereksamen) in 1874 and started his studies in theology at the University of Copenhagen. Besides theology he eagerly cultivated aesthetic studies and became absorbed in the work of Schiller and Heinrich Heine.
Education
Gjellerup received a well-rounded education in the Fibiger household.
Religion, music, and classical German literature were a prominent part of his studies. In 1874, Gjellerup graduated with honors from Haerslevs grammar school and headed to the University of Copenhagen.
By the time he entered college, Gjellerup was well–read and steeped with a broad background in literature.
At this time, Gjellerup became drawn toward the ideas of Danish critic and scholar Georg Brandes, who lectured at the University of Copenhagen intermittently between 1871 and 1883.
While at the university, Gjellerup underwent a philosophical transformation.
Karl Gjellerup studied radical Bible criticism and Darwinistic literature. He earned the University Gold Medal for this work.
Gjellerup earned his theology degree in June 1878, but by then had completely lost faith in the traditional Christian belief system. After graduating summa cum laude, Gjellerup moved to the countryside and began writing in earnest, exploring his new ideas about the world.
Career
Among the early works of Gjellerup must be mentioned his most important novel Germanernes Lærling (1882, i.e. The Germans' Apprentice), a partly autobiographic tale of the development of a young man from being a conformist theologian to a pro-German atheist and intellectual, and Minna (1889), on the surface, a love story but more of a study in woman's psychology. Some Wagnerian dramas show his growing romanticist interests. An important work is the novel Møllen (1896, i. e. The Mill), a sinister melodrama of love and jealousy.
n his last years he was clearly influenced by Buddhism and Oriental culture. His critically acclaimed work Der Pilger Kamanita/Pilgrimen Kamanita (1906, i.e. The Pilgrim Kamanita) has been called 'one of the oddest novels written in Danish'. It features the journey of Kamanita, an Indian merchant's son, from earthly prosperity and carnal romance, through the ups and downs of the world's way, a chance meeting with a stranger monk (who, unbeknownst to Kamanita, was actually Gautama Buddha), death, and reincarnation towards nirvana. In Thailand, which is a Buddhist country, the Thai translation of The Pilgrim Kamanita co-translated by Phraya Anuman Rajadhon was formerly used as part of the school textbooks.
Den fuldendtes hustru (1907, i.e. The wife of the perfect) is a versified drama, inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, about Buddha's earthly life as Siddharta, being inhibited in his spiritual efforts by his wife, Yasodhara. The giant novel Verdensvandrerne (1910, i.e. The world roamers) takes its contemporary starting point in a German female academic on a study tour in India, but evolves across chronological levels, in which characters re-experience what has happened in former eons, thus featuring souls roaming from one incarnation to another.
Rudolph Stens Landpraksis (1913, i.e. The country practice of [physician] Rudolph Sten) is set in the rural Zealand of Gjellerup's youth. The main character develops from a liberal, superficial outlook on life, including youthful romantical conflicts, through years of reflection and asketic devotion to duty towards a more mature standpoint, hinting at the author's own course of life.
Das heiligste Tier (1919, i.e. The holiest animal) was Gjellerup's last work. Having elements of self-parody, it is regarded as his only attempt at humour. It is a peculiar mythological satire in which animals arrive at their own Elysium after death. These include the snake that killed Cleopatra, Odysseus' dog Argos, Wisvamitra (the holy cow of India), the donkey of Jesus and the horses of various historical commanders in field. The assembly select, after discussion, Buddha's horse Kantaka as the holiest of animals, but it has left without a trace to follow its master to nirvana.
Views
Karl Adolph Gjellerup embraced the German=Danish idealism that he had grown up with.
Connections
Gjellerup was married to Eugenia Anna Caroline Hensinger after she divorced her first husband, Jewish musician Fritz Bendix.