Jens Baggesen
Danish poet (1764–1826)
Jens Baggesen
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Jens Baggesen, pastel by
Christian Horneman
made during a visit to
Copenhagen
in 1806 from
Paris
where Baggesen lived at the time
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Born |
Jens Immanuel Baggesen
( 1764-02-15 ) 15 February 1764 Korsør , Denmark |
Died |
3 October 1826
(1826-10-03)
(aged
62)
Hamburg , German Confederation |
Occupation | Poet |
Nationality | Danish |
Literary movement | Romanticism |
Notable works |
Labyrinten
" Da Jeg Var Lille " |
Signature | |
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Jens Immanuel Baggesen [1] (15 February 1764 – 3 October 1826) was a major Danish poet , librettist , critic , and comic writer.
Life
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Baggesenseg.jpg/200px-Baggesenseg.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Gravesite_Jens_Immanuel_Baggesen_Kiel_Germany.jpg/200px-Gravesite_Jens_Immanuel_Baggesen_Kiel_Germany.jpg)
Baggesen was born at Korsør on the Danish island of Zealand on February 15, 1764. [2] His parents were very poor, and he was sent to copy documents at the office of the clerk of Hornsherred [ citation needed ] District before he was twelve. He was a melancholy, feeble child, and he attempted suicide more than once. By dint of indomitable perseverance, he managed to gain an education; in 1782, he entered the University of Copenhagen . [2]
His first work—a verse Comical Tales broadly similar to the later Broad Grins of Colman the Younger —took the capital by storm and the struggling poet found himself a popular favorite at age 21. [2] He then tried more serious lyric poetry and his tact , elegant manners, and versatility gained him a place in the best society. [2] In March 1789, [ citation needed ] his success collapsed when his opera Holger Danske was received with mockery of its many faults [2] and a heated nationalist controversy over Baggesen's association with Germans . [ citation needed ] He left Denmark in a rage and spent the next years in Germany , France , and Switzerland . [2]
In 1790, he married at Bern and began to write in German . [2] He published his next poem Alpenlied ("Alpine Song") in that language, but brought the Danish Labyrinten (" Labyrinth ") as a peace offering upon his return to Denmark in the winter. It was received with unbounded homage. [2] Over the next twenty years, he published volumes alternately in Danish and German and wandered across northern Europe before settling principally in Paris . [2] His most important German work during this period was the 1803 idyllic hexameter epic called Parthenais . [2]
Upon his 1806 visit to Copenhagen , he found the young Oehlenschläger hailed as the great poet of the day and his own popularity on the wane. [2] He then stayed, engaging in one abusive literary feud after another, most with the underlying issue that Baggesen was determined not to allow Oehlenschläger to be considered a greater poet than himself. [2] He finally left for Paris in 1820, where he lost his second wife and youngest child in 1822. [2] Suffering a period of imprisonment for his debts , he fell at last into a hopeless melancholy madness. [2] Having slightly recovered, he determined to see Denmark once more, but died en route at the Freemasons ' hospital in Hamburg on October 3, 1826. [2] He was buried at Kiel . [2]
Legacy
Baggesen's many-sided talents achieved success in all forms of writing, but his political , philosophical , and critical works fell out of favor by the mid-19th century. [2] His satire is marred by his egotism and passions, but his comic poems are deathless. [2] His finished and elegant style was very influential on later Danish literature , in which he is regarded as the major figure between Holberg and Oehlenschläger . [2] His greatest success, however, has proven to be the simple song Da Jeg Var Lille [3] ("There Was a Time when I Was Very Little") [4] which was known by heart among Danes a century after his death [2] and still remains popular. [ citation needed ] It has outlived all of his epics.
There is a statue of Baggesen on Havnepladsen in Korsør , unveiled on 6 May 1906 by Professor Vilhelm Andersen . The local Best Western hotel is also named after him.
References
- ↑ Also formerly written as Jens Emmanuel Baggesen . ( Gosse 1911 , p. 200)
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One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Gosse, Edmund William (1911). " Baggesen, Jens Immanuel ". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 200.
- ↑ Baggesen, Jens (1801), "Da jeg var lille" , Samtlige Værker, Vol. I (in Danish), archived from the original on 2016-03-04
- ↑ "There Was a Time when I Was Very Little" , Library of the World's Best Literature
External links
- Gosse, Edmund William (1878). "Jens Emmanuel Baggesen" . In Baynes, T. S. (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 3 (9th ed.). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 230–231.
- Works by or about Jens Baggesen at Internet Archive
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Works by Jens Baggesen
at
LibriVox
(public domain audiobooks)
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