Chapter 31

BJÖRN SIVERTSEN’S WEDDING TRIP

BJÖRN SIVERTSEN’S WEDDING TRIP

BY HOLGER DRACHMANN

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By general consent Drachmann fills a niche in the temple of fame as introducer of the modern “short story” into Denmark. He was born at Copenhagen in 1846, and is a man of extraordinary versatility both in accomplishment and temperament. Besides being a marine painter of some note, and, before he joined with the conservative party of thinkers in 1880, the most conspicuous of the new realistic school of writers in Denmark, he has been at various times royalist, socialist, realist, romanticist, radical, orthodox, national, cosmopolitan.With his volume of poems, published in 1872, followed by skilful, realistic tales of fisherman life, the revolutionary march in Danish literature began, with Brandes as drum-major.Drachmann’s stories are marked by sudden outbursts of real inspiration—by impulses rather than by principles—curiously combined with a strong feeling for form.

By general consent Drachmann fills a niche in the temple of fame as introducer of the modern “short story” into Denmark. He was born at Copenhagen in 1846, and is a man of extraordinary versatility both in accomplishment and temperament. Besides being a marine painter of some note, and, before he joined with the conservative party of thinkers in 1880, the most conspicuous of the new realistic school of writers in Denmark, he has been at various times royalist, socialist, realist, romanticist, radical, orthodox, national, cosmopolitan.

With his volume of poems, published in 1872, followed by skilful, realistic tales of fisherman life, the revolutionary march in Danish literature began, with Brandes as drum-major.

Drachmann’s stories are marked by sudden outbursts of real inspiration—by impulses rather than by principles—curiously combined with a strong feeling for form.

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