ATTERBOM, PER DANIEL AMADEUS (1790-1855)

This article appears in Volume V02, Page 880 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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ATTERBOM, PER DANIEL AMADEUS (1790-1855) , Swedish poet, son of a country parson, was born in the province of Ostergotland on the 19th of January 1790. He studied in the university of

Upsala

UPSALA, or UPPSALA

from 1805 to 1815, and became professor of philosophy there in 1828. He was the first

great

GREAT

poet of the romantic

movement

MOVEMENT

which, inaugurated by the

critical

CRITICAL (in alphabetical order of authors)

work

WORK

of Lorenzo Hammerskold, was to revolutionize Swedish literature. In 1807, when in his seventeenth year, he founded at

Upsala

UPSALA, or UPPSALA

an artistic society, called the Aurora League, the members of which included V. F. Palmblad, A. A. Grafstrom (d. 1870), Samuel Hedborn (d. 1849), and other youths whpse names were destined to take a foremost rank in the literature of their generation. Their first newspaper, Polyfem, was a crude effort, soon abandoned, but in 1810 there began to appear a journal, Fosforos, edited by

Atterbom

ATTERBOM, PER DANIEL AMADEUS (1790-1855)

, which lasted for three years and finds a place in classic Swedish literature. It consisted entirely of poetry and aesthetico-polemical essays; it introduced the study of the newly arisen Romantic school of Germany, and formed a vehicle for the early works, not of

Atterbom

ATTERBOM, PER DANIEL AMADEUS (1790-1855)

only, but of Hammerskold, Dahlgren, Palmblad and others. Later, the members of the Aurora League established the Poetisk Kalender (1812-1822), in which their poems appeared, and a new

critical

CRITICAL (in alphabetical order of authors)

organ, Svensk Litteraturtidning (1813-1824). Among Atterbom's independent works the most celebrated is Lycksalighetens 0 (The Fortunate

Island

ISLAND (O.E. ieg =isle, +land')

), a romantic drama of extraordinary beauty, published in 1823. Before this he had published a cycle of lyrics, Blommorna (The

Flowers

FLOWERS, ARTIFICIAL

), of a mystical character,
ATTERBURY
somewhat in the manner of Novalis. Of a dramatized fairy tale, Fogel bid (The Blue Bird), only a fragment, which is among the most exquisite of his writings, is preserved. As a purely lyrical poet he has not been excelled in Sweden, but his more ambitious works are injured by his weakness for allegory and symbolism, and his consistent adoption of the mannerisms of Tieck and Novalis. In his later years he became less violent in literary controversy. He became in 1835 professor of aesthetics and literature at Upsala, and four years later he was admitted to the Swedish

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

. He died on the 21st of July 1855. His Svenska Siare och Skalder (6 vols., 1841-1855, supplement, 1864) consists of a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of biographies of Swedish poets and men of letters, which forms a valuable history of Swedish letters down to the end of the "classical " period. Atterbom's works were collected (13 vols., Orebro) in 1854-1870.

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