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Encyclopedia Britannica



TEGNER, ESAIAS (1782-1846)

This article appears in Volume V26, Page 506 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: TAV-THE
TEGNER, ESAIAS (1782-1846) , Swedish writer, was born on the 13th of November 1782, at Kyrkerud in Wermland. His father was a pastor, and his grandparents on both sides were peasants. His father, whose name had been Esaias Lucasson, took the surname of Tegnerusaltered by his fifth son, the poet, to Tegnerfrom the hamlet of Tegnaby in SmEand, where he was born. " In 1792 Tegnerus died. In 1799 Esaias Tegner, hitherto educated in the country, entered the university of Lund, where he graduated in philosophy in 1802, and continued as tutor until 18ro, when he was elected Greek lecturer. In 18o6 he married Anna Maria Gustava Myhrman, to whom he had been attached since his earliest youth. In 1812 he was named professor, and continued to
work
  as a lectw"er in Lund until 1824, when he was made bishop of Vexio. At Vexio he
TEGNER 505
remained until his death, twenty-two years later. Tegner's early poems have little merit. He was comparatively slow in development. His first great success was a dithyrambic war-song for the army of ,8o8, which stirred every Swedish heart. In 1811 his patriotic poem Svea won the great prize of the Swedish Academy, and made him famous. In the same year was founded in Stockholm the
Gothic
  League (GOtiska forbundet), a sort of club of young and patriotic men of letters, of whom Tegner quickly became the
chief
 . The club published a magazine, entitled Iduna, in which it printed a great deal of excellent poetry, and ventilated its views, particularly as regards the study of old Icelandic literature and history. Tegner, Geijer,
Afzelius
 , and
Nicander
  became the most famous members of the
Gothic
  League. Of the very numerous poems written by Tegner in the little room at Lund which is now shown to visitors as the Tegner museum, the majority are short, and even occasional lyrics. His celebrated Song to the Sun
dates
  from 1817. He completed three poems of a more ambitious character, on which his fame chiefly rests. Of these, two, the romance of Axel (1822) and the delicately-chiselled idyl of Nattvardsbarnen (" The First Communion," 182o), translated by Longfellow, take a secondary place in comparison with Tegner's masterpiece, of world-wide fame. In 182o he published in Iduna certain fragments. of an epic or cycle of epical pieces, on which he was then working, Frithjofs saga or the Story of Frithiof. In 1822 he published five more cantos, and in 1825 the entire poem. Before it was completed it was famous throughout Europe; the aged Goethe took up his pen to commend to his countrymen this " alte, kraftige, gigantischbarbarische Dichtart," and desired Amalie von Imhoff to translate it into German. This romantic paraphrase of an ancient saga was composed in twenty-four cantos, all differing in verse form, modelled somewhat, it is only
fair
  to say, on an earlier Danish masterpiece, the Helge of Ohlenschlager. Frithjofs saga is the best known of all Swedish productions; it is said to have been translated twenty-two times into English, twenty times into German, and once at least into every European language. It is far from satisfying the demands of more
recent
  antiquarian research, but it still is allowed to give the freshest existing impression, in imaginative form, of life in early Scandinavia. In later years Tegner began, but left unfinished, two important epical poems, Gerda and Kronbruden. The period of the publication of Frithjofs saga (1825) was the
critical
  epoch of his career. It made him one of the most famous poets in Europe; it transferred him from his study in Lund to the bishop's palace in Vexio; it marked the first breakdown of his health, which had hitherto been excellent; and it witnessed a singular moral crisis in the inner history of the poet, about which much has been written, but of which little is known. Tegner was at this time passionately in love with a certain beautiful Euphrosyne Palm, the wife of a town councillor in Lund, and this unfortunate passion, while it in-spired much of his finest poetry, turned the poet's blood to gall. From this time forward the heartlessness of woman is one of Tegner's principal themes. It is a remarkable sign of the condition of Sweden at that time that a man not in holy orders, and so little in possession of the religious temperament as Tegner, should be offered and should accept a bishop's crosier. He did not hesitate in accepting it: it was a great honour; he was poor; and he was anxious to get away from Lund. No sooner, however, had he begun to study for his new duties than he began to regret the step he had taken. It was nevertheless too
late
  to go back, and Tegner made a respectable bishop as long as his health lasted. But he became moody and melancholy; as early as 1833 he complained of fiery heats in his brain, and in 184o, during a visit to Stockholm, he suddenly became insane. He was sent to an asylum in Schleswig, and early in 1841 he was cured, and able to return to Vexio. It was during his convalescence in Schleswig that he composed Kronbruden. He wrote no more of importance; in 1843 he had a stroke of apoplexy, and on the 2nd of November 1846 he died in Vexio. From 1819 he had been a member of the Swedish
Academy, where he was succeeded by his biographer and best imitator Bottiger.
See Bottiger, Teckning of Tegners Lefnad ; Georg Brandes, Esaias Tegner; Thommander, Tankar och ojen. (E. G.)


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