Esaias Tegnér

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the writer. For his grandson, a linguist, see Esaias Tegnér Jr.

Esaias Tegnér
Frithjof's Saga
SpouseAnna Maria Gustava Myhrman
Children
  • Christoffer
  • Göthilda
  • Disa
  • Lars Gustaf
Signature

Esaias Tegnér (Swedish:

Frithjof's Saga
. He has been called Sweden's first modern man. Much is known about him, and he also wrote openly about himself.

Early life

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 Tegnérus—altered by his fifth son, the poet, to Tegnér—from the village of Tegnaby in the province of Småland, where he was born. In 1792 Tegnérus died.[1]

In 1799 Esaias Tegnér, hitherto educated in the country, entered

Bishop of Växjö. He remained in Växjö until his death, twenty-two years later.[1]

He was comparatively slow in development. His first great success was a

Nicander became the most famous members of the Gothic League.[1]

Lund poems

Title page of Frithiofs Saga (1876)

The majority of the many poems from Tegnér in Lund are short, but some are in lyrics. They are still shown to visitors as the Tegnér museum. 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, the romance of Axel (1822) and the delicately chiselled idyl of Nattvardsbarnen (1820), translated by Longfellow, take a secondary place in comparison with Tegnér's masterpiece of worldwide fame.[1] In 1819 he also became a member of the distinguished Swedish Academy,[2] on seat 8.

Claim to recognition

In 1820 he published in Iduna fragments of an epic on which he was working:

Goethe took up his pen to commend to his countrymen this alte, kräftige, 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, modeled somewhat, on an earlier Danish masterpiece, Helge of Oehlenschläger.[1]

Frithjof's saga was during the 19th century 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.[1] A section of the work was later used by Max Bruch as the basis for his 1864 cantata Frithjof.[3]

Later life

Statue of Tegnér, right by Lund Cathedral in central Lund

The period of the publication of Frithjof's 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 Växjö; 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. Tegnér 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 inspired much of his finest poetry, turned the poet's blood to gall. From this time forward the heartlessness of woman is one of Tegnér's principal themes.[1]

Bishop's seat

It is a remarkable sign of the condition of Sweden at that time that a man without a Christian heritage, and with little interest in formal religious matters, 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 began 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 Tegnér made a respectable bishop as long as his health lasted. In 1835, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. But he became moody and melancholy; as early as 1833 he complained of fiery heats in his brain, and in 1840, during a visit to Stockholm, he suddenly became insane.[1]

Mental deterioration

He was sent to an

Schleswig that he composed Kronbruden. He wrote no more of importance; in 1843 he had a stroke of apoplexy, and on 2 November 1846 he died in Växjö.[1]

Tegnérmuseet in Lund

Tegnérmuseet

Tegnérmuseet is a museum devoted exclusively to the life and work of Esaias Tegnér. The museum is located in the house where Esaias Tegnèr lived with his family from 1813 to 1826 in the city center of Lund. Since 1997, the museum has been part of the foundation Kulturen, which also operates the open-air museum in Lund.[4] [5]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Gosse 1911, p. 505.
  2. ^ Gosse 1911, p. 506.
  3. ^ "Frithjof; Scenen aus der Frithjof-Sage von Esaias Tegnèr". upenn.edu. University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  4. ^ "Tegnérmuseet in Lund". guidebook-sweden.com. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
  5. ^ "Kulturen in Lund - Museum of Cultural History and Open-Air Museum". tripadvisor.com. Retrieved 1 December 2019.

References

This article is part of a series on
Conservatism in Sweden
Principles
Intellectuals
Politicians
Parties
Active

Defunct

Organisations
Media
Active

Former

History
Related topics

English

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Esaias Tegnér.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Esaias Tegnér.
Cultural offices
Preceded by Swedish Academy,
Seat No.8
1818–1846 		Succeeded by
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Esaias_Tegnér&oldid=1187008584"