 karl gjellerup (june 2, 1857 &ndash; october 13, 1919) was a danish poet and novelist who together with his compatriot henrik pontoppidan won the nobel prize in literature in 1917. he belonged to the modern break-through. he occasionally used the pseudonym epigonos. ==biography== ===youth and debut=== gjellerup was the son of a vicar in zealand who died when his son was three years. karl gjellerup was raised then by the uncle of johannes fibiger, he grew up in a national and romantic idealistic atmosphere. in the 1870s he broke with his background and at first he became an enthusiastic supporter of the naturalist movement and georg brandes, writing audacious novels about free love and atheism. strongly influenced by his origin he gradually left the brandes line and 1885 he broke totally with the naturalists, becoming a new romanticist. a central trace of his life was his germanophile attitude, he felt himself strongly attracted to german culture (his wife was a german) and 1892 he finally settled in germany, which made him unpopular in denmark on both the right and left wing. as years passed he totally identified with the german empire, including its war aims 1914-18. among the early works of gjellerup must be mentioned his most important novel germanernes lÃ¦rling (1882, i.e. the learner of german), a partly autobiographic tale of the development of a young man from being a conformist theologian to a pro-german atheist and intellectual, and minna (1889), on the surface, a love story but more of a study in woman's psychology. some wagnerian dramas show his growing romanticist interests. an important work is the novel mÃ¸llen (1896, i. e. the mill), a sinister melodrama of love and jealousy. ===later years=== in his last years he was clearly influenced by buddhism and oriental culture. his critically acclaimed work der pilger kamanita/pilgrimen kamanita (1906, i.e. the pilgrim kamanita) has been called 'one of the oddest novels written in danish'. it features the journey of kamanita, an indian merchant's son, from earthly prosperity and carnal romance, through the ups and downs of the world's way, a chance meeting with a stranger monk (who, unbeknownst to kamanita, was actually gautama buddha), death, and reincarnation towards nirvana. in thailand, which is a buddhist country, the thai translation of the pilgrim kamanita co-translate
1857_births 1919_deaths Danish_Nobel_laureates Danish_atheists Danish_novelists Danish_poets Nobel_laureates_in_Literature People_from_Faxe_Municipality