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Georg (Morris Cohen) Brandes (1842-1927) | |
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Danish critic and scholar, who had great influence on the Scandinavian literature from 1870s through the turn of the century. Brandes formulated at the age of thirty the principles of a new realism and naturalism, condemning hyper-aesthetic writing and fantasy in literature. According to Brandes, literature should be an organ "of the great thoughts of liberty and the progress of humanity." His literary goals were shared my many authors, among them the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. "That a literature exists in our time is shown by the fact that it sets up problems for debate. Thus, for instance, George Sand debates the question of marriage, Voltaire, Byron and Feuerbach debate religion, Proud'hon private property, the younger Alexandre Dumas the relationship between the sexes, and Émile Augier the societal relationships. For a literature not to raise any question for debate is the same as for it to set out to lose all significance." (in the Main Currents lectures, 1872-1887) Georg Brandes was born in Copenhagen of middle-class Jewish parents. He was the eldest son of Herman Cohen Brandes (1816-1904), a wholesaler, and Emilie Bendix (1818-1898). Brandes was born two months prematurely. "I was forever hearing that I was pale and small, pale in particular," Brandes said in his book of memoir, Reminiscences of My Childhood and Youth (1905). "Others remarked in joke: "He looks rather green in the face." And so soon as they began talking about me the word "thin" would be uttered." At home the atmosphere was nonreligious, but when Brandes encountered Kierkegaard's uncompromising Christianity, he went through a serious crisis, which ended about 1863. Finding it impossible for him to undertake the leap of faith, Brandes devoted himself entirely to aesthetics. He studied at the University of Copenhagen, receiving his master's degree in aesthetics in 1864, and worked then as a lecturer and drama critic. His early writings Brandes collected in Æsthetiske Studier (1868) and Kritiker og portraiter (1870). Brandes was convinced that criticism is an art rather than a science. Under the influence of Hippolyte Taine and Sainte-Beuve, he turned away from the Hegelian philosophy. In his doctoral thesis, Den franske Æsthetik i vore Dage (1870), Brandes examined French aesthetics with a special emphasis on Taine, but did not accept his conception of the genius as a manifestation of Zeitgeist. Brandes made an impact on Danish and Scandinavian cultural life with the first of his public lectures on Hovedstromninger I Det 19De Aarhundredes Litteratur (1872-87, Main Currents in the 20th Century Literature). The lectures started on November 3, 1871 and were published later in six volumes between 1872 and 1890. Brandes thought that people in Denmark were forty years behind the rest of Europe. He wanted to awaken his country. Writers should reject abstract idealism and work in the service of progressive ideas and the reform of modern society. His lectures became events of agitation, and angered conservative circles. He was denied the chair in aesthetics at the university that had been promised to him – a reaction to his Jewish origin, atheism, and unorthodox thinking. In 1870-71 Brandes traveled to England, Italy, and France, and was impressed by the Mediterranean climate and Renaissance art. Between the years 1874 and 1877 he published with his brother Edvard Brandes the magazine Det nittende Aarhundrede. Also this enterprise failed, and he left Denmark and lived for five years in Berlin. There he laid the groundwork for the later breakthrough "Brandesianism." During this period he published such monographs as Benjamin Disraëli (1879) and Ferdinand Lassalle (1881). He also wrote about Esaias Tegnér (1878), a Swedish poet and theologian, and Søren Kierkegaard (1877), who was not recognized during his lifetime as a genius, but whose philosophical views were later adopted by the French existentialist movement. Brandes became the principal leader of naturalistic movement in Scandinavian literature, befriending with Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Henrik Ibsen, Jonas Lie, Alexander Kielland, and August Strindberg. In a short period, Scandinavian adopted realism and no longer ignored social issues and biological factors. Brandes awanted that authors deal with "problems": gender roles, atheism, marriage, private property, but he also defended ultra-individualism in Aristokratisk Radikalisme. En Afhandling om Friedrich Nietzsche (1889), Nietzsche responded to Brandes's analysis by saying that the "expression 'aristocratic radicalism,' which you employ, is very good. It is, permit me to say, the cleverest thing I have yet read about myself." Brandes's closest follower in Denmark was Jens Peter Jacobsen, whose naturalist Fru Marie Grubbe (1876) depicted a noblewoman who ends up with her erotic choices as the wife of a ferryman and sometime convict. Main Currents in 19th Century Literature, Brandes's major work in the 1870s, caused sensation, when its first volumes appeared. Brandes argued that the most significant literature in Germany, France, and England from 1789 to 1848, was in debt for the French Revolution. On this basis he criticized such writers as Coleridge, Novalis, and Lamartine, whom he saw representing the conservative order. In 1888, in a further series of public lectures in Copenhagen, Brandes "discovered" Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher who became a myth even before he died in 1900. After spending several years in Germany, Brandes had come under the influence of Nietzsche's doctrice of the Übermensch and disavowed democracy. "I love the one who has a free spirit and a free heart," declared Zarathustra. Like Nietzsche, Brandes considered geniuses as best products of high culture. He published biographies of such great historical figures as William Shakespeare, J.W. von Goethe, Voltaire, Julius Caesar, and Michelangelo. "Dersom jeg siger: Menneskehedens Maal er at frembringe store Mennesker - hvad Dybsind er der da i den Indvending: Enten betragter disse store Mennesker sig selv som Formaal - i saa Fald er de ikke store. Eller de gør det ikke - i saa Fald ligger Maalet altsaa ikke i de store Mennesker. Jeg finder intet Dybsind deri. Dersom jeg siger: Menneskehedens Maal er at frembringe Mennesker som Æschylos, Cæsar, Jesus, Leonardo, Michelangelo,Spinoza, Kopernikus, Newton, Goethe, Beethoven - kan man fornuftigvis ikke spørge: Mener Du Leonardo med eller uden hans Malerier, Goethe med eller uden hans Værker? - Hvor kan maa skrælle Manden for hans Livsgerning, Stjernen for dens Straaler!" (in Tanker om Liv og Kunst, 1902) During his later years Brandes traveled widely. University of Copenhagen awarded Brandes after his thirty years work a full professorship. Brandes's opposition to World War I and religious skepticism made him still a controversial figure. For decades he refused to support Jewish nationalism and Theodor Herzl's thoughts, but with the Balfour declaration of 1917, which favored the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, Brandes changed his mind. Sagnet om Jesus (1925) provoked wide protests. During his career, Brandes corresponded with such famous writers and critics as Edmond de Goncourt, Anatole France, Romain Rolland, John Stuart Mill, Paul Heyse, Gerhart Hauptmann, Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke. He never met Maxim Gorky, but in 1921 me met Maria Andreyeva, the commonlaw wife of Gorky, who appealed for help for the suffering Russian people. Brandes died on February 19, 1927. By the time of his death his critical method was outmoded but his biographical works on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and William Shakespeare present deep psychological portraits of these authors. Brandes's ideas about political and scientific freedom surfaced again in the 1960s along with the new radical movement. For further reading: Georg Brandes by C.G. Elberling (1937); Georg Brandes by B. Nolin (1976); Den politiske Georg Brandes by Hans Hertel (1982), Det ukendte Georg Brandes, ed. by Georg Philipp (1982); A History of Scandinavia Literature, 1870-1980 by Sven H. Rossel (1982); Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (1983); World Authors 1900-1950, ed Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1996); Georg Brandes og Goethe by Lars Peter Rømhild (1996); Georg Brandes magt og afmagt 1896-1914 by Jørgen Knudsen (1998); Georg Brandes by Werner Thierry (1998) - See also influence: Karl Gjellerup Selected works:
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