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BAGGESEN, JENS IMMANUEL (1764-1826)

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Originally appearing in Volume V03, Page 200 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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BAGGESEN, JENS IMMANUEL (1764-1826) , Danish poet, was See also:born on the 15th of See also:February 1764 at See also:Korsor. His parents were very poor, and before he was twelve he was sent to copy documents at the See also:office of the clerk of the See also:district. He was a See also:melancholy, feeble See also:child, and before this he had attempted See also:suicide more than once. By dint of indomitable perseverance, he managed to gain an See also:education, and in 1782 entered the university of See also:Copenhagen. His success as a writer was coeval with his earliest publication; his Comical Tales in See also:verse, poems that recall the Broad Grins that See also:Colman the younger brought out a See also:decade later, took the See also:town by See also:storm, and the struggling See also:young poet found himself a popular favourite at twenty-one. He then tried serious lyrical See also:writing, and his tact, elegance ofmanner and versatility, gained him a See also:place in the best society. This sudden success received a See also:blow in 1789. when a very poor See also:opera, Halge Danske, which he had produced, was received with mockery and a reaction against him set in. He See also:left See also:Denmark in a rage and spent the next years in See also:Germany, See also:France and See also:Switzerland. He married at Berne in 1790, began to write in See also:German and published in that See also:language his next poem, Alpenlied.. In the See also:winter of the same See also:year he returned to his See also:mother-See also:country, bringing with him as a See also:peace-offering his See also:fine descriptive poem, the See also:Labyrinth, in Danish, and was received with unbounded See also:homage. The next twenty years were spent in incessant restless wanderings over the See also:north of See also:Europe, See also:Paris latterly becoming his nominal See also:home. He continued to publish volumes alternately in Danish and German.

Of the latter the most important was the idyllic epos in hexameters called Parthenais (1803). In 18o6 he. returned to Copenhagen to find the young See also:

Ohlenschlager installed as the See also:great poet of the See also:day, and he himself beginning to lose his previously unbounded popularity. Until 182o he resided in Copenhagen, in almost unceasing See also:literary See also:feud with some one or other, abusing and being abused; the most important feature of the whole being Baggesen's determination not to allow Ohlenschlager to be considered a greater: poet than himself. He then left Denmark for the last See also:time and went back to his beloved Paris, where he lost his second wife and youngest child in. 1822, and after the miseries of an imprisonment for See also:debt, See also:fell at last into a See also:state of hopeless melancholy madness. In 1826, having slightly recovered, he wished to see Denmark once more, but died in the freemasons' See also:hospital at See also:Hamburg on his way, on the 3rd of See also:October, and was buried at See also:Kiel. His many-sided talents achieved success in all forms of writing, but his domestic, philosophical and See also:critical See also:works have See also:long ceased, to occupy See also:attention. A little more See also:power of restraining his egotism and See also:passion would have made him one of the wittiest and keenest of See also:modern satirists, and his comic poems are deathless. The Danish literature owes Baggesen a great debt for the firmness, See also:polish and See also:form which he introduced into it—his See also:style being always finished and elegant. With all his faults he stands as the greatest figure between See also:Holberg and Ohlenschlager. Of all his poems, however, the loveliest and best is a little See also:simple See also:song, There was a time when I was very little, which every Dane, high or See also:low, knows by See also:heart, and which is matchless in its simplicity and pathos. It has outlived all his epics.

End of Article: BAGGESEN, JENS IMMANUEL (1764-1826)

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