Garborg, Arne

Garborg, Arne (är`nə gär`brg), 1851–1924, Norwegian writer of the naturalistic school. He founded the weekly Fedraheim (1877), in which he urged reforms in many spheres—political, social, religious, agrarian, and linguistic. Garborg championed the use of Nynorsk, New Norwegian, which is based on rural dialects, as a literary language; he translated the Odyssey into it. Several of his early novels presented male views in the debate on sexual morality conduted throughout the 1880s. Two outstanding novels, Tired Men (1891) and Peace (1892, tr. 1929), relate the tragic disintegration of morally bankrupt and guilt-ridden men.

Bibliography

See study by J. Sjåvik (1980).

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Garborg, Arne 

Born Jan. 25, 1851, in Time; died Jan. 14, 1924, in Labråten. Norwegian author.

Garborg was a participant in the liberal cultural movement Young Norway, which considered the Norwegian peasant as the basic social strength of the country (articles “On the Blessedness of Illusions” and “In Defense of Folk Tales”). Garborg supported the movement for the national language Landsmaal (the book The Nynorsk Linguistic and National Movement, 1877). He was the author of the realistic novel Peasant Students (1883) on the influence of capitalism on the Norwegian village. In the dramatic lampoon Irreconcilables (1888) Garborg depicted the struggle of bourgeois figures to obtain ministerial portfolios. The novels At Mother’s (1890) and Tired People (1891) denounce capitalist sharp dealers. He translated the Odyssey into Norwegian (published in 1918). The influence of naturalism is apparent in many works of Garborg. The influence of decadence and mysticism increases in his later works.

WORKS

Skrifter i samling, vols. 1-8. Oslo, 1951.
Artiklar. Oslo, 1967.
In Russian translation:
Sobr. soch., vols. 1-7. Moscow, 1911-12.

REFERENCES

Brandes, G. Sobr. soch., 2nd ed., vol. 1. St. Petersburg [1906]. (Translated from Danish.)
Thesen, R. Arne Garborg, vols. 1-3. Oslo, 1933-39.

E. A. SURITS