Johannes Vilhelm Jensen

Jensen, Johannes Vilhelm 

Born Jan. 20, 1873, in Farsø, Jutland; died Nov. 25, 1950, in Copenhagen. Danish writer.

Jensen studied medicine and worked as a journalist. His first novels were The Danes (1896) and Einar Elkjaer (1898). In his collections of stories Himmerland Tales (1898–1910), Jensen describes the natural beauty of northern Jutland and the everyday life of its people. His historical novel The Fall of the King (parts 1–3, 1900–01) portrays the struggle of the Danish peasantry against the feudal lords in the Middle Ages. He propounded a theory of the rebirth of the “Gothic race” in such works as his collection of essays Gothic Renaissance (1901). Jensen’s predilection for racial and biological theories is shown in his novel cycle The Long Journey (parts 1–6, 1908–22; Nobel Prize, 1944). In the novels Madame d’Ora (1904) and The Wheel (1905), he realistically depicted life in capitalist America. Jensen also published the collections Poems (1906), Myths (1907–44), Seasons (1923), and Jutland Wind (1931). Realism and modernistic tendencies are combined in his art.

WORKS

Samlede skrifter, vols. 1–8. Copenhagen, 1916.
In Russian translation:
Sobr. soch., vols. 1–9. Moscow, 1911–12.

REFERENCES

Gelsted, O. Johannes Vilhelm Jensen. Copenhagen, 1938.
Elbek, J. J. V. Jensen. [Copenhagen, 1966.]
Nedergaard, L. J. V. Jensen. Copenhagen, 1968.

A. A. KITLOV