HEIDENSTAM, KARL GUSTAF VERNER von. - Swedish poet and writer, b. at Olshammar on 6 July 1859, d. at Stockholm on 20 May 1940. To him is largely due the rise in Sweden of a new romanticism. In 1916 he received the Nobel Prize. Interested in the figurative arts (he was also a mediocre painter), he found in the East, which he visited in his early youth, the field best suited to his joy of observation and to his imagination, which would brook no restraints: only at a later stage would he set against Oriental colour and splendour the spare and naked beauty of his native north.
An aristocrat by birth and by sentiment, a nationalist by instinct and by lived experience of other countries, from a singer of beauty and of the senses he rose with the years to the position of bard of the fatherland, tempered by his own religious, almost humanistic conception of life. Of his works, mention is made of the poetry collection Vallfart och vandringsår ("Years of Pilgrimage and Wandering", 1880) and the novels Endymion (1889) and Hans Alienus (1892). With the satire Pepitas bröllop ("Pepita's Wedding"), written in 1890 together with O. Levertin, he practically won his battle against naturalism. His art is fully mature in the Dikter ("Poems", 1885): the poet now knows that the only possible salvation lies in the native land; in the short collection Ett folk ("One People") he takes an active part in the political problems of the moment. From now on the most vivid and real source of inspiration for him is the history of his people and the nature of his land: Charles XII is at the centre of the novel Karolinerna ("The Soldiers of Charles", 1897-98); St. Bridget is followed on her pilgrimage to Rome (Heliga Birgittas pilgrimfärd, "The Pilgrimage of St. Bridget", 1901) and the early Swedish Middle Ages rise again in the vast novel Folkungaträdet ("The Tree of the Folkungs", 1905-1907). In Nya dikter ("New Poems", 1915) the poet has reached an inner harmony of his own, certain that "he has faith for whom many things are sacred".
His fine autobiography (När kastanjerna blommade, "When the Chestnuts Bloomed") and the Sista dikter ("Last Poems") were published posthumously (1941).
Bibliography2 works
Alda Manghi