Georg Brandes
Georg Brandes
Georg Brandes, born Morris Cohen, was a Danish critic and scholar who greatly influenced Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind the "Modern Breakthrough" of Scandinavian culture. At the age of 30, Brandes formulated the principles of a new realism and naturalism, condemning hyper-aesthetic writing and also fantasy in literature. His literary goals were shared by some other authors, among them the Norwegian "realist" playwright Henrik...
NationalityDanish
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth4 February 1842
CountryDenmark
I came into the world two months too soon, I was in such a hurry.
When I was a little boy I did not, of course, trouble much about my appearance.
The stream of time sweeps away errors, and leaves the truth for the inheritance of humanity....
Just about this time, when in imagination I was so great a warrior, I had good use in real life for more strength, as I was no longer taken to school by the nurse, but instead had myself to protect my brother, two years my junior.
But when I was twelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of the fundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be for life - namely, Beauty.
I became an ardent, but never a specially good, dancer.
He who does not understand a joke, he does not understand Danish.
Any feeling that I was enriching my mind from those surrounding me was unfortunately rare with me.
Among the delights of Summer were picnics to the woods.
Birth was something that came quite unexpectedly, and afterwards there was one child more in the house.
A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion.
The masses are only to be regarded as one of three things: either as copies of great personalities, bad copies, clumsily produced in a poor material, or as foils to the great, or finally as their tools
I was at home then in the world of figures, but not in that of values.
On the whole, the world was friendly. It chiefly depended on whether one were good or not.