Leonardo da Vinci Barnwell, Jeppe
Danske studier,
09/2021
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This paper presents a hitherto unpublished essay by the Danish symbolist poet Sophus Claussen (1865-1931). The essay entitled ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ was intended for the collection Løvetandsfnug ...(‘dandelion fluff’), 1918, but was for unknown reasons omitted in the final edition. In the essay, Claussen recalls when, at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence in 1902–03, he saw a painting (perhaps by Leonardo da Vinci) depicting the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary. At the time, the Virgin Mary of the painting reminded Claussen of a young Danish girl with whom he had been hopelessly in love some ten years prior. The remembrance of this past experience, at the time of writing the essay in early or mid 1918, causes him to contemplate not only the artistic method of Leonardo, but also, more generally, the relationship between chastity and lust, nature and imitation, and art and science. ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ has never been described in the secondary sources on Claussen’s work. It is, however, arguably both interesting and exemplary for its dual role as both a biographical and poetological lead in his essays and in his oeuvre as a whole.
This paper presents a hitherto unpublished essay by the Danish symbolist poet Sophus Claussen (1865-1931). The essay entitled ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ was intended for the collection Løvetandsfnug ...(‘dandelion fluff’), 1918, but was for unknown reasons omitted in the final edition. In the essay, Claussen recalls when, at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence in 1902–03, he saw a painting (perhaps by Leonardo da Vinci) depicting the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary. At the time, the Virgin Mary of the painting reminded Claussen of a young Danish girl with whom he had been hopelessly in love some ten years prior. The remembrance of this past experience, at the time of writing the essay in early or mid 1918, causes him to contemplate not only the artistic method of Leonardo, but also, more generally, the relationship between chastity and lust, nature and imitation, and art and science. ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ has never been described in the secondary sources on Claussen’s work. It is, however, arguably both interesting and exemplary for its dual role as both a biographical and poetological lead in his essays and in his oeuvre as a whole.
Ved havet (“At the Seaside”, 1978) by the Danish author Peter Seeberg (1925-99) is a complex novel that portrays approximately 40 people on a day at the beach of Rømø Island. It has often either been ...construed as a biblically inspired narrative or expounded in the light of a Nietzschean amor fati (love of faith). As an alternative, I suggest an interpretation grounded on a conception of the beach as a particular and privileged space, eternal yet open and liable to change, which allows a plurality of voices and views to coexist peacefully in what I call a horizontal open-mindedness. I argue that the novel grapples with a classic modernistic idea about existence—and in particular a symbolistic idea about transcendence—but that it does it in a new, more sensorial and inclusive way. By comparing the novel to, among other things, an unpublished essay on “the meaning of life on Lakolk Beach,” I propose a reading that points towards a new postmodern “realism” in the writings of Seeberg and perhaps in Danish literature on the whole.
PDF
