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Johan Herman Wessel (6 October 1742 - 29 December 1785) was a well known
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
in
NorwegianNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
and
DanishDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries; southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and it is bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea...
literatureLiterature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" , and therefore the academic study of literature is known as Letters...
(Norway-Denmark being in union at the time). Some of his satirical poems are still popular. The traditional restaurant
Wesselstuen in Bergen, Norway contains many of his works as decorations.
He was born and raised in
VestbyVestby is a municipality in Akershus county, Norway. It is part of the Follo traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Vestby.-Name:...
,
Akershusis a county in Norway, bordering Hedmark, Oppland, Buskerud, Oslo and Østfold; it has also a short border with Sweden . Akershus is the second largest county by population after Oslo, with more than half a million inhabitants. The county is named after Akershus Fortress...
,
NorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
, son of a priest, and was the elder brother of mathematician
Caspar WesselCaspar Wessel was a Danish-Norwegian mathematician.Wessel was born in Jonsrud, Vestby, Akershus, Norway. In 1763, having completed secondary school, he went to Denmark for further studies...
.
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Johan Herman Wessel (6 October 1742 - 29 December 1785) was a well known
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
in
NorwegianNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
and
DanishDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries; southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and it is bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea...
literatureLiterature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" , and therefore the academic study of literature is known as Letters...
(Norway-Denmark being in union at the time). Some of his satirical poems are still popular. The traditional restaurant
Wesselstuen in Bergen, Norway contains many of his works as decorations.
He was born and raised in
VestbyVestby is a municipality in Akershus county, Norway. It is part of the Follo traditional region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Vestby.-Name:...
,
Akershusis a county in Norway, bordering Hedmark, Oppland, Buskerud, Oslo and Østfold; it has also a short border with Sweden . Akershus is the second largest county by population after Oslo, with more than half a million inhabitants. The county is named after Akershus Fortress...
,
NorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
, son of a priest, and was the elder brother of mathematician
Caspar WesselCaspar Wessel was a Danish-Norwegian mathematician.Wessel was born in Jonsrud, Vestby, Akershus, Norway. In 1763, having completed secondary school, he went to Denmark for further studies...
. He was a relative of the naval hero
Peder TordenskjoldPeter Jansen Wessel , better known as Tordenskjold , but also known as Peter Wessel, Peter Tordenskjold, or Peter Tordenskiold, , was an eminent Norwegian naval officer in the service of the King of Denmark-Norway...
.
Living most of his (
bohemianBohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits, with few permanent ties...
) life in
CopenhagenCopenhagen ; ) is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban area with a population of 1,167,569 and a metropolitan area with a population of 1,875,179...
dependent on casual work and weakened by a bad health and drinking Wessel became the popular and admired centre of
Norske Selskab ("
The Norwegian SocietyThe Norwegian Society was a literary society for Norwegian students in Copenhagen. Its members included authors, poets and philosophers. The Norwegian Society was formed in 1772 by Ove Gjerløw Meyer...
") a very important club of Norwegian literary figures cultivating their national identity and writing in classical metres.
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First of all Wessel is known for his many humorous and satiric verse tales (ed. 1784-1785), referring to man’s foolishness and injustice. Most famous is
Smeden og Bageren (“The Smith and the Baker”) about the only smith of a village who is pardonned for
manslaughterManslaughter is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder.The law generally differentiates between levels of criminal culpability based on the mens rea, or state of mind...
since the village people need one, while a more superfluous baker is executed instead (there are two bakers, the village only needs one) in order to observe the rules that “life pays life”.
In
Herremanden (“The Squire”) a man coming to Hell makes unpleasant discoveries of the origin of his own son while
Hundemordet (“The Dog Murder”) tells about wrangle about trivial things.
The style of Wessel is deliberate elaborate and digressive and at the same time elegant and witty. Another genre is the
epigramAn Epigram is a brief, clever, and usually memorable statement. Derived from the "to write on - inscribe", the literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
that he mastered, especially his short, witty, impudent, precise and also self-ironic commemorative poems. Many of them are still quoted.
His satirical play
Kierlighed uden Strømper (i. e.
Love without Stockings , 1772 -- with epilogue, 1774) is a generic
parodyA parody , in contemporary usage, is a work created to mock, comment on, or poke fun at an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of neoclassical tragedy; it takes place in a daily milieu of banal conflicts but observes the formal rules of “heroic language”. It is still performed.
An another play is
Anno 7603Anno 7603 is a play in six acts, written by the Dano-Norwegian poet Johan Herman Wessel in 1781.The two main characters - Leander and Julie - is being moved to the future by a good fairy. In this future the sex roles have been reversed: The men act like women - and the women act like men...
, written in 1781. It has a low literary value, and it has never been performed - but it has some cult status since this is one of the first examples of
time travelTime travel is the concept of moving between different moments in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space, either sending objects backwards in time to a moment before the present, or sending objects forward from the present to the future without the need to...
in fiction.
Sources
- Liv Bliksrud, Johan Herman Wessel og hans tid, Wesselakademiet, 2000.. ISBN 8292033017 (Norwegian).
- Liv Bliksrud, Den smilende makten : Norske Selskab i København og Johan Herman Wessel, Aschehoug, 1999. ISBN 82-03-18146-5. (Norwegian).