Johannes V. Jensen

Johannes V. Jensen has had great influence on Danish literature both as a lyric poet and as a novelist. He was born in a village in northwestern Jutland, where his father was a veterinarian and his grandfather a farmer and weaver. His early short stories, Himmerland Stories (1904, 1910), depict this world of his childhood. Jensen studied medicine in Copenhagen but did not become a doctor. His great interest in anthropology and biology was concentrated in the theory of evolution. An optimist, Jensen wrote a series of myths, each portraying the same movement: the present is the culmination of all that has been in the past. This positive Darwinian philosophy permeates the six novels that comprise his epic The Long Journey (1908--22). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1944.