Herman Bang


Bang, Herman

 

Born Apr. 20, 1857, in Als, Denmark; died Jan. 29, 1912, in Ogden, (Utah), USA. Danish writer.

The collections of articles Realism and Realists (1879) and Critical Studies (1880) reflected Bang’s enthusiasm for French naturalism. The notion of the primacy of the fatal instinct in the lives of people underlay many of his works, as in the novels Generations Without Hope (1880, Russian translation Beznadezhno pogibaiushchie) and Phaedra (1883), which were written in an impressionistic style. His realistic novels Three Roads (1886) and Tine (1889) were devoted to the events of the Danish-Prussian war of 1864. Images of women as passive sufferers are prominent (The White House, 1898); in his later works, features of realism are also strong (the novels Mikaël, 1904, and Denied a Country, 1906).

WORKS

Værker i mindeudgave, 2nd ed., vols. 1–6. Copenhagen, 1920–21.
In Russian translation:
Poln. sobr. soch., vols. 1–10. Moscow, 1910–13.

REFERENCES

Levinson, A. Ia. Poet beznadezhnykh pokolenii. Moscow, 1912.
Jacobsen, H. Herman Bang, resignationens digter. Copenhagen, 1957.
Jacobsen, H. Den tragiske Herman Bang. Copenhagen, 1966. Dansk litteratur historie, vol. 3. Copenhagen, 1966.