Abell, Kjeld
Abell, Kjeld
(kyĕl ä`bĕl), 1901–61, Danish playwright. Abell's Melody That Got Lost (1935, tr. 1939) was an early success. Trained as a stage designer, he was an innovator in stage technique. He later turned to ethical and social drama; Anna Sophie Hedvig (1939, tr. 1944), The Queen Walks Again (1943), Silkeborg (1946), and Skriget (1961) are arresting and powerful problem plays concerned with justice and social protest.Abell, Kjeld
Born Aug. 25, 1901, in Ribe; died Mar. 5, 1961, in Copenhagen. Danish playwright, founder of the philosophic-symbolic drama.
Abell turned to stage design in 1927. The comedies The Melody That Got Lost (1935; Russian translation 1960) and Eva Does Her Childhood Service (1936) present his ideas on the social destiny of man and sharply censure middle-class morality. He wrote the antifascist plays Anna Sophie Hedvig (1939) and Silkeborg (1946), both about the Danish resistance movement. In the allegorical drama Days on a Cloud (1947), Abell warns against the dangers of atomic war. The dramas Andersen, or the Fairy Tale of His Life (1955) and The Lady of the Camellias (1959) are imbued with pessimism.
WORKS
Fire skuespil. Copenhagen, 1955.Dyveke. Copenhagen, 1967.
REFERENCES
Kristensen, S. M. Datskaia Literatura 1918–1952 gg. Moscow, 1963.Schyberg, Fr. Kjeld Abell. Copenhagen, 1947.
En bog om K. Abell. Copenhagen, 1961.