Vesaas, Tarjei
Vesaas, Tarjei
(tär`jā vā`sŏs), 1897–1970, Norwegian author. In novels, short stories, and lyric poetry, Vesaas combines insight into human psychology with a sensitivity to broader social and political concerns; symbol and allegory are central to his technique. He had been writing seriously for a decade and had published more than 10 books before the appearance of his first widely acclaimed work, The Great Cycle (1934), a novel set in rural Norway. He was among the most important Norwegian authors of his generation to write in landsmål (see Norwegian languageNorwegian language,member of the North Germanic, or Scandinavian, group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. It is spoken by about 4 million people in Norway and another million in the other Scandinavian countries and North America.
..... Click the link for more information. ). He wrote more than 30 books, including The Birds (1957).
Bibliography
See study by K. C. Chapman (1970).
Vesaas, Tarjei
Born Aug. 20, 1897, in Telemark. Norwegian author. Writes in Landsmaal.
His first novel was The Human Child (1923). The early books of Vesaas are filled with romantic symbolism, but by 1928 his novel Black Horses already showed realistic tendencies. The theme of the struggle of good and evil forces in man is treated in the cycle of novels Father’s Journey (1930), Sigrid Stallbrokk (1931), Those Unknown People (1932), and The Heart Does Not Forget the Fatherland (1938), as well as in his later works. The drama Ultimatum (1934) describes the prewar tension in an expressionistic manner. The novels The Great Play (1934) and The Woman Needs a Home (1935) are devoted to peasant life. The novel The Seed (1940) condemns violence. The novel House in the Dark (1945) and the play Morning Wind (1947) present pictures of occupied Norway. In some novels of the 1950’s the intensification of symbolism and deepening of pessimism are obvious, such as in The Signal (1950) and Spring Night (1954). Vesaas published collections of novellas (Winds, 1952) and of verse in the spirit of modernism.
WORKS
Noveller. Oslo, 1955.In Russian translation:
Velikaia igra. Moscow, 1970.
REFERENCES
Mæhle, L. Ei bok om T. Vesaas av ti nordiske studentar. Oslo, 1964.Tarjei Vesaas, 1897—20. August—1967. Oslo, 1967.
E. A. SURITS