Drachmann, Holger Hendryk Herholdt

Born Oct. 9, 1846, in Copenhagen; died Jan. 14, 1908, in Hornbaek. Danish writer.

Drachmann began his artistic career as a seascape painter and later became a radical bourgeois journalist. He protested against social injustice in the collections of lyrical poems Poems (1872) and Muted Melodies (1875) and in the collections of short stories With Coal and Chalk (1872) and In Storm and in Calm (1875). He wrote the novel The Superfluous Man (1876) under the influence of I. S. Turgenev. Drachmann created warmly emotional nature lyrics in the collections Songs by the Sea (1877) and Old Gods and New (1881). The plays Once Upon a Time (1885) and Voland Dismissed (1894) are written in the spirit of national romanticism. His autobiographical novel Pledged (1890) combines realism and romanticism. F. Nietzsche’s influence can be felt in Drachmann’s last works. The novella The Church and the Organ (1904) expresses the decadent motif that death is the only haven of the beautiful.