Gelsted, Otto

(pseudonym of Einar Jeppesen). Born Nov. 4, 1888, in Middelfart; died there Dec. 22, 1968. Danish poet. Communist.

In his youth Gelsted was attracted by the philosophy and aesthetics of left-wing expressionism (the treatise Expressionism, 1919). The collection of poems Eternal Things was published in 1920. In 1931 he published the cycle of antifascist poems Toward the Light. Emigrant Poems (1945), which were written in Sweden, where he had emigrated, are filled with hatred of the Hitlerite occupiers and admiration for the Resistance fighters. In collections such as Years of Freedom (1947), Get Up and Turn On the Light (1948), Songs of Cold War Days (1952), and Death in the Bathroom (1955), Gelsted warned against a revival of fascism. He wrote the collection of articles Hail to Thee, Life (1958), the collection of poems Never Before Has the Day Been so Bright (1959), and a work on literary ties between Denmark and the USSR. The collection Verses From a Sunny Shore (1961) is devoted to Greece. Gelsted translated the Iliad and Odyssey into Danish.