Literate Lifetime
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Martin Andersen Nexø (June 26, 1869 - June 1, 1954) was a Danish writer. He was the first author to write about the working class, and the first great Danish communist writer.
Martin Anderson Nexø was born to a large family in a very poor area of Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1877 his family moved to Nexø, Denmark. Martin later adopted the name of this town as his last name). As a young man he overcame tuberculosis. After a short career as a worker, he attended a folk high school; later, he worked as a journalist.
In the mid-1890s Martin Andersen Nexø travelled in Southern Europe, and his book Soldage (1903) is largely based on those travels.
As a fine literate, Nexø, like Johannes V. Jensen, was at first much influenced by fin-de-siécle pessimism but gradually he turned to a more extroverted view and joined the Social Democratic movement. From then on, most of his books had a social bias. Probably his best known and most translated book is Pelle Erobreren (Pelle The Conqueror), the last volume of which was completed in 1910. The beginning part of the book was the subject of the movie Pelle Erobreren made in 1987. His other great work was Ditte Menneskebarn (1917-21), a hailing of the working woman and her self-sacrifice as a mother of others. A Danish film version of Part I of this book was released in 1946. The much debated Midt i en Jærntid, 1929, (i. e. "In an Iron Age", eng. transl. In God's Land) satirises the Danish farmers of World War I. During his last years he wrote a (never fulfilled) trilogy (Morten hin Røde, Den fortabte generation, Jeanette 1944-56) which was partly a continuation of Pelle the Conqueror, partly a masked autobiography.
Nexø later joined the Danish Communist Party though he did not break completely with the Social Democrats until 1933. He always wholeheartedly supported the Soviet Union and this attitude in many ways influenced later generations of left wing writers. As a communist he was jailed in 1941 by the Danish police during Denmark's occupation by the Nazis. Upon his release, he went to neutral Sweden. From there he moved to the Soviet Union where he made broadcasts to Denmark and Norway (which were also occupied by the Nazis at this time).
After World War II, Nexø moved to Dresden in East Germany, where he was made an honorary citizen. Among other things, the Martin-Andersen-Nexø-Gymnasium High School in Dresden was named after him.
Nexø died in Dresden in 1954 and was interred in the Assistens Kirkegård in the Nørrebro section of Copenhagen.
In his prime, Nexø enjoyed an international reputation, especially in Eastern Europe until the collapse of communism. Though this position will fade with time, there is no doubt that Martin Anderson Nexø ranks among the greatest European social writers.
Nexø Works in English
- Martin Andersen Nexø: Days in the Sun. Transl. by Jacob Wittmer Hartmann. 1929. (travel book)
- Martin Andersen Nexø: In God’s Land. Transl. by Thomas Seltzer. 1933.
- Martin Andersen Nexø: Under the Open Sky. My early Years. Transl. by J. B. C. Watkins. 1938. (part of autobiography)
- Martin Andersen Nexø: Pelle the Conqueror 1-2. Transl. by Jesse Muir and Bernard Miall. Gloucester, Mass. 1963. – New ed. by Fjord Press 1989-.
- Martin Andersen Nexø: Ditte. Gloucester, Mass. 1963.
Literature
- Henrik Faith Ingwersen and Niels Ingwersen: Quests for a Promised Land. The Works of Martin Andersen Nexø. 1984.
- Henrik Yde: Martin Andersen Nexø. An Introduction. (in: Nordica, vol. 11. 1994).
External links
- Works by Martin Andersen Nexø at Project Gutenberg
- http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nexo.htm
This biographical information was gathered from the Martin_Andersen_Nexø page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project.
Books
Pelle the Conqueror — CompletePelle the Conqueror — Volume 01
Pelle the Conqueror — Volume 02
Pelle the Conqueror — Volume 03
Pelle the Conqueror — Volume 04
