HOLGER HENRIK HERBOLDT

DRACHMANN (1846-1908)  , Danish poet and dramatist, son of Dr A . G . Drachmann, a physician of Copenhagen, whose family was of German ex-traction, was born in Copenhagen on the 9th of October 1846 . Owing to the early death of his mother, who was a Dane, the child was left much to his own devices . He soon developed a fondness for semi-poetical performances, and loved to organize among his companions heroic games, in. which he himself took such parts as those of Tordenskjold and Niels Juul . His studies were belated, and he did not enter the university until 1865, leaving it in 1866 to become a student in the Academy of Fine Arts . From 1866 to 1870 he was learning, under Professor Sorensen, to become a marine painter, and not without success . But about the latter date he came under the influence of Georg Brandes, and, without abandoning art, he began to give himself more and more to literature . At various periods he travelled very extensively in England, Scotland, France, Spain and Italy, and his literary career began by his sending letters about his journeys to the Danish newspapers . After returning home, he settled for some time in the island of Bornholm, painting seascapes . He now issued his earliest volume of poems, Digte (1872), and joined the group of young Radical writers who gathered under the banner of Brandes . Drachmann was unsettled, and still doubted whether his real strength lay in the pencil or in the pen .

By this time he had enjoyed a surprising experience of

life, especially among sailors, fishermen, students and artists, and the issues of the Franco-German War and the French Commune had persuaded him that a new and glorious era was at hand . His volume of lyrics, Daempede Melodier (" Muffled Melodies," 1875), proved that Drachmann was a poet with a real vocation, and he began to produce books in prose and verse with great rapidity . Ungt Bled (" Young Blood," 1876) contained three realistic stories of contemporary life . But he returned to his true field in his magnificent Sange ved Havel; Venezia (" Songs of the Sea; Venice," 1877), and won the passionate admiration of his countrymen by his prose work, with interludes in verse, called Derovre fra Graensen (" Over the Frontier there," 1877), a series of impressions made on Drachmann by a visit to the scenes of the war with Germany . During the succeeding years he was a great traveller, visiting most of the principal countries of the world, but particularly familiarizing himself, by protracted voyages, with the sea and with the life of man in maritime places . In 1879 he published Ranker og Roser (" Tendrils and Roses "), amatory lyrics of a very high order of melody, in which he showed a great advance in technical art . To the same period belongs Paa Somands Tro og Love (" On the Faith and Honour of a Sailor," 1878), a volume of short stories in prose . It was about this time that Drachmann broke with Brandes and the Radicals, and set himself at the head of a sort of " nationalist " or popular-Conservative party in Denmark . He continued to celebrate the life of the fishermen and sailors in books, whether in prose or verse, which were the most popular of their day . Paul og Virginie and Lars Kruse (both 1879); Osten for Sol og vesten for Maone (" East of the Sun and Moon," 188o); Puppe og Sommerfugl (" Chrysalis and Butterfly," 1882); and Strandby Folk (1883) were among these . In 1882 Drachmann published his fine translation, or paraphrase, of Byron's Don .Tuan . In 1885 his romantic play called Der var en Gang (" Once upon a Time ") had a great success on the boards of the Royal theatre, Copenhagen; and his tragedies of Volund Smed (" Wayland the Smith ") and Brav-Karl (1897) made him the most popular playwright of Denmark .

He published in 1894 a volume of exquisitely fantastic Melodramas in rhymed verse, a collection which contains some of Drachmann's most perfect work . His novel Med den brede Pensel (" With a Broad

Brush," 1887) was followed in 1890 by Forskrevet, the history of a young painter, Henrik Gerhard, and his revolt against his bourgeois surroundings . With this novel is closely connected Den hellige Ild (" The Sacred Fire," 1899), in which Drachmann speaks in his own person . There is practically no story in this autobiographical volume, which abounds in lyrical passages . In 1899 he produced his romantic play called Gurre; in 1900 a brilliant lyrical drama, Hallfred Vandraadeskjald; and in 1903, Det grbnne Haab . He died in Copenhagen on the 14th of January 1908 . See an article by K . Gjellerup in Dansk Biografisk Lexikon vol. iv . (Copenhagen, 189o) . (E .