OSCAR

IVAN

See also:

• OSCAR IVAN LEVERTIN (1862-1906)

LEVERTIN (1862-1906)  , Swedish poet and man of letters, was born of Jewish parents at Norrkoping on the 17th of July 1862 . He received his doctorate in letters at Upsala in 1887, and was subsequently docent at Upsala, and later professor of literature at Stockholm . Enforced sojourns in southern Europe on account of health familiarized him with foreign languages . He began by being an extreme follower of the naturalist school, but on his return in 1890 from a two years' residence in Davos he wrote, in collaboration with the poet C . G . Verner von Heidenstam (b . 1859), a novel, Pepitas brollop (189o), which was a direct attack on naturalism . His later volumes of short stories, Rococonoveller and Sista noveller, are fine examples of modern Swedish fiction . The lyrical beauty of his poems, Legender och visor (1891), placed him at the head of the romantic reaction in Sweden . In his poems entitled Nya Dikter (1894) he drew his material partly from medieval sources, and a third volume of poetry in 1902 sustained his reputation . His last poetical work (1905) was Kung Salomo och Morolf, poems founded on an eastern legend . As a critic he first attracted attention by his books on the Gustavian age of Swedish letters: Teater och drama under Gustaf III .

(1889), &c . He was an active collaborator in the

review Ord och Bild . He died in 1906, at a time when he was engaged on his Linne, posthumously published, a fragment of a great work on Linnaeus .