Paludan-Muller, Frederik

(1809-1876)

   A Danish poet and dramatist, Paludan-Muller had a literary career that illustrates the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkgaard's aesthetic and ethical stages of existence. While a law student at the University of Copenhagen, Paludan-Muller sought the favor of the city's lovers of literature with his two volumes of Poesier (1836-1838; Poems) and the epic Danserinden (1833; The Dancer); the latter tells about the unsuccessful love relationship between a nobleman and a woman of low rank. Classical mythology gave him material for the dramas Amor og Psyche (1834; Cupid and Psyche) and Venus (1841), as well as for the dramatic poem Tithon (1844), which draws on the legends about Troy. Paludan-Muller's work was well received, and he became a much celebrated literary figure in Copenhagen.

   Paludan-Muller's turn toward ethical seriousness came as a consequence of a potentially fatal illness and resulted in one of the great works of Danish literature, the epic Adam Homo (1842-1849; tr. 1981), which has a religious as well as an ethical dimension. Adam is an everyman whose path through life is that of a scoundrel and sinner; when he dies and enters the afterlife, he is saved from damnation only because of the prayers and pure love of a woman named Alma. The similarities to the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen s Peer Gynt (1867) are fairly obvious. Other parallels are that both Adam and Peer experience great financial and social success, which contributes to their downfall, and like Paludan-Muller's younger self, both are Kierkegaardian aesthetes. Paludan-Muller also wrote an ethical counterpart to Adam Homo, the trilogy Ivar Lykkes Historie (1866-1873; The Story of Ivar Lykke), in which Ivar's stature as a human being increases as he suffers material adversity and defeat.