The Life of Blicher

Knud Sørensen on Blicher

By : Knud Sørensen

Childhood
Steen Steensen Blicher was born on 11 October 1782 in the village of Vium in mid-Jutland, on the border between vast and thinly populated stretches of moorland towards the west and more fertile, arable land towards the east. He was the son of Pastor Niels Blicher and his wife Kristine Marie.
   His childhood home was marked by his mother´s illness. She suffered from depression, with the result that her son not only became more attached to his father but was also – during periods of excessive strain – sent to stay at the neighbouring manor at Aunsbjerg belonging to his mother´s uncle, Steen de Steensen.

Childhood Region
The region of Jutland, where Blicher grew up, was characterized by moors and heather moors, which especially in the western part of the country covered most of the land. From Blicher's native place adjoining moors made it possible to walk on heather not only to the North Sea, but also far into Germany. To the literati of the capital Jutland was an unknown part of Denmark, far away from culture and civilization. The landscapes and the atmosphere that Blicher experienced in his childhood he rediscovered when he became acquainted with Ossian's poems, and it is no exaggeration to say that they influenced Blicher to become a poet and more particularly a Jutlandish poet. Blicher lived most of his life in Jutland, and as a regional poet he was the one to make room for Jutland and the Jutlandish population in Danish literature and thereby in the general Danish consciousness.
   During the 1780s the Danish absolute monarchy embarked on a series of reforms that were totally to change both rural life and agriculture: villeinage was abolished, the transition to private ownership gathered momentum, the land was redistributed and new methods of cultivation were introduced. Like many other clergymen of the time Niels Blicher too was engaged in this work. His interest and enthusiasm greatly influenced his son, who was for periods directly involved in his father´s local community work and remained actively interested in agriculture and social reform for the rest of his life.

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Blicher's Youth
In 1796 Blicher's father, Niels Blicher, took holy orders in Randlev and moved the family with him. However, after a few months Steen was sent to grammar school in Randers where he graduated in 1799.
   That same year Blicher commenced his theological studies at the University of Copenhagen. He came from a family of clergyman, and there had never been any doubt as to his chosen profession.
   Blicher´s studies coincided with the breakthrough of romanticism in Danish literature. But whereas the majority of Danish artists and intellectuals found inspiration in Germany, Blicher mainly looked to English poets and writers. His first contribution to literature was a highly regarded translation of Ossians poems, published in two volumes in respectively 1807 and 1809 Blicher completed his studies in the autumn of 1809.

Blicher as Grammar School Master
In 1809 he was appointed grammar-school master in Randers, the east-Jutland town where he himself had gone to school. In 1810 he married his uncle´s seventeen-year-old widow, Ernestine Juliane, who brought considerable capital into the marriage.

Glebe Tenant in Randlev
From 1811 to 1819 he administered the farm at his father´s parsonage. The latter was then the incumbent of Randlev in south-east Jutland, and it was here Blicher began to write in earnest. His debut in 1814, with Poems. Part I, won him instant recognition as a poet.
   These were difficult years. Denmark was at war with England on the French side 1807-14, and the ensuing inflation resulted in 1813 in state bankruptcy with a subsequent crisis especially in agriculture.

Pastor of Thorning
During these critical years much private capital – including Blicher´s – turned into debt, and he was obliged to apply for a benefice. From 1819-26 he was the pastor of Thorning, a parish neighbouring on that of Vium, and from 1826 until shortly before his death he was the pastor of Spentrup, north of Randers.
   On the map of the Jutland peninsula the three important localities in Blicher´s life – Vium/Thorning, Randlev and Spentrup – form a triangle with sides measuring 40-50 miles, and within or near this triangle are to be found most of the places he mentions in his fiction.
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In Denmark, as in other European countries, the idea of freedom was gathering momentum and, after the death of King Frederik VI in 1839, it gave the Danes a free constitution, that of 1849. Blicher died almost entirely forgotten during the commotion aroused by the wars against Schleswig-Holstein in 1848, but his stories have quietly gone from strength to strength and also become generally known abroad, not least in German. Together with Hans Christian Andersen´s fairy tales Blichers short stories are among the greatest of Danish nineteenth-century literature.

Extract from a biography by Knud Sørensen, who is a Danish Author.