Welhaven, Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer

▪ Norwegian poet

born Dec. 22, 1807, Bergen, Nor.

died Oct. 21, 1873, Christiania

      Norwegian poet and critic who attacked the crudity and extreme nationalism of many of his contemporaries, particularly the nationalist poet Henrik Wergeland (Wergeland, Henrik Arnold), who advocated complete cultural independence for Norway; their feud is the most famous in Norwegian literature.

      Welhaven began the study of theology but dropped it. He earned a meagre living by tutoring and drawing to support his writing. He was above all a lyric poet and is remembered for his Norges dæmring (1834; “The Dawn of Norway”), a sonnet cycle attacking his contemporaries, and “Digtets aand” (“The Spirit of Poetry”), a short verse treatise. He later became professor of philosophy at King Frederick's University (now the University of Oslo). Welhaven sought to promote national progress by means of education and artistic refinement. He insisted that culture was indivisible and urged that whatever was valuable in Danish tradition be retained. His concepts of form and unity in art were very conservative. He was thus unable to recognize the breadth of spirit in Wergeland's poetry beneath its apparent surface crudity and was outraged by Wergeland's inclusion of words from Norwegian dialects in an otherwise Danish text.

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