Thomas Thorild

Thomas Thorild ( born April 18, 1759 in Svarteborg, Bohuslän, † October 1, 1808 in Greifswald) was a Swedish poet, writer and literary critic.

Life

Thomas Thorild was born actually Thorén and changed his last name only in 1785 in Thorild ( Old Swedish for: Thor's flame). Thorild attended high school in Gothenburg and then studied law in Lund. In 1782 he moved to Stockholm, stayed from 1787 to 1788 in Uppsala, and then spent some time in England. The defense of his dissertation in Uppsala was held in the presence of the king and the king's order was opposed by the two renowned authors Schroderheim and Leopoldt. The protocol of defense after Thorild struck valiantly to. After he ended up in England in prison, he returned to Sweden. Duke Charles, the. Following the assassination of King Gustav III led the regency for the still immature Gustav IV Adolf, felt by Thorilds writings attacked, and so Thorild was expelled in 1793 of the country. Thorild went to the then Swedish Greifswald, where he got a job as a professor of literature and librarian after some time. Here he married on September 11, 1797 in St. Nikolai his mistress, Gustav Steglig of Kowsky who had accompanied him into exile and with whom he had two children in free marriage. He was 13 years at the University of Greifswald and is buried in New Church ( near Greifswald ).

Importance

Thorild was a supporter of the Sturm und Drang literature and an opponent of the French-inspired classicism, whose main representatives were in Sweden Johan Henrik Kellgren and Carl Gustaf af Leopold. Thorilds great models were Jean -Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Ossian and the young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This was expressed by the fact that Thorild free forms and great passions preferred and any constraint scorned. His first major poem was published in 1781, not rhyming, poem Passion Erna ( " Passions " ), in which he expressed a pantheistic feeling for nature.

Thorild, however, was known less as a poet, but as a writer and literary critic. Thorild involved in violent, long-running feuds with literary opponents such as Kellgren, against which he addressed 1784 Straffsång ( criminal song ).

Thorild was also active politically, fighting for freedom and large-scale social reforms and welcomed the French Revolution, whose excesses he, however, distanced 1794. He himself said about his concerns: Att förklara hela och att nativity vilja omskapa hela världen ( " to explain the whole of nature and to change the world ").

Works

• Samlade Skrifter. Blom, Lund 1975-1990 (12 vols )