Biography of Jeppe Aakjær

Jeppe Aakjær

(Aakjaer, 1866 - Jenle, 1930) Danish novelist and poet. Belonging to a peasant family, a rigid practitioner of Pietism, in his youth he alternated work in the fields with attendance at the popular school, in which he was influenced by the Grundtvigian interpretation of Christianity. He himself narrates episodes from his childhood and youth in Childhood Years ( Drenge Aaar ), Adolescence ( Knøseaar ), and Before Day ( Før det dages ), as well as in the novel The Peasant's Son ( Bondens Søn ).

At the end of the century, he worked as a journalist for a few years in Copenhagen, where he was attracted by the ideas of G. Brandes and by socialism. He was considered an agitator, being a prominent member of the Brandes-inspired student reform movement. The novel The Children of Wrath ( Vredens Børn, 1904), in which he expresses his protest at the exploitation of rural day laborers, ignited a debate that led to improvements in the situation of those workers.

In his next novel, Arbejdets glæde (1914), his love for the peasant way of life (threatened by the advances of industry) as well as Jutland traditions and dialect appears. As soon as it was possible for him, he moved back to Jutland (1907), to continue his literary work there, taking care at the same time of the education of the peasants. The importance that the book has for him in the social struggle is attested by the novel Forces in Ferment ( Hvor der er gaerende Kraefter ).

While aggressive and subversive accents predominate in his novels, his lyrics are of all the greater merit the more linked they appear to traditional values. Among his poetic works Free Field ( Fri Felt, 1905), Songs of Rye ( Rugens Sange, 1906), and Under the Evening Star ( Under Aftenstjernen ) deserve to be highlighted. His best-known book is Songs of Rye; It includes poems of great sensuality to which the Danish composer Carl Nielsen set music, but social criticism is not absent either. The biography The tragedy of the life of Steen St. Blicher ( Steen St. Blichers Livstragedie, 1918) testifies to the affection he felt for the romantic and unfortunate Jutlandic poet Blicher.

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