biography
| name: |
Spitteler, Carl
|
| |
pseudonym Carl Felix Tadem
|
pronunciation:
[shpiteler]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1845–1924)
|
| biography:
| Writer, born in Liestal, near Basel, N Switzerland. He studied law in Basel and Protestant theology in Zurich and Heidelberg before becoming an atheist. Having spent years teaching in Russia, Finland, and Switzerland, he became features editor of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (1890–92). He is best known for his epic poetry which endeavours to breathe fresh mythical significance into the ancient world of the gods, notably in his two major works Prometheus und Epimetheus (1881) and Der Olympischer Frühling (1900–5). His vision is heavily pessimistic and is influenced by the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jakob Burckhardt, and Arthur Schopenhauer. He was a pacificist and made a plea for the neutrality of Switzerland in 1914 in his famous speech ‘Unser Schweizer Standpunkt’. He also wrote the novel Imago (1906), poetry, essays, tales, and reminiscences. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1919. |
|
|
