Elsa Gress

Elsa Judith Elisa Gress (born January 17, 1919 in Frederiksberg , † July 18, 1988 in Damsholte , island of Møn ) was a Danish writer who was awarded both the Critic 's Prize and the Søren Gyldendal Prize .

Life

Childhood, adolescence and studies

Elsa Gress grew up in Ordrup as the daughter of a secretary who lost the family's fortune in horse racing , as a result of which the family lost its economic and social security. After graduating from the New Language High School in Ordrup, she began studying literature at the University of Copenhagen in 1937, and between 1937 and 1939 also spent time studying in Germany , France and Great Britain . After the death of her mother in 1938, family problems came along alongside financial difficulties.

Experience from stays abroad during the pre-war period, etc. a. in Germany, shaped her literary work and made her a staunch advocate of democracy and humanism . In 1942 she completed her studies with a thesis on English art criticism from around 1700 ( Engelsk æstetisk kritis fra 1680 til 1725 ) and received the gold medal from the University of Copenhagen for this, before she received a master's degree in 1944 .

During the Second World War she took part in the Danish resistance against the German occupation forces and had to live underground for a time because of the participation in acts of sabotage . Personal tragedies they met even after the end of the war: Both her her partner and her brother Palle Gress committed because of the war experiences suicide . She herself worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) between 1945 and 1946 .

Literary debut and stay in the USA

In the following years she devoted herself increasingly to writing. She has written novels, literary criticism , dramas and essays , but has also worked as a translator , publishing consultant and commentator. In 1945 she published a first collection of her essays under the title Strejftog and began a series of works dealing with the subjects of society, art and love. At the same time, she recounted her experiences on trips and stays abroad.

Shortly thereafter, she processed her painful experiences in her literary award-winning debut novel Mellemspil (1947), which tells the story of a young woman who fled to post-war London to deal with her lover's suicide and set a new break for her to find further life.

Between 1948 and 1956 she owned an apartment on Teglgårdsstræde in Copenhagen, which quickly became a gathering place for artists and intellectuals. In order to secure a livelihood for herself and her changing subtenants, she mainly worked as a translator during this time. In 1950 she took part in the annual seminar for American studies in Salzburg , where she met the American literary scholar and dean of this seminar, Professor RWB Lewis . She followed him to the USA . From this love affair, which existed between 1951 and 1952, comes their first son, the philologist and university professor David Gress , who was born in 1953 after her visa for the USA was rejected and her return to Denmark.

Return to Denmark and awards

In 1956 she married the American painter Clifford Wright , whom she met during her stay in the USA in the summer of 1952 in the Yaddo artists' colony in New York State , and with whom she had two more children in 1957. Despite the rejection of her US visa in 1952, she felt a fascination for the United States and the American culture of the 1950s , which was shaped by the McCarthy era . This interest was reflected in the book Nye strejftog (1957), a collection of new essays.

In 1959 she moved with her family from Copenhagen to Glumsø on the island of Zealand and became a leading figure in the local artist colony. In 1964 she published the book Det uopdagede køn . She described the events of childhood and the loss of family fortune in the first volume of her memoir , which appeared in 1965 under the title Mine mange hjem and played in the 1920s and 1930s .

She also translated works such as Anthony Burgess ' A Clockwork Orange (1962), Conversations with Goethe in the Last Years of his Life (1963), Bertrand Russell's Philosophy of the West (1965) and Philip Roth's Goodbye Columbus (1965), but also Knaur's Mal - and drawing book (1964) in the Danish language . In the essay volume Fugle og frøer , published in 1969, she described the importance of travel and other experiences for the development of an independent personality. In addition, she wrote a play in 1970 entitled Den sårede Filoktet .

In the second volume of her memoir Fuglefri og Fremdmed (1971), for which she was honored with the Danish Critics' Prize in 1971 , she talked about her studies and experiences abroad. In 1972 she and her family left the artists' settlement Glumsø and settled on the island of Møn . There she continued her artistic work.

In 1974 she was the first woman to receive the Søren Gyldendal Prize . The book Compania I (1976), in which she described her experiences from the Copenhagen years 1948 to 1956 , was also autobiographical . Compania II was also published in 1976 , which continued the memories until 1972.

With her intensive criticism of social, cultural and literary problems, Elsa Gress continued the tradition of the culturally radical writers Georg Brandes and Poul Henningsen . As a solution to these problems, she primarily saw humanism, while she rejected a solution through the emerging feminism of the 1970s and even distanced herself clearly from feminism.

Elsa Gress, who became a member of the Danish Academy in 1975, most recently wrote the novels Salamander (1977) and Simurghen (1986). A year after her death, a television film was made about her with the title Dramatists Elsa Gress .

Elsa Gress died in 1988 at the age of 69. The burial took place in the cemetery where she lived in Damsholte on Møn.

Web links

• Literature by and about Elsa Gress in the catalog of the German National Library
• Elsa Gress in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Biography (Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Elsa Gress