EWALD, JOHANNES

born Nov. 18, 1743, Copenhagen, Den. died March 17, 1781, Copenhagen one of Denmark's greatest lyric poets and the first to use themes from early Scandinavian myths and sagas. On the death of his father, a poorhouse chaplain, he was sent to school at Slesvig (Schleswig), where his reading of Tom Jones and Robinson Crusoe aroused his spirit of adventure. In 1758 he went to Copenhagen to study theology, fell in love, and, in search of quickly gained glory, ran away to fight in the Seven Years' War. He returned to find that his beloved Arendse, whom he immortalized as his muse, had married another. He passed his final examination when he was 19 and was already becoming known as a writer of prose and occasional poetry. When finishing Adam og Eva (1769), a dramatic poem in the style of French tragedy, he met the German epic poet Friedrich Klopstock, and at about the same time he read Shakespeare's plays and James Macpherson's Ossian. Their influence resulted in the historical drama Rolf Krage (1770), taken from an old Danish legend that was recorded by the medieval historian Saxo Grammaticus. Ewald's life began to show signs of serious disorder, especially an addiction to alcohol. In the spring of 1773 his mother and a Pietistic pastor, J.S. Schnheyder, secured his removal from Copenhagen to the relative isolation of Rungsted. There he produced his first mature works: Rungsteds lyksaligheder (1773; The Joys of Rungsted), a lyric in the elevated new style of the ode; Balders dd (1774; The Death of Balder), a lyric drama on a subject from Saxo and Old Norse mythology; and the first chapters of his memoirs, Levnet og meninger (Life and Opinions), explaining his enthusiasm for the adventurous and fantastic. In 1775 he was transferred to a still more solitary place near Elsinore, where he went through a religious crisisa struggle between the Pietistic idea of self-denial and his own proud independence. In 1777 he was allowed to return to Copenhagen. His poetic genius was recognized, and his life became calmer despite increasingly severe illness. On his deathbed he wrote the heroic Pietist hymn Udrust dig, helt fra Golgotha (Gird Thyself, Hero of Golgotha). Ewald renewed Danish poetry in all of its genres. Of his dramatic works, only Fiskerne (1779; The Fishermen), an operetta, is still performed. His greatest work in prose is his posthumously published memoirs, in which lyrically pathetic chapters about his lost Arendse intermingle with humorous passages. He is known best as a lyric poet, especially for his great personal odes and for songs such as Kong Kristian stod ved h jen Mast (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as King Christian Stood by the Lofty Mast), which is used as a national anthem, and Lille Gunver, the first Danish romance. Though its form is rooted in the classical tradition, Ewald's poetry heralded the works of Adam Oehlenschlger and the Romantic movement by its emotionalism and its use of themes drawn from Old Norse literature.