Georg Brandes

Works

• 1872Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature

  Lectures given in Copenhagen from 1871 and published in six volumes (1872–90): European literature from the émigrés of the French Revolution to Young Germany read as a struggle between reaction and freedom, with a call for a literature that puts problems up for debate.

• 1889Aristocratic Radicalism

  Essay in the journal Tilskueren, based on his lectures of 1888 and one of the first major accounts of Nietzsche: his philosophy is presented as an “aristocratic radicalism” that sets great individuals and the culture they create above the happiness of the many.

Position

Brandes is on the map as the critic who defined the “Modern Breakthrough” in Scandinavian literature and as one of the first major interpreters of Nietzsche. In his opening lecture of 1871 he demanded that literature raise problems for discussion – marriage, religion, property, the position of women – instead of serving tradition and Romantic idealism. Drawing on Taine’s method and Mill’s liberalism, he read European literature from the émigrés of the French Revolution to Young Germany as a struggle between reaction and freedom. In 1887 he began a correspondence with Nietzsche, who welcomed his formula “aristocratic radicalism” as the cleverest thing he had read about himself; Brandes’s lectures in Copenhagen in 1888 and his essay of 1889 were among the first serious public discussions of Nietzsche and did much to make him known. Harald Høffding answered with “Democratic Radicalism”, and their debate set an ethics of great individuals against one of general welfare. Brandes also wrote critical monographs on Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, Goethe and Voltaire. In his later years he opposed the First World War and wrote in defence of small and oppressed nations; his Jewish origin made him a frequent target of antisemitic attacks in Denmark.

Life & context

Georg Brandes was born on 4 February 1842 in Copenhagen into a Jewish merchant family. He studied aesthetics at the University of Copenhagen and took his doctorate in 1870 with a study of contemporary French aesthetics centred on Hippolyte Taine. Travels to France, England and Italy brought him into contact with Taine, Ernest Renan and John Stuart Mill, whose “The Subjection of Women” he translated in 1869. His lectures on the main currents of nineteenth-century literature, begun in Copenhagen in 1871, caused a public scandal; passed over for the chair of aesthetics, he lived in Berlin from 1877 to 1883. Back in Copenhagen he became the leading critic of Scandinavia and, through essays and correspondence, a link between Nietzsche, Ibsen, Strindberg and the European public. In 1902 he was granted a professor’s salary. He died in Copenhagen on 19 February 1927.

Further main works

• Hovedstrømninger i det 19de Aarhundredes Litteratur (6 vols., 1872–90)
• Søren Kierkegaard (1877)
• Det moderne Gjennembruds Mænd (1883)
• Aristokratisk Radikalisme (1889)
• William Shakespeare (1895–96)