Of all Danish authors the most widely known is, however, Hans Christian Andersen, not so much because of the especial greatness of his genius—Denmark has produced greater poets—as owing to its peculiar quality, rendering his works in an eminent sense cosmopolitan and his place in the world-literature one of absolute uniqueness. His fairy-tales have been translated into a score of languages and are read by every American child.
In more recent years the novelist J. P. Jacobsen has revealed to the reading world the polish and pliability of the Danish language as a literary tool. No writer has handled it with greater skill, none with such infinite tenderness. His two volumes are linguistic as well as literary milestones. Being utterly untranslatable, foreigners have learned Danish solely in order to read him; while in Germany several prosaists of the younger school are admittedly influenced by his style.
The songs of Drachmann, "the bard of the sea," reverberate throughout the sea-encircled plains of Denmark, and far beyond. Modern Germany can point to no lyricist of his talent or originality.
Georg Brandes, the aesthetician, whose fervent enthusiasm, the astounding sweep and penetrating keenness of whose lucid intellect, and whose unswerving devotion to his cause in the face of thirty years' ruthless opposition have left their indelible imprint upon the present generation, not only of writers, but of all spiritually interested men and women, in Scandinavia and in ever-widening circles in other lands; who has liberated, in that he has liberalized, literary—and, through reaction, to an appreciable degree political—Denmark from the bondage of conservatism and stagnation—is universally recognized as the greatest living critic. It is to be regretted that so few of his works have been translated into English. His William Shakespeare, however, is found on the shelves of every student of the Stratford sage. Brandes, while freely acknowledging his indebtedness to the literature and philosophy of the Germans—with whom his works are extremely popular, and who have made repeated attempts to appropriate him as one of their own—like modern Danish writers generally, does not conceal his preference for French spirit and French belles-lettres.
