Paludan-Müller

Paludan-Müller, FREDERIK, Danish poet, born at Kjerteminde in Fünen, on 7th February 1809, led a quiet, uneventful life, and died at Copenhagen on 29th December 1876. Whilst still a student at the university in that city he gained the ear of the public with a play, Love at Court (1832); a poem, The Dancer (1833); and a lyric drama, Amor and Psyche (1834; 8th ed. 1883)—all three decidedly romantic in temper, the second especially showing Byronic influence. But his fame rests on Adam Homo (3 vols. 1841–49; 7th ed. 1885), a humorous, didactic poem, full of deep and suggestive thought, with no small share of satiric wit and irony, and strong realistic touches, and of the most finished literary workmanship; on Kalanus (1854), a contrast between Alexander the Great and the Indian sage Kalanus, as representatives of Greek culture and Hindu religion, a work written in the loftiest spirit of idealism; and on Adonis (1874), an exquisitely finished little mythological poem. Along with Kalanus he published the poems Paradise, Abel's Death, Cain, Ahasuerus, and Benedict of Nursia; and he wrote also two prose romances, The Source of Youth (1865) and Ivar Lykke's History (3 vols. 1866–73). His poetical works were published in 8 vols. in 1878–79. See Georg Brandes, Danske Digtere (1877).