Georg Johannesen

Georg Johannesen
Born	(1931-02-22)February 22, 1931 Bergen, Norway
Died	24 December 2005(2005-12-24) (aged 74) Egypt
Occupation	Author
Nationality	Norwegian
Period	1957–2005
Genre	Poetry Novels

Georg Johannesen (22 February 1931 – 24 December 2005) was a Norwegian author and professor of rhetoric.

He was born in Bergen. He wrote his dissertation on the spring motif in the poetry of Olaf Bull. He drowned while on vacation in Egypt.

Georg Johannesen also worked as a lecturer in Scandinavian literature at the University of Bergen between 1978 and 1987.^[1]

Writing career

Georg Johannesen's entered the literary scene with a novel, Høst i mars ("Autumn in March") (1957), a tender love story with a tragic denouement about romance in the face of bourgeois prejudice. The novel was followed by three collections of poetry. The first of these, Dikt 1959 ("Poems 1959") (1959), deals, as the title suggests, with temporal subjects. The second collection, Ars moriendi (1965), is structured around a rigid formal arrangement inspired by the seven deadly vices of the Catholic Church. The last, New Poems (1966) is more politically-driven. It is also regarded as one of the numerous poetry collections produced during what is widely regarded the best phase in Norwegian poetry.^[1]

Johannesen stirred controversy in 1967 with his play Kassandra. The play was attacked for its blasphemous content. It caused an uproar when it was listed at the ABC Theatre. The play shows Johannesen's genius of creating a socially critical work. The play established Johannesen as one of the country's all-time greats of literature.^[1]

Johannesen's love for paradox and delivering political messages in his work continued in Second Kings (1978), John's Book (1978) and Simon's Book (1980). These works were laden with paradox and irony, the literary devices Johannesen most played with. These works were allegorical, shedding light on some of contemporary Norway's problems. The Norwegian drive for oil was presented in a satirical manner in the novel Mongstad (1989), which Johannesen published under the pseudonym Kathy Johns.^[1]

All his writing shows an interest in the power language has to enshroud true meaning. The language we use, forces upon us a sentimentality which clouds over real political insight and action, and Johannesen's most important task is to unveil language. Both his plays and his poems bear obvious inspiration from Bertolt Brecht. His essays show a certain fondness for paradox.^[2]

References