From his elevated study in the octagonal tower on the corner of H. C. Ørstedsvej and Kastanjevej in Frederiksberg, Johannes Jørgensen began his lifelong work writing against the mediocre morals he felt were engulfing his generation in dark clouds. Any excitement had ceased to exist in modern Danish culture; even worship and faith, love and self-sacrifice were to Jørgensen long-lost virtues in the 1890s. "Derfor ruger et trist Graavejr over den moderne Kultur" (Therefore overcast clouds gloom over modern culture), Jørgensen wrote in the now well-known essay "Symbolisme" (Symbolism, published in Taarnet, 1893). Orthodox realism and atheism personified the darkness in the giant of Danish letters Georg Brandes. Jørgensen found life in the industrialized Danish capital unrewardingly prosaic, and he set out to deepen this life through a new and otherworldly poetic voice. His work became known as the major...