Thorkild Bjørnvig's works comprise poetry, translations, literary criticism, essays, and memoirs; between 1949 and 1993 he produced more than thirty-five books. His collections of poems with their complex themes of eroticism, nature, and the role of humans in the cosmos make him a central figure in modern Danish literature. Furthermore, his involvement with the ecology movement and his close friendships with Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) and Martin A. Hansen have attracted great attention, in Denmark and elsewhere, while his highly esteemed translations of Friedrich Hölderlin and Rainer Maria Rilke have made these two central European poets accessible to Scandinavian readers.

Thorkild Strange Bjørnvig was born in Aarhus (after 1948, spelled Århus) on 2 February 1918; his father, Theodor Frese Bjørnvig, was a factory inspector and was married to Adda Thomine Hummel Jensen. Thorkild spent the first thirty years of his life in Aarhus, partly...