SOURCE: Brostrøm, Torben. Introduction to Contemporary Danish Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Line Jensen, Erik Vagn Jensen, Knud Mogensen, and Alexander D. Taylor, pp. 1-10. Boston, Mass.: Twayne, 1977.

In the following essay, Brostrøm reviews the development of modern Danish poetry, focusing on stylistic and thematic trends particularly influential in Denmark during the first half of the twentieth century.

For a description of modern Danish poetry, various historical points of departure may be chosen, e.g., the nearly century-old Naturalism with its new idea of man, coinciding with the emergence of industrialism and capitalism. In many respects we are still living under similar conditions, and poetry still finds answers to the challenges they present. The language of Naturalism, however, was not primarily that of lyric poetry. The age of modern poetry was heralded in the 1890s by the so-called Symbolists, and their major figure in this respect...