a blog by Peter Leonard
Somebody who surely won't be on my upcoming Master's exams is Carl David af Wirsén (1842-1912). A moralist and social conservative in a time of astounding change in urban Scandinavia in the 1880s and '90s, his influence on the Swedish Academy ensured that institution's irrelevancy in the context of the scathing social critique in the writing of Strindberg and other authors of the Modern Breakthrough. A self-described Romantic who was born too late, "naturalistiska och problemdebatterande litteratur har därför varit honom en styggelse, som han angripit med stor bitterhet," (Naturalistic and problem-debating literature was therefore a horror for him, which he attacked with great bitterness,) notes literary biography from as early as 1906!
In the early days of the Nobel prizes the Swedish Academy was charged with selecting candidates in literature, and Wirsén's bungling management of the task made Sweden an international laughing-stock. Displaced from the royal circle following the death of King Oscar in 1907, he lived to see his influence wane and by 1909 was reduced to boycotting the Nobel awards in protest of Selma Lagerlöf's selection -- one of a long line of writers of whom he disapproved, and whose reputations would one day greatly outshine his own.