Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler (April 24, 1845 — December 29, 1924) was a Swiss poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1919. His work includes both pessimistic and heroical poems.
Spitteler was born in Liestal, and from 1863 he studied law at the University of Zurich. In 1865-1870 he studied theology in the same institution, at Heidelberg and Basel. Later he worked in Russia as tutor, starting from August 1871, remaining there (wi...
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Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler (April 24, 1845 — December 29, 1924) was a Swiss poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1919. His work includes both pessimistic and heroical poems.
Spitteler was born in Liestal, and from 1863 he studied law at the University of Zurich. In 1865-1870 he studied theology in the same institution, at Heidelberg and Basel. Later he worked in Russia as tutor, starting from August 1871, remaining there (with some periods in Finland) until 1879. Later he was elementary teacher in Bern and La Neuveville, as well as journalist for the Der Kunstwart and as editor for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
In 1881 Spitteler published the allegoric prose poem Prometheus and Epimetheus, published under the pseudonym Carl Felix Tandem, and showing contrasts between ideals and dogmas through the two mythological figures of the titles; later he reworked it and published it under his true name, with the title Prometheus der Dulder (Prometheus the Sufferer, 1924). This...
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