The Classics with Klaus Rothstein: Amalie Skram
ONLY FOR SEASON TICKET HOLDERS – In the lecture series with Klaus Rothstein, the Diamond Club delves into classic works from the history of literature, which are worth remembering and rereading.
The Classics is the Diamond Club's new lecture series, where literary critic and author Klaus Rothstein takes us on a journey into some of Denmark's greatest works of fiction. Each lecture is illustrated with archival photos, original manuscripts and the like from the library's collections, so that we get completely new views into the history of literature.
This time we delve into Amalie Skram's writing.
Amalie Skram
There is something irresistibly wild and tyrannical about Amalie Skram (1846-1905), who, although born and raised in Norway, insisted that it should be written on her grave that she was a Danish citizen, a Danish subject and a Danish writer.
She gained her surname in her marriage to the Danish writer Erik Skram, who was one of the men of the modern breakthrough in Georg Brandes' circle. When she broke through herself, she was more radical and uncompromising than the standard-setting men who dominated society. With her novels, she threw herself headlong into the morality feud about women, marriage and sexuality, and with the novel Professor Hieronimus (1895) she pulled the rug away from under Professor Knud Pontoppidan, who had treated her at Kommunehospitalet's psychiatric department. That novel changed both the public's and politicians' view of society's treatment of the mentally ill.
Amalie Skram's author persona continues to fascinate, and with the years' distance, she is as relevant as ever in a time when literature is once again deeply concerned with women's roles, motherhood and psychiatry.
She is not to be missed in the Diamond Club's classics series, where we will look at the manuscript of Professor Hieronymus in the author's own handwriting.
