Criticism about FPG & FrL

Greve/Grove & Else v. Freytag-Loringhoven

FR E D E R ICK PHILIP GROVE.
FPG
Frederick Philip Grove / Felix Paul Greve and SWEDEN

Transcript of Gaby Divay's 2009 PowerPointPresentation in Umeå
provided by SlidePlayer
Cover Slide
First UM-UMEA Partnership Conference
Umea,
Mo, Feb. 16, 2009

3.
ABOUT the FPG Collections at the UM
The PAPERS of the Canadian author Frederick Philip Grove (1879-1948) were acquired from his widow in the early 1960s
In 1973, M. Stobie published her Grove book (Twayne's World Authors series)
D. O. Spettigue's seminal FPG: The European Years came out the same year
The Research Collections of both scholars were added to the UM archival holdings in 1976 & in the late 1980s respectively

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ABOUT the F.P.G. Collections at the UM

Alas, D. Pacey's papers went to the NL of Canada in Ottawa – his 1976 ed. of FPG's LETTERS remains the perhaps most authoritative reference source
Stobie's papers contain notably Grove's first Canadian publication in 1914,
the Nietzsche-like essay "Rousseau als Erzieher" in Der Nordwesten
Spettigue's papers document his sensational discovery of the Greve/Grove identity in October 1971 (pub. 1973)

5 Spettigue, Dustcover, 1973

6 Grove, studiously writing (Pacey, 1976)

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ABOUT the F.P.G. Collections at the UM
My own research findings & other FPG & FrL materials have been deposited in the Archives since the early 1980s as research collection Mss 12
Apart from a host of smaller research clusters, there are substantial BOOK collections, such as The F. P. Grove Library Collection, and
The F. P. Greve Translations Collection
Both, along with quite a few e-editions, have been made available on the FPG & FrL Website since 1998

8 FPG (Greve/Grove) & FrL Website

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ABOUT the F.P.G. Collections at the UM
In 2008, the digitized Video-Proceedings of the International Anniversary Symposium "In Memoriam FPG: 1979-1948-1998" went online
It was spear-headed by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields, & introduced by the then Fac Arts' Associate Dean, James Dean
This illustrious event included a session on the New York dada artist, Else Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (FrL)
Greve had abandoned her in 1911, barely a year after she had joined him in Pittsburgh

10 Website, 1998 Symposium, Video-Proceedings

11 FPG (Greve/Grove) & FrL Website

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FrL in the FPG Collections at the UM
Around 1988, Professors Spettigue & Hjartarson found that Greve's Else had left a revealing autobiography, where the decade she spent with him loomed large [publ. as Baroness Elsa, 1992]
Here FINALLY was hard proof that Greve started a new life in America in 1909, and that she had followed him in June 1910
Her papers at the Univ. of Maryland also include "unidentified" German letters & poems ...
adressed to "Tse"/Endell, E. Hardt, R. Schmitz, M. Behmer et al.
Several are dedicated "To FPG"

13. "Spottgedichte:" about Hardt & Endel

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FrL in the FPG Collections at the UM
Two "FPG" poems hark back to the 1904/5 poetry cycle she & FPG had published under the name "Fanny Essler" [all 7 are in FPG's 1993 PEd Poems/Gedichte]
One of them specifies the location of their rocky & short-lived reunion: "Sparta, Kentucky, am Eagle Creek" [found in April 1991]
In 1913, she married Baron Leo, a black sheep of the illustrious Freytag-Loringjovem family
He retirned to Germany at the outbreak of Woeld War I
For ten years, she modelled in New York, then returned to Berlin in 1923
In 1926, she was able to join her American friends in Paris
There, she committed suicide in December 1927

15 Baron Leo, ca. 1914

16 Else in 1917
Oil, Theresa Bernstein, NY

17 Letter "A"
Man Ray, 1921
Still Frame of a lost film "The Baroness shaving her pubic hair"

18 Portrait of Marcel Duchamp

19 GOD (ca.1917)

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WHO was F. P. GREVE ?
Frederick Philip Grove was born Felix Paul Greve in 1879
He grew up in Hamburg, Germany, where he received an excellent education:
In 1898, he graduates with honours from the humanistic Gymnasium Johanneum
He goes to Bonn to study Classical Philology with authorities like
Usener, Bücheler, & Loeschke
He also studies Byron, Michelangelo, & Oceanography

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WHO was F. P. GREVE ?
In early 1901, he is in Rome at the Deutsche Archäologische Institut
Later that year, he moves to Munich
Barely 23, & without a university degree, he registers as "Privatgelehrter" (Independent Scholar)
Soon, he courts Karl Wolfskehl & the "Meister" Poet Stefan George
He imitates Nietzsche's & George's poetry in Wanderungen (Feb. 1902), and
Das Jahr der Wende (mss, a sensational UMA acquisition, 2008)

22 Dashing Dandy Greve
Postcard Detail, 1902

23 Stefan George

24 Karl Wolfskehl

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WHO was F. P. GREVE?
He starts translating Oscar Wilde, then Dowson, Browning, Pater, et al.
He reviews Nietzsche's & Stendhal's works in the Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung
He collaborates with archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler on an acclaimed catalogue of Greek vases
In view of such hectic activities, Wolfskehl questions his sanity: "Ob er krank ist?"
("Perhaps, he is ill?" he asks in a letter to Gundolf, early 1902)
Greve's letters to Insel Publ. rather do suggest that he was indeed manic

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WHO was F. P. GREVE ?
In October 1902, he moves to Berlin
He hopes to have four Oscar Wilde's plays staged at Max Reinhardt's "Kleines Theater"
He befriends Jugendstil architect August Endell & his wife Else –
soon, they become lovers
In early 1903 all three journey via Hamburg to Palermo
Endell is left behind in Naples with a consolation bicycle

27 August Endell, Jugendstil architect

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WHO was F. P. GREVE ?
In May 1903, Greve is arrested, tried, and sentenced ...
... for defrauding his friend Kilian of M10,000
He spends a year in Bonn prison, furthering his translation career
... now with contemporary authors like Gide, Wells, & Meredith
He spends a year in Bonn prison, furthering his translation career [with contemporary authors like Gide, Wells, & Meredith]
Fresh out of jail, he visits André Gide in Paris (June 1904)
Gide publishes his impressions in 1919 as "Conversation avec un Allemand"
It was published in BAAG, 1976, with 2 confessional letters:
In one, Greve declares "je sommes 3" (eEd. 2002, gd)
Greve & Else publish their "Fanny Essler" novel & poems (Freistatt) in 1904/5

29 André Gide

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WHO was F. P. GREVE ?
Greve & Else visit H. G. Wells, then move to Wollerau near Zürich until mid-1905
Until they return to Berlin in early 1906, they live in Paris-Plage/Étaples on the French Channel Coast
- just a hop over to Wells estate in Folkestone
Greve's 1905 Fanny Essler novel about Else's life in Berlin and Munich targets the George Circle, while his Maurermeister Ihles Haus (1906) is about her childhood in Swinemünde
Both books are mirror-images of FrL's autobiography, written in the 1920s
In late July, 1909 Greve leaves Germany with a staged suicide
(Kippenberg to "widow" Else suggests, because he had double-sold his Swift translation)

31 Wollerau, near Zürich
Hotel Bellevue, overlooking Zürich Lake


32 Paris-Plage, near Etaples

33 H. G. Wells

34 FPG's Poetry Ed., 1993

35 "Fanny Essler" - Drei Sonette

36 Fanny Elssler, 1840, in Broom 1921

37 Circle" in Broom, 1921/22

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WHO was F. P. GREVE ?
As described in the opening pages of Grove's first autobiographical novel ASA (1927), he travelled second-class on a White Star Liner [the Megantic] from Liverpool to Montreal
Following the ASA leads, Greve's PASSAGE was found in late Oct. 1998, shortly after the IN MEMORIAM symposium
His last German publication was "Reise in Schweden" in Neue Revue und Morgen – we will hear more about this essay later

39 Megantic 1909

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FPG in the USA, 1909-1912
Little is known about these three "lost" years
According to ASA, he peddled Travelogues in New York, took – innocently! - part in a book scam selling a History Set to rich industrialists for ten times the going price
He tramped along the Ohio, worked in a furniture factory, stayed at a Bonanza Farm in "the Dakotas", ... then settled in Canada to teach
The entire Kentucky year with Else is omitted

41 ASA Lining Paper Ma

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FPG in the USA, 1909-1912
Apart from Else's Sparta reference, there is a NYT note reporting her arrest on Pittsburgh's 5th Ave, for cross-dressing & smoking in public [found in Dec. 2004]
An entry in a 1910 Pittsburgh directory lists Greve as a downtown agent for National Alumni, publisher of a 20 v. History title [found in Apr. 1994 & 2000]
The Bonanza Farm could be identified as the Amenia & Sharon Land Co. near Fargo & Casselton, ND, in March 1995

43 Pittsburgh Arrest, Sep.1910

44 National Alumni History Set

45 The Bonanza Farm (near Fargo)

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WHO was F. P. GROVE ?
Grove emerges as an author from Rapid City, Manitoba, in 1922, with perfectly impersonal nature essays -
they seamlessly align with Greve's 1909 Sweden article
When FPG must provide biographical givens to publishers & readers, he cleverly reinvents his past:
He appropriates former friend Kilian's Anglo-German background as his own
But: he turns it into a more desirable Anglo-Swedish one

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WHO was F. P. GROVE ?
The biographical underpinnings of Grove's first novel Settlers of the Marsh (1925) were not recognized until the mid-1990s
It is a therapeutic account of ending a ten-year relationship in Sparta, Ky
His two autobiographies, A Search for America (ASA, 1927) & In Search of Myself (ISM, 1946) are both based on FPG's 1907 sketch for a literary dictionary:
The text Greve submitted then reads like a blueprint of Grove's accounts

48 Brümmer's Lexicon Cover

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WHO was F. P. GROVE ?
ASA blends Goethe's "Dichtung & Wahrheit" with all sorts of genres: the picaresque- & adventure novel, the Bildungsroman, & satires from Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus & Voltaire's Candide…
Repeated claims to ABSOLUTE veracity hold strangely true, despite the distorted narrative frame:
Grove dates the setting back to 1892, & makes himself up to eleven years older -- later, he will settle for seven years

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WHO was F. P. GROVE ?
In ISM, Grove recants precisely those truthful ASA accounts that could have led to his identification as Greve
He bends over backwards to brake out of the self-imposed time-prison by reporting five trips to Europe between 1892 & 1912
All coincide with important episodes in Greve's life
In both books, FPG often brags about his language skills –
his alleged mother- tongue Swedish is conspicuously lacking!

51 ASA Cover

52 eEd. of Grove's A Search for America
(c2005, orig. 1927)

53 ISM Cover

54 eEd. of Grove's In Search of Myself
(c2007, orig. 1946)

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WHO was F. P. GROVE ?
In comparison to Greve's biography, Grove's fiction is rather boring.
After leaving Manitoba in 1929, he briefly is affiliated with Graphic Publishers in Ottawa
He then settles for the rest of his life as a "gentleman farmer" in Simcoe, Ontario
Of Grove's many books, only his 1933 novel Fruits of the Earth is mentioned here to demonstrate his typical multi-referential condensation technique

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FPG & Hamsun
The title artfully mimics both Gide's Les nourritures terrestres (1897) and Knut Hamsun's Growth of the Soil (1917, Nobel Prize 1920).
This brings us back to Greve's 1909 Swedish travel impressions
He mentions to Gide that he is about to go to Norway in July 1908
He may have tried to visit Hamsun, who was very popular in Germany at the time

57 Hamsun's Works in 17 v.

58 Hamsun's Book

59 Grove's Library, no.147

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FPG & Travel Essays
While all of FPG's travel impressions draw mainly on Flaubert and his symbolic realism, they also follow models like Heine, Fontane, & Hamsun
Greve's 1909 description of the northern Swedish landscape is very similar to Grove's 1922 Manitoba nature essays in Over Prairie Trails
Greve adds drama to the text, as he is lost for hours after an excursion on "Mount Dundret to the south of "Gellivare"

61 Gällivare, Sweden

62 Map, Gällivare, Sweden
[Detail]

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Greve's Contemporaries
Echoes of Greve's trip to Norway & Sweden exist in form of a family anecdote:
Grove told his son Leonard how he received the royal treatment there, because his name was mistaken for the aristocratic title "Count" – which is "Greve" in Swedish!
The artistic circles Greve frequented both in Munich & in Berlin had multiple ties to Scandinavians like Ibsen, Brandes, Hamsun, Strindberg, and Munch

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Greve's Contemporaries: Munich
Albert Langen met Hamsun in Paris and published his Mysterien in 1896
The same year, he married Dagny, the daughter of B. Björnson (Nobel-Prize, 1903)
Langen's famous satirical journal Simplicissimus employed Gulbransson who would marry Björnson's niece Dagny in 1906
This artist also portrayed Ibsen, who resided many years in Munich, & Hamsun, who sometimes visited Langen

65 Publisher A. Langen

66 Author B. Björnson

67  Artist O. Gulbransson

68 Hamsun, by Gulbransson

69 Ibsen, by Gulbransson

70 Cover, Simplicissimus

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Greve's Contemporaries: Berlin
Max Reinhardt was directing Wolzogen's Cabaret, "Das Bunte Theater," which Endell had built in 1901
He also took over more serious theatres: his opening play at the Kammerspiele in Nov. 1906 was Ibsen's Ghosts
Munch was providing the set designs for that momentous occasion
Reinhardt also staged Hofmannsthal, Wedekind, Strindberg & Oscar Wilde [including at least one of the latter's comedies in Greve's translation]

72 Max Reinhardt


73 Endell's "Buntes Theater"

74 Munch

75 Set design, for Ibsen's Ghosts

76 Hamsun

77 O. Wilde

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Greve's Contemporaries: Brandes
Another influential FPG contact was the Danish critic Georg Brandes, the first to propagate NIETZSCHE in Europe
Nietzsche's influence cannot be over- estimated, but here, his reception by Hamsun & FPG are our only concern
Hamsun, of course, embraced Nietzsche far earlier than Greve, who was 20 years younger
FPG reflects Nietzsche's influence in his 1901/2 poetry, Das Jahr der Wende & Wanderungen, and in 1939, mss Aphorisms in his "Poems" Notebook

79 Georg Brandes

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Greve's Contemporaries: Brandes
Incidentally: The name of ASA's protagonist "Phil Branden" is one of those multi-layered references to
- Georg Brandes
- Karl Wolfskehl in Munich, who was affectionately called "Dr. Phil"
... a close homophone of Greve's shortened given name Felix [Fel/Phil]

81 Greve's Das Jahr der Wende, 1901

82 "Vision" Das Jahr der Wende

83 Friedrich Nietzsche, 1899

84 LCMND, Sept 2008 gd
Greve's First Poetry Books, 1901/2
Das Jahr der Wende reflects the unstructured style of Nietzsche's "Dionysos Dithyramben"
These concluded the "Zarathustra" complex in 1888, just before Nietzsche suffered a permanent mental breakdown
Greve's Wanderungen show the formally rigid way of crafting poetry in the so- called Stefan "George-Mache"

85 Nietzsche's "Dionysos Dithyramben"

86 Facsimile eEd. of Jahr der Wende

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GROVE & HAMSUN
A typically oblique "Homage" to Hamsun can be found in the Bonanza Farm episodes in both ASA & ISM:
Indeed, it is hardly a coincidence that FPG should have been drifting to this very specific area near Casselton, some 20 km west of the next larger town of Fargo
Nor is it by chance that FPG set his narrative to roughly the time that Hamsun resided at the Dalrymple's vast estate

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GROVE & HAMSUN
FPG was stationed at the Amenia & Sharon Land Company in the summer of 1912 [but pre-dated to 1892]
Hamsun stayed on several occasions at the Dalrymple's Farm, mostly in the late 1880s
Hamsun's travel impressions about the Red River Valley were published by A. Langen as "Auf der Prairie" & "Vagabundentage" in 1905, the very year that the Swedish-Norwegian union fell apart

89 Hamsun, Gesammelte Novellen, 1905

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GROVE & HAMSUN
Further similarities suggesting that Greve/Grove imitated Hamsun are the Hobo theme,
describing the social criticism of exploitative practices of both man and beast,
& reckless gambling scenes
A 2003 anthology entitled Hamsun remembers America assembles many of the 1905 German texts available to Greve,
and a few more issued in Kristiana/Oslo newspapers as early as Nov. 1887

91 Hamsun remembers. (2000)

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GROVE & HAMSUN
The editor, Richard Nelson Current, points out that Hamsun's Bonanza Farm episodes are disproportionally prominent in the author's recollections
The map, not unlike Grove's in ASA, shows both Fargo & Casselton at the left margin
Hamsun mentions the owner, Oliver Dalrymple, by name
[a descendent was Governor of North Dakota around 2005]

93 Hamsun, Contents

94 Hamsun's Map

95 Oliver Dalrymple
(1830–1908)

96 Chaffee's House

97 Bonanza Harvest

98 Grove's ASA Map

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GROVE & HAMSUN
FPG speaks only vaguely of the "Young Owner" & his widowed mother:
They are L. H. Chaffee & Carrie Chaffee, her husband, the financial genius H. F. Chaffee, had drowned in the Titanic Tragedy of April 1912
For a long time, only a shot of a middle-aged "young owner" with a slain antelope was available
Since 2007, this image can be matched with the rifled Lawrence H. Chaffee [courtesy, his grand-daughter, Carie Good Chaffee]

100 L. H. Chaffee, with antelope

101 L. H. Chaffee, with rifle

102 Carrie Chaffee Survivor of the 1912 Titanic disaster

103 H. F. Chaffee, died in the 1912 Titanic disater

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FPG: the quintessential Imitator
Once again, the sly references to Hamsun show to what extent FPG was imitating admired literary models
He started with the decadent Oscar Wilde, then turning to the austere Flaubert after prison in 1903/4
He used Nietzsche for his cultural criticism, and Goethe for his autobiographies
He ended up partially imitating Hamsun with his Manitoba nature essays, & substantially, as chronicler of the Dakota Bonanza Farms


Sources




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