Abstract
Tom Kristensen’s travel book En Kavaler i Spanien (1926) was the result of a stay at the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen’s house, where Kristensen not only met his physical and psychological superior, he also began his artistic development and personal breakdown towards the novel Hærværk (1930). The article argues that with a departure from this context, En Kavaler i Spanien can be read as an original and complex subgenre of the sentimental novel and it suggests that the work might best be categorized as ‘hard sentimentalism’. This subgenre of the travel novel can be identified in the intertwinement of the core thematic of the book — eroticism, medieval Spain and identity loss — with style and form. The paradoxical generic notion of ‘hard sentimentalism’ is used to connect medieval Spain with the erotic, but in an increasingly dangerous way, which threatens the traveler’s identity by increasing homosexual attraction and opening an abyss of degeneration and distorted emptiness behind the flirt.
Litteratur
Primærlitteratur
Kristensen, Tom 1926: En Kavaler i Spanien. København.Search in Google Scholar
Kristensen, Tom 21945: En Kavaler i Spanien. København.Search in Google Scholar
Kristensen, Tom 1966: Aabenhjertige Fortielser. København.Search in Google Scholar
Kristensen, Tom 1968: Første gang in Politiken. ”Hvad var mit Ærinde?”. I: Hvad var mit Ærinde? Rejseglimt i udvalg ved Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen. København. 7–15. 5. juli 1953.Search in Google Scholar
Kristensen, Tom 1994: Glimtvis åbner sig nuet. Red. Tom Alsing og Jens Andersen. København.Search in Google Scholar
Kristensen, Tom 22015: Hærværk. Red. Torben Jelsbak. København.Search in Google Scholar
Sekundærlitteratur
Andersen, Jens 31995: Dansende stjerne — en bog om Tom Kristensen. København.Search in Google Scholar
Breitenstein, Jørgen 1978: Tom Kristensens udvikling. København.Search in Google Scholar
Cuddon, J. A. 41998: ”Sentimental Novel”. I: J. A. Cuddon: Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory. London.Search in Google Scholar
Handesten, Lars 1992: Litterære rejser — poetik og erkendelse i danske digteres rejsebøger. København.Search in Google Scholar
Jeppesen, Bent Haugaard 1990: Orfeus i underklassen. Tom Kristensens proletardæmoni. Aarhus.Search in Google Scholar
Müller-Wille, Klaus 2013: ”Hispanomanie – Dänische Spanienreisen und die Konzeption einer anderen Moderne”. I: Thomas Seiler (Red.): Skandinavisch-iberoamerikanische Kulturbeziehungen. Beiträge zur Nordischen Philologie 50. Tübingen. 85–109.Search in Google Scholar
Steinthal, Herbert 1968: ”En dagdrømmers nederlag og sejre”. I: Politiken. 17. November 1968.Search in Google Scholar
Thomsen, Hans Hagedorn 2003: Det lukkede rum. Rum og bevidsthed i Herman Bangs og Tom Kristensens romaner. University of Southern Denmark Studies in Literature 36. Odense.Search in Google Scholar
von Wilpert, Gero 1969: ”Empfindsamkeit”. I: Gero von Wilpert: Sachwörterbuch der Literatur. Stuttgart. 204–206.Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
