A Priest's Diary

The spirit of the 1890s found its most uniquely characteristic expression in the work of this poet. Generally accepted as having been the young "Scandinavian in Paris" whom Rilke used as a model for the eponymous hero of Malte Laurids Brigge, Obstfelder was singularly attuned to the period in which he lived. This, his last and in its conception most ambitious work was cruelly cut short by his tragic death in 1900 at the age of thirty-three, and in its incomplete form was published posthumously. It is the diary of a priest, a man sustained by the conviction that within the chaotic immediacy of life, there lies a coherent ordering principle waiting to be discovered. "A poet of subtle impressionism and intense sensibility." - Rilke