FREDER
I
C
K
P
H
I
L
I
P
G
R
O
V
E
1
FPG (Greve/Grove)
+
SWEDEN
by Gaby Divay for the
UM-UMEA Conference
Mo, Feb. 16, 2009
ABOUT the F.P.G. 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
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
3
ABOUT the F.P.G. Collections at the UM
Alas, D. Pacey's papers went to the NLC
in Ottawa – his 1976 ed. of FPG's
LETTERS remains an authoritative
reference source
Stobie's papers contain notably Grove's
1914 Nietzsche-like essay "Rousseau als
Erzieher" in Der Nordwesten, his first
Canadian publication
Spettigue's papers document his
sensational discovery of the Greve/Grove
identity (October 1971)
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
4
5
6
ABOUT the F.P.G. Collections at the UM
My own research findings & other FPG &
FrL materials have been deposited since
the 1980s
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
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
7
FPG (Greve/Grove) & FrL Website (Top)
8
ABOUT the F.P.G. Collections at the UM
In 2008, the digitized Video-Proceedings
of the International Anniversary
Symposium "In Memoriam FPG: 19791948-1998", spear-headed by the late
Carol Shields & introduced by James
Dean, went online
This illustrious event included a session
on the New York dada artist, Else
Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (FrL)
Greve abandoned her in 1911, a year after
she had rejoined him in Pittsburgh
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
9
10
FPG (Greve/Grove) & FrL Website
11
FrL in the F.P.G. 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 had started a new life in America in
1909, [since she had followed him in June 1910]
Her papers at the Univ. of Maryland also
included "unidentified" German letters &
poems [to "Tse"/Endell, E. Hardt, R. Schmitz, Behmer ; some
are dedicated "To FPG"]
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
12
“Spottgedichte”: Hardt & Endell
http://www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/collections/fpg/frl/hardt.html
13
FrL in the F.P.G. Collections at the UM
Two hark back to the 1904/5 poetry cycle
she & FPG had published under the name
"Fanny Essler" [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]
For ten years, she modeled in New York,
then returned to Berlin in 1923
In 1926, she joined her American friends
in Paris where she committed suicide in
December 1927
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
14
Baron Leo, ca. 1914
15
Else in 1917:
Oil, Theresa Bernstein, NY
16
Letter “A” (Man Ray)
17
Portrait of Marcel Duchamp
18
GOD (ca.1917)
19
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
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
20
WHO was F. P. GREVE?
In early 1901, he is in Rome at the DAI
[Deutsche Archäologische Institut]
Later that year, he moves to Munich
Barely 23, & without a university degree,
he registers as a "Privatgelehrter"
Soon, he courts Karl Wolfskehl & the
"Meister" Poet Stefan George
He imitates Nietzsche's & George's
poetry: Jahr der Wende (mss) &
Wanderungen (Feb. 1902) [sensational 2008
acquisitions!]
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
21
Dashing Dandy Greve
22
Stefan George
23
Karl Wolfskehl
24
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 hectic activities, Wolfskehl
questions his sanity: "Ob er krank ist?"
Greve's letters to Insel Publ. rather do
suggest that he WAS manic
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
25
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 artist 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
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
26
August Endell
J
U
G
E
N
D
S
T
I
L
A
R
T
I
S
T
27
WHO was F. P. GREVE?
In May 1903, Greve is arrested, tried, and
sentenced for defrauding his friend Kilian
of M10,000, an incredible sum at the time
He spends a year in Bonn prison,
furthering his translation career [with
contemporary authors like Gide, Wells, & Meredith]
He visits André Gide in Paris in June 1904
Gide publishes his impressions in 1919 as
"Conversation avec un Allemand" [BAAG,
1976 with 2 confessional letters: MANIC, "je sommes 3" ; ol, 2002]
Greve & Else publish their "Fanny
Essler" novel & poems (Freistatt, 1904/5)
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
28
André Gide
29
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 1906, they
live in Paris-Plage/Étaples on the French
Channel Coast [just a hop over to Wells in Folkestone]
Greve's 1905 Fanny Essler novel about
Else's life in Berlin and Munich targets
the George Circle [His Maurermeister Ihles Haus
(1906/7) is about her childhood in Swinemünde – both
are mirror-images of FrL's autobiography of the 1920s]
In late July 1909 Greve leaves Germany
with a staged suicide (Kippenberg to Else: after
double-selling his Swift translation)
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
30
Wollerau, near Zürich
31
Paris-Plage, near Etaples
32
H. G. Wells
33
34
35
Fanny Elssler, 1840, in Broom 1921
36
“Circle” in Broom, 1921/22
37
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: "Reise in
Schweden" in Neue Revue und Morgen –
we will hear more about this essay later
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
38
Megantic 1909
39
FPG in the USA, 1909-1912
Little is known about the 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, tramped along the
Ohio, worked in a furniture factory,
stayed at a Bonanza Farm in "the
Dakotas", then settled in Canada to teach
The Kentucky year with Else is omitted…
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
40
ASA Lining Paper Map
41
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 1996
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
42
Pittsburgh Arrest, Sep.1910
43
National Alumni History Set
44
The Bonanza Farm (near Fargo)
45
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
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
46
WHO was F. P. GROVE?
The biographical underpinning of Grove’s
first novel Settlers of the Marsh (1925)
were not recognized until the mid-1990s [It
is a therapeutic account of the ending of his marriage]
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
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
47
http://www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/collections/fpg/bio/
48
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 to 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 eleven years
older -- later, he will settle for seven years
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
49
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 mothertongue Swedish is conspicuously lacking!
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
50
ASA Cover
51
eEd. of Grove's A Search for America (1927)
52
ISM Cover
53
eEd. of Grove's In Search of Myself (1946)
54
WHO was F. P. GROVE?
In comparison to Greve's biography,
Grove's is rather boring.
After leaving Manitoba in 1929, he briefly
is affiliated with Graphic Publishers in
Ottawa, 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 will be
mentioned here to demonstrate a typical
multi-referential condensation device
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
55
FPG & Hamsun
The title mimics both Gide's Les
nourritures terrestres (1897) and Knut
Hamsun's Growth of the Soil (1917), for
which he received the Nobel Prize in 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 June 1908 – he may have
tried to visit Hamsun who was immensely
popular in Germany at the time
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
56
Hamsun's Works in 17 v.
57
58
59
FPG & Travel Essays
While all of FPG's travel impressions
draw mainly on Flaubert's symbolic
realism, they also follow models like
Heine, Fontane, & Hamsun
The 1909 description of the northern
landscape is very similar to the 1922
Manitoba essays
Greve adds drama to the text, as he is lost
for hours after a mountain excursion on
Mount Dundret to the south of
"Gellivare"
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
60
Gällivare, Sweden
61
62
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 & Munch, &others
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
63
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 later married Björnson's niece
Dagny
This artist also portrayed Ibsen, who
resided many years in Munich, &
Hamsun who sometimes visited Langen
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
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 [at
least one of the latter's comedies in Greve's translation]
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
71
Max Reinhardt
72
Endell’s “Buntes Theater”
73
74
75
76
77
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 overestimated, but here, his reception by
Hamsun & FPG are our only concern
Hamsun, of course, embraced Nietzsche
far earlier than Greve
Greve reflects Nietzsche's influence in his
1901/2 poetry, Das Jahr der Wende &
Wanderungen
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
78
79
Greve's Contemporaries: Brandes
Incidentally:
The name of ASA protagonist "Phil
Branden" is one of those multi-layered
references to
- Karl Wolfskehl in Munich who was
affectionately called "Dr. Phil"
- Georg Brandes
- A homophone of Greve's given name
Felix, in short: Fel/Phil
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
80
Greve’s Jahr der Wende, 1901
81
"Vision", Jahr der Wende
82
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1899
83
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 socalled Stefan "George-Mache"
LCMND, Sept 2008 gd
84
Nietzsche's Dionysos Dithyramben
85
Facsimile eEd. of Jahr der Wende
86
GROVE & HAMSUN
A typically oblique "Homage" to Hamsun
can be found in the Bonanza Farm
episodes of 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 the time that Hamsun resided
at the Dalrymple's vast estate
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
87
GROVE & HAMSUN
FPG was stationed at the Amenia &
Sharon Land Company in the summer of
1912 [but pre-dated it to 1892]
Hamsun stayed on several occasions at
the Dalrymple's Farm, mostly in the mid1880s
Hamsun's travel impressions about the
Red River Valley were published in
Germany by 1905, the very year that the
Swedish-Norwegian union fell apart
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
88
89
GROVE & HAMSUN
Further similarities suggesting that
Greve/Grove imitated Hamsun are the
Hobo theme, 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 Christiana/Oslo
newspapers as early as Nov. 1887
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
90
91
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 is
Governor of North Dakota today!]
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
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, having drowned in the Titanic
Tragedy of Apr. 1912
For a long time, only a shot of a middleaged "young owner" with a slain antilope
were available
Since 2007, this image can be matched
with the rifled Lawrence H. Chaffee
[courtesy, his grand-daughter, Carie Good Chaffee]
UMEA, 16 Feb. 2009 gd
99
100
101
102
103
FPG: the quintessential Imitator
Once again, the sly references to Hamsun
show to what extent FPG was imitating
admired literary models:
starting with the decadent Oscar Wilde,
then turning to the austere Flaubert,
using Nietzsche for his cultural criticism,
or Goethe for his autobiographies, he
ended up plagiarizing Hamsun as
chronicler of the Dakota Bonanza Farms
104