ABSTRACT
Spitteler studied law and theology at Basel, after which he taught in Russia and Finland. In 1889 he worked for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, in 1892 he gave this up to become an independent writer. He attempted prose (Friedli der Kolderi (1891); Gustav, ein Idyll (1892); Conrad der Leutnant (1898); Imago (1906)), also drama (Der Parlamentär (1889); Der Ehrgeizige (1892)), but it is as the author of vast epics, e.g. Prometheus und Epimetheus (1881) and Olympischer Frühling (1900-5) that he is best remembered. These monumental, cosmic visions owe much to Nietzsche, also Schopenhauer; they attempt a new mythology, a fantastic cosmogony not easily digestible. In 1924 Spitteler wrote a new version, in iambic hexameters, of Prometheus und Epimetheus, entitled Prometheus der Dulder. Spitteler is regarded as an outsider, a man whose work (like that of Däubler and Mombert) is remote from the modern experience and difficult of access. Freud, however, greatly admired Imago and used the title for the journal which he founded in 1912. Spitteler also wrote essays (on Nietzsche, Keller, Swiss neutrality). He received the Nobel prize in 1919. The Gesammelte Werke (eleven vols) appeared from 1945 to 1958, the Kritische Schriften in 1965.
