FPG

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FPG
F R E D E R
I C K P H I L I P G R O V E
Felix Paul Greve
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• FPG (Greve/Grove)SWEDEN

by Gaby Divay for the UM-UMEA ConferenceMo,
Feb. 16, 2009
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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

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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)

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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

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FPG (Greve/Grove) FrL Website (Top)
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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", 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

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FPG (Greve/Grove) FrL Website
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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"

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Spottgedichte Hardt Endell
http//www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/c
ollections/fpg/frl/hardt.html
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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

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Baron Leo, ca. 1914
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Else in 1917Oil, Theresa Bernstein, NY
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Letter A (Man Ray)
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Portrait of Marcel Duchamp
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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 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!

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Dashing Dandy Greve
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Stefan George
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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 hectic activities, Wolfskehl questions
  his sanity "Ob er krank ist?"
• Greve's letters to Insel Publ. rather do suggest
  that he WAS 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 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

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August Endell
JU G E N D S T I L A R TI S T
Endell
1871 TO 1925
August ENDELL
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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, 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)

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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 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)

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Wollerau, near Zürich
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Paris-Plage, near Etaples
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H. G. Wells
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Fanny Elssler, 1840, in Broom 1921
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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 "Reise in Schweden"
  in Neue Revue und Morgen we will hear more
  about this essay later

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Megantic 1909
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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

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ASA Lining Paper Map
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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 1996

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Pittsburgh Arrest, Sep.1910
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National Alumni History Set
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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 underpinning of Groves 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 FPGs 1907 sketch for a literary
  dictionary
• The text Greve submitted then reads like a
  blueprint of Grove's accounts

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http//www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/c
ollections/fpg/bio/
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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
  Grimmelshausens Simplicissimus to Voltaires
  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

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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!

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ASA Cover
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eEd. of Grove's A Search for America (1927)
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ISM Cover
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eEd. of Grove's In Search of Myself (1946)
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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

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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

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Hamsun's Works in 17 v.
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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"

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Gällivare, Sweden
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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 Munch, others

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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 later married Björnson's
  niece Dagny
• This artist also portrayed Ibsen, who resided
  many years in Munich, Hamsun who sometimes
  visited Langen

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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 at least one of the
  latter's comedies in Greve's translation

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Max Reinhardt
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Endells Buntes Theater
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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
• Greve reflects Nietzsche's influence in his
  1901/2 poetry, Das Jahr der Wende Wanderungen

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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

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Greves Jahr der Wende, 1901
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"Vision", Jahr der Wende
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Friedrich Nietzsche, 1899
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Greves 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
• Greves Wanderungen show the formally rigid way
  of crafting poetry in the so-called Stefan
  "George-Mache"

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Nietzsche's Dionysos Dithyramben
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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 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

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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 mid-1880s
• 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

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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

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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 is Governor of North Dakota
  today!

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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,
  having drowned in the Titanic Tragedy of Apr.
  1912
• For a long time, only a shot of a middle-aged
  "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

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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
• 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