EN
Ludvig Holberg. Uczony, pisarz, prześmiewca by Krystyna Szelągowska is an extensive and thorough intellectual biography of the Danish playwright called the “Molière of the North.” The monographer sketches a multiple portrait of her subject presenting him not only as a comedy writer and author of texts for the first Danish public stage, but also as a Copenhagen university professor, a thinker, a Norwegian who cultivated the Danish language, and a shrewd businessman. The whole of Holberg’s artistic and intellectual activity is shown as a form of active public life driven by the hopes of modernising the Danish society’s mentality, which has its origins in the Enlightenment. Szelągowska sets the life and opinions of Holberg in historical context, reminding the reader about the significant political, social and world-view changes that took place concurrently with the birth of enlightened absolute monarchy in Denmark. She is, however, particularly interested in the existential aspects of the historical facts and therefore does not eschew psychological analysis. Taking care not to thwart the voices of the witnesses of the epoch and Holberg’s own voice with her narration, Szelągowska provided the book with numerous carefully translated quotations.