Bellman, Carl Michael 02/04/1740 - 02/11/1795

Carl Michael Bellman (1740-1795) was a Swedish poet-musician, whose songs have remained very popular in Scandinavia. Beginning as a writer of Bacchanalian songs, Bellman produced over seventeen hundred poems, most set to music.



He was born into a respectable middle-class family in Söder in Stockholm. He lived in Stockholm his whole life except when he studied at Uppsala University for a short time and when he ran away from creditors to Norway in 1763. After returning to Sweden Bellman could not continue in his post at the National Bank, and in the following restless years he started to write drinking songs.



By the late 1760s Bellman had already became famous with his songs and biblical parodies, which circulated orally and in handwritten copies and printed sheets. After his parents died in 1765, creditors took all that was left of the property. In 1766 Bellman established his 'Bacchi Orden' which parodied contemporary fashionable knightly orders and celebrated the joys of wine. The members of the Order were notorious drunkards who had been dismissed from their posts.



The poet developed ties to the court of King Gustav III (1746-92), a devoted patron of the arts, without forgetting Stockholm's underclass. Despite Gustav III's appreciation and financial support, Bellman's choice of subject matter made him an outsider at court. However, the poet was a loyal supporter of his royal benefactor, even during the years before his murder in 1792 when opposition against the King grew stronger.



Bellman combined in his works the classical allusions, elevated metaphors, and pastoral motifs so loved by the Enlightenment with perceptive descriptions of life's comic and tragic realities. Some songs dealt with figures from the Old Testament.



In 1765 Bellman began producing a cycle of songs, FREDMANS EPISTLAR (1970), the title alluding to the Pauline Epistles. Among the central characters are Father Berg, Fredman, a watchmaker, Mollberg who wants revive the past glory of Sweden, Movitz, a musician, and Ulla Winblad, the nymph and priestess of the temple of Bacchus. Fredman was originally the clockmaker Jean Fredman (1712/13-1767), who maintained church clocks. Ulla Winbland was Maria Kristina Kiellström (1744-1798), who came from a poor family. The poems depicted mostly tavern life. They were followed by FREDMANS SÅNGER (1791), also a varied collection containing mainly drinking songs. BACCHI TEMPEL (1783) contained some songs and engravings.



In most of his songs, Bellman borrowed the tunes from minuets, folk songs, opera, and march music. Some of the melodies Bellman composed himself. In 1794 he started to write his autobiography, but never finished it. Bellman was imprisoned in 1794 for ten weeks because of unpaid debts to Enoch Nobelius, but was soon released with the help of his friends. (According to rumors, Nobelius wanted revenge when Bellman's wife did not respond to his attentions.) However, the poet's health was already broken, and he died of tuberculosis on February 11, 1795. His plays were published posthumously.