Carl Jonas Love Almqvist

I say sir, I challenge you to a duel. These two deadly enemies are Swedish writers: Carl Jonas Love Almqvist ... and August Blanche. Almquist didn't pick up the glove so there never was a duel. Instead it ended like this.

Gross! But how did this come to be? Let's start from the beginning, and get to know Almqvist. Almqvist wrote his earlier books in the romantic period, and his later ones during the realist period -- when writers described the real world and often criticised society. Two of his most important stories are "The Queen's Tiara" - which is romantic, and "Sara Videbeck and The Chapel" - which is realist. "The Queen's Tiara" is about Tintomara.

Tintomara is neither man nor woman: an androgyne! Men believe Tintomara to be a woman while all the women think Tintomara is a man. Both men and women fall in love with Tintomara, who doesn't want anyone. This is a fictional story set in the time right after a real event: the murder of the king, Gustav III. The same night the king is murdered, Tintomara steals, or "borrows" some jewelry, a tiara, from the queen.

But Tintomara's brother takes and sells the jewelry before Tintomara is able to return it, which creates trouble. Tintomara escapes by joining an army band. Accidentally, Tintomara kills a soldier and is sentenced to death. It's decided that Tintomara will not be shot with real bullets, but with harmless blanks. However...

one bullet is not a blank: It's from the gun of one of Tintomara's admirers. The bullet hits... and kills Tintomara. In the book there are several things typical of the romantic period: Fantasy, strong feeling, and also the free form it's written in: Almquist blends prose and drama - as if it were a play - in the same story. Almqvist thought that women should be allowed to vote - about 80 years before this became a reality.

So he was one of the first feminists in Sweden. This Feminism shows in the book, "Sara Videbeck and The Chapel", which in Swedish is called "Det går an" - a quaint old-fashioned way of saying, "It'll do!" The story is about Sara and Albert who meet on a ferry trip and fall in love. Albert asks Sara to marry him, but she doesn't want to marry. Instead she wants them to live together without getting married and without a shared home. "Will it 'do'?" "It will do!" But it didn't "do" in the real world. Almqvist was criticised.

His old writer buddies insulted him in the newspapers. The ideas in "Sara Widebeck and the chapel" don't sound so dangerous today, but a woman's right to earn her living and decide in these matters was felt to be a threat to society. Other writers wrote sequels to the book where it ended badly for Sara and Albert or where Sara finally accepted the proposal. Finally Almqvist was fed up and insulted one of the writers - Blanche - in the newspaper. Almqvist called Blanche a bastard.

And that was why Blanche challenged him to a duel. But Almqvist's life continued to be exciting even after the "spit". Almqvist was involved in several crimes. He had been working for a fishy man who made money out of lending money to other people. A loan shark.

Someone tried to kill the loan shark by putting poison into his pea soup. Maybe it was Almqvist. The loan shark survived but Almqvist had to flee. He fled to America where he got married - despite the fact that he was already married in Sweden. But that is a crime!

Fortunately for him; this wasn't discovered until after his death. Almqvist died in Germany. Poor and forgotten. It wasn't until the 20th century that people realised what a modern and skilful writer he was.