Playwright
He often used a historical background for his plays - among his influences were William Shakespeare, Adam Oehlenschläger, Henrik Ibsen, and George Bernard Shaw. In his dramas Munk often displays a fascination for "strong characters" and integrated people who fight wholeheartedly for their ideals (whether good or bad). In his play En Idealist, for example, the "hero" is King Herod whose fight to maintain power is the motive behind all of his acts until he is at last defeated by a show of kindness to the Christ child in a weak moment. I Brændingen is a camouflaged portrait of Munk's antagonist, the anti-religious Georg Brandes whose atheism also impressed him.
His 1925 play Ordet (The Word) is often said to have been his best work; it is an investigation of miracles from the unique (at least, to theatre) viewpoint of one who was not prepared to dismiss them. A family of farmers - of differing degrees of faith - find themselves reconciled to their neighbours through a miracle. A 1955 film version of Ordet was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, and won numerous awards, including the Golden Lion in the 1955 Venice Film Festival and the 1956 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
His plays, many of which have been performed at the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, and elsewhere, include:
- Pilatus (1917. Published 1937),
- Ordet (tr. The Word) (1925),
- Kærlighed (1926),
- En Idealist (1928),
- I Brændingen (1929),
- Kardinalen og Kongen (1929),
- Cant (1931),
- De Udvalgte (1933),
- Sejren (1936),
- Han sidder ved Smeltediglen (1938),
- Egelykke (1940),
- Niels Ebbesen (1942),
- Før Cannae (1943).
His play Niels Ebbesen has been translated into English (2007) by his granddaughter Arense Lund, and Dave Carley.
Read more about this topic: Kaj Munk
Famous quotes containing the word playwright:
“A playwright ... is ... the litmus paper of the arts. He’s got to be, because if he isn’t working on the same wave length as the audience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about. He is a kind of psychic journalist, even when he’s great.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)