Lars Johansson (Lucidor)

Lars Johansson, who signed himself Lucidor and sometimes Lucidor the Unfortunate, was born in Stockholm on 6 October 1638, the son of a naval lieutenant. Orphaned young, he grew up in Swedish Pomerania, studied at Greifswald, at Leipzig and in France, and returned to Sweden in 1662. He lived on language lessons and occasional verse. In 1669, a wedding poem that offended the nobleman Conrad Gyllenstierna earned him months in prison. He died in August 1674, killed by a sword in a tavern quarrel. The eighteenth century held him to be a debauchee; the Romantics made him the figure of the unhappy genius.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetryHelicons BlomsterLars Johansson (Lucidor) · 1689not translated into EnglishLiterature