Karl Gjellerup

Gjellerup took a theology degree in Copenhagen and promptly renounced it, converted by Darwin and by Georg Brandes's freethinking Modern Breakthrough; his early novels wore their atheism as a badge. German on his mother's side and by temperament, he settled near Dresden and increasingly wrote in German first.

The naturalist grew steadily more mystical (Schopenhauer, Wagner, then the Pali scriptures) until The Pilgrim Kamanita (1906) staged his conversion in fiction: a merchant's son meets a wandering monk he fails to recognize as the Buddha, and pursues his beloved across celestial rebirths toward the extinction of self.

The 1917 Nobel, shared with Pontoppidan and citing his 'varied and rich poetry, inspired by lofty ideals,' baffled Denmark, which had half forgotten him. He died near Dresden two years later, one of the prize's genuinely strange, serene figures.