BELLMAN, KARL MIKAEL Swedish poet, son of a civil servant, was born at Stockholm. When he was 19 he became clerk in a bank and afterwards in the customs, but his habits were irregular and he was frequently in great distress. particularly after the death of his patron, Gustavus III. As early as 1757 he published Evangeliska Dodstankar, meditations on the Passion from the German of David von Schweidnitz, and during the next few years wrote, besides other translations, a great quan tity of poems, imitative for the most part of Dalin. In 1760 appeared his first characteristic work, Manan (The Moon), a satirical poem, which was revised and edited by Dalin. But the great work of his life occupied him from 1765-80, and consists of the collections of dithyrambic odes known as Fredmans Epistlar (1790) and Fredmans Sanger (1791). Fredman and his friends were well-known characters in the Stockholm pot-houses, where Bellman studied them from the life. He was accustomed, when in the presence of none but confidential friends, to announce that the god was about to visit him. He would shut his eyes, take his zither, and begin apparently to improvise the music and the words of a long Bacchic ode in praise of love or wine. Most of his melo dies are taken direct, or with slight adaptations, from old Swedish ballads, and still retain their popularity. His torrents of rhymes are not without their method ; wild as they seem, they all conform to the rules of style which he accepted. A great Swedish critic has remarked that the jovial humour of Bellman is, after all, only "sorrow clad in rose-colour," and this underlying pathos gives his poems their undying charm. Much of Bellman's work was only printed after his death, Biliang till Fredmans Epistlar (Nykoping, 1809), Fredmans Handskri f ter (Uppsala, 1813), Skaldestycken ("Poems," 1814) being among the most important of these post humous works. A colossal bronze bust of the poet by Bystrom (erected by the Swedish Academy in 1829) adorns the public gardens of Stockholm, and a statue by Alfred Nystrom is in the Hasselbacken, Stockholm. Bellman was a favourite companion of King Gustavus III.
The best edition of his works was published at Stockholm, edited by J. G. Carlen, with biographical notes, illustrations and music (1856-61) ; see also monographs on Bellman by Nils Erdmann (1895) and by F. Niedner (Berlin, 1995).