His life shortened by alcoholism, Olaf Bull lived for only forty-nine years; but in that brief span he became, according to many critics, the greatest Norwegian poet of all time. Constantly restless, he spent most of his adult life traveling among Christiania (which became Oslo in 1925), Copenhagen, Paris, and Rome, and he died without a permanent address. A tall and impressive man with an obsession for the poetry to which he dedicated his life, he said in an interview with the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in the fall of 1930, "Kunsten er en reduksjon af naturen, som kanskje gjør denne mindre gjenkjennelig for de ytre sanser, men mer gjenkjennelig for sinnet" (Art is a reduction of nature, possibly making it less recognizable for external senses, but more recognizable for the mind). If one looks at the abundance of imagination reflected in Bull's poetry, one might argue that he...