[Was it a sin? Emil Aarestrup, physician and poet].

Emil Aarestrup (1800-56) worked as a general physician, later as a public health officer in Denmark. He married his cousin and wrote love poems to her and to other women. His erotic poetry is regarded as the most elegant in Danish literature. His poems have precise words and colourful details and show a special sense of the condensed mood in the erotic situation. He writes upon the complex nature of love: union, separation and death.