Spitteler, Carl Friedrich Georg

(kärl frē´drĭkh gā´ôrkh shpĭt´ələr), 1845–1924, Swiss poet, whose pseudonym was Carl Felix Tandem. He was awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize in Literature. His chief works include the epics Prometheus und Epimetheus (1881, tr. 1931) and Olympischer Frühling [Olympian spring] (2 vol., 1900–1906; revised version, 1910). The latter, set among the Greek gods, is an original and complex allegory of the necessity for ethics in the modern world. His other works include novels, essays, and poems.