Swedish books online

As a side note on the accessibility of Swedish texts, I have found that it's possible to download Swedish ebooks from Adlibris via Google Books/ My Library. For example, both of the titles mentioned in my previous post (Drabbad av renhet and Blandade kort) can be purchased this way for a very reasonable price in GBP. 

And of course, there is always the excellent Litteraturbanken. 

Interpretation Prize

 I'm pleased and honoured that, together with my fellow translator Gisela Kosubek, I've been awarded the Swedish Academy's Interpretation Prize (Tolkningspris).

New Swedish Writing in English

The theme of the new issue of Swedish Book Review (now re-conceived exclusively as an online publication) is Emerging Voices in Swedish Literature, with work by Pooneh Rohi, Kayo Mpoyi, Adrian Perera, Balsam Karam and Joel Mauricio Isabel Ortiz. There are also reviews of new titles, including poetry with Burcu Sahin's Broderier (Embroideries) - also featured in an earlier post here. 

The editors of the new site are to be congratulated on its pleasing and variegated design.

Kallocain Audiobook

News from Penguin that there's to be an audiobook recording of my translation of Karin Boye's KALLOCAIN, scheduled for release in July.

Finland-Swedish Literature Today - Series

On the occasion of Tua Forsström's election to the Swedish Academy, Opulens has a series devoted to contemporary Finland-Swedish writing. Authors profiled so far include Tuva Korsström and Merete Mazzarella, and there are apparently more articles in the pipeline. Series editor Ivo Holmqvist has some wry historical notes on the Finland-Swedish presence in the Academy:

Så är det också skamligt länge sedan någon från Finland återfanns där. Den ombytlige Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt som var född i den östra rikshalvan blev invald på stol nr 14 i maj 1786. Åtta år senare uteslöts han, för påstådda politiska stämplingar. 1805 togs han åter in, fast på stol nr 17 som han tvangs lämna 1811 när han förvisats ur Sverige. Han är den ende som suttit på två stolar i den församlingen.

On the outlook for the newest Finland-Swedish member, Holmqvist is encouraging, though he can't  help pointing to some of the commentary that has greeted the latest appointment:

Dagens Nyheters kulturchef hör till dem som hälsat Tua Forsström välkommen fast han samtidigt undrade om hon är tillräckligt stridbar, och här på sidan noterade Helena Lie nyss att det är ”en ytterligt patriarkal hegemoni Forsström träder in i (motbevisa mig gärna, jag är idel öra) så frågan är väl hur länge Forsström kommer stå ut i ett sådant sällskap om det fortsätter som hittills.” Det är nog en onödigt pessimistisk blick in i framtiden även om föregångare som Kerstin Ekman, Lotta Lotass, Sara Danius och Sara Stridsberg satt exempel genom att frivilligt lämna församlingen.

Lists

SELTA is compiling a list of 100 ‘must-reads’ - popular Swedish books in translation, though it’s unclear what the purpose of the list may be. It’s actually quite hard to imagine that there are as many as 100 books fitting this category, with so many titles out of print, and especially in view of the fact that numerous  exclusions are made: for example, no poetry or drama is considered, while for unaccountable reasons the wide panorama of Finland-Swedish literature is kept out of the picture altogether. 

It seems that by ‘books’ the compilers mean ’novels’. 

One thing that did become clear during a ‘name your favourite books’ session on the SELTA discussion forum was that several interesting Swedish-language authors remain entirely untranslated, with no English versions of modern classics like the controversial novels of Agnes von Krusenstjerna and the books of Birgitta Trotzig.

The list is modelled on a similar venture from Deutsche Welle, though it’s significant that the German list is composed not of ‘German’ but of German-language titles - i.e. Austrian fiction is included along with the rest.

Presumably the SELTA list is intended for publication in Swedish Book Review, though this has not yet been announced. 

Priorities

It’s remarkable that although two full-length biographies of Karin Boye now exist (Margit Abenius --Drabbad av renhet [1950) and Johan Svedjedal -- Den nya dagen gryr [2017]), neither has yet been published in English translation. It often increasingly seems that when it comes to the Nordic countries the interest of UK/US publishers lies almost exclusively in the direction of light fiction and fantasy, with much less attention given to the skönlitteratur that is the primary token of the Nordic presence in the European cultural heritage.

Karin Boye Biography

Another book for my reading list - a new biography of Karin Boye that appeared, ironically, almost at the same time as the Peter Weiss biography I mentioned earlier. I'll hope to write about both of these books, and the themes that connect them, in a future post.

Peter Weiss Biography

I'm looking forward to reading Werner Schmidt's biography of Peter Weiss, which appeared almost a year ago.

Peter Weiss: Letters - 2

I’ve now finished reading the book* – it’s a fairly short work, and includes the text of 21 letters, with notes and bibliography. The letters themselves give a fascinating snapshot of the 24 year-old Weiss’s psychological, emotional and artistic situation in Alingsås, western Sweden, during the summer of 1941. In April of the same year, the Swedish poet Karin Boye, who also lived in Alingsås, and with whom Weiss may have had personal contact, committed suicide. It seems that this event drove him to seek psychoanalytic treatment, though it was some time before he could afford to undertake a proper analysis. In the letters there are references to an aborted analysis with a local doctor, Iwan Bratt, and a self-analysis conducted afterwards during a time when Weiss was still working as a darkroom technician in his father’s factory.

Henriette Itta Blumenthal, like several other of Weiss’s close friends during this period, was considerably older than him, and had also trained as an analyst. Unlike Weiss, she emigrated to the United States. Weiss’s letters to her bear the character of a personal confession, and reveal much about his troubled sense of personal, ethnic and national identity, his relation to his parents, his affairs with women, his attitude towards homosexuality, his increasingly political interpretation of the role of resistance in psychoanalysis, and many other themes which eventually became merged into his later literary works, especially the "Erzählung” Abschied von den Eltern (1960), and the novels Fluchtpunkt (1961) and Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (1975-1981) There is also a good deal of detail about his activity and aspirations as a painter and visual artist, and the book gives an insight into his concept of “world theatre” (Welttheater) as a meeting-place of the personal and the public, which would later become important in his work for the stage and screen. The descriptions of life in a small Swedish town during wartime, with its gossip, its hostility to foreigners and its undisguised anti-Semitism, are sharply and vividly drawn.

In their notes, the editors of the volume have tried to be as precise, inclusive and informative as possible, and this is very welcome. Their introductory essay also serves as a useful summary of the rest of the text. One has the impression, however, that the editors are not quite at home in Swedish, and this is a pity, as the letters are written in a curious linguistic style that hovers somewhere between German and Swedish, occasionally producing some strange and subtle shifts, not all of which are literary, and which require some detective work on the part of the reader.  In one case when Weiss writes that he has been out with friends picking rosehips, and uses a “Germanized” form (Nippon) of the Swedish word nypon, the notes flag this as “Unklar: Es gibt eine Pfingstrose namens »Nippon Beauty«. Möglicherweise auch ein Übertragungsfehler.“ (p. 151) Where Weiss spells the name of the journal Månadstidningen in a mixture of German and Swedish which probably reflects his state of mind in exile, as "Monatstidningen", in one instance the notes go even further, and reproduce the title as Månatsdidningen (p.71). On a more general level, many readers could probably dispense with notes that inform them that Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch painter, or that Diego Rivera was a Mexican one.

But these are minor matters, and ones which it would perhaps not be hard to set right for a second edition. Readers who are familiar with Weiss's prose work, especially the Ästhetik, will find much of interest in this book as it provides documentary background material and in some cases a confirmation of certain themes and facts that are only hinted at in the prose fiction. It is also a highly enjoyable read, and a worthy addition to the volumes of Weiss's letters that have already been published (most recently his correspondence with Hermann Hesse and Siegfried Unseld, the late head of Suhrkamp.)

* Peter Weiss: Briefe an Henriette Itta Blumenthal, Matthes & Seitz, Berlin, 2011. 175pp.

Peter Weiss: Letters

News that Berlin publishers Matthes & Seitz will this month release a new edition of Peter Weiss's Letters to Henriette Itta Blumenthal, written mostly from Alingsås, Sweden, between 1941 and 1943, before the beginning of Weiss's first proper psychoanalysis.

Update: the book is now published, and I have a copy. I'll post a short review here in due course.

August Prize winner

Sweden's 2009 Augustpriset (Strindberg Literary Prize) has been won by Steve Sem-Sandberg for his novel De fattiga i Łódź (The Poor of Lodz [Bonniers]), which is written on the theme of the Holocaust. Kristina Rotkirch has reviewed the book for Hbl here. Excerpt:

Why does a Swede write a book about the Lodz ghetto? The author himself has talked of how we are nearly always confronted with the Holocaust from the point of view of the survivors. Where are the rest? In his book, all the main characters die, even the tenacious Adam Sege Rzepin who holds out until the Russians are visible on the horizon. But Sem-Sandberg's idea is that we as readers bring the characters back to life, at least for the space of time our reading lasts.

The Cities Inside Hall

Michel Ekman, reviewing Johannes Anyuru's Städerna inuti Hall (The Cities Inside Hall) in Hbl (excerpt, my tr.):

...The Cities Inside Hall is a daydream, or rather, given its grim tone, a waking night dream. At the beginning we meet the poetic “I” on a park bench. To be on the safe side, the bench is left empty, so all one has to do is sit down in the author's position. Then we set off on a journey, an inner journey, but still in a largely recognizable world, with concrete features (troubles) to make up our minds about. The distinguishing characteristic of this world is described in the title. Hall is a Swedish prison: the whole world is locked up in it.

The poetic “I” is suffused by a never-ending flood of pain and discomfort. Prison scenes, riots in Paris and Copenhagen, flashbacks to the war in Algeria, expressions of alienation and suffering in modern society fill the poems like short, specific scenes of violence. On a more abstract level Anyuru chooses – with a shade too much didacticism – the lock as a symbol of oppression. Detailed descriptions of various locking mechanisms pop up repeatedly. Another motif – the law – appears with lesser frequency, becoming lost in airy ambiguity.

There is obviously something impressive about a poetry collection that runs to 358 pages, and one feels that the sheer mass of print would be enough to knock the critics on their backs. For myself, however, I think that The Cities Inside Hall suffers from monotony and lack of conceptual focus. The poems seem to constantly generate new poems because they find it difficult to stand on their own. It is, after all, impossible to read a colossus like this as carefully and with the same attention to the whole that one would devote to an ordinary collection of poems. The question then becomes: what is the poetry form really being used for?

That question is reinforced by the fact that the form itself is also problematic. The staccato idiom employed by Anyuru often does not work particularly well in print. Presumably, it was originally conceived for reading aloud, but in contrast to two of his obvious models, Göran Sonnevi and Bruno K. Öijer, Anyuru finds it hard to create a style that also works in print. He falls short of his predecessors on another point, too. This has to do with the poetry’s political potential. Anyuru has been hailed as a renewer of the political poem, but I find neither the political acumen of a Sonnevi nor the provocative anti-politics of an Öijer in his work. Anyuru ends up in a tepid middle ground where much centres on the idea that policemen are not nice people.

The Cities Inside Hall strikes me as a book that is only half-finished, written by an author who is feeling the heavy hand of expectation on him. That doesn’t alter the picture of Johannes Anyuru as one of the most promising voices in Swedish poetry.

Karin Boye - a biographical profile - 8

(continued)

Among the German-Jewish emigré friends she made during the summer of 1937 time were several men. To one of these she became very closely attached, and it seemed that some kind of decision was imminent. But at the last moment the poet went away to Stockholm to see Margot Hanel for a few days, and when she came back she asked the man to forget everything that had passed between them. Something seemed to have changed in her relationship with Margot, and from that time onwards she ceased to talk of it and her in condescending tones. The epigram 'To You', written in July 1937, put the seal on this. Yet the problems within the relationship were not resolved: indeed, they seemed to intensify. In 1938 Karin tried to send Margot to Paris to live with a family there, but Margot returned within a month. Karin spoke of 'events that have made my life into chaos', and in a letter to the handwriting expert, Dr Blum she wrote, in German:

Nur tun mir Ihre Schlussworte über die notwendige Resignation ein bisschen weh. Ich stehe eben in einer Situation, wo eine absolute Selbstaufopferung - von Arbeitsfreude, Kameradschaft, künstlerischem Schaffen, Ruhe, Harmonie - verlangt wird, und ich habe so schwer ein solches Opfer zu bringen, jedenfalls kann es nicht mit Freude geschehen. Glauben Sie wirklich, dass Resignation der Sinn meines Lebens sein kann? {Eine zu persönliche Frage... Die Antwort kann nie von einem Anderen kommen.)

Only your words at the end about necessary resignation hurt me a little. For I am in just such a situation where an absolute self-sacrifice - of joy in my work, of friendship, of artistic creation, of peace, of harm ony - is demanded of me, and I find it so hard to make such a sacrifice - at any rate, it cannot happen with joy. Do you really believe that resignation can be the meaning of my life? (A too personal question... The answer can never come from someone else.)

In February 1938, Karin Boye visited the cathedral town of Linköping in order to give a reading of her poems. While staying there, she visited the cathedral and had a deep spiritual experience while standing before the altar-painting of Christ by the modern Norwegian artist Anna Sørensen, and the tapestries by Märta Afzelius. The result of the experience forms the subject of the long poem 'Linköping Cathedral', in The Seven Deadly Sins.

During the summer of the same year, the poet visited Greece on a travel scholarship from the Swedish Academy. On the way she visited Vienna, Prague and Istanbul. In Greece she travelled from Athens to Delos, where she wrote: 'the Aegean sea is brilliant blue, and on the other side of the water lie other rocky islands in a thick heat haze. The light is wonderful. It overwhelms one, takes one's breath away. It is apt here. After all, Apollo was the one "whose eyes had never seen the darkness".'

In the autumn of 1938, at her own request, Karin Boye took up full-time teaching at Viggbyholm, but the workload proved to be too much for her, and she suffered from overstrain and exhaustion. Her consciousness of the cruel and terrible events that were taking place in Europe at this time, the German invasion of Czechoslovakia and the persecution of the Jews, also contributed to her sense of confusion and breakdown. She was unable to write or work on her poetry, a condition which for her was tantamount to a complete paralysis of spirit, and she developed a severe and acutely painful inflammation of the nerves in one of her arms, which nothing would cure. Eventually she left Viggbyholm, and returned to Stockholm.

4. 1939 - SUMMER 1941

It was at around this time that the poet began to correspond again more frequently with Anita Nathorst, whom she had now known for almost twenty years. Anita had contracted a disastrous form of skin cancer, which was eating its way inwards into her body. Karin, who was still in love with Anita, travelled to Alingsås, near Göteborg, in order to be with her and look after her. While she was there, she wrote letters to Margot Hanel assuring the latter of her continued loyalty. In many ways, the poet seemed split in two - something noticed by her mother, who wanted to encourage her daughter's move away from Margot Hanel, but was concerned by her psychological state. This may not have been made any easier by the fact that Anita was by now the assistant of the psychoanalyst Iwan Bratt, who lived in Alingsås and whose house she frequented. Karin came into contact with many seriously disturbed patients, and Bratt himself seems to have been a somewhat controversial figure, with an approach to psychoanalysis that some called crude and oversimplified.

Nonetheless, all this time Karin Boye continued to work at her writing with great application and an almost demonic intensity. Not only did she produce a large body of poetry - she also wrote and completed her prose masterpiece, the novel Kallocain, which bears an epigraph from T.S. Eliot:

The awful daring of a moment's surrender,
which an age of prudence could never retract,
by this, and this only, we have existed...


Biographical Profile - 1
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(to be continued)

Karin Boye - a biographical profile - 7

(continued)

3. 1933-1938

One of the ways in which Karin Boye sought to clarify the problems in her inner and emotional life, and even to seek answers to them, was the writing of prose fiction. In novels such as 'Crisis', 'Astarte' and 'Merit Wakes Up', she explored the themes of the strong woman and the weak man, of lifelong self-deception, of the 'doil's house', and other problems of inner and outer existence. These works, of which she wrote many, are less 'pure' than her poetry. They are often somewhat schematic, and the characters tend to be merely vehicles for the author's ideas. From many angles these works can even be viewed as commercial, which they were insofar as another aim of her writing them was to secure herself an income, a task made all the more pressing by the expense of analysis. Yet in these books she tackled themes that were controversial in their time, and she probably helped others by publishing them. This was particularly true of 'Crisis', a book which depicts her own adolescent religious crisis and discovery of her own bisexuality. Around 1933, at the time it was written, there was much discussion in Sweden about a liberalization of the laws on homosexuality, and her documentary novel was a contribution to the public debate. It is probably her strongest prose work after her masterpiece, Kallocain, and it was widely read and discussed.

Back in Sweden in 1934, the poet bought a small flat in Stockholm consisting of two rooms and a kitchen 'in an environment so devoid of tradition, more functionalistically cold and impossible than anywhere else in Stockholm... a hell of lines that gives not the slightest opportunity to the imagination.' According to Margit Abenius, however, the flat possessed a good view in summer of flowering gardens and a fountain, and it is possible that Karin Boye felt less lonely in a city than she might have done living alone in the countryside. There was, nevertheless, the fact that all her attempts to make a life with another human being had failed. Temperamentally unsuited to solitariness, she must have found her life at this time extremely difficult. In desperation, she decided to invite Margot Hanel to come from Berlin and live with her. At first the experiment went well: for the first time in her life, Karin Boye felt calm and reassured, and as if she had some sort of root in existence. But Margot Hanel was extremely jealous amd dependent, and as time went by she began to develop chronic illnesses, making Karin look after her and take complete responsibility for her. In a matter of months, the 'marriage' degenerated into a destructive symbiosis: while, out of jealousy, Margot refused to let Karin see her literary friends and tried to make her stay in the flat and talk about trivia, Karin repaid her with personal cruelty, talking to others condescendingly about her, and even calling their relationship 'ein ausgehaltenes Verhältnis'. Yet the couple stayed together. Karin evidently found in Margot, who made such very great demands on her, an outlet for her need for self-sacrifice and self-immolation. Margot Hanel also seems to have been a substitute for the child Karin Boye never had. And, while it must have been profoundly tormenting for both partners much of the time, the relationship also had its brighter moments. According to Margit Abenius, the couple 'became welded together in the way that cannot be avoided between two people who share life's troubles for a long time.' It was to Margot Hanel that Karin wrote the epigram 'To You':

You my despair and my strength,
you took all the life I owned,
and because you demanded everything,
you gave back a thousandfold.


At this time, also, Karin Boye wrote her novel Too Little. Its hero, Harald Måhrman, is torn between art and life, and ends by choosing neither, creating an atmosphere of disharmony and hostility wherever he goes. His failure is a failure to love - either his art or his family, or both. Margit Abenius quotes Karin Boye's diary of 1921, with its entry: 'I believe that what one receives in love is precisely what one gives - not necessarily from and to the other person, but from and to love.'

1935 saw the publication of Karin Boye's fourth book of poetry, För trädets skull ('For the Tree's Sake'). This met with a mixed response from the critics, many of whom saw in it a capitulation to free-verse modernism. In fact, however, the volume continues and develops many of the poet's earlier themes and concerns, though now with more austere technical means, and an almost 'neo-classical' restraint. The free verse poems give the impression of avoiding rhyme and metre in order to approach the truth more closely, not in order to shock, or to disrupt conventional modes of perception. One detects a shift away from Christianity, and at the same time away from the ideals of Clarté towards a more abstract, impersonal kind of art - yet the familiar themes of love, suffering, sacrifice, hope and betrayal are always present, too. Much of the negative thrust of the critcs' response to the collection - they wanted the 'old' Karin Boye back - was precisely because she had moved on from political radicalism towards an individually-conceived view of the world and of cosmic reality.

Margit Abenius describes a dream which Karin Boye related to Harry Martinson: 'She was dead and had come to paradise. Heavenly bliss was organized like a school. On the wall hung a timetable showing hours and lessons. Karin and the other blessed ones had to sit in the chalices of sweet-scented roses and God hurled the roses with their souls through the azure. A radiant, unutterable sense of happiness accompanied the rose lesson. After that came the "lily lesson". Brilliant white madonna lilies grew everywhere in large clumps and clusters as far as the eye could see. One could hear singing. Pilgrims walked in multitudes. But the lily lesson was not as eventful and highly-charged as the rose lesson; it led nowhere but seemed to stand still. Then an immensely large female figure appeared. She was wonderfully beautiful, but her hands were large and coarse like a charwoman's. Karin knew that this was Reality. She suddenly saw this hybrid of goddess and charwoman sitting on a throne, and seized by reverence she bowed down and kissed her foot. And then Reality asked: "Why are you kissing my foot? After all, you do not know me."'

In 1936, Karin Boye started work as a teacher at Viggbyholm boarding school, near Stockholm. The school's founder, a Christian pacifist named Per Sundberg, wanted to bring together children from different ethnic backgrounds, and many of the pupils were refugees from Hitler's Germany. There were also many children of divorce, and children with problems of development. At first, Karin Boye went on living in Stockholm and travelling to the school to teach, but eventually she moved to Viggbyholm and spent all her time there. It was a milieu that brought together several of the previous environments in which she had lived: the radical, pacifistic intellectual atmosphere was reminiscent of that of Clarté, while the Christian element in the teaching was similar to what she had experienced as a young theology student at summer camps. There was also the presence of trees and nature. Initially, Karin Boye taught very young children. There were problems attendant on this, however, for the children tended to laugh at their teacher and call her names. One little boy even said, when the children were asked why they laughed at her: 'because she looks like a little pig!' Thereafter, Karin Boye was transferred to the school's higher classes, the 'gymnasium', or grammar school, where she became a much-admired and loved teacher.

Far from being the 'school of reality', however, this was hardly an an ordinary environment. In many ways, it seems to have functioned in Karin Boye's life as a kind of continuation of her psychoanalysis: spending so much time in the company of children and young people, she found that new layers of her personality were constantly being opened. This process of 'opening' or 'being broken open' had become very important to her: 'All human beings want to be broken open', she wrote to her friend Anna Petri. At this time, too, she developed a lively interest in Gestalt psychology.

Biographical Profile - 1
Biographical Profile - 2
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Biographical Profile - 4
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(to be continued)

Literary Dialogues

Swedish Book Review has published an anthology called Literary Dialogues: Contenporary Swedish Writing in English, edited by Sarah Death and Neil Smith. The book contains an introduction by Sir Michael Holroyd, and the featured writers and poets include Johannes Anyuru, Marjaneh Bakhtiari, Henning Mankell and Eva Runefelt. Among the translators are Sarah Death, B. J. Epstein, Tom Geddes and Tiina Nunnally. Copies can presumably be ordered from Swedish Book Review - see their website, though there doesn't appear to be any mention of the anthology there yet.

Karin Boye - a biographical profile - 2

(continued)

During her last two years at school, Karin Boye moved away from Buddhism and towards Christianity. Many of her schoolfriends found it hard to understand how she could have accepted Christianity, as previously she had always talked about it with cynicism and a kind of dry laughter. At first, the change seems to have been a source of happiness and self-discovery for her. Buddhism had become a life-denying influence on her, and for the first time she began to experience a sense of personal and inner freedom. At this time, she kept diaries. These are mostly of an 'inner' nature, containing meditations on religious experience. In one passage she describes how she came to her religious awakening:

Now I have reached the age of twelve or thirteen, the borderland between child and young person. Like a milestone shines the memory of one single book: Kipling's Kim. It is the last of my childhood books that I remember, and at the same time the one that probably meant most for my development.

In the moving figure of Teshu Lama, religion entered my life for the first time as a living reality. That may seem strange for a child who had had a good Christian upbringing. But the child's religion is often so far from deserving the name 'religion' that it seems to me fruitless - with perhaps only a few exceptions - to offer a child the divine beauty of the Gospels, and a sacrilege to set the Gospel stories as homework. For me 'the Bible stories' were worn, everyday, already too well-known, when the hunger for religion began to awake. Teshu Lama - prepared by Puran Bhagat of The Jungle Book - came like a message from a world that had hitherto been closed, and I trembled, and I fell down and adored.

At the age of eighteen, she experienced a liberation and a transformation: an entry from the summer of 1918 reads: 'Domine, rex, venisti, vidisti, vicisti.' And on the eve of 1919: 'My birth-year is at an end.'

The diaries also concern Karin Boye's experiences not only at school, but also at Christian summer camps, where she seems to have approached the fairly routine group discussions with extraordinary intensity, forming close attachments to other girls and women in the groups. Two such relationships seem to have been particularly important for her. Agnes Fellenius, one of her classmates with whom she mutually shared all secrets, became quite severely depressed because of conflicts within her home, and Karin Boye took it upon herself to rescue her from the effects of this. She began to supervise Agnes' schoolwork, and made her take the final school examinations, trying by strength of willpower to make her pass, which she did. Margit Abenius describes how Karin stood outside the examination room, 'wrapped in intense concentration and the desire for a good outcome'.

The other important relationship was with Anita Nathorst, a woman who was seven years older than her and was a student of theology and the humanities at Uppsala University. At the Christian summer camp Karin attended at Fogelstad, Anita Nathorst was a group 'mother', looking after the young female students. Karin Boye wrote to her friend Signe Karlsson:

Our 'mother' was Astrid Nathorst's sister, Anita Nathorst. Do you know who she is? Oh Signe, such a person! She is so wonderful! One day Ruth, Brita, Daisy and I carried blankets out into the park (it was immensely large) and took Anita with us and lay and talked. I don't think I shall ever forget it. I think I could dare to say all that I think and wonder to Anita and be certain that she would never misunderstand me. And one understands so well what she says. My goodness, it is not everyone of whom one can say that one understands what they mean.

By 1920, Karin Boye was a student at Uppsala University, and was herself a group mother at one of the meetings, held at Almnäs on Lake Vättern. It was at this meeting, with its 'question box', into which the schoolchildren put their questions about life and God, that Anita Nathorst helped her through her revulsion at, and fear of, human suffering, emotions that had led her to adopt Buddhism. A long letter from Karin Boye to Agnes Fellenius tells us something about the relationship between Karin and Anita:

Then there was a question about the innocent suffering and death of creation. What it said, more or less, was: the animals eat one another. Can one hope for a continuation for the poor innocent victims? Can one believe that suffering has a meaning? Anita had the question and answered yes. She demonstrated that the lower life was sacrificed so that the higher could stretch ever further upward towards the divine, and she ended by reading a poem by Jeanna Oterdahl about a little boy who sits weeding in a garden plot, but suddenly feels sorry for the weeds. Then his mother says that the weeds will later become soil, and from the soil the beautiful flowers and the nice vegetables will get their nourishment. Must not the weeds like giving them their nourishment? Then the boy is pleased that he can help the weeds to become soil. That answer acquired a deep significance for me. When I did not yet believe in God, I saw creation's innocent suffering and was horrified: that was why I so eagerly clutched at Buddhism's life-denying pessimism. Later, when I directly perceived life's value, I no longer dared to think of anything but human life. The other seemed terrible to me. Now I see suffering again - but in a different light. I said to Anita: 'Then that means that every meal we eat is a sacrament.' 'Of course,' she replied, 'have you never thought about it? That is why we say grace at table.' 'I have never understood why one ought to pray more there than elsewhere.' 'Formerly it was conceived as a sacrament. The first ritual action of the savage was shared meals. That is also the meaning of holy communion. The whole of life is a sacrament.' Do you understand this? Do you also understand how deeply this must move me? I fancied I saw the world in a new light - in the sign of the Cross, of representative suffering. God's cross extends through every time and every space. And what else is holy communion but an initiation to the Cross, the new union with God: one initiates oneself in order for His sake to take a part of His eternal suffering - upon oneself, to fight God's fight in the world: it involves great pain. I understood, or thought I understood, how Christ at the moment of communion gave himself as a sacrifice (oh, those old, worn-out phrases, something new shimmers through them now), when he said: 'This is my body - this is my blood.' Do you understand me? (NB You understand, I don't have in mind representative suffering as Anselm did, it is only this I mean: one person's suffering can serve and light the way for others.)

(to be continued)

Biographical Profile - 1

Karin Boye - a biographical profile - 1

By David McDuff

1. 1900-1922

Karin Boye was born on 26 October 1900, in the Swedish city of Göteborg. On her father's side she had German blood. Her paternal grandfather, Carl Joachim Eduard Boye, was the Prussian consul in the town. The Boye family originally came from Bohemia, and most of its male members devoted themselves to various forms of financial or commercial activity, both in Europe and in South America. As a young man, Eduard Boye was head of a large English clothes manufacturing business in Hamburg until the Great Fire of Hamburg in 1842 destroyed the office, warehouse and shops. He then moved to Leeds, in England, and took up clothes manufacturing there; later, he moved to Göteborg, where he was his firm's agent for a number of years. Eventually he established his own cotton and textile importing business in Göteborg, E. Boye & Co., and adopted Swedish citizenship in 1849. In addition to cotton importing, he also took an interest in industrial and marine engineering. Eduard Boye was one of the pillars of Göteborg society, and together with his wife, Hilda, ran both a town and a country home in patriarchal style, entertaining many guests at dinners and soirées, and patronizing the arts. They had five children, and it was their eldest son, Fritz (Carl Fredrik) who was Karin Boye's father. Fritz Boye trained at the Göteborg Technical High School as a civil engineer, practised as a draughtsman and designer at various works and plants, but eventually moved into the insurance business, becoming head of the Svea Fire-Life Company. He married Signe Liljestrand, an employee at his office, some eighteen years his junior - she made up in vitality and energy for his somewhat dour and retiring nature. The couple had several children, of whom Karin was the first. At first, her education was undertaken by her mother, who was very well-read in European classical literature and was also influenced by spiritualism and oriental religions. Her father remained a somewhat distant figure - his sons said later in life that they had never known him, and he seldom showed any tenderness towards his children. On the other hand, he possessed a speculative, imaginative mind, and even wrote a 'Fragment of a Story About the Future', which is inspired by notions of utopian reform. His emotional instability and nervous temperament were perhaps the real reason why he found it difficult to come close to his children.

Karin Boye attended a private junior school in Göteborg. According to Karin Boye's biographer, Margit Abenius (author of Victim of Purity, a Swedish-language account of the poet's life, published in 1950), her first teacher, Fröken Mimmie Agardh, had almost never had a pupil who stayed in her memory as Karin Boye did:

The round, soft little girl was far ahead of her school-mates, she was remarkably well-informed and could answer any question, often did so with a little rhyme or other inventive and well-chosen words. Fröken Agardh offered to let her sit and read an interesting book while the others did their spelling, but Karin wanted to take part and help. Fröken Agardh especially remembers her delight at the spring. She would jump and rejoice: 'Aunt Mimmie, Aunt Mimmie, it's spring! How happy I am!' Jeanna Osterdahl also taught at the school, and Karin told 'Aunt' Jeanna that she wrote stories. Among her papers Fröken Agardh has preserved some short verses and fables by her pupil, including this 'Story of the Crocus, by Karin Boye, aged 7':

There was once a little boy who had a little crocus. Inside the crocus there was a little elf; she could do magic spells. The crocus was yellow, and pretty. Now autumn came, and the crocus began to wilt. Krokusa (that was the elf's name) thought that was nasty, and flew away. Then the crocus fell. Have you seen a crocus fall?

The story is illustrated with a drawing of the flying Krokusa with a crown on her head, and underneath are the words: 'Krokusa flew away'.

In 1909 the family moved to Stockholm after Fritz Boye went into premature retirement because of nervous debility. This involved some reduction in the family's standard of living, but it did not affect the children's lives. Later on, Fritz Boye became an inspector in the Swedish Private Insurance Supervisory Service. At her new school, Karin made friends with a few girls of similarly introspective and imaginative temperament. Together they read the works of Dumas, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells and Maeterlinck, and also those of Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore's poetry seems to have made an especially strong impression on the young Karin Boye: she immersed herself in Indian mythology, and sought to experience the country itself through Karl Gjellerup's Indian novel Pilgrimen Kamanita ('Kamanita the Pilgrim'). Above all, she studied Buddhism, and made serious efforts to learn Sanskrit. With her friend Signe Myrbäck as 'disciple', Karin played the role of guru, and the two girls would sit crosslegged on the lawn together, practising the art of breathing in and out. Signe Myrbäck relates that when their ecclesiastical history teacher once told the class that Sweden had only a small minority of Buddhists, Karin claimed to be one of them. Her history teacher, Lydia Wahlström, also once made some slightly disparaging remarks about Buddhists during a lesson, and Karin Boye put up her hand and said sternly: 'I'm a Buddhist!'

(to be continued)

Inclusions and exclusions

It's sometimes instructive to follow the patterns of inclusion and exclusion that characterize the relations between the Nordic countries and their neighbours, and these are often evident as in the field of literary activity and publishing. The Helsinki Book Fair opens on Thursday - a large-scale, 4-day event, each year it chooses a theme to bind together the various strands of interest that are represented by the numerous readings, mini-seminars, presentations and  discussions that supplement the static exhibition of books and other material.

This year, it looks as though one can take one's pick as to what the theme really is, for according to the English-language version of the advance publicity it is "What is really happening? - the question set in Pentti Saarikoski’s collection of poems published in 1962... The aim of the Book Fair is to give a comprehensive view of today’s reality and future visions. The starting point is the writers, the people involved and the books: the whole spectrum, from humor to science. There will be more than 900 performers and 600 programmes: interviews, seminars, panel discussions, debates and events."

On the other hand, looking further down the page, one reads that "In recognition of the anniversary 1809, Sweden is the Helsinki Book Fair country focus", and indeed on exploring the enormous schedule of events, it's possible to find a few Swedish authors (billed for talks and readings, and some other events, including a government-sponsored one, which have a more or less Swedish flavour. But it's hard to find confirmation of the claim that "more than thirty Swedish writers are attending the fair."

For the first time, one or two Russian authors and publishers are taking part in the fair. Yet the primary focus is surely, as usual, on Finnish writing and publishing - there's a truly vast array of writing talent on show, but one wonders if it can be appreciated by the foreign guests who may have come to acquaint themelves with the contemporary Finnish scene - for the language of nearly all of the events is Finnish, with a few in Swedish or Finland-Swedish.

On a different subject, though in some ways it's related, Sweden's prestigious literary August Prize has  presented its nominations for the 2009 award. Names on the fiction list include Eva Adolfsson, Johannes Anyuru, Per Agne Erkelius, Aris Fioretos, Ann Jäderlund and Steve Sem-Sandberg. But one looks in vain for any Finland-Swedish names: in particular, the absence of Monika Fagerholm and Kjell Westö, both of whom published major new works this autumn, is striking.

This blog

Readers may recall that this blog began last March, when some members of the Swedish literary translators' association SELTA decided it was time to try to create a forum or Web resource that might be of interest to translators and readers of all Nordic literature, not just Swedish (and occasionally Finland-Swedish). Another SELTA meeting - the AGM - is to be held early  in November, but to judge from the minutes and agenda that have just been sent out to members, there's not much likelihood of a change of direction, contrary to the expectations that arose earlier in the year.

It seems a pity that the association should be so closed within itself - although it's now running on a faster server, the website isn't updated very often (let's hope that changes), and the Google group is apparently members-only. Maybe SELTA needs to go onto Facebook or another networking service and interact with a wider public.

Now that Nordic Voices is my personal blog, I feel I want to continue posting here rather than taking part in more SELTA business and discussion. That way perhaps there's a better chance of reaching readers rather than fellow-translators (sometimes a cheerful experience, but not always), and of continuing to trace the links between the literatures and cultures of the different Nordic countries, and their links with the world at large.