NILS ARTUR LUNDKVIST, SWEDISH POETRY IN THE 2OTH C.

Today is a wonderful day and The Grandma has taken her bike to go to the beach to enjoy one of her favourite activities: reading.

 

Reading poetry is an indescribable pleasure for the soul and, like any reading, if you can read it in the original language, the pleasure is even deeper. 

The Grandma has chosen the poems of Artur Lundkvist, the Swedish writer, Nobel Prize in Literature, who left us on a day like today thirty-four years ago. 

Nils Artur Lundkvist (3 March 1906-11 December 1991) was a Swedish writer, poet and literary critic. He was a member of the Swedish Academy from 1968.

Artur Lundkvist published around 80 books, including poetry, prose poems, essays, short stories, novels and travel books, and his works have been translated into some 30 languages. He is also noted for having translated many works from Spanish and French into Swedish. Several authors whose works he translated were later awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He married the poet Maria Wine in 1936.

Artur Lundkvist was born in Perstorp Municipality, Skåne County. As a child he lived on a small farm, first in Hagstad and then in nearby Toarp. From an early age his main interest was reading and he also liked wandering in the surrounding countryside.

At the age of twenty Lundkvist moved to Stockholm determined to become a writer, he studied at a Folk high school and became acquainted with other young people with the same interests. His first books of poems, the anthology Fem unga and introductions of foreign modernist literature quickly established Lundkvist as a leading figure in Modernist Swedish literature in the 1930s. 

Lundkvist went on to publish more than 80 books in many genres and was also a prominent critic. 

In 1968 he was elected a member of the Swedish Academy, and was a member of the Academy's Nobel committee from 1969 to 1986. He was married to Maria Wine since 1936 and died on 11 December 1991.

Lundkvist published his first book of poems Glöd (Glowing Embers) in 1928 and contributed to the important anthology Fem unga (Five young men) in 1929. He was one of the dominant figures in Swedish literary modernism, the most vigorous promoter of the modernist breakthrough that took place around 1930, and one of the leading poets of the period. His early works was influenced by Scandinavian and American modernists, most notably Carl Sandburg, and later by surrealism.

In the late 1940s his works became increasingly influenced by Spanish language writers like Pablo Neruda and Federico García Lorca, whose poetry he also translated to Swedish. Although he continued to publish books of poetry, including Liv som gräs (Life as grass, 1954) and Ögonblick och vågor (Moments and waves, 1962) which by many is considered to be among his finest works, prose works dominated his writings from the 1950s and onwards. In several books, starting with Malinga (1952) and leading up to late works such as Skrivet mot kvällen (Written towards the evening, 1980), his ambition was to defy genre limitations and merge prose poetry, fictional stories, short essays, personal memoirs and impressions from his many travels around the world into a new form of literature.

Artur Lundkvist was a very productive writer, and also published numerous articles, short stories, collections of literary essays, and books about his travels in South America, India, China, the Soviet Union and Africa. As a literature critic, and also translator, he introduced foreign literature to Swedish readers, including several authors that would subsequently be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, such as William Faulkner, T. S. Eliot, Pablo Neruda, Claude Simon, Vicente Aleixandre, Octavio Paz, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. His later work also include several historical novels such as Snapphanens liv och död (1968, about snapphanar), Tvivla, korsfarare! (1972, about crusaders), Krigarens dikt (1976, about Alexander the Great) and Slavar för Särkland (1978, about vikings).

In 1966, his autobiography Självporträtt av en drömmare med öppna ögon (Self portrait of a dreamer with open eyes) was published, and in 1968 he was elected a member of the Swedish academy.

In 1977, he was awarded the prestigious Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings festival in Struga, North Macedonia. He died in Solna, Stockholm County.

More information: The Guardian

 Jag har en envis tro på omedelbar suggestion,
automatism eller spontanitet, som du önskar,
och jag misstror rationalism och efterföljande modifieringar.

I have a stubborn faith in immediate suggestion, 
automatism or spontaneity, as you wish, 
and I distrust rationalism and subsequent modifications.

Artur Lundkvist