Harry Martinson

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Harry Martinson (May 6, 1904 – February 11, 1978) was an author and poet from the Swedish province Blekinge in south-eastern Sweden. In 1949 he was elected into the Swedish Academy. He was awarded a joint Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 together with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson. The choice for Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson was very controversial as both were on the Nobel panel themselves and Graham Greene, Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov were the favored candidates that year.

Life

At a young age he lost both his parents, whereafter he was stationed on the Swedish country side as a foster child (Kommunalbarn). At the age of sixteen, Martinson got away, and enrolled on a ship. He spent the next years sailing around the world, for example to Brazil and India.

After that he suffered from lung problems, and went ashore in Sweden. The next years were spent travelling around Sweden, sometimes as a vagabond on the country roads. In Malmö, he was arrested for vagrancy, at the age of 21.

Together with Artur Lundkvist, Gustav Sandgren, Erik Asklund and Josef Kjellgren, he debuted in 1929 as a poet in the anthology Fem unga (Five youngsters), which introduced Swedish Modernism. His poetry combined an acute eye for and love of nature with a deeply felt humanism. His popular success as a novelist came with the semi-autobiographical Nässlorna blomma (Flowering Nettle), in 1935, about hardships encountered by a young boy on the countryside. It has since been translated into more than 30 languages.

One of his most famous works is the poetic cycle Aniara, which is a story of the space craft Aniara, that during a journey through space loses its course, and subsequently aimlessly floats through space, without destination. The book was published in (1956), and became in 1959 an opera, composed by Karl-Birger Blomdahl. The cycle has been described as an epic story of man's fragility and folly.

From 1929 to 1940 he was married to the Swedish writer Moa Martinson. The sensitive Harry found criticism in the 1970's subsequent to the Nobel prize hard to cope with. He committed suicide with a pair of scissors on Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm in 1978.

The 100th aniversary of his birth was celebrated around Sweden in 2004.

Bibliography

Titles in English where known.

Novels Vägen till Klockrike Nässlorna blomma (Flowering Nettles) Vägen ut (The Way Out)

Essays Svärmare och harkrank Midsommardalen Det enkla och det svåra Utsikt från en grästuva Verklighet till döds Den förlorade jaguaren Resor utan mål

Poems Spökskepp [[Harry Martinson:Nomad|Nomad]] Passad Cikada Aniara Gräsen i Thule Vagnen Dikter om ljus och mörker Tuvor

Radio plays [[Harry Martinson:Gringo|Gringo]] Salvation Lotsen från Moluckas

Stage plays Tre knivar från Wei

Psalms De blomster som i marken bor

External links

• [Harry Martinson]
• [A translators look at Flowering Nettles] Swedish book review

 

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