Harry Martinson - Nobel Prize in Literature, 1974 (incl. Aniara)

HARRY MARTINSON (1904-1978) was a Swedish author and poet.  He was awarded a joint Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 together with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson "for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos".  The choice was controversial, as both Martinson and Johnson were members of the Swedish Academy and had partaken in endorsing themselves as laureates.

Martinson's poetry and prose is characterized by expressive and original language.  Themes include his experiences during a harsh and unloving childhood and during his youth spent as a seaman and hobo.  His poetry combines an acute eye for, and love of nature, with a deeply felt humanism.  His philosophical reflections and descriptions of the natural world reflect both his affection and concern for nature and his interest in science.

His most famous work, ANIARA: A REVIEW OF MAN IN TIME AND SPACE (1956) , is an epic poetic cycle that relates the story of a luxurious space ship, loaded with 8,000 evacuees, fleeing an Earth made uninhabitable by human technological arrogance.  A malfunction knocks the craft off course, taking these would-be Mars colonists on an irreversible journey into deep space and an existential struggle.  Theodore Sturgeon declared that the poem achieved "an inexpressible, immeasurable sadness.  [It] transcends panic and terror and even despair [and] leaves you in the quiet immensities, with the feeling that you have spent time, and have been permanently tinted, by and with an impersonal larger-than-God force."  It has been translated into many languages, adapted into a popular avant-garde opera, and made into a 2018 Swedish feature film.


The following books are in PDF format:

* Aniara (Story Line, 1999). Stephen Klass and Leif Sjoberg, trans.
* Aniara (Hutchinson, 1963). Hugh MacDiarmid and Elspeth Harley Schubert, trans.
* Friends, You Drank Some Darkness: Four Swedish Poets (Beacon, 1975).  Robert Bly, trans.
* Wild Bouquet: Nature Poems (BkMk, 1985).  Wm J. Smith & Leif Sjoberg, trans.

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