View Full Version : Tomas Tranströmer
Stewart
06-Oct-2008, 12:43
Tomas Transtr?mer (born April 15, 1931) is a Swedish writer, poet and translator, whose poetry has been deeply influential in Sweden, as well as around the world.
Transtr?mer received his secondary education at the S?dra Latin School in Stockholm and graduated as a psychologist from Stockholm University in 1956. He began writing at thirteen, and published his first collection of poems, 17 dikter (Seventeen Poems) in 1954. His latest collection, Den stora g?tan (The Great Enigma), was published in 2004, and an English translation of his entire body of work, The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems, was published in 2006. He published a short autobiography, Minnena ser mig (The memories are watching me), in 1993.
Other poets - especially in the "political" 70's - accused him for being apart from his tradition and not including political issues in his poems and novels. His work, though, lies within and further develops the Modernist and Expressionist/Surrealist language of 20th century poetry; his clear, seemingly simple pictures from everyday life and nature in particular reveals a mystic insight to the universal aspects of the human mind.
In 1990, he suffered a stroke that affects his speech, but he continues to write. He has often been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and many consider him one of Sweden's foremost poets. Transtr?mer's awards include the Bonnier Award for Poetry, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Oevralids Prize, the Petrach Prize in Germany, and the Swedish Award from International Poetry Forum. His poetry has been translated into fifty languages; Bly, Robin Fulton, and the prominent American blues writer Samuel Charters have translated his work into English.
In 2007, Transtr?mer received a special Lifetime Recognition Award given by the trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, which also awards the annual Griffin Poetry Prize.
RELATED LINKS
Official Website (http://www.tomastranstromer.com/)
Tomas Transtr?mer on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomas_Transtromer)
Biography of Tomas Transtr?mer (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/trastt.htm)
Tomas Transtomer (1931-present) is one of the most influential Swedish poets of the modern day. Noticing he had no thread and having rather recently read all the way through his absolutely essential, monumental, and frustratingly small body of work in the form of "The Great Enigma" I decided he might need one of his own.
Wikipedia's bio:
Tomas Transtr?mer (born 15 April 1931 in Stockholm) is a Swedish writer, poet and translator, whose poetry has been deeply influential in Sweden, as well as around the world.
Transtr?mer received his secondary education at the S?dra Latin School in Stockholm and graduated as a psychologist from Stockholm University in 1956. He began writing at thirteen, and published his first collection of poems, 17 dikter (Seventeen Poems) in 1954. His latest collection, Den stora g?tan (The Great Enigma), was published in 2004, and an English translation of his entire body of work, The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems, was published in 2006. He published a short autobiography, Minnena ser mig (The memories are watching me), in 1993.
Other poets - especially in the "political" 70's - accused him for being apart from his tradition and not including political issues in his poems and novels. His work, though, lies within and further develops the Modernist and Expressionist/Surrealist language of 20th century poetry; his clear, seemingly simple pictures from everyday life and nature in particular reveals a mystic insight to the universal aspects of the human mind.
Transtr?mer and the American poet Robert Bly are close friends and their correspondence has been published in the book Air Mail.
In 1990, he suffered a stroke that affects his speech, but he continues to write. He has often been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and many consider him one of Sweden's foremost poets. Transtr?mer's awards include the Bonnier Award for Poetry, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Oevralids Prize, the Petrach Prize in Germany,the Golden Wreath of the Struga Poetry Evenings and the Swedish Award from International Poetry Forum. His poetry has been translated into fifty languages; Bly, Robin Fulton, and the prominent American blues writer Samuel Charters have translated his work into English.
In 2007, Transtr?mer received a special Lifetime Recognition Award given by the trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, which also awards the annual Griffin Poetry Prize.
In addition to his work as a writer, Transtr?mer was also a respected psychologist before he had his stroke. He worked in juvenile prisons, and with disabled, convicts, and drug addicts. He is also a good piano player, something he has been able to continue after his stroke, albeit with one hand.
His 1974 "Baltics" is among the most powerful poetry I have ever read. An epic work in a tiny amount of pages, given Transtromer's notoriously minimal output "Baltics" constitutes something very massive if considered as one big poem against his oeuvre. Also his memoir provides a touching glimpse of the very young Transtromer and is in fact informative and a must-read for anyone interested in Transtromer's body of work.
Of all the poets whose work I've read and who are in contention for the Nobel Prize in Literature--Ashbery, Zagajewski, Adonis, Parra (not too many it seems)--the biggest challenge for Transtromer will be Ashbery (Parra may just be too old) and the tension between their two surrealist forms of poetry is quite interesting when it comes to deciding which is more deserving (wouldn't it be funny if Ashbery ended the American drought instead of Roth, DeLillo, or McCarthy?).
Swedish Collections
17 dikter (1954) - Seventeen Poems
Hemligheter p? v?gen (1958)
Den halvf?rdiga himlen (1962) - The Half-Finished Heaven
Klanger och sp?r (1966) - Windows and Stones
M?rkerseende (1970) - Night Vision
Stigar (1973) - Paths
?stersj?ar (1974) - Baltics
Sanningsbarri?ren (1978)
Det vilda torget (1983)
F?r levande och d?da (1989) - For the Living and the Dead
Sorgegondolen (1996)
Den stora g?tan (2004)
Galleriet: Reflected in Vecka nr.II (2007)- an artist book by Modhir Ahmed
Selected Books in English Translation
20 Poems (Robert Bly, trans.)
Windows and Stones (May Swenson, trans.)
Baltics (Samuel Charters, trans.)
The Half-Finished Heaven (Robert Bly, trans.)
The Great Enigma: Collected Poems (Robin Fulton, trans.)
The Sorrow Gondola (Michael McGriff and Mikaela Grassl, trans.)
The Deleted World (Robin Robertson)
Actually, there was a thread already, I've merged yours with the old one. But thanks for reminding me that I need to get a hold of some of his books.
Whatever the technical side of things, it was a good idea to (again) draw our attention to Tomas Transtromer so thanks to Stewart, J Tolle, and Bjorn. He must be just about the most important living Swedish poet, followed maybe by people such as G?ran Sonnevi. Maybe we should have a few of his poems here in translation, so those who have never read any can catch a glimpse of his style and subject-matter in English translation. I'm sure there must be a few that can be cut & pasted from the internet without infringing copyright.
Has anyone found that using the ? (o-umlaut) or leaving it out when Googling for things about him makes any difference to results?
Actually, there was a thread already, I've merged yours with the old one.
I really looked for it, sorry about that :o
Note for help: any recommended translations of his poetry into English?
The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems trans. Robin Fulton
Contains everything Transtromer has done up until 2006, including the short prose-memoir "Memories Look at Me", which is greatly recommended to anyone who enjoys his poetry, and Fulton has been translating him since 1987.
Looking back on the things I've written, here, I realize that I'd forgotten - somewhat - how greatly Tranströmer's poetry had affected me when I first read him. He was the first contemporary European poet who I'd really gotten into, and something about his Surrealism and humanity, his humor and gravity, made a great impression. In fact, now that he's gotten his Nobel, I ought to buy The Great Enigma and revisit him.
Daniel del Real
06-Oct-2011, 21:36
The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems trans. Robin Fulton
Contains everything Transtromer has done up until 2006, including the short prose-memoir "Memories Look at Me", which is greatly recommended to anyone who enjoys his poetry, and Fulton has been translating him since 1987.
Do you mean that The Great Enigma contains his whole body of works at 288 pages?
"Englund said that Tranströmer's production had been 'sparse – you could fit it into a not too large pocket book, all of it'"
And I'm apparently corroborated by Wikipedia, not that that says anything definite. Either way, it is the most comprehensive collection of his poetry available in English and it contains his short memoir, "Memories look at me". I think it's the best place to start reading Tranströmer.
from The Half-Finished Heaven (1962)
"The Tree and the Sky"
There's a tree walking around in the rain,
it rushes past us in the pouring grey.
It has an errand. It gathers life
out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.
When the rain stops so does the tree.
There it is, quiet on clear nights
waiting as we do for the moment
when the snowflakes blossom in space.
(trans. Robin Fulton)
Stewart
07-Oct-2011, 00:23
Do you mean that The Great Enigma contains his whole body of works at 288 pages?
That's pretty much it, yes.
Daniel del Real
07-Oct-2011, 21:07
That's pretty much it, yes.
That's something I really don't like about poetry. When you want to buy certain book it's really hard to find it and you end buying something called "collected poems, anthology, the best poems" or sort things like that. Sometimes you don't know who is actually making the selection and if it's decent enough to get a good impression of the poet's work.
About Tranströmer I've read a book of poems that is an anthology from 1954-1989 150 pages long. I want to read something else by him, but I don't want to buy a book that repeats all the poems I've read so far, so that's why I prefer to buy the complete works so I can select unread poems. I guess The Great Enigma will do the trick.
Diotima
07-Oct-2011, 21:48
Midwinter
By Tomas Tranströmer
A blue light
radiates from my clothing.
Midwinter
Clattering tambourines of ice.
I close my eyes.
There is a silent world
there is a crack
where the dead
are smuggled across the border.
Translated by Michael McGriff and Mikaela Grassl
So I went ahead and borrowed Robert Bly's "selected translations" of T. T. under the title of The Half-Finished Heaven, and the poems (although T. is definitely not "my kind of poet") have struck me as precise, crystal-clear, humane and, at times, slightly surreal in quality. I was surprised to see so many parallels between his, and Pentti Holappa's work, who is a Finnish contemporary of T's whose work I admire and have previously written about. T's "natural" poems, especially, often read like Holappa's (or vice versa). I'm not suggesting that there was any stealing or unconscious influence at work here; this may very well be a "Scandinavian" thing.
kpjayan
17-Oct-2011, 04:59
“It is not difficult to find words similar to the words in the original language. It is difficult to find silences between the words of a language in another. And poetry resides as much in words as in the silences between the words.”
http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/MMOnline.dll/portal/ep/theWeekContent.do?BV_ID=@@@&contentType=EDITORIAL§ionName=TheWeek Columns&programId=1073755417&contentId=10243675 (http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/MMOnline.dll/portal/ep/theWeekContent.do?BV_ID=@@@&contentType=EDITORIAL§ionName=TheWeek%20Columns&programId=1073755417&contentId=10243675)
Having recently checked The Great Enigma out of the library, I am amazed at how much better and more flowing Fulton's translations are from the Swedish than Bly's. I didn't like quite a lot of poems in The Half-Finished Heaven (selected and translated by Bly); suddenly, these very same poems began to flow and read beautifully in Fulton's hands. Perhaps it's because he's been closely and intimately engaged with Tranströmer's work for over 35 years? Will post some samples later: but am currently in love with the shorter poems and the haiku sequences.
A few short poems by Tranströmer, trans. by Robin Fulton:
Storm
Here the walker suddenly meets the giant
oak tree, like a petrified elk whose crown is
furlongs wide before the September ocean's
murky green fortress.
Northern storm. The season when rowanberry
clusters swell. Awake in the darkness, listen:
constellations stamping inside their stalls, high
over the treetops.
[17 Poems; 1954]
*
Evening/Morning
Moon--its mast is rotten, its sail is shriveled.
Seagull--drunk and soaring away on currents.
Jetty--charred rectangular mass. The thickets
founder in darkness.
Out on doorstep. Morning is beating, beats on
ocean's granite gateways and sun is sparkling
near the world. Half-smothered, the gods of summer
fumble in sea mist.
[17 Poems; 1954]
*
Midnight Turning Point
The wood ant watches silently, looks into
nothing. And nothing's heard but drips from dim
leafage and the night's murmuring deep in
summer's canyon.
The spruce stands like the hand of a clock,
spiked. The ant glows in the hill's shadow.
Bird cry! And at last. The cloud-packs slowly
begin to roll.
[17 Poems; 1954]
*
Sketch in October
The tugboat is freckled with rust. What's it doing here so far inland?
It's a heavy extinguished lamp in the cold.
But the trees have wild colors: signals to the other shore.
As if someone wanted to be fetched.
On my way home I see mushrooms sprouting through the grass.
They are the fingers, stretching for help, of someone
who has long been sobbing alone down in the darkness.
We are the earth's.
[Paths; 1973]
*
From March 1979
Weary of all who come with words, words but no language
I make my way to the snow-covered island.
The untamed has no words.
The unwritten pages spread out on every side!
I come upon the tracks of deer in the snow.
Language but no words.
[The Wild Market Square; 1983]
*
Memories Look at Me
A June morning, too soon to wake,
too late to fall asleep again.
I must go out--the greenery is dense
with memories, they follow me with their gaze.
They can't be seen, they merge completely into
the background, true chameleons.
They are so close that I can hear them breathe
though the birdsong is deafening.
[The Wild Market Square; 1983]
*
Early May Stanzas
A May wood. The invisible removal load,
my whole life, like a haunting here. Birds in song.
In the silent pools, midge larvae--
their dancing furious question marks.
I escape to the same places, and the same words.
Cool sea breeze. And the ice-dragon licks the back
of my neck while sunlight blazes.
The load is burning with chilly flames.
[For the Living and the Dead; 1989]
*
Eagle Rock
Behind the vivarium glass
the reptiles
unmoving.
A woman hangs up washing
in the silence.
Death is becalmed.
In the depths of the ground
my soul glides
silent as a comet.
[The Great Enigma; 2004]
*
November
When the hangman's bored he turns dangerous.
The burning sky rolls up.
Tapping sounds can be heard from cell to cell
and space streams up from the ground-frost.
A few stones shine like full moons.
[The Great Enigma; 2004]
*
Snow Is Falling
The funerals keep coming
more and more of them
like the traffic signs
as we approach a city.
Thousands of people gazing
in the land of long shadows.
A bridge builds itself
slowly
straight out in space.
[The Great Enigma; 2004]
*
Selected Haiku (1996-2004)
The sun is low now.
Our shadows are giants.
Soon all will be shadow.
*
The presence of God.
In the tunnel of birdsong
a locked seal opens.
*
Oak trees and the moon.
Light. Silent constellations.
And the cold ocean.
*
Thoughts standing still, like
the colored mosaic stones in
the palace courtyard.
*
Gaunt tousled pine trees
on the same tragic moorland.
Always and always.
*
Borne by the darkness.
I met an immense shadow
in a pair of eyes.
*
And blueweed, blueweed
keeps rising from the asphalt.
It's like a beggar.
*
The darkening leaves
in autumn are as precious
as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
*
A revelation.
The long-standing apple-tree.
The sea is close by.
*
Ash-colored silence.
The blue giant passes by.
Cool breeze from the sea.
*
Birds in human shape.
The apple trees in blossom.
The great enigma.
In the wake of the Nobel Prize, two new collections of previously translated poems are being published later this year: Baltics, a magnificent bilingual edition (http://www.amazon.com/Baltics-Tomas-Transtromer/dp/193563514X/ref=sr_1_254?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320516290&sr=1-254) translated by Samuel Charters (accompanied by black-and-white photographs) and The Deleted World, a 65-pp. collection (http://www.amazon.com/Deleted-World-Poems-Tomas-Transtromer/dp/0374533539/ref=sr_1_300?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320516512&sr=1-300)of "versions" by one Robin Robertson.
Diotima
08-Dec-2011, 11:50
Has anyone read Nobel Lecture in Literature by Tomas Tranströmer yet? Thanks.
errequatro
08-Dec-2011, 15:50
There is no Nobel LEcture, I think. Due to the poet's ilness. There was a live reading of his poems, with a musical performance. But please check the website:) I might be wrong! hehe
Diotima
08-Dec-2011, 21:58
After A Death by Tomas Transtromer
http://youtu.be/MKPVVsalnGA
Thanks, errequatro (http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/forum/member.php/7343-errequatro).
There is no Nobel LEcture, I think. Due to the poet's ilness. There was a live reading of his poems, with a musical performance. But please check the website:) I might be wrong! hehe
http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1739
Daniel del Real
23-Feb-2012, 21:05
I just finished Tomas Tranströmer's latest poetry books, the very short Sad Gondola & The Great Enigma. I had read an anthology of his poetry before but I was curious to see how emotionally and not only physically his illness affected his poetry. I found him more obscure in his verses, specially in The Sad Gondola, with a lot of references to the death and the artist, with the specific example of Liszt, Wagner and Venice representing death just as Mann portrayed it. However, the glimpses of life and glittering landscapes cannot be missing from a poet who is always looking for the mystic perspective of nature and events. Just when Death seems to impregnate the whole atmosphere, a breath of fresh air comes with the brief but emotionally evocative haikus, full of images and representations within a few words. I found The Great Enigma less articulated, without the form oa poetry book carrying an idea the whole time brings, more like a series of single poems. However the poetic force of Tranströmer does not descend and his spirit rises again, vivid and mythic, just like before he suffered the stroke in 1990.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.0 Copyright © 2013 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.