Formspråket och ”själens palimpsest”
i Johannes Edfelts lyrik
Innehåll
AbstractSummary
Abstract
The central thesis advocated by the author is that the discourse by the Swedish poet Johannes Edfelt (1904–97) during the years 1932–47 inherits a conflict between tradition and reality. In order to bridge that division, he strives not only to be a part of history but also to recapture and change its foundations.
This literary method seems to have come about under influence from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922), where musical and psychological principles appear in a similar way. According to the dissertation, both thematic and linguistic microstructure can be subordinated to an intertextual view. These so called alludemes in Edfelt often lead us back to an ancient origin, in several cases to the philosopher Plato, but also to literary works by Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Stagnelius, Kierkegaard, Baudelaire, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Strindberg, Ernst Josephson, Gustaf Fröding, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Vilhelm Ekelund, Pär Lagerkvist, Bo Bergman, Martin Buber, Birger Sjöberg, Bertil Malmberg, and Hjalmar Gullberg. Other important intertexts are theories by Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung.
The conclusion drawn is that only our view of the future can determinate the present and that this fact must not be forgotten by the poet himself.
Summary
This dissertation, which has been given the title Palimpsest of the Soul — Writing and Intertextuality in the Poetry by Johannes Edfelt, consists of three major parts called «The Mind as a Medium», «The Dream of History» and «The Utopia of Writing». The starting-point has been intertextual, but the method also draws on thematic criticism. The term writing corresponds with Roland Barthes’ l’écriture in a publication from 1953.«The Mind as a Medium» firstly sketches an outline of earlier research on Edfelt’s poetry. While concepts like form and palimpsest are defined, a brand new term, referring to the smallest communicative component part in an allusion, is launched. These so-called alludemes are here divided into seven different subcategories connected to (1) word choice, (2) clause structure, (3) rhythm, (4) spelling, (5) imagery, (6) theme and (7) composition. In several cases, they can be negated and their internal order reversed.
The second part, «The Dream of History», maps out allusions in Edfelt’s poetry. Regarding writing and style, the poet’s work during the studied period can be divided into two phases lasting from 1932 through ’41 and from 1943 through ’47. Keywords are here polyphony, palimpsest and paradox. The final part, «The Utopia of Writing», sums up the atmosphere of that time, while research results are discussed and summarized in the light of Edfelt’s literary project and impressions from psychoanalysis and New Criticism.
Through a divided writing that lacks inner harmony, Edfelt’s aim is both to identify himself with history and to change its foundations. Like T. S. Eliot, he emphasizes the role of the writer as a medium not only to his surrounding and its living past but also to a possible future. This resistance in the presence is the same as to work as an artist. «A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest», Eliot writes in his essay on «Philip Massinger» (1920, ed. 1941 p 206), a remark that his Swedish colleague seems to have paid heed to. Other important sources for inspiration in Edfelt’s poetical works are evidently Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung.
According to Edfelt’s essay «Marginalia» (1943), imagery holds an exceptional position in his literary method. This manner not only links up with currents in that moment of time but also, in its details, with considerably older literature. Many themes and symbols (e.g., the love flame, the flood’s way into the sea, the lover’s wine, the musical instrument of the soul, the forest organ, the copper sky, the life as a stage, and the inner bars), like a great number of more or less correct quotations, lead us back to an ancient origin but are also present in the works by Dante, William Shakespeare, Georg Stiernhielm, Erik Johan Stagnelius, Søren Kierkegaard, Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustaf Fröding and Erik Axel Karlfeldt. Edfelt’s use of such traditional elements shows, in its purpose, similarities both to Plato’s doctrine of forms and to Jung’s teaching about archetypes.
The night is an essential symbol for Edfelt. Like in Christian mysticism, it denotes both destruction and rebirth of the soul. This holds good for the imagery of water and fire, as well. However, the darkness and the well in his texts are also symbols for the unconsciousness in psychoanalysis. The starry sky is associated with archetypes but, at the same time, it expresses the vulnerability of human life, as in «Gavott» («Gavotte»; 1932 p 54): «Föraktfullt glittra alla,/ och ingens blick är god […].» («All are glittering contemptuously and no one’s eye is nice.») This conception of the world not only covers the existential situation of humankind but also hard times during the depression.
Simultaneously, Edfelt gives a new, ominous meaning to St. Paul’s familiar wording in his Epistle to the Galatians (3:28: «There is neither Jew nor Greek»): «Den som vet, hur Chios ödelades,/ den som sett galiziska pogromer […];/ borta är hans tro på goda gnomer» («The one who knows how Chios was ravaged, the one who has seen Galizian pogroms […]; gone is his faith in good gnomes»), according to «Purgatorium III» (ID p 15), which, apart from Karlfeldt’s poem «Inför freden» («With Peace at Hand»; 1927 p 9) and its German gnomes, also alludes to persecution of ethnic minorities.
An image with heavy intertextual connotation is the bars of the soul, which we already find in Edfelt’s debut volume under the heading «Fången» («The Prisoner»; Gryningsröster p 11). Symbolism and framing in several cases seems to be taken over from Gustaf Fröding’s famous poem «En ghasel» («A Ghasel»; 1891 p 67). However, this imagery seems to originate from Plato’s dialogue Phaedo (ed. 1984 p 101). In his tragedy Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe describes a scene similar to Edfelt’s depiction, where the study is conceived both as a prison and as a miniature universe. The intertextual dialogue with Fröding occurs as a negative alludeme in Edfelt’s poem «Avsked» («Parting»; 1936 p 52) with its alba mood och erotic mysticism. A similar theme, where bars symbolize the limitations of life, we also find in «Osynligt land» («Invisible Land»; 1941 p 85). The repetition of imagery in Edfelt’s poetry becomes a kind of intertextual ghazál in a dialogue both with the poet’s own production and older poetry.
Like Charles Baudelaire, Edfelt does not hesitate in depicting unpleasant sides of life and its horrors, which sometimes are rendered in the shape of drowning, as in Eliot’s The Waste Land, or in the shape of room symbolism, where the world is regarded as a prison, a hotel, a school, a stage, or an asylum. This type of imagery follows patterns from baroque as well as Romanticism, from early symbolism as well as expressionism. Against the stuffiness of the self in the moment of time, Edfelt puts a higher form of existence that can be reached through an emotional fellowship with another subject of the opposite sex. Well-aware of the resonance in his imagery, the poet compares the union of two bodies and souls to a recovered native country.
Double exposures and allusions, e.g, to the Bible and Dante, in Edfelt’s «Förklaringsberg» («Mountain of Elucidation»; 1934 p 75) make a contribution to the concept of crossing frontiers and strengthen the poem’s theme of ascension. Also the Swedish expressionistic poet Birger Sjöberg is here an important intertext. The formulation «ditt underliga hjärtas slag» («the beats of your peculiar /strange/ heart») in «Förklaringsberg» seems to be reshaped from Bertil Malmberg’s poem «Förvandling» («Transformation»; 1927 p 52), where the self speaks of «ditt främmande, sällsamma hjärtas slag» («the beats of your strange, peculiar heart»). Edfelt has in this context also borrowed phrases and imagery from Hjalmar Gullberg’s «Kärleksroman XIII» («Love Novel XIII»; 1933 p 19), which in turn seems to be inspired from Baudelaire’s «Parfum exotique» (1857; ed. 1942 p 25) concerning word choice and erotic imagery.
In the light of a review signed Georg Svensson in Bonniers Litterära Magasin (No. 9, 1932), Edfelt’s paraphrase could be seen as a literary challenge: «Den sista cykeln i Gullbergs samling heter ’Soluppgång’ och där förklarar skalden i hänryckta strofer att han är på marsch mot ett nytt ljus, bra likt ljuset från förklaringens berg» («The last cycle in Gullberg’s collection is called ’Sun Rise,’ and here the poet in rapturous strophes explains that he is on the march towards a new light, very much like the light from the mountain of elucidation»), Svensson wrote (p 62) using the same metaphoric phrase that Edfelt two years later would place as a heading above one of his poems in Högmässa («High Mass», 1934).
Consequently, Edfelt’s intertextuality also includes critics. With a paraphrase on negative reviewers’ word choice and under influence from theorists like T. S. Eliot and Hans Ruin, Edfelt in his essay «Lyrisk stil» («Lyric Style»; 1941 p 311) states that a poet «i hög grad är instrument och barometer för tidstrycket» («to a high degree is instrument and barometer for the time pressure»). Freud’s description (GS 2 p 438) of dream censorship as a «Widerstand» that creates symbols is possibly a contributory cause to the modification of Edfelt’s text, which was published in 1947 (p 95) saying that «en diktare är medium och motstånd, aldrig enbart en seismograf för världens tillstånd» («a poet is medium and resistance, never solely a seismograph for the state of the world»).
Edfelt archaizes modern society in a way that reminds of the Swedish poet and Nobel Prize Winner E. A. Karlfeldt; for this purpose he mainly uses a traditionalistic imagery and literary allusions. From the symbolist’s «Dina ögon äro eldar» («Thy Eyes are Fires»; 1901 p 50), Edfelt has borrowed stuff for his poem «Människa» («Human Being»; 1941 p 93). Here we again find the woman’s burning eyes as well as the man’s urgent request for her to turn his soul on fire; but while there in Karlfeldt exists an outspoken hesitation («Jag vill brinna, jag vill svalna» («I want to burn, I want to cool down»)), a clear knowledge of the wasting properties of fire («Som en höstkväll låt oss brinna» («Like an autumn night let us burn»)), Edfelt’s stanzas are going more for a redeeming motive: «du av vars blodomlopp/ natten blir sommarklar» («you from whose blood circulation the night becomes bright as [in] summer»).
According to earlier research, Karlfeldt’s image of the flame as a metaphor for love goes back to the Swedish translation of the Song of Songs (6:4) in the Bible from 1703, where the bridegroom says to his beloved: «Wändt tin ögon ifrå migh, förty the giöra migh brinnande» («Turn your eyes away from me for they make me burn»). The unity between terrestrial and divine in Edfelt’s poem is paratextually emphasized by the heading «Human Being».
Like Dante, our poet gives his woman the shape of a shimmering saint, a soul’s companion in a dark and horrible time, where felicity, in reach for the pilgrim, is symbolized by firelight in his lady’s eyes. The author of La Commedia (3, XVIII, 20f) presumably alludes to the same Bible passage as Karlfeldt above though in Vulgate’s Latin version of Canticum canticorum («averte oculos tuos a me quia ipsi me avolare fecerunt», that is to say «turn your eyes away from me for they make me fade away»): «Volgiti e ascolta;/ che’ non pur ne’ miei occhi è paradiso» («Look around you, paradise is not only in my eyes»), says Beatrice confronted with the pilgrim’s admiration of her burning appearance, and she is given an intertextual reply in Edfelt’s «Människa».
Dead things and abstract concepts are repeatedly apostrophized by the poet, often as a religious invocation, which creates a feeling of an animated universe; this proceeding leads our thoughts to Pär Lagerkvist’s expressionistic poetry. The depicted human beings in Edfelt’s verse are sometimes reduced to a solitary characteristic or a part of the body, possibly another influence from Lagerkvist or from Swedish hymn lyrics, and they are, as in Plato’s dialogue Nomoi («Laws»), exposed to higher powers’ cynical game.
Even God’s presence is represented by a hand or a tool. Together with the four elements symbolizing the world, this style, which in rhetorics is called synekdoke, gives a decreased and reduced impression reminding both of baroque and modernistic poetry. The animated landscape also shows affinity with ancient topoi, Shakespeare’s dramas, Romanticist poetry and Baudelaire’s «spleen». Studying Edfelt’s combination of mindscape and concrete details, we find a similar pattern in Birger Sjöberg’s Kriser och kransar («Crises and Wreaths»; 1926); other correspondences are stylistical features as neologisms, genitive metaphors, dialogue, and personification.
Otherwise, the animated landscape seems related to Bertil Malmberg’s autumnal sceneries. In his poem «Aning» («Presentiment»; 1927 p 45) — apart from several verbal correspondences to Edfelt’s «Demaskering» («Unmasking»; 1934 p 51: «Den skall komma, denna stund,/ denna isande minut» («It will come, that moment,/ that icy minute»)) as demonstrated by Ulla-Britta Lagerroth (1993 p 160f) — there are also the same chilly emotional situation filled with agony: «Det kan komma en stund/ i din mörknande höst,/ då du väcks av orkanens och vanvettets röst» («There may be a moment in your darkening autumn when the voice of the hurricane and the insanity wakes you up»).
However, this text also contains, in accordance with the multilayer principle that the poet applies, some distinct references to Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s publication Enten-Eller («Either-Or»), where a famous metaphor describes how «der kommer en Midnatstime, hvor Enhver skal demaskere sig» («a midnight hour will come when everyone has to unmask oneself»). As far as word choice and imagery are concerned, this very situation, where man are confronted with the examination of God, seems to be taken over from the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber’s publication Ich und Du (1923). A negative alludeme is the spiritual reprieve that the subject in «Demaskering» says he is missing; this notion is also essential in Christian faith. Edfelt’s metaphoric uses of religiously ringing words like «mercy» and «moment» seems otherwise affected by Malmberg.
Dealing with writing («l’écriture») in Edfelt, we will find that he, concerning intonation, norms, and nature of word choice, mainly resembles Bo Bergman, even though he, superficially looking, belongs to another school than the Swedish symbolist tradition. The opening lines of his ’50s poem «Drömspel» («Dream Play»; 1956 p 17), where the heading obviously alludes to August Strindberg’s pre-expressionistic drama Ett drömspel («A Dream Play») from 1902, could be viewed as a literary description of the intertextual situation — both concerning the sudden feeling of a repetitive occasion (what Barthes calls déjà lu) and concerning polyphony in the dialogue. Besides, this theme connects with a fundamental idea in Ett drömspel by Strindberg, where the Lawyer, in an allusion to Kierkegaard, describes one of the trials in life thus (p 287): «Gentagelsen… Omtagningar!… Gå tillbaks! Få bakläxa!…» («Repetition… Repeats!… Going back! Doing it all over again!…») Later on in the play, the Daughter says to the Poet (p 311): «Mig tycks att vi stått någon annanstans och sagt dessa ord förr.» («It seems to me as if we’ve been standing somewhere else saying these words before.») Even the drama genre in itself can, as we know, be associated with repetition and returns.
At the same time as the allusion on the heavenly sent god’s daughter actualizes themes like rebirth and descension from Edfelt’s earlier poetry, «Drömspel» contains clearly perceptible echoes from Bo Bergman’s poem «Venetianskt skuggspel» («Venetian Shadow Play»; 1919 p 207), to which the younger poet’s discourse seems to be in a complex relationship. In addition to the Italian motive combined with a verbally similar title, which suggests that our senses should not be trusted, and the imagery of a world in decay, Edfelt also seems to have taken over Bergman’s manner to let the voyage upon the glassy surface, in distinct verse bindings, get an escaping, undulation-like nature.
Concerning the mystical experience of unity, it is possible to connect Vilhelm Ekelund to Edfelt’s use of so called cryptologisms, that is expressions, which in a larger context get a different meaning than they usually have mainly because of their high frequency. An example of such a key word is ’music’. Moreover, earlier research has overlooked the significance of prototypes like Ernst Josephson, Gustaf Fröding, and Erik Axel Karlfeldt. Another underestimated name in this discussion is Charles Baudelaire. Consequently, Edfelt to a large extent has brought in impulses from expressionism and symbolism. We are confronted with both the cosmic enlarged subject, as an image for the pure feeling on the backdrop of a white screen, and the double projection of landscape and mood.
During the 1930s and ’40s, many poems by Edfelt show a structure not at all corresponding to the so-called Aristotelian unity of action, time, and room. This method seems to have come about under influence from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922), where musical and psychological principles are used in a similar way. Like the discourse in the Swedish poet, the English poem is polyphonic through different characters’ voices that sounds together in a dialogue but also through allusions, which produce dialogicity. In Edfelt, this echo-effect is amplified by assonances and rhymes. Besides, there are thematic correspondences to the older poet, for example, in the criticism of the industrial society.
In 1932, Karin Boye and Erik Mesterton published a Swedish translation of «The Waste Land» in the magazine Spektrum (vol. 2, No. 2, pp 25-44) together with an introduction to Eliot’s poetry (No. 3, pp 41-53). In the same year, Edfelt wrote «Getsemanegränd» («Getsemane Alley»; HM s 53), which contains several references to older literature. Apart from a similar atmosphere in the opening stanza of Fröding’s poem «Smeden» («The Blacksmith»; 1910 p 37), there are the same clause structure (topic and comment) and a corresponding rhyme pair «hvalf» — «skalf» («vault» — «quaked»). The phrase «från hjässan till fotabjället» («from the top of the head to the feet») that is found in Edfelt’s poem, originates from a passage in Deuteronomy (28:15, 35).
When he compares the world to a stage or an asylum, Edfelt uses a traditional imagery, whose foremost representative probably is William Shakespeare. Another common theme in Edfelt is anxiety and fear in the big city, which appears under the influence of psychoanalysis’ description of trauma and in the light of Hegel’s consciousness of death and Kierkegaard’s assumption of existential freedom.This concept draws from an existentialistic tradition that ranges from the Book of Hiob and Augustine to Kierkegaard, from Baudelaire and Freud to Pär Lagerkvist and Bertil Malmberg.
Sometimes Edfelt builds on metric structure of older poetry. The taken over rhythm could, with the poet’s experience of tempo in mind, be assumed to have influenced other mood making factors in his discourse. This holds good for «Förklaringsberg», which concerning not only metre and rhyme construction but also word choice, imagery, and syntax has obvious similarities to both Sjöberg’s «I Ditt allvars famn» («In Your Arms of Seriousness»; 1926 p 22) and Fröding’s «Atlantis» (1894 p 142). The rhyme structure AbAbOb in Edfelt seems mainly borrowed from the latter, which in the corresponding positions has the order AbAbOOb. Besides, several similar expressions can be found in «Förklaringsberg», even line endings. Its structure also seems to be influenced by Sjöberg’s combination of imagery, trochées, and cæsura, while hearing in a similar way in «I Ditt allvars famn» is associated with water and imagery of doom and destruction.
The intertextuality in Edfelt displays a dialectical unity, which arises from the murmur of voices of the past. Speaking to Michail Bachtin, such a synthesis occurs de facto on a higher level than the traditionally monological writing. In his mature poetry, Edfelt for this polyphonic purpose resumes early prototypes like Ernst Josephson, Gustaf Fröding, Bo Bergman, and Pär Lagerkvist thereby linking up with his own Gryningsröster («Dawn Voices»; 1923) and Unga dagar («Young Days»; 1925). My purpose has been to show how such reading impressions in a transformed way have had a determining significance for the mature poetry and that this development, at least partially, occurs in association with the psychoanalytic notion about the early living years’ importance for the grown-up personality.
From Aftonunderhållning («Evening Entertainment»; 1932) on, there are allusions to Swedish writers to a seemingly greater extent than earlier: Haquin Spegel, Johan Olof Wallin, Esaias Tegnér, Erik Johan Stagnelius, August Strindberg, Viktor Rydberg, Ernst Josephson, Gustaf Fröding, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Vilhelm Ekelund, Pär Lagerkvist, Harriet Löwenhjelm, Birger Sjöberg, Bertil Malmberg, Erik Blomberg, and Hjalmar Gullberg; moreover, one can distinguish internationally well-known names like Homer, Aischyl, Sophocle, Sappho, Plato, Plutarch, Plotin, Horace, Ovid, Dante, William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich von Schiller, Charles Baudelaire, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, T. S. Eliot, Bertolt Brecht, Martin Buber and Eugene O’Neill. There are plenty of allusions to mythology and historical events, as well.
One of these polyphonic poems is «Symposion» (1939 p 46), which alludes to Plato, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Tegnér and Fröding. Apart from the heading, Edfelt’s poem has the consuming of great amounts of wine and the tribute to a speaker in common with Plato’s dialogue Symposium, which thereby gives voice to the dilemma hiding in the world’s silent reaction to ovations at fascists’ mass meetings in the ’30s. In his essay «Marginalia» (1943), Edfelt connects Nietzsche’s pair of notions «Apollonic» and «Dionysic» — originating from the German philosopher’s description of the birth of tragedy — to literary currents of that time. Evidently, Kierkegaard uses Plato’s dialogue as an intertext for his short story «In vino veritas» (1845). Esaias Tegnér combines, in his translation of Oelenschläger’s «Skaldens hem» («The Poet’s Home»), Plato’s world of forms with a philosophical banquet, literary allusions, Christian and ancient symbolism in a manner that seems to anticipate Edfelt’s poetry and particularly the mentioned «Symposion», which possibly is a contributory cause to the poet’s intertextual reply in «Fosterland» («Native Country»; 1936 p 41).
When the same symbol is used for visualizing opposite phenomena, it becomes a kind of reconciliation between these things at heart. Bengt Landgren (1977 p 98), who has demonstrated how the poet’s complex of imagery follows a uniform pattern, overlooks that images and allusions are part of an extensive effort for harmony. To reach the whole we have to listen to our own unconsciousness, according to Edfelt. The love scenes depict the mind in touch with the past and an obliteration of the self, a fact that belongs to the mysticism of poetry and a dialogue about a renewal of the writing (l’écriture), which comes into existence with themes like destruction and resurrection.
The choice of the Hesperides from ancient myth as a symbol for a coming cultural and moral renaissance, in Edfelt’s poem «I denna natt» («In This Night»; 1936 p 5), gets additional deep perspective if one looks at these Nyx’s (the Night’s) daughters in the light of a well-known Stagnelius quotation (CW 2 p 54) with ancient heritage: «sjung i bedröfvelsens mörker:/ Natten är dagens mor, Chaos är granne med Gud» («sing in the darkness of despair: The night is mother of the day, Chaos is God’s neighbour». In «Tunnel» («Tunnel»; 1941 p 91), a couple of lines allude to the Swedish Romanticist’s imagery: «Vilken lättnad, då kompakta/ skuggor veko i ens hjärna!» («What a relief, when compact shadows collapsed in one’s brain!»)
Besides, the formulation «Kaos, föd en morgonstjärna!» («Chaos, give birth to a morning star!») in the same stanza alludes to Nietzsche’s publication Also sprach Zarathustra (ed. 1893 p 15): «Ich sage euch: man muss noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können. Ich sage euch: ihr habt noch Chaos in euch.» Edfelt has given expression to something similar in his essay «Poeten och samtiden» («The Poet and His Time»; 1941 p 62), where he simultaneously links up with Martin Buber’s metaphoric language: «Aldrig var det mer angeläget att framhålla ordningens nödvändighet än i de tider, då kaos stod vid tröskeln. Sist och slutligen måste sången leva och andas under dubbelstjärnorna Frihet och Ordning.» («It was never more urgent to point out the necessity of order than in periods when chaos was standing at the threshold. Finally, the song must live and breathe under the double stars Freedom and Order.»)
© Torgny Lilja (2009)
Palimpsest of
the Soul 
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