Review of Modern utländsk lyrik (1975/1985)
Sverker Göransson (writer), Börje Räftegård (writer).
Read in 2022.
A collection of American and non-Swedish European poetry from the mid-19th century to the 1960s, with author bios, literal translations to Swedish, and factual aids to hermeneutics.
The collection contains the following complete poems in French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese:
- “La vie antérieure” (1855).
- “Correspondances” (1857).
- “Harmonie du soir” (1857).
- “Spleen” (1857).
- “Une charogne” (1857).
- “Le voyage VIII” (1859).
- “L’Albatros” (1859).
- “Enivrez-vous” (1864).
- “Chanson d’automne” (1866).
- “Clair de lune” (1869).
- “The Sleeper in the Valley” (1870/1888).
- “Vowels” (1871/1883).
- “Toast funèbre” (1873).
- “Ô saisons, ô chateaux” (1873).
- “Il pleure dans mon cœur” (1874).
- “Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit” (1881).
- “Art poetique” (1882).
- “The Swan” (1885).
- “Aube” (1886).
- “Being Beauteous” (1886).
- “Départ” (1886).
- “Marine” (1886).
- “Parsifal” (1886/1888).
- “Pierrots” (1886).
- “Solde” (1886).
- “Toute l’âme résumée” (1895).
- “Des sehers wort ist wenigen gemeinsam” (1897).
- “Komm in den totgesagten park und schau” (1897).
- “Wir schreiten auf und ab im reichen flitter” (1897).
- “Die Engel” (1902).
- “Pont du Carrousel” (1902).
- “Der Panther” (1903).
- “Möwenlied” (1905).
- “Neznakomka” (1906).
- “Ballade des äusseren Lebens” (1907).
- “Palmström” (1910).
- “Zakljatie smechom” (1910).
- “Mann und Frau gehn durch die Krebsbaracke” (1912).
- “Hagia Sophia” (1912/1913).
- “Chantre” (1913).
- “Kaspar Hauser Lied” (1913).
- “Les colchiques” (1913).
- “Večerom” (1913).
- “Die Nacht” (1915).
- “Grodek” (1915).
- “O pašni, pašni, pašni” (1917/1918).
- “V lesu” (1917).
- “Desire” (1918).
- “The Stabbed Dove and the Fountain” (1918).
- “San Martino del Carso” (1919).
- “The Graveyard by the Sea” (1920).
- “Prikaz №2 armii iskusstv” (1922).
- “Popytka revnosti” (1924).
- “Mediterraneo” (1925).
- “Salomon-Song: Die Ballade von den Prominenten” (1928).
- “L’union libre” (1931).
- “Autopsicografia” (1932).
- “Facteur Cheval” (1932).
- “Gacela de la huída” (ca. 1931–1934).
- “Mattina” (1933).
- “Pusti menja, otdaj menja, Voronež” (1935).
- “Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters” (1939).
- “Les lilas et les roses” (1940).
- “Pour vivre ici” (1940).
- “Vivre” (1940).
- “O binómio de Newton é tão belo como a Vénus de Milo” (1944).
- “Uomo del mio tempo” (1949).
- “Invierno en el sur, a caballo” (1950).
- “La gran alegría” (1950).
- “La muerte” (1950).
- “Welchen der Steine du hebst” (1955).
- “Gamlet” (1957).
- “Ins Lesebuch für die Oberstufe” (1957).
- “Goya” (1958).
- “Sommerbericht” (1959).
- “Fritz Cremer, Bronze: „Der Aufsteigende“” (1968).
The Russian texts are transliterated to the Latin alphabet. The collection also contains the following, in English:
- Song of Myself (1892). Parts 1, 5 and 16 only.
- “Praise of Ysolt” (1909).
- “Alba” (1913).
- “In a Station of the Metro” (1913).
- “Theodore the Poet” (1915).
- “L’art, 1910” (1916).
- “A Pact” (1916).
- “Chicago” (1916).
- “The Wild Swans at Coole” (1917).
- “Grass” (1918).
- “Sweeney Among the Nightingales” (1920).
- “Gerontion” (1920).
- “Unknown Soldiers” (1924).
- “The Hollow Men” (1925).
- “Sailing to Byzantium” (1927).
- “The Man of Tyre” (1932).
- “And Death Shall Have No Dominion” (1933).
- “The Express” (1933).
- “The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower” (1934).
- “Musée de Beaux Arts” (1939).
- “The Shield of Achilles” (1952).
- “The Thought-Fox” (1957).
- “To Aunt Rose” (1958/1961).
- “Early Spring” (1962).
- I Am a Rock (1965).
- “Riderless Horses” (1968).
- The Cantos (1969). Part XLV only.
I read parts of this book in its intended usage as a textbook in a 2002 course, and finished it in 2022, when I was twice as old. Even in 2002, the book was showing its age as a sausage fest, but it is carefully curated, usually providing a bare minimum of context for the reader’s own interpretation.
Some poems I regard as excerpts, and these I have not reviewed. The Paul Simon song also falls outside my editorial policy. In 2022, it reminds me of the bathetic decision to award 2016’s Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan because the committee happened to belong to the right generation for it.