Harry Martinson
Contributors to Penny's poetry pages Wiki
Template:Refimprove Harry Martinson (May 6, 1904 – February 11, 1978) was a Swedish sailor, author and poet. 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...
/skins-ucp/mw139/common/favicon.ico
Penny's poetry pages Wiki
Template:Refimprove

Harry Martinson (May 6, 1904 – February 11, 1978) was a Swedish sailor, author and poet. 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. They and Graham Greene, Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov were the favored candidates that year.

Life[]

Martinson was born in Jämshög, Blekinge County in south-eastern Sweden. At a young age he lost both his parents whereafter he was placed as a foster child (Kommunalbarn) in the Swedish countryside. At the age of sixteen Martinson ran away and signed onto a ship to spend the next years sailing around the world visiting countries such as Brazil and India.

A few years later lung problems forced him to set ashore in Sweden where he travelled around without a steady employment, at times living as a vagabond on country roads. In the city of Malmö, at the age of 21, he was arrested for vagrancy.

In 1929, he debuted as a poet. Together with Artur Lundkvist, Gustav Sandgren, Erik Asklund and Josef Kjellgren he authored the anthology Fem unga (Five Youths), 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 (The Nettles Flower) in 1935, about hardships encountered by a young boy in the countryside. It has since been translated into more than thirty 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 floats on 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 1970s after the Nobel prize hard to cope with, and attempted suicide[1] with a pair of scissors. He died of February 11, 1978, at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm.

The 100th anniversary of Martinson's birth was celebrated around Sweden in 2004.

Bibliography[]

Titles in English where known.

Novels[]

Nässlorna blomma (Flowering Nettles) 1935

Vägen ut (The Way Out) 1936

Den förlorade jaguaren (The Lost Jaguar) 1941

Vägen till Klockrike (The Road) 1948

Essays[]

Resor utan mål (Aimless Journeys) 1932

Svärmare och harkrank 1937

Midsommardalen (Midsommer valley) 1938

Det enkla och det svåra (The easy and the hard) 1938

Verklighet till döds (Reality to death) 1940

Utsikt från en grästuva (Views From A Tuft of Grass) 1963

Poems[]

Spökskepp 1929

Nomad 1931

Passad (Trade Wind) 1945

Cikada 1953

Aniara 1956

Gräsen i Thule 1958

Vagnen 1960

Dikter om ljus och mörker 1971

Tuvor 1973

Radio plays[]

Gringo

Salvation 1947

Lotsen från Moluckas 1948

Stage play[]

Tre knivar från Wei 1964

Psalms[]

De blomster som i marken bor

References[]

[]

Harry Martinson

A translators look at Flowering Nettles Swedish book review

Harry Martinson's Photo & Gravesite

Preceded by

Elin Wägner Swedish Academy,

Seat No.15

1949-1978 Succeeded by

Kerstin Ekman

Template:Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates 1951-1975

Persondata Name Martinson, Harry Alternative names Short description Date of birth May 6, 1904 Place of birth Jämshög, Sweden Date of death February 11, 1978 Place of death Stockholm, Sweden

This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia. (view article). (view authors).