Abstract
The article discusses three Swedish dream poems: Artur Lundkvist’s “Om natten älskar jag någon…” from Nattens broar (1936), Gunnar Ekelöf’s “Monolog med dess hustru” from Strountes (1955), and Tomas Tranströmer’s “Drömseminarium” from Det vilda torget (1983). These authors and their poems all relate to European Surrealism. However, they do not only support the fundamental ideas of the Surrealist movement, they also represent reservations about, and corrections to, this movement. The article illuminates different aspects of dream poems and discusses the status of this poetic genre and its relation to Surrealism throughout the twentieth century.
Highlights
The article discusses three Swedish dream poems: Artur Lundkvist’s “Om natten älskar jag någon . . . ” from Nattens broar (1936), Gunnar Ekelöf’s “Monolog med dess hustru”
Artur Lundkvist’s “Om natten älskar jag någon . . . ” is a poem that promotes a surreal dream universe that encircles itself and its dissonant content: The poem begins by depicting a lyrical I who loves someone at night whom he cannot find at daytime
In Tomas Tranströmer’s surreal universe, the dream is not just a guide to the inner world of man. It points to the existence of worlds unfolding in parallel with and beyond what is immediately given, and in that way transcends the Surrealist position. This investigation of dream poems within the modernist tradition has focused on central forms types of dream poems from the perspective of Surrealism, which is the modern European movement that has foregrounded the importance of the dream
Summary
Artur Lundkvist’s “Om natten älskar jag någon . . . ” is a poem that promotes a surreal dream universe that encircles itself and its dissonant content: The poem begins by depicting a lyrical I who loves someone at night whom he cannot find at daytime. The last fixation of the woman is related to the sea as well It reads: “She wades further out where the ebb tide never ceases” [Hon vadar allt längre ut där ebben aldrig upphör] With reference to Freud, we might say that she incarnates Eros and Thanatos These concepts sum up her mythological character as well as the references to life and death in the poem, where the woman appears at once as erotically alluring and life-threatening to those who come close to her. The paradoxical nature of the poem is situated at the trope level, and from a stylistic point of view, it is especially the colliding images of the poem that connect it with the language of Surrealism.2 These images allow the very same woman to be described as a valley, a dice, a sliding.
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