“Fragment of What Will Happen”

Abstract

Abstract The Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015), winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature, is known for the perceptive metaphors in his poems “couched in deceptively spare language, crystalline descriptions of natural beauty and explorations of the mysteries of identity and creativity.” Although Tranströmer himself never made a secret of the religious tendency in his work, there is some discussion about the importance of the religious dimension in his poems, which are widely acclaimed in Sweden, a predominately secular country. This article discusses several discourses exploring the religious dimensions of Tranströmer’s poetry, and presents a new approach for understanding the religious and spiritual aspects of his art based on the work of philosopher of religion John D. Caputo. Caputo’s “hauntology” is claimed to be conducive in reading Tranströmer’s poetry as a religious text. A “hauntological” reading of the poetry of Tranströmer interprets the event that is haunting the poems, and suggests a new way of conceiving a religious insight in a work of modern art.