Modernistische Dichtung als Kulturwissenschaft? Der Fall Gunnar Ekelöf

Abstract

The paper deals with the poetological propositions of one of the major Scandinavian Modernist poets Gunnar Ekelof. My argument is that Ekelof was one of those Modernist writers who saw literature from the perspective of a Weltkultur. I’m framing my reading of his intertextual collages, especially A Molna-elegy in that context. The question of literary predecessors, tradition, dialogue and cultural ancestry becomes extremely important in Ekelofs poetological propositions. His “ultramodernist” techiques as the use of a wide range of intertextual strategies or cultural recycling, are expressions of a cultural nostalgia rather than a proclamation of an aesthetic revolution. The perspective of a global culture that transgresses the borders of time and space directs the Swedish poet to the conception of poetry as a kind of culture science.