In 1974, on the 200th anniversary of the Royal Swedish Academy, two Swedish authors shared the Nobel Prize for Literature: Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson. Both belonged to a large group of prominent authors who emerged during the 1920’s and 1930’s from proletarian or rural origins, and who came to dominate Swedish literary life for the next half century. Most of them had very little formal education--they were a generation of autodidacts. Harry Martinson (1904 – 1978), for example, had no formal schooling beyond his thirteenth year, but he had an insatiable appetite for reading, an observant eye, a very good memory, and a vivid imagination. He was also a spellbinding storyteller. After a difficult childhood in various foster homes, Martinson spent the years 1920 to 1927 as a vagabond and sailor on the world’s oceans. Leaving that life behind, he began articulating his experiences and memories in poems. Two years later Martinson’s first book came out, a volume entitled Spökskepp [Ghost ships], and he was a young man with a great deal on his mind. During the next couple of years he published more poetry, two prose volumes depicting his experiences as a vagabond and sailor on the world’s oceans, two autobiographical novels describing his difficult childhood, as well as several books of essays.
Initially, Harry Martinson’s innovative use of language, combined with subject matters that readers found both interesting and moving, quickly transformed him into something of a celebrity. But in 1935 his third book of poems was less than favorably received. One prominent critic suggested that he should stop writing poems for a couple of years, advice Martinson seems to have taken seriously. The result was that he invented something that has been called a new genre in Swedish literature—the philosophical nature essay. There had been earlier forms of nature writing in Sweden, of course, like the famous travel books written by Linneaus, but that hardly amounted to a tradition. What Martinson was after was something original. It was an attempt at combining penetrating and detailed observations of nature based on scientific learning, blending it with philosophical speculation using fresh, poetic language. Occasionally the critics complained that the dense, philosophical language obscured what the writer attempted to say, but most were very impressed when Martinson focused on the observation of nature. Three volumes of nature essays rapidly followed each other Svärmare och harkrank [Sphinx moths and daddy longlegs] in 1937, Midsommardalen [The midsummer valley] the following year, and Det enkla och det svåra [Simple things and difficult things] in 1939.
Also in 1939, Harry Martinson’s eleven-year long relationship with author and feminist Moa Martinson fell apart after years of increasing tensions. In the difficult war years that followed other concerns occupied his life. In 1947 Harry Martinson completed another collection of essays, but the manuscript (titled Gyro) was not published until after his death in 1986. Then another fifteen years passed until Martinson returned to this genre. The result was a collection of thirteen essays and one poem called Utsikt från en grästuva, [Views from a tuft of grass] (1963), and it was also to be his last book of essays.
Compared to his essays from the late 1930’s, Views from a Tuft of Grass reflects many changes. The style has matured and become clearer, and there is less dense philosophical speculation. The range of the material is greater as well. The author’s joyful descriptions of the life of the insects on a summer meadow are precise and evocative; our senses are quickly engaged by the sights and sounds and we are soon transported into this fascinating non-human realm. But the essays are far from limited to the detailed observations of insect life. For example, one explores the characteristics of nature writing itself, and another how our summer awareness is created by the seasons in which we live. It also a much less optimistic book. The last essay, “Letter,” grieves the loss of the quiet and slow-moving rural world of the author’s childhood, and warns that the forces behind the wave of noise, pollution and urbanization that followed in the post-war period might do irreparable harm both to the environment and to ourselves. To a certain degree one could even argue that some of these essays convey an early form of ecological awareness, long before the concept gained circulation outside the world of biologists.
But even though Views from a Tuft of Grass concludes on a somber note, it is still a delightful book that explores a wide range of subject matters. One essay describes the importance that childhood folktales had in shaping the author’s sense of storytelling, and provides an illuminating glimpse into the author’s personal aesthetic. Another essay explores what we can learn about our way of seeing the world from the history of maps. We also discover a thoughtful meditation on the way a poet ought to write his poems. It is precisely because this book is the widest in scope of all of Martinson’s essay books, that this volume of essays has been referred to as a coda.
Harry Martinson was widely known as an author with a remarkable memory, and as a reader it is always a pleasure to follow the rich chains of association that occur in his writing. Even after turning a particular subject over in his mind for an extended meditation, there seem to be no shortage of additional perspectives and ideas. When you think that Martinson has exhausted his subject, he often surprises you by adding, “I would just like to add one more thing, …” Still, no matter how good, no one’s memory is infallible, and this is true of Martinson’s as well. The translators have silently corrected a few minor slips in the original, and—where we felt it would help an American reader with Scandinavian geography, history and literature—added an unobtrusive note or two at the end of each chapter.
Lars Nordström, Ph.D.