Swedish Poetry 1
Quiet Bird Quiet bird, black mute bird, by my bre
ast I have warmed you, with my flesh I have fed you. I wanted to teach you about everything. I whistled it to you like a bird seller: this is the sun that gives the rose bush twelve baskets of roses, this is the storm that breaks ships into wrecks. You do not glow, do not imitate, do not softly whistle songs about dear things. Your eyes do not seek a home and hearth next to mine. Maybe you remain quiet while waiting for him who will teach you all of the music of indifference, the saving word? You have a name, quiet bird, your name is my beloved idea. Stina Aronson, from Tolv hav (Twelve Seas), 1930 Translated by Johannes Göransson Stina Aronson The poems written in and around the 1930s can be considered a second debut by the writer. The warning siren blows once more: faced this time with the threat of being ensnared in her own net of words. /…/ Throughout her literary career /…/ a painful struggle is waged between “the sacred unsaid”, “that which is life itself”, and the brutality of the linguistic order. From an article “Hon ville treva varsamt, jag slå fast med bevis”, by Marianne Hörnström in Nordisk kvinnolitteraturhistoria 3 (1996) Stina Aronson (1892-1956) Tolv hav (Twelve Seas, 1930) The poem of sexual passion has been a neglected genre in modern Swedish poetry. Love poems based on actual experience are rare. Stina Aronson is better known in Sweden as a novelist. Her poetry collection Tolv hav was considered so extraordinarily daring that she was forced to publish it under a pseudonym. In this work experience is anchored in an embodied reality, while a dynamic is produced by the collision of the physical with a visionary form language. Although the love affair related in the events of the poems is heading towards its end, the poetic ego does all it can to hold on to the feelings involved. If their love is doomed to fail, the poem has nevertheless done its best–and succeeded–in preserving the intensity of the experience. Collections of Poetry: Tolv hav (1930) Kantele (1949) 21 SWEDISH POETRY