This dissertation, which has been given the title "Writing and Intertextuality in the Poetry by Johannes Edfelt", consists of three main parts called "The Mind as a Medium", "The Dream of History," and "Utopia of Writing". The starting-point has mainly been intertextual but my method also draws on thematic criticism. The term writing corresponds with Roland Barthes' l'écriture in a publication from 1953.
In "The Mind as a Medium", I firstly sketch an outline of earlier research on Edfelt's poetry. Then the central concepts 'writing' and 'palimpsest' are defined. A brand new term, referring to the smallest communicative component part in an allusion, is launched. These so-called alludemes are here divided into seven different subcategories with connection to (1) word choice, (2) clause structure, (3) rhythm, (4) spelling, (5) imagery, (6) theme, and (7) composition. In several cases, they can be negated and the internal order reversed. "The Dream of History" maps out allusions in Edfelt's poetry during the 1930's and the 1940's. The final part, "Utopia of Writing", sums up the atmosphere during that period while results are discussed and summarized to the background of the Edfelt's literary project and his impressions from psychoanalysis and New Criticism. Keywords are here polyphony, palimpsest, and paradox.
By means of a divided writing that lacks inner harmony, our poet's aim is both to identify himself with history and to change its foundations. Like T. S. Eliot, he emphasizes the role of the writer as a medium not only to his surrounding and its living past but also to a possible future. This resistance in the presence is the same as to work as an artist. "A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest", Eliot writes in his essay on "Philip Massinger" (1920, ed. 1941 p 206), a remark that his Swedish colleague seems to have paid heed to. Other important sources for inspiration in the latter's poetical works are evidently Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung.
According to Edfelt's essay "Marginalia" (1943), the imagery holds an exceptional position in his literary method. This manner not only links up with currents in that moment of time but also, in its details, with considerably older literature. Many themes and symbols (e.g., the love flame, the flood's way into the sea, the lover's wine, the musical instrument of the soul, the forest organ, the copper sky, the life as a stage, and the inner bars ), like a great number of more or less correct quotations, lead us back to an ancient origin but are also present in the works by Dante, William Shakespeare, Georg Stiernhielm, Erik Johan Stagnelius, Søren Kierkegaard, Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustaf Fröding, and Erik Axel Karlfeldt. Edfelt's use of such traditional elements shows, in its purpose, similarities both with Plato's doctrine of ideas and Jung's teachings about archetypes.
The night is an essential symbol for Edfelt and, as in the Christian mysticism, it denotes both destruction and rebirth of the soul. This holds good for imagery of water and fire, as well. However, the darkness and the well in these texts are also symbols for the unconsciousness in psychoanalysis. The starry sky is associated with archetypes but, at the same time, it expresses vulnerability of life, as in "Gavott" ("Gavotte"; 1932 p 54): "Föraktfullt glittra alla,/ och ingens blick är god [ ]." ("All are contemptuously glittering and no one's eye is nice.") This conception of the world not only covers the existential situation of humankind but also hard times of that period. Edfelt simultaneously gives a new, ominous meaning to St. Paul's familiar wording in his Epistle to the Galatians (3:28: "Here is neither Jew nor Greek"): "Den som vet, hur Chios ödelades,/ den som sett galiziska pogromer [ ];/ borta är hans tro på goda gnomer" ("The one who knows how Chios was ravaged, the one who has seen Galizian pogroms [ ]; gone is his faith in good gnomes"), some lines in "Purgatorium III" (ID p 15) read, which, apart from Karlfeldt's poem "Inför freden" ("With Peace at Hand"; 1927 p 9) and its German gnomes, also alludes to persecution of ethnic minorities.
An image with heavy intertextual connotation is the bars of the soul, which we find already in the debut volume under the heading "Fången" ("The Prisoner"; Gryningsröster p 11). Symbolism and framing could in several cases have been taken over from Gustaf Fröding's well known poem "En ghasel" ("A Ghasel"; 1891 s 67); however, this imagery seems to originate from Plato's dialogue Faidon (ed. 1984 p 101). A scene similar to Edfelt's, where the study is conceived both as a prison and a miniature universe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe describes in his tragedy Faust. The intertextual dialogue with Fröding occurs as a negative alludeme in the 30's poem "Avsked" ("Parting"; 1936 p 52) with its alba mood and erotic mysticism. The same theme, where the bars symbolizes limitations of life, one also finds in "Osynligt land" ("Invisible Land"; 1941 p 85). The repetition of this image becomes a kind of intertextual ghazál in dialogue both with the poet's own production and the symbolist of the 1890's.
Like a Charles Baudelaire, Edfelt do not hesitate in depicting the unpleasant sides of life and its horrors, which can be rendered in the shape of drowning, as in T. S. Eliot, or to the background of subterranean and room symbolism where the world is regarded as a prison, a hotel room, a school, a stage, or an asylum. This type of imagery follows patterns from baroque as well as Romanticism, from early symbolism as well as expressionism. Against the stuffiness of the I in the moment of time, Edfelt puts a higher form of existence that can be reached through the emotional fellowship with another subject of the opposite sex. Well-aware of the resonance in his imagery the poet compares the union of two bodies and souls to a recovered native country.
The many double exposures, like allusions to the Bible and Dante among other things, in "Förklaringsberg" ("Mountain of Elucidation"; 1934 p 75) make a contribution to the idea of crossing frontiers and strengthen the poem's theme of ascension. Also Birger Sjöberg is here an important intertext. The formulation "ditt underliga hjärtas slag" ("the beats of your peculiar /strange/ heart") in Förklaringsberg" seems to be reshaped from Bertil Malmbergs poem "Förvandling" ("Transformation"; 1927 p 52) where the I speaks of "ditt främmande, sällsamma hjärtas slag" ("the beats of your strange, peculiar heart"). Our poet has in this context also borrowed phrases and imagery from Hjalmar Gullberg's "Kärleksroman XIII" ("Love Novel XIII"; 1933 p 19), which in turn seems inspired from Baudelaire's "Parfum exotique" (1857; ed. 1942 p 25) concerning word choice and erotic imagery. To the background of a review signed Georg Svensson in Bonniers Litterära Magasin (No. 9 1932), Edfelt's paraphrase could be seen as a literary challenge: "Den sista cykeln i Gullbergs samling heter 'Soluppgång' och där förklarar skalden i hänryckta strofer att han är på marsch mot ett nytt ljus, bra likt ljuset från förklaringens berg" ("The last cycle in Gullberg's collection is called 'Sun Rise' where the poet in rapturous strophes explains that he is on the march towards a new light, very much alike the light from the mountain of elucidation"), Svensson wrote (p 62) using the same metaphoric phrase that Edfelt two years later places as a heading above one of his poems in Högmässa ("High Mass", 1934). Consequently, the poet's intertextuality also includes critics. With a paraphrase on negative reviewers' word choice and under influence from theorists like T. S. Eliot and Hans Ruin, Edfelt in his essay "Lyrisk stil" ("Lyric Style"; 1941 p 311) states that a poet "i hög grad är instrument och barometer för tidstrycket" ("to a high degree is instrument and barometer for the time pressure"). Freud's description (GS 2 p 438) of dream censorship as a "Widerstand" that creates symbols is possibly a contributory cause to the modification of the text, which was published in 1947 (p 95) saying that "en diktare är medium och motstånd, aldrig enbart en seismograf för världens tillstånd" ("a poet is medium and resistance, never solely a seismograph for the state of the world").
Edfelt archaizes modern society in a way that reminds of the Swedish poet E. A. Karlfeldt; for this purpose he uses mainly a traditionalistic imagery and literary allusions. From the symbolist's "Dina ögon äro eldar" ("Your Eyes are Fires"; 1901 p 50), our writer has borrowed stuff for his poem "Människa" ("Human"; 1941 p 93). Here one can find again the woman's burning eyes as well as the man's urgent request for her to turn his soul on fire; but while there in Karlfeldt exists an outspoken hesitation ("Jag vill brinna, jag vill svalna" ("I want to burn, I want to cool down")), a clear knowledge of the wasting properties of fire ("Som en höstkväll låt oss brinna" ("Like an autumn night let us burn")), Edfelt's stanzas are going more for a redeeming motive: "du av vars blodomlopp/ natten blir sommarklar" ("you from whose blood circulation the night becomes bright as [in] summer"). According to earlier research, Karlfeldt's image of the flame as a metaphor for love goes back to the Swedish translation of the Song of Songs (6:4) in the Bible from 1703 where the bridegroom says to his beloved: "Wändt tin ögon ifrå migh, förty the giöra migh brinnande" ("Turn your eyes away from me for they make me burn"). The unity between terrestrial and divine in Edfelt's poem is paratextually emphasized by the heading "Human".
As Dante, our poet gives his woman shape of a shimmering saint, a soul's companion in a dark and horrible time where felicity, in reach for the pilgrim, is symbolized by firelight in his lady's eyes. The author of La Commedia (3, XVIII, 20f) presumably alludes to the same Bible passage as Karlfeldt above though in Vulgata's Latin version of Canticum canticorum ("averte oculos tuos a me quia ipsi me avolare fecerunt", that is to say "turn your eyes away from me for they make me fade away"): "Volgiti e ascolta;/ che' non pur ne' miei occhi è paradiso" ("Look around, paradise is not only in my eyes"), says Beatrice confronted with the pilgrim's admiration of her burning appearance and she is given an intertextual reply in Edfelt's "Människa".
Dead things and abstract concepts are repeatedly apostrophized by the poet, often as a religious invocation, which creates a feeling of an animated universe; this proceeding leads one's thoughts to Pär Lagerkvist's expressionistic poetry. The depicted humans in Edfelt are, possibly as another influence from the same direction and Swedish hymn lyrics, reduced to some solitary characteristic or part of the body and are, as in Plato's dialogue Laws, exposed to higher powers' cynical game. Even God's presence is represented by a hand or a tool. Together with the four elements, this style, which is called synekdoke, gives a decreased and reduced impression reminding both of baroque and modernism. But the animated landscape also shows affinity with ancient topoi, Shakespeare's dramas, romantic poetry, and Baudelaire's "spleen". The similarity to the literary technique in Birger Sjöberg's Kriser och kransar ("Crises and Wreaths"; 1926) is obvious when you study the combination of mindscape with concrete details; moreover, other correspondences are stilistical features as neologisms, genitive metaphors, dialogue, and personification.
Otherwise, the animated landscape seems related to Bertil Malmberg's autumnal sceneries. In his poem "Aning" ("Presentiment"; 1927 p 45), there are, apart from several verbal correspondences to Edfelt's "Demaskering" ("Unmasking"; 1934 p 51: "Den skall komma, denna stund,/ denna isande minut" ("It will come, that moment,/ that icy minute"))--as demonstrated by Ulla-Britta Lagerroth (1993 p 160f), also the same chilly emotional situation filled with agony: "Det kan komma en stund/ i din mörknande höst,/ då du väcks av orkanens och vanvettets röst" ("There may be a moment in your darkening autumn when the voice of the hurricane and insanity wakes you up"). However, this text also, in accordance with the multilayer principle that the poet applies, contains some distinct references to Søren Kierkegaard's publication Enten--Eller ("Either--Or") where a famous metaphor speaks of how "der kommer en Midnatstime, hvor Enhver skal demaskere sig" ("a midnight hour will come when everyone has to unmask oneself"). As far as word choice and imagery are concerned, this very situation, where man are confronted with the examination of God, seems to be taken over from the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber's publication Ich und Du (1923). A negative alludeme is the spiritual reprieve that the subject in "Demaskering" says he is missing; this notion is also essential in Christian faith. Edfelt's metaphoric uses of religiously ringing words like "mercy" and "moment" seems otherwise affected from Malmberg.
Dealing with the writing ("l'écriture") in Edfelt, we will find that he, concerning intonation, norms, and nature of word choice, mainly resembles Bo Bergman, even though he, superficially looking, belongs to another school than the Swedish symbolist tradition. The opening lines of his 50's poem "Drömspel" ("Dream Play"; 1956 p 17), where the heading obviously is alluding to August Strindberg's pre-expressionistic drama from 1902, could be viewed as a literary description of the intertextual situation--both concerning the sudden feeling of a repetitive occasion (what Barthes calls déjà lu ) and polyphony in the dialogue. Besides, this theme connects with a fundamental idea in A Dream Play by Strindberg where the Lawyer, in an allusion to Kierkegaard, describes one of the trials in life (p 287) thus: "Gentagelsen... Omtagningar!... Gå tillbaks! Få bakläxa!... " ("Repetition... Repeats!... Going back! Doing it all over again! ...") Later on in the play the Daughter says to the Poet (p 311): "Mig tycks att vi stått någon annanstans och sagt dessa ord förr." ("It seems to me as if we've been standing somewhere else saying these words before.") Even the drama genre in itself can, as we know, be associated with repetition and returns. At the same time as the allusion on the heavenly sent god's daughter in Edfelt actualizes themes like rebirth and descension from his own 30's and 40's poems, "Drömspel" contains clearly perceptible echoes from Bo Bergman's poem "Venetianskt skuggspel" ("Venetian Shadow Play"; 1919 p 207), to which the postsymbolist's discourse seems to be in a complex relationship. In addition to the Italian motive combined with a verbally similar title, which suggests that our senses should not be trusted, and the imagery of a world in decay, the younger poet also seems to have taken over Bergman's manner to let the voyage upon the glassy surface, in distinct verse bindings, get an escaping, undulation-like nature.
Concerning the mystical experience of unity, it is possible to connect Vilhelm Ekelund to Edfelt's use of so called cryptologisms, that is expressions, which in a larger context get a different meaning than the usual mainly because of their high frequency. An example of such a key word is 'music'. Moreover, earlier research has overlooked the significance of prototypes like Ernst Josephson, Gustaf Fröding, and Erik Axel Karlfeldt. Another underestimated name in this discussion is Charles Baudelaire. Consequently, our poet to a large extent has brought in impulses from expressionism and symbolism. We are confronted with both the cosmic enlarged subject, as an image for the pure feeling on a white screen, and the double projection of landscape and mood.
During the 30's and 40's, many poems by Edfelt show a total structure not at all corresponding to the Aristotelian unity of action, time, and room. This method seems to have come about under influence from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) where musical and psychological principles are used in a similar way. Like the discourse in the Swedish poet, the English poem is polyphonic through different character voices that sounds together in a dialogue but also through allusions, which produce so called dialogicity. In Edfelt, this echo-effect is amplified by assonances and rhymes. Besides, there are thematic correspondences with the older poet, for example, in the criticism of the industrial society.
In 1932, Karin Boye and Erik Mesterton published a Swedish translation of "The Waste Land" in the magazine Spektrum (vol. 2, No. 2, pp 25 - 44) together with an introduction to Eliot's poetry (No. 3, pp 41 - 53). In the same year, Edfelt wrote "Getsemanegränd" ("Getsemane Alley"; HM s 53), which by means of a related aesthetics contains several references to older literature. Apart from a similar atmosphere in the opening stanza of Fröding's poem "Smeden" ("The Blacksmith"; 1910 p 37), there are the same topic and comment and the corresponding rhyme pair "hvalf" - "skalf" ("vault" - "quaked"). The phrase "från hjässan till fotabjället" ("from the top of the head to the feet") that is found in Edfelt's poem, originates from a passage in Deuteronomy (28:15, 35). When the poet compares the world to a stage or an asylum he uses a traditional imagery whose foremost representative probably is William Shakespeare. A common theme with city connection in Edfelt is the anguish whose existentialistic tradition ranges from the Book of Hiob and Augustine to Kierkegaard, from Baudelaire and Freud to Pär Lagerkvist and Bertil Malmberg. Such suffering of the soul our poet associates to the past as well as to the future. This component appears under the influence of psychoanalysis' description of trauma and to the background of Hegel's consciousness of death and Kierkegaard's assumption of existential freedom.
Sometimes Edfelt builds on metric structure of older poetry. The taken over rhythm could, with the poet's experience of tempo in mind, be assumed to have influenced other mood making factors in his own discourse. This holds good for "Förklaringsberg", which concerning not only meter and rhyme construction but also word choice, imagery, and syntax has obvious similarities to both Sjöberg's "I Ditt allvars famn" ("In Your Arms of Seriousness"; 1926 p 22) and Fröding's "Atlantis" (1894 p 142). The rhyme structure AbAbOb in Edfelt seems mainly borrowed from the latter, which in the corresponding positions has the order AbAbOOb. Besides, several similar expressions can be found in the poem, even line endings. The construction in "Förklaringsberg" also seems to be influenced from Sjöberg's combination of imagery, trochées, and cæsura in the expressionistic I "Ditt allvars famn" where hearing in a similar way is associated with water and imagery of doom and destruction.
The intertextuality in Edfelt displays dialectical unity, which arises from the murmur of voices of the past. Such a synthesis occurs, speaking to Michail Bachtin, de facto on a higher level than the traditionally monological. In his mature poetry, Edfelt for this polyphonic purpose resumes early prototypes like Ernst Josephson, Gustaf Fröding, Bo Bergman, and Pär Lagerkvist thereby linking up with his own Gryningsröster ("Dawn Voices"; 1923) and Unga dagar ("Young Days"; 1925). My aim has been to show how such reading impressions in a transformated form have had a determining significance for the mature poetry and that this development, at least partially, occurs in association with the psychoanalytic idea about the early living years' importance for the grown-up personality.
From Aftonunderhållning ("Evening Entertainment"; 1932) on, there are allusions to Swedish writers to a seemingly greater extent than earlier: Haquin Spegel, Johan Olof Wallin, Esaias Tegnér, Erik Johan Stagnelius, August Strindberg, Viktor Rydberg, Ernst Josephson, Gustaf Fröding, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Vilhelm Ekelund, Pär Lagerkvist, Harriet Löwenhjelm, Birger Sjöberg, Bertil Malmberg, Erik Blomberg, and Hjalmar Gullberg; moreover, one can distinguish internationally well known names like Homer, Aischyl, Sophocle, Sappho, Plato, Plutarch, Plotin, Horace, Ovid, Dante, William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich von Schiller, Charles Baudelaire, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, T. S. Eliot, Bertolt Brecht, Martin Buber, and Eugene O'Neill. There are plenty of allusions to mythology and historical events, as well.
One of these polyphonic poems is "Symposion" (1939 p 46), which refers to Plato, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Tegnér, and Fröding. Apart from the heading Edfelt's poem has the consuming of great amounts of vine and the tribute to a speaker in common with Plato's dialogue Symposion, which thereby gives shape to the dilemma hiding in the world's silent reaction to ovations at fascist's mass meetings in the 30's. In his essay "Marginalia" (1943), Edfelt connects Nietzsche's pair of notions "Apollonic" and "Dionysic"--originating from his description of the birth of tragedy--to literary currents of that time. Evidently, Kierkegaard uses Plato's dialogue as an intertext for his short story "In vino veritas" (1845). In attaching several references to the ancient philosopher in "Symposion", among them the heading, Edfelt has been aware of this state of things. Esaias Tegnér combines, in his translation of Oelenschläger's "Skaldens hem" ("The Poet's Home"), Plato's world of ideas with a philosophical banquet, literary allusions, Christian and ancient symbolism in a manner that seems to anticipate Edfelt's poetry and particularly the newly mentioned "Symposion", which possibly is a contributory cause to the poet's intertextual reply in "Fosterland" ("Native Country"; 1936 p 41).
When the same symbol is used for visualizing opposite phenomena it becomes to a reconciliation between them at heart. Bengt Landgren (1977 p 98), who has demonstrated how the poet's complex of imagery follows a uniform pattern, overlooks that images and allusions are part of an extensive effort for harmony. To reach the whole we have to listen to our own unconsciousness. The love scenes depict the mind in touch with the past and an obliteration of the I, a fact that belongs to the mysticism of poetry and a dialogue about a renewal of the writing (l'écriture), which comes into existence with themes like destruction and resurrection.
The choice of the hesperids from ancient myth as a symbol for a coming cultural and moral renaissance, in Edfelt's poem "I denna natt" ("In This Night"; 1936 p 5), gets additional deep perspective if one looks at these Nyx' (the Night's) daughters to the background of a well known Stagnelius quotation (SS 2 p 54) with ancient heritage: "sjung i bedröfvelsens mörker:/ Natten är dagens mor, Chaos är granne med Gud" ("sing in the darkness of despair: The night is mother of the day, Chaos is God's neighbour"). In "Tunnel" ("Tunnel"; 1941 p 91) some lines allude to the Romantic's imagery: "Vilken lättnad, då kompakta/ skuggor veko i ens hjärna!" ("What a relief when compact shadows collapsed in one's brain!")
Besides, the formulation "Kaos, föd en morgonstjärna!" ("Chaos, give birth to a morning star!") in the same stanza alludes to Nietzsche's publication Also sprach Zarathustra (ed. 1893 p 15): "Ich sage euch: man muss noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können. Ich sage euch: ihr habt noch Chaos in euch." Something similar Edfelt has given expression to in his essay "Poeten och samtiden" ("The Poet and His Time"; 1941 p 62) where he simultaneously links up with Martin Buber's metaphoric language: "Aldrig var det mer angeläget att framhålla ordningens nödvändighet än i de tider, då kaos stod vid tröskeln. Sist och slutligen måste sången leva och andas under dubbelstjärnorna Frihet och Ordning." ("It was never more urgent to point out the necessity of order than in periods when chaos was standing at the threshold. Finally, the song must live and breathe under the double stars Freedom and Order.")
I. Medvetandet som medium | II. Drömmen om historien | III. Språkets utopi | Blackbird's Nest