Booklover — Controversy

Column Editor: Donna Jacobs (Retired, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425) <donna.jacobs55@gmail.com>

Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, both natives of Sweden, shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature. Johnson — “for a narrative art, far-seeing in lands and ages, in the service of freedom” and Martinson — “for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos.” Curiosity fact, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been shared four times with the 1974 prize being the last time to date.

Seems simple enough except for the controversy and it was very controversial. Both Johnson and Martinson were members of the Nobel academy and three other authors were on the shortlist for the prize in 1974. Critics considered this awarding incestuous, corrupt and beneath the integrity of the academy. Supporters felt the two authors were deserving and the award too long in coming. History suggests that the controversy compromised both authors resulting in their early demise. Johnson died in 1976 and Martinson died in 1978.

Eyvind Johnson

Dust covers are meant to give the reader a tease. The dust cover of Johnson’s 1949 novel Dreams of Roses and Fire had been disassembled and pasted into the front of the book I checked out from the Clemson Library. The tease for me was three-fold:

1) “The novel was instrumental in his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1974.”;

2) it was “already considered a European classic”; and

3) “a reading experience of unusual intensity.” Intensity is a mild descriptor for this novel, to say the least.

Introductions to complex works of literature can be essential to fully appreciate the work. This is true of Monica Setterwall’s “Introduction” to Johnson’s novel Dreams of Roses and Fire. The narrative from two perspectives is based on a historic event and a historic figure, Urbain Grandier (spelled Grainier in the book). Setterwall gives elements for the reader to consider; a bit of biography; props to the translator Erik J. Friis for tackling Johnson’s difficult writing style; and perspective for this work of historical fiction — “Historical facts can only be transmitted as echoes through the subjective eyes of the beholder or listener.” The reader can now begin this story, set in France in the 1600s and delivered in phenomenal detail, about village life, religion, power, demonic possession, exorcism, fire and dreams about roses. There were too many excerpts noted to share, but they are difficult to appreciate without story context. However, these two illustrate the exquisite, elegant beauty of both the writing and the translation.

Changes

“Mortar comes loose slowly and falls down from a surface made a long time ago and the stone underneath is graying, crumbling, or is getting darker. Forests sway as they rove across hills and plains: a wave of forests receding a few yards toward the south or toward the north, gnawed off at the edges where the peasant’s axe and hoe penetrate for a generation or two. Later, in a movement that we with our limited view, our time-conditioned shortsightedness believe is immobility, the forest rolls, surges or slinks back for a generation or two when the axe and hoe have fallen out of the old man’s hands; — a forest buries, absorbs, and changes both man and hoe, before it once again pulls back when the new roving fields and meadows drive it away and want to take its place in the plains or on the hills of Touraine, Poiters, Vienne.”

A Night in the fall of 1633

“One candle had almost burned itself out, and when the wick at last bent down toward the puddle of wax, he took the candle snuffers from the pewter bowl and waited. He snuffed it out when the blue flame began to flicker. The burnt wick remained in the hollow of the snuffers, its tip still glowing. The smoke stung his nose. He reached out and put out the other candle. The room was dark but some light entered from outside. It came from an undetermined source flickering above the crucifix on the wall, shining with faint gleams on the dark table top, at the edge of the pewter bowl and across the worn leather of the armchair. He dropped the candle snuffers into the bowl. The tip and the blades made a dull scraping noise against the pewter.”

Harry Martinson

When searching the Internet for a work of Martinson’s poetry to read and share, the website: www.nobelprize.org provided a nice selection to choose from. This offering from Passad published in 1945 and translated by Stephen Klass seemed appropriate as a compliment to Johnson’s Dreams of Roses and Fire

“Waves from all upheavals turn swiftly old and paths from all upheavals soon become highroads. What is left is a longing for something not the wheel of appetites or revenges. Man is best when he wishes good he cannot do and stops breeding evil he finds easier to do. He will still have a direction. It will have no end in view. It is free from unsparing endeavor.”