Poetry
Marionetterna
Not translated into English
Bo Bergman · 1903
Synopsis
The poem that gives the book its title shows an old gentleman sitting in the hall of heaven: from his hands run thousands of threads, one for each human life he lights, and when he pulls, we bow and pirouette as he wishes. We eat, drink, love, fight, die; everything that happens to us is only tugs on the threads. Around it, other poems, including the one about the star that falls in the evening like a match struck against the sky, and a Stockholm seen by a walker with a sharp eye.
Context
The author's first book, published in 1903, the collection was at once received as a breakthrough. It belongs to the disillusioned, deterministic vein of his early work, which is compared with that of his friend Söderberg; the tone of his work later softened towards a gentler humanism. Wilhelm Stenhammar, Ture Rangström and Karin Rehnqvist set poems by the author to music, and a medal by Berndt Helleberg, in 1979, depicts a scene from the title poem.
Who it is for
A short collection of poems, in Swedish, sombre and disillusioned in tone; it has not been translated into French or English.
Prizes and reception
The debut that immediately established its author as a poet, and whose title poem remains attached to his name.
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