Jesper Svenbro

Jesper Svenbro 2011

Jesper Svenbro (born March 10, 1944 in Landskrona ) is a Swedish poet and classical philologist . In 2006 he succeeded the translator and writer Östen Sjöstrand as a member of the Svenska Academies on chair number 8.

Life

Svenbro's father was a pastor and died when Svenbro was a child. He processed the memories of this experience in later works such as My Father the Pastor . After graduating from high school in his hometown Landskrona, he studied Latin and Greek at Lund University . During his student days he made his debut as a poet with the collection of poems Det är i dag det sker (1966). From 1969 to 1970 he continued his doctoral studies at Yale University from 1970 to 1976 at Lund University. During this time he stayed in Rome for three years before the newly graduated Svenbro moved to Paris in 1977 to continue his research career at the Center Louis Gernet . He wrote his doctoral thesis La parole et le marbre (1976), which deals with the origins of Greek poetry, in French and thus sealed his international research career. The study Phrasikleia (1988), which was strongly oriented towards cultural anthropology, followed later and was translated into English, Italian, modern Greek and German.

The poetry of the French Francis Ponge was interpreted by Svenbro in Ur tingens synpunkt (1977) and translated into Swedish. This source of inspiration changed the direction of his writing and he became the “purest meta-poet” among Swedish authors, a poet who speaks about poetry in his poetry. He shaped the continental final phase of the less metapoietic than more Anglo- Saxon Lundaskola , in which Göran Printz-Påhlson (1931-2006) was a central figure of this group of poets from Lund in the 1950s . Svenbro managed a virtuoso treatment of classical and traditional verse forms and he was able to elegantly combine essential elements of Nordic and classical Greek mythology , as in Särimner (1984) or Samisk Apollon och andra dikter (1993). In between, the collection of poems Hermes kofösaren (1991) appeared, which is considered exemplary in Svenbro's more orthodox metapoietic creative phase. Along with Gradiva och andra dikter (1966) by Göran Printz-Påhlson, it is the most metapoetic of all Swedish poetry collections. The early 1990s were not only the climax of his metapoetry, but also its end.

Blått (1994) is a transitional book and bears the autobiographical traits of his childhood. This was followed by the most voluminous collection of poems to date, entitled Vid budet att Santo Bambino di Aracoeli slutligen stulits av maffian (1996). After a three-year break, exact and concise essays were also published in Swedish - his non-fiction prose was published in French until 1999 - with the titles Myrstigar (1999) and Fjärilslära (2002). Myrstigar treats various Greek figures in a popularizing way, in contrast to the more scientifically written work Phrasikleia . Svenbro then visited the Rome of his youth and wrote the texts for the work Ljuset och rummet (2004), which is illustrated with photographs of the city from 1949 by the classic architectural photographer Lennart af Petersens (1913–2004). To date, seventeen Svenbro's antique studies have been published in Swedish in the anthology Försokratikern Sapfo och andra studier i antikt tänkande (2007).

Svenbro lives in Paris and is Research Director at the Center national de la recherche scientifique .

Awards

• Sveriges Radio Poetry Prize 1993
• Bellman Prize 2000
• Aniara Prize 2000
• Ekelöf Prize 2001
• Övralid Prize 2005

Works

• Det är idag det sker , 1966
• Ur tingens synpunkt , 1977
• Element till en kosmologi och andra dikter , 1979
• Särimner , 1984
• Phrasikleia . Anthropologie de la lecture en Grèce ancienne, Paris 1988
  • Phrasikleia: Anthropology of reading in ancient Greece , German by Peter Geble, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn 2005. ISBN 978-377053973-4 ()
• Hermes kofösaren , 1991
• Samisk Apollon och andra dikter , 1993
• Blått , 1994
• Vid budet att Santo Bambino di Aracoeli slutligen stulits av maffian , 1996
• Myrstigar , 1999
• Installation med miniatyrflagga , 1999
• Ant trails . Figures of writing and reading in ancient Greece , German by Lukas Dettwiler, Literaturverlag Droschl 2000, ISBN 3-85420-551-1
• Pastorn min far , 2001
  • My father the pastor, German by Lukas Dettwiler, afterword: Andreas Mauz, Achius Verlag 2004, ISBN 978-390535108-8
• Fjärilslara , 2002
• Ljuset och rummet , 2004
• Himlen och andra upptäckter , 2005
• Dictars och musiken , 2006
• Försokratikern Sapfo och andra studier i antikt tänkande , 2007
• Vingårdsmannen och hans söner , 2008
• Inget andetag är det andra likt , 2011
• Echo to Sappho : Poems and Essays , German by Lukas Dettwiler, Waldgut Verlag 2011
• John Scheid - Jesper Svenbro, La tortue et la lyre: Dans l'atelier du mythe antique , CNRS 2014
  • Tortoise and lyre: In the workshop of mythology , German by Birgit Lamerz-Beckschäfer, Verlag Philipp von Zabern 2017

literature

• Friedrich Kittler, Thomas Macho: Between noise and revelation: On the cultural and media history of the voice . Oldenbourg Akademieverlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-05-004482-8 , p. 428 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Jesper Svenbro in the catalog of the German National Library
• Jesper Svenbro on the homepage of the Svenska Academies by Jan Arnald (Swedish), accessed on November 24, 2012
• Biography on the website of Bonnier Verlag (Swedish), accessed on November 24, 2012

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lepidopterology on eNotes , accessed on November 28, 2012
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Jan Arnald: Jesper Svenbro (Homepage of the Svenska Academies)
3. ^ Biography at Waldgut Verlag, accessed on November 28, 2012