Johannes Edfelt

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Johannes Edfelt at the beginning of the forties.

Johannes Edfelt (born December 21, 1904 in Kyrkefalla , Tibro municipality , † August 27, 1997 ) was a Swedish poet and critic who u. a. with his translations and essays tried to bring German literature closer to the Swedes.

Life and literature

Bo Johannes Edfelt attended high school in Skara and then studied German, Nordic philology and literary history at Uppsala University and Stockholm University . For a short time he taught at a grammar school, later he lived as a freelance writer not far from Stockholm . He was a strict opponent of National Socialism . From 1957 to 1967 he was chairman of the Swedish PEN club and from 1969 a member of the Swedish Academy , where he held seat No. 17. He was also a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and the German Academy for Language and Poetry .

Edfelt wrote poetry - he became famous for his work Högmässa (Hochamt) published in 1934 - and worked as a translator. For example, he translated TS Eliot , Ezra Pound , Georg Trakl , Novalis and Andreas Gryphius . “The affinity to the German poetry of Kästner , Trakl, Heym and Loerke is unmistakable in his poetry .” His poetry appears bitter, concentrated and devoid of illusions. Högmässa is structured according to the ritual of a Christian worship service, its statements are austere and factual. The work contains, for example, the poem Kalla koraler (Cold Chorales) , which is modeled on a spiritual children's song, but the author does not convey confidence in faith, but feelings of uncertainty, threat and fear.

Edfelt was a critic and wrote essays in which he introduced his country to European and especially German poetry from the last centuries, including two works on Heinrich Heine . He was convinced of the importance of Nelly Sachs' poetry . "You can hardly go wrong in assuming that he was one of the driving forces behind the Nobel Prize for them in the Swedish Academy , as well as for Heinrich Böll and Elias Canetti ."

Awards

Works

Swedish first publications

Poetry

  • Gryningsröster 1923
  • Unga dagar 1925
  • Sank in 1929
  • Aftonunderhållning 1932
  • Högmässa 1934
  • I denna natt 1936
  • Järnålder 1937
  • Vintern är lång 1939
  • Sång for reskamrater 1941
  • Elden och klyftan 1943
  • Bråddjupt eko 1947
  • Hemliga slagfalt 1952
  • Under Saturnus 1956
  • Utblick 1958
  • Insyn 1962
  • Ådernät 1968
  • Dagar och nätter 1983
  • Följeslagare 1989
  • Mötesplatser 1992
  • Brännpunkter 1996
  • Dict 2004

prose

  • Dostojevsky 1936
  • Strövtåg 1941
  • Heinrich Heine 1955
  • Årens spegel 1963
  • Birger Sjöberg 1971
  • Profiler och episoder 1973

German-language editions

  • The shadow fisherman. Selected poems . Translated from Swedish by Nelly Sachs. Büchner-Verlag, Düsseldorf and Darmstadt 1960
  • Poems . From the Swedish by Erich Furreg. Bergland, Vienna 1964
  • Fever letter. Prose poems . Translated from the Swedish by Anna-Liese Kornitzky. Hanser, Vienna and Munich 1984, ISBN 3-446-13837-4

Quote

“ [Edfelt's] concentrated, firmly formed poetry achieves the greatest effects with the most economical means. The suggestive imagery has a dark underlying tone of foreignness and coldness. "

- Lexicon of world literature

German-language secondary literature

  • Jessen, Heinrich: Johannes Edfelt. Winner of the Henrik Steffens Prize 1967 . In: Outlook . Bulletin of the German Foreign Society. No. 18 (May 1967), H. 1/2, pp. 9-12.
  • Gustav Korlén : Our last poet. On the death of Johannes Edfelt . In: Yearbook 1997 . German Academy for Language and Poetry , Darmstadt, ISBN 3-89244-285-1 .
  • Edfelt, Johannes . In: Gero of Wilpert (ed.) Encyclopedia of World Literature A-K . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-59050-5 .
  • Artur Bethke , Horst Bien u. a .: Northern European literatures . VEB Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig, 1980.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gustav Korlén: Our Last Poet, p. 200
  2. ↑ Ulf Wittrock in: Nordic literature history . Volume II. Fink, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-7705-2105-6
  3. ↑ Gustav Korlén: Our Last Poet, p. 201
  4. ↑ Edfelt, Johannes . In: Gero von Wilpert (ed.): Lexicon of world literature AK . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1997, p. 411
personal data
SURNAME Edfelt, Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Edfelt, Bo Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish poet, translator, critic and essayist
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Kyrkefalla , Tibro (municipality)
DATE OF DEATH August 27, 1997