Ralf Parland

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ralf Parland (before 1950)

Ralf Thomas Friedrich Parland (born June 21, 1914 in Vyborg ( Grand Duchy of Finland ), † May 22, 1995 in Stockholm ) was a Finnish-Swedish writer , critic , translator and poet .

Life

Ralf Parland was the youngest son of the engineer Oswald Parland and his wife Marie Julia Sesemann. The British ancestor Parlands moved to St. Petersburg to work for Tsarina Katarina , his mother came from a Baltic-German family known in Vyborg . To avoid the turmoil of the Russian Revolution, the family, which spoke Russian and German, moved to Finland in 1912. He only learned Swedish by attending school in Grankulla near Helsinki . Through his brother Henry , Ralf Parland came into contact with modern literature and the Finnish-Swedish modernist group , which included Gunnar Björling , Elmer Diktonius and Rabbe Enckell , among others . In 1932 he became a student and for a short time took up a technical course.

At the age of twenty, Ralf Parland made his debut in 1934 with the collection of novels shower ("shower"). He then switched between the genres of short prose , poetry and novel. His output includes 25 printed works. In 1939 he worked as a journalist and editorial secretary for the newspaper Viborgs Nyheter , from 1939 to 1947 as a music critic for the Finnish-Swedish newspaper Arbetarbladet and from 1949 to 1958 also for Swedish newspapers and magazines, for example as a literary reviewer for Stockholms-Tidningen .

Due to his multilingual and cosmopolitan background, it was obvious that Ralf Parland also worked as a translator of German, Finnish and Russian works in 1939. This also included Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther from 1949 and Robert Musil's Drei Frauen with an introduction from 1957. Among the unprinted translations, the opera Eugene Onegin by Peter Tchaikovsky after Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse can be mentioned.

During the Second World War , Parland was critical of Finnish politics and the war against the Soviet Union . In his post-war productions, Parland broke away from Diktonius' influence and became more abstract. In the late 1940s he and other Finnish-Swedish authors joined the left-wing literary association Kiila ("Wedge").

In 1948 Parland moved from Finland to Sweden and published poems and short stories of Orwellian science fiction : Eros and Elektronerna (1953) and En apa for till Himmelen (1961). With these works he distanced himself from modernism . He had already shown his interest in myths in Abel y Aifars sånger (1941) and for China and India in Mot fulbordan (1944) . In Hymner från Santsche-Pi (1959) Parland created an anti-utopia with connections to James Hilton's simpler story of Shangri-La . Parland's dystopian science fiction reached its climax with I. En roman om förhävdelsen (1973), a prosaic extension of the Santsche-Pi myth. Sonat för fallskärm och karlebass (1964) showed the author's affection for Russian culture.

During his long life he was in a relationship with the writer Eva Wichman and Helga Henschen , as well as the publisher and translator Berit Skogsberg.

Works (selection)

Novellas

  • Shower , 1934
  • Ebonite , 1937
  • Himlens stenar. Noveller , 1947
  • Hårt ljus: noveller , 1952
  • Eros och elektronerna , 1953
  • Hem till sitt hav: karelska noveller om mycket vatten , 1957
  • En apa for till Himmelen , 1961
  • En Hundpredikan , 1966
  • Regnbågens död , 1970

Poems

  • Avstånd , 1938
  • Mot fullbordan , 1944
  • Oavslutadariuska. Dikter och legender , 1946
  • Nattens eldar: dicter 1938-1948 , 1949
  • Relief: dicter , 1950
  • Brev till ett tomrum , 1951
  • Det blåser ur intet: dikter , 1953
  • Eolita , 1956
  • Hymner from Santsche-Pi , 1959
  • Zodiaken: en diktsvit , 1961
  • Sonat för fallskärm och kalebass , 1964
  • Bländverket: dramatiskt poem i tre satser , 1968

Others

  • Abel y Aifars singers , 1941
  • Mot morgondag: en åhörares betraktelser om musik , 1942
  • De två vägarna: prosa i urval , 1954
  • I: en roman om förhävelsen , 1973

Prizes and awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Book review, English
  2. ↑ a b Ralf Parland in the Swedish translation dictionary
  3. ↑ a b biography on www.kirjasto.sci.fi
personal data
SURNAME Parland, Ralf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Parland, Ralf Thomas Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Finnish-Swedish writer, poet, critic and translator
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Vyborg , Grand Duchy of Finland
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1995
Place of death Stockholm