Edith Södergran

Edith Södergran is a Finnish poetess of expression Swedish born in 1892 and died in 1923. Its popularity in Scandinavia does not cease increasing. She is regarded today as one of the largest Scandinavian poets of this century.

In Scandinavia, one introduces sometimes Edith Södergran like a heiress of the currents Symbolists French, German expressionists, and even futuristic Russian. If it is true that she had a perfect command of German, and that she knew Russian like French, the reading of only one of its poems makes not very relevant the taking into account of these heritages, that it in addition seems difficult to be able to reconcile. These rather contradictory attempts in order to attach it to a movement show well the originality of Edith Södergran, who is really a figure with share. Not that she had wished to withdraw herself in an ivory tower, but the disease, like insulation, contributed to give to its work a print so particular which she seems a strange voice still today, surprising. However, it was astonished itself that one qualified his work " of originale". The originality was not wanted, but " naturelle".

Its life

It was born on April 4th, 1892 in Saint Petersbourg, only child having survived of Matts and Helena Södergran. The family settles in a commune of Karelia, Raivola, where it remains ten years near her mother. She receives a multilingual teaching at the German school of Saint Petersbourg, where she côtoie of young Russians, Germans, Swede and Finn. Curiously, in spite of the multilingualism of teaching, it does not follow any Swedish course, who will be his language of writing.

The father, Matts, gone bankrupt and quickly waste the money of his wife; it seems that the relations of his/her parents pushed Edith to adopt an unquestionable mistrust with respect to the men, often causes disappointments through its work. Without to have been militant, its poems testify sometimes to a reproach in their opposition, them which put up very well with their domination on the women, whose real person interests them rather little:

Tu sought a flower and found a fruit.
You sought a source and found a mer.
You sought a woman and found a heart, you are déçu. (Dagen svalnar, the fraîchit day)

The life of Edith is a succession of tragic events, and especially a permanent meeting with death; his/her adoptive sister, an young girl collected by her mother, named Singa, dies, reversed by a train. In 1904, his/her father is reached Tuberculose. In 1906, seriously sick, it leaves to reside at the Sanatorium of Nummela. Its health condition continues to worsen and he dies in 1907.

In November 1908 it is Edith who falls ill, it also, of tuberculosis. It knows from now on that it has about a chance on three to survive more than ten years.

It moves in its turn with Nummela, there even where it saw her father dying out. The first year, its health improves, and it can turn over to Raivola for the summer; but with the autumn its state worsens and it must turn over to the sanatorium. The two years which follow, the disease gains ground. Depressed, feeling captive of the sanatorium, it does not cease dreaming with other regions, dreams of which it can transfigure the naivety; these regions are not other thing, for it, only the refusal of death, the escape of a corridor towards the death which it knows already.

In 1911, accompanied by her mother, it leaves for Arosa, in Suisse, but it hardly goes better. It is with the sanatorium of Davos-Dorf that a doctor manages to give it on feet thanks to particular care. It seems cured then, and turns over to Raivola. But the disease returns quickly, very quickly, and stronger. It dies out at it, in 1923.

Work

The work of Edith Södergran is rather homogeneous. So much of Poème S announce fugitive impression, like Stjärnorna , " étoiles" , with which the glares strew its garden, being likely to wound the imprudent walker, others evoke concerns plus metaphysics. But the essence of its work testifies to one preparation to death. Died sometimes distressing, sometimes alleviating, and waited.

“Here all died and does not wake up any joy,

if it is not the broken flute which spring

left on bank. ”

She in Den låga stranden , " writes; the bank basse" , but she will say, also, with death, in Ankomst till Hades , " arrival at Hadès" , its last poem:

Tu show me a country merveilleux

where are held tops palmiers

and where between the piliers

vaguenesses of the désir.

The bank is an omnipresent place. It is from there that it seems to be able to observe with far this " country which is not pas" :

Je me languished of the country which is not,

because all that is, I am tired of the désirer.

This strange country which seems to attract the being, in this border place of the shore. Then, the bank can become like the world of the man: an interval worlds, between the impossible life and a sometimes desired, sometimes feared, sometimes refused end. Optimism, confidence in a happy eternity leaves place, most of the time, with a bitter report. On this bank, the man is not at his place:

One says that I was born in captivity here not a face which is known for me.

And it does not remain whereas to observe this disappointing life, and to be solved to think that this place which is not one, is all that the man has of some:

Et nothing is more nauseating than death all seule.

We must like the life of long hours of disease,

of narrow years of desire like short winks when the destiny fleurit.

Because there is not anything else, which is sure, tangible, on which one can count:

Calme you, my child, it has nothing,

there and all such as you are see it: the forest, the smoke and the escape of the rails.

Some share far from here out of ground lointaine

is a more blue sky and a wall with a softer roses

or palm tree and wind and it is tout.

All at the bottom of my garden is a lake somnolent.

Me which likes the ground does not know anything better than the eau.

French bibliography

the country which is not . Translation of Carl Gustaf Bjurström and Lucie Albertini. Paris: The Difference, 1992. ISBN 2729108505

It is possible, moreover, to consult certain exhausted translations, for example with the Library Holy-Genevieve (Paris).

External bonds

complete Works in Swedish
Some translations in French

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