Gunnar Ekelöf Biography: Swedish poet and writer

Gunnar Ekelöf

 Gunnar Ekelöf, (born Sept. 15, 1907, Stockholm—died March 16, 1968, Sigtuna, Swed.), outstanding Swedish poet and essayist.

Ekelöf exerted great influence on his contemporaries. His radically modern style was influenced by such poets as Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot. In such poetry from the 1930s as Sent på jorden (1932; “Late on Earth”), Ekelöf was drawn to the Surrealist technique of automatism (the spontaneous release of the subconscious in the creative act), but his work also reflects an interest in musical forms and Oriental mysticism. A student of Oriental languages, Ekelöf felt divided between mystical tendencies and rationalism. This conflict is apparent in Färjesång (1941; “Ferry Song”) and Non Serviam (1945; “I Will Not Serve”). Central to Ekelöf’s work is En Mölna-elegi (1960; “A Mölna Elegy”), published in several earlier versions from the mid-1940s. Its starting point is within the mind of the poet, sitting at Mölna dock on a summer day in 1940. Memories from his individual past intermingle with those of history in an endless panorama.

Life and works

Gunnar Ekelöf has been called Sweden's first surrealist poet. He made his debut with the collection sent på jorden ("late on earth") in 1932, written during an extended stay in Paris in 1929–1930, which was too unconventional to become widely appreciated and described by its author as capturing a period of suicidal thoughts and apocalyptic moods. It was in a sense an act of literary revolt akin to Edith Södergran's Septemberlyran of a dozen years earlier. While not disavowing his debut, Ekelöf moved towards romanticism and received better reviews for his second poetry collection, Dedikation (1934). Both the volumes are influenced by surrealism and show a violent, at times feverish torrent of images, deliberate breakdown of ordered syntax and traditional poetic language and a defiant spirit bordering on anarchism ("cut your belly cut your belly and don't think of any tomorrow" runs the black humorous refrain of a poem called "fanfare" in sent på jorden; a collection that eschews capital letters). This defiant externalism was grounded in his person. Though he came from an upper-class background, Ekelöf had never felt committed to it – his father had been mentally ill and when his mother remarried, Ekelöf strongly disapproved of his stepfather, and by extension of his mother; he had become a loner and a rebel by his teens and would never feel at ease with the mores of the established upper and middle classes or with their inhibitions and what he perceived as their hypocrisy and back-scratching.Swedish critic Anders Olsson described Ekelöf's turn to poetry as a choice of "the only utterance that doesn't expurge the contradictions and empty spaces of language and of the mind.

 

Bengt Gunnar Ekelöf (1907-1968)

Gunnar Ekelöf was considered one of Sweden’s leading and most important twentieth-century poets who produced deeply intellectual and challenging works that weave in many different languages and cultural influences. A lifelong outsider, he is known for introducing surrealism and modernism to Swedish poetry, and for his late-career Byzantine trilogy, beginning with D?w?n över fursten av Emgión (1965) (Divan on the Prince of Emgión), which received the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1966.

 

Portrait of Gunnar Ekelöf, 1967.
Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf, 1967. Photo: Pressens Bild (Public domain)
1 July 2019 by Jenny Rood and Juliette Victor

Ekelöf was born in Stockholm in 1907. He studied Oriental languages briefly in London and Uppsala, but never completed his formal education; however, he received an honorary doctorate from Uppsala in 1958.

 

He made his début with a poetry collection called sent på jorden (1932) (Late Arrival on Earth, 1967), his so-called ‘surrealistic suicide book’ influenced by the music of Stravinsky and a stay in Paris. This ground-breaking volume with free verse and non-traditional word usage was followed by Dedikation (1934) (Dedication, 1975); then came his personal breakthrough collection Färjesång (1941) (Ferry Song, 1975) with his characteristic dualism and leitmotifs.

 

For some 20 years Ekelöf worked on En Mölna-Elegi (1960) (A Mölna Elegy, 1984), a taxing work laden with allusions and quotations, many in Latin and Greek. He ventured into the absurd and anti-poetic with Strountes (1955) (Nonsense) and En natt i Oto?ac (1961) (A night in Oto?ac).

 

Ekelöf produced 15 books of poetry, but also four books of translations from several languages (particularly French, German, Latin, Persian, and, notably, T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” from English) and four books of essays. He was deeply influenced by Swedish poet Edith Södergran, and although his style is difficult to imitate, several Swedish poets from the 1940s onward are in turn in his debt, including the 2006 Nordic Council Literature Prize recipient Göran Sonnevi.

 

Ekelöf received several major prizes, including every national Swedish award save the Nobel for literature. Most consider his crowning achievement his Byzantine trilogy: D?w?n över fursten av Emgión (1965) (Divan on the Prince of Emgión), which received the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1966, Sagan om Fatumeh (1966) (The Tale of Fatumeh), and Vägvisare till underjorden (1967) (Guide to the Underworld, 1980). Ekelöf was elected to the Swedish Academy in 1958. He died in Sigtuna in 1968 of throat cancer.

 

Further reading:

Carl Olov Sommar, Gunnar Ekelöf: en biografi [Gunnar Ekelöf: a biography] (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1991).