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Eyvind Johnson (1900-1976) | |
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Swedish working class writer – on his own from the age of 13 – who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature with Harry Martinson in 1974. Eyvind Johnson's early works dealt with his impoverished upbringing and social or political problems. In many of his later novels Johnson tested and questioned the many roles of the storyteller and experimented with time, the interaction between historical events and their interpretation. Often his hero is a battered but resilient humanist. "His work, which mirrors the ideological and technical development of the novel from Hamsun to Faulkner, is pervaded by the political and cultural debates of his time. He regarded the dissolution of the form of of the novel as a necessary step in its development, and saw each of his novels as an experiment in expressing the dark and the bright sides on life." (Sven H. Rossel in A History of Scandinavian Literature, 1870-1980, 1982) Eyvind Johnson was born at Saltsjobaden in Norrbotten, in northern Sweden. When his father, a laborer on the Lapland iron ore railroad, suffered from mental breakdown, Eyvind's mother entrusted her son's upbringing to relatives. At the age of thirteen., Johnson left school and earned his living in odd jobs, mainly as a lumberjack, but also as a sawmill worker, and a locomotive cleaner. Johnson educated himself by reading and in 1919 he settled in Stockholm, where he was for a short time at LM Ericsson's workshop. With some other aspiring young writers he founded the magazine Vår Nutid and wrote for the magazine Brand. He also participated actively in politics and trade unionism. In 1924 he broke with Socialism – the year marked also the beginning of his career as a writer. Most of the 1920s Johnson spent in Berlin and Paris, working among others as a dishwasher. During this period he seriously developed himself to become a writer. In 1921 he moved to Berlin, where he lived for two years. In Paris (1925-30) he wrote for Swedish newspapers. He read the works of John Dos Passos, Alfred Döblin, Marcel Proust, André Gide, and James Joyce, as well as Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud. Through their influence he gradually took distance to traditional novel forms, which culminated in the publication of KOMMENTAR TILL ETT STJÄRNFALL (1929), an attack on capitalist society. The work was a critical success. On his return visits to Sweden Johnson was distressed by its sense of isolation from the rest of Europe. Johnson's first books appeared in the 1920s, among them TIMANS OCH RÄTTFÄRDIGHETEN (1925), STAD I MÖRKER (1927) and STAD I LJUS (1928). These early efforts showed the influence of Hamsun and expressionism. MINNAS (1928) used the inner monologue which was quite new in Sweden. Although Johnson's books inspired discussion about modernism, they were not widely read. In 1927 Johnson married Aase Christiansen and returned to Sweden in 1930 as an established writer and the most important representative of experimental novel of his generation. AVSKED TILL HAMLET (1930) began the series of five books about Mårten Torpare, a character with a background like the author's own. Mårten also learns to reject his ambivalence toward his simple past. REGN I GRYNINGEN (1933, Rain at Daybreak) was concerned with boring office jobs. Between the years 1934 and 1937 he wrote ROMANEN OM OLOF. The four-volume epic was based on Johnson's experiences as a logger and became a classic of Swedish literature. In the life of its young hero, Olof, Johnson blended fairy tale and realism. Typical modernist features include use of inner monologue, changing point of view, and preoccupation with the question of time. The tetralogy - NU VAR DET 1914 (1934), HÄR HAR DU DITT LIV! (1935), SE DIG INTE OM! (1936), and SLUTSPEL I UNGDOMEN (1937) - tells of the story of a young Swedish boy growing up in the sub-Arctic during World War I. Increasingly disturbed by the rising totalitarianism in the 1930s, Johnson worked actively against the onslaught of Nazism and helped establish a link between Resistance in Norway and Sweden. In NATTÖVNING (1938) Johnson's alter ego, Mårten Torpare, gave his account of the times, and SOLDATENS ÅTERKOMST (1940) depicted the fate of a Swedish volunteer who had fought dictatorship in Spain. After his first wife died in 1938, Johnson married Cilla Frankenhauser, and collaborated with her in translations of such writers as Albert Camus, Anatole France, Jean-Paul Sartre and Eugène Ionesco. During World War II Johnson coedited with Willy Bradt the newspaper Et Handslåg for the Norwegian resistance and wrote the trilogy KRILON (published 1941, 1943, and 1945). The work, which weaves together fictional, allegorical, and symbolic levels, condemns Nazi oppression and explores the controversial policy of Swedish neutrality during the war. In the story a real-estate broker, Krilon, establishes a discussion group with his friends and tries to keep it together as a counterforce against totalitarian and corporative pressures. Their enemies are Jekau and Staph, representing the Soviet Union ("tjekan") and Hitler's Germany (Gestapo). The Swedish- American Frank Lind symbolizes Franklin D. Roosevelt and the U.S. At the same time their struggle is an allegory of the events of World War II and the battle between idealism and corruption. In 1947 Johnson condemned Bolshevism in a radio speech, when the Soviet Union celebrated the October Revolution: "Similarities between a Communist state and a Nationalist or Fascist state are greater than differences. The both rule by clichés and blood." His novel STRÄNDERNAL SVALL (1946) was a retelling of Homer's Odyssey and illustrated the moral dilemma of World War II – does good ends justify the means? Following WW II Johnson traveled extensively in Switzerland, where he lived two years (1947-49). Its culture and landscape provided the setting for several of his novels. Johnson was elected a member of the Swedish Academy in 1957. In the 1960s and 1970s ideas of the rising leftists movements did not attract him, and in 1974 he resigned from the writers' association in protest. Johnson died in Stockholm on August 25, 1976. Johnson's early novels show the influence of Marcel Proust, André Gide and James Joyce. Among his best-known novels is perhaps HANS NÅDENS TID, an analysis of the totalitarian ideology, seen through the eyes of the inhabitants of a nation conquered by Charlemagne. The tone is deeply pessimistic, but although the Stalin-like dictator manages to destroy freedom, love and hope remain in dreams. Internationally famous is also STRANDERNAS SVALL (1946), translated as Return to Ithaca: The Odyssey Retold as a Modern Novel, which began a series of novels emphasizing the repetition of history, the illusion of chronological time and the similarity of man's condition under varying circumstances. "Utan tidningar och radio skulle säkert stora delar av mänskligheten tro att allt är så bra som man kan gebärä - också på alla andra ställen på Jordklotet. Ja inbilla sej - kanske - att just de själva borde ha anledning till att vara, att de var lykliga. I brist på telegram och radionyheter och andra raporter skulle de kanhända vara fyllda av största lugn i själen. Människan är i hög grad outforskad. I brist på fantasi eller brist på kunskanp om de andra, skulle människor som har bara fem minuters promenadväg till Helvetet inte ha en aning om att Helvetet fanns så närä deras egen trygghet." (from Några steg mot tystnaden, 1963) At age 46 Johnson began to write historical novels. Among them is DRÖMMAR OM ROSOR OCH ELD (1949), which looks at political trials and executions through the witchcraft trial of the 17th-century French Priest Urbain Grainier. The process also inspired Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun (1952). MOLNEN ÖVER METAPONTION (1957) combined Xenophon's Anabasis with the fate of a Swedish survivor of a German concentration camp. The story moves back and forth between four time levels, between events that happened 2,300 years ago and were retold by the Greeks, the concentration camps, and the 1950s. This narrative method was also used in NÅGRA STEG MOT TYSTNADEN (1963). LIVSDAGEN LÅNG (1964) was an eight-episode chronicle spanning the 9th to 16th cs. "Man kan säga vad som helst on Amerika tämligen ostraffat, men till sist kommer man fram till att USA:s styrka är den för närvarande enda fullviktiga garanten för vår egen trygghet. Om Amerika är starkt - och med det västerlandet - betyder det för oss att vi ännu har möjligheten till vår folkliga självbestämmanderätt kvar. Ifall den styrkan mattas eller drar sig tillbaka i isolationism, återtsår oss det andra: att omfattas av, pressas in i en östlig världs intressen, att bli provinsen eller guvernementet Sverige i protektoratet Europa. Förebilden är de so kallade folkdemokratierna med så kallade folkdomstolar inför vilka själva tanken på västerländsk demokrati betraktas som ett grov brott, som lands- och statsfientlig verksamhet, värd dödsstraff." (first published in Stockholms-Tidningen, on March 13, 1951) For further reading: Eyvind Johnson by Jørgen Claudi (1947); Eyvind Johnson by G.K. Orton (1972); The Ulysses Theme by W.B. Stanford (1963); Den tidlösa historien by S. Bäckman (1975); Eyvind Johnson's historiska romaner by O. Meyer (1977); Romantikern Eyvind Johnson by Thure Stenström (1978); Hamlet i klasskampen by Nils Schwartz (1979); Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature, ed. by Jean-Albert Bédé and William B. Edgerton (1980); Myt och verklighet. Berättandets problem i Eyvind Johnsons roman Strändernas svall by Merete Mazzarella (1981); A History of Scandinavian Literature, 1870-1980, by Sven H. Rossel (1982); Eyvind Johnson och Djävulen by Mona Kårsnäs (1984); Norrbottningen som blev europé by Örjan Lindberger (1986); Människan i tiden by Örjan Lindberger (1990); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 2, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Berättaren Eyvind Johnson by Örjan Lindberger (1999); Eyvind Johnson och Norrbotten by Kjell Lundholm (2000); Eyvind Johnson: bibliografi by Per-Olof Mattsson (2000) Selected works:
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