the stable and driven to Kolmården to be alone for a couple of days and have time to catch up with myself. (Kolmården is a woodsy tract between Ostergötland and Södermanland.) I’m sitting in an inn, writing this.
You put some questions in your letter. I think you should let go of the ambition to do some sort of complete Swedish anthology. If you call a book “20 SWEDISH POEMS” you’ve only promised to display exactly 20 SWEDISH POEMS: twenty Swedish poems which I, Robert Bly, have found and which I think are so good that I want to translate them. How one can translate a poem one dislikes I don’t know. Let it be your anthology. It’s not possible anyway to give a representative picture of twentieth-century Swedish poetry in twenty poems. Gullberg should be included for example: he rhymes and seems almost impossible to translate. Eddegren isn’t a big name here, but if you think he’s good then translate him. Martinson should suit you and there’s an endless number of poems to choose among. Come over soon and we’ll go through several kilos of poems. I probably like Martinson best of all the Swedish poets now living. It’s hard to say how much of his greatness lies in linguistic nuances that can’t be translated. But a poet from Minnesota ought to have a decent chance.
Some of your comments about my translation of “Snowfall” etc. arise from a groundless apprehension. PÅ SJON means “at sea” or “on the sea” [“på havet”] in everyday Swedish. That last phrase sounds “literary” and not entirely natural. It’s like this: SJO sometimes means lake, sometimes sea. If you say “en sjö” it always refers to a lake. If you say “sjön” it can also mean the ocean, particularly in such expressions as “på sjön” or “till sjöss” (cf. Eng. sea). Ordinary people, pilots and fishermen for example, don’t use the word “sea” [“hav”] at all. You should bear this in mind when you read Swedish texts.
STRÅNA is an awkward, powerful word, entirely in the same class as CORNSTALKS. No, I don’t want to use “majsstänglarna” [corn + stalks] by reason of the fact that it brings an element of exoticism into (the Swedish) poem. Majs [corn] is something the Swedish reader has seen Disney’s cartoon characters gnawing on or possibly gnawed on themselves from tin cans. What makes translating SNOWFALL so worthwhile is that the poem will strike Swedes as completely natural—a good reader knows right away that this isn’t an interesting exotic product by some American but I have experienced this mystery for myself.
BLEKNAR BORT means, exactly, FADE AWAY. If you like we can write TONAR BORT but that sounds a little bit “literary.” But I think it’s unnecessary. One must have a certain faith in the public’s gifts of comprehension.
FARTYG [ship] should perhaps be changed. Not to “stomme” [framework], which God forbid, but to SKROV [hull], maybe FARTYGSSKROV [ship + hull].
I’ll translate some more of your poems, at least 4–5. Preferably more. I hope in fact that Bonniers (our great, omnipotent publisher) will bring out an American anthology sooner or later—it’s time to be able to read Lowell, William Carlos Williams, Bly, Wright, Wilbur, Levertov and probably some others in a plump selection. Simpson disappointed me a little with his latest book, despite several good pieces. “Redwoods,” which would be right up my alley, won’t work because of the tree itself, which is wholly exotic (cf. my argument above).
To thank you for the three poems (of which especially “Watching Television” gets me going) I’m sending you three unpublished ones of mine. “About History” is probably to some extent influenced by my work with “the poetry of the Sixties.” An attempt to write speechlines, non-rhetorical ones, and not to flinch from the political, the historical. The problem has occupied me for a long time: to write about the reality of the events surrounding us
You put some questions in your letter. I think you should let go of the ambition to do some sort of complete Swedish anthology. If you call a book “20 SWEDISH POEMS” you’ve only promised to display exactly 20 SWEDISH POEMS: twenty Swedish poems which I, Robert Bly, have found and which I think are so good that I want to translate them. How one can translate a poem one dislikes I don’t know. Let it be your anthology. It’s not possible anyway to give a representative picture of twentieth-century Swedish poetry in twenty poems. Gullberg should be included for example: he rhymes and seems almost impossible to translate. Eddegren isn’t a big name here, but if you think he’s good then translate him. Martinson should suit you and there’s an endless number of poems to choose among. Come over soon and we’ll go through several kilos of poems. I probably like Martinson best of all the Swedish poets now living. It’s hard to say how much of his greatness lies in linguistic nuances that can’t be translated. But a poet from Minnesota ought to have a decent chance.
Some of your comments about my translation of “Snowfall” etc. arise from a groundless apprehension. PÅ SJON means “at sea” or “on the sea” [“på havet”] in everyday Swedish. That last phrase sounds “literary” and not entirely natural. It’s like this: SJO sometimes means lake, sometimes sea. If you say “en sjö” it always refers to a lake. If you say “sjön” it can also mean the ocean, particularly in such expressions as “på sjön” or “till sjöss” (cf. Eng. sea). Ordinary people, pilots and fishermen for example, don’t use the word “sea” [“hav”] at all. You should bear this in mind when you read Swedish texts.
STRÅNA is an awkward, powerful word, entirely in the same class as CORNSTALKS. No, I don’t want to use “majsstänglarna” [corn + stalks] by reason of the fact that it brings an element of exoticism into (the Swedish) poem. Majs [corn] is something the Swedish reader has seen Disney’s cartoon characters gnawing on or possibly gnawed on themselves from tin cans. What makes translating SNOWFALL so worthwhile is that the poem will strike Swedes as completely natural—a good reader knows right away that this isn’t an interesting exotic product by some American but I have experienced this mystery for myself.
BLEKNAR BORT means, exactly, FADE AWAY. If you like we can write TONAR BORT but that sounds a little bit “literary.” But I think it’s unnecessary. One must have a certain faith in the public’s gifts of comprehension.
FARTYG [ship] should perhaps be changed. Not to “stomme” [framework], which God forbid, but to SKROV [hull], maybe FARTYGSSKROV [ship + hull].
I’ll translate some more of your poems, at least 4–5. Preferably more. I hope in fact that Bonniers (our great, omnipotent publisher) will bring out an American anthology sooner or later—it’s time to be able to read Lowell, William Carlos Williams, Bly, Wright, Wilbur, Levertov and probably some others in a plump selection. Simpson disappointed me a little with his latest book, despite several good pieces. “Redwoods,” which would be right up my alley, won’t work because of the tree itself, which is wholly exotic (cf. my argument above).
To thank you for the three poems (of which especially “Watching Television” gets me going) I’m sending you three unpublished ones of mine. “About History” is probably to some extent influenced by my work with “the poetry of the Sixties.” An attempt to write speechlines, non-rhetorical ones, and not to flinch from the political, the historical. The problem has occupied me for a long time: to write about the reality of the events surrounding us
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