{"id":9336,"date":"2021-07-23T03:00:31","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T03:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/?p=9336"},"modified":"2021-07-23T03:00:31","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T03:00:31","slug":"summery-prose-with-harry-martinsons-juninatten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/summery-prose-with-harry-martinsons-juninatten\/","title":{"rendered":"Summery Prose with Harry Martinson’s Juninatten"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay<\/p><\/div>\n


\nIt\u2019s July, almost August in fact. And although we’re technically over the Midsommar <\/em>hump, I feel like summer only just arrived. Long days still fade into mild evenings and the sun sparkles gently as it sets into any of Minnesota\u2019s 10,000 lakes. This week, I want to share a poem that captures that feeling. <\/span>Juninatten<\/span><\/i> was written by Nobel Laureate Harry Martinson and voted the favorite summer poem by Dagens Nyheter <\/em>readers in 2020. This week, we\u2019ll meet Martinson, learn a bit about his truly fascinating life and work, and read the short, but oh-so-sweet poem, <\/span>Juninatten<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Rocky Start for Harry Martinson<\/span><\/h2>\n

Harry Martinson was born in 1904 in the southern Swedish province of Blekinge. When Martinson was 6, his father died of tuberculosis and his mother emigrated to the U.S. a year later. Martinson was orphaned with the rest of his siblings. With help from the local parish, he attended school and lived on various farms in the area. In his late teens, he ran away to work as a sailor traveling around the world, embracing a vagabond lifestyle. This most certainly inspired his first collection of poems <\/span>Sp\u00f6kskepp<\/span><\/i> (\u201cGhost Ship\u201d) in 1929, and<\/span> Nomad<\/span><\/i> in 1931.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

A Dreamer and a Stargazer<\/span><\/h2>\n

This week\u2019s poem <\/span>Juninatten<\/span><\/i> was published in the 1953 work <\/span>Cikada<\/span><\/i> a dedicaion of his love to natural science<\/span>. Shortly thereafter, he released the epic science fiction poem <\/span>Aniara<\/span><\/i>: <\/span>en revy om m\u00e4nniskan i tid och rum<\/i><\/b>, his international claim to fame. <\/span>The work depicts the tragedy that occurs when a spaceship of Mars-bound colonists is set off course. This existentialist weaving of space and humanity was a key contributor in his earning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974, \u201cf<\/span>or writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos.\u201d Criticism for his selection as a Nobel Laureate eventually led to Martinson committing suicide in 1978. There\u2019s much more to the story of Harry Martinson, that I won\u2019t go into – read his biography via the <\/span>Nobel Prize\u2019s website.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Juninatten<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

In 2020 Dagens Nyheter took a poll<\/a> of readers’ favorite summer poems. <\/span>Juninatten <\/span><\/i>won by a landslide. As you read the Swedish version of the poem below, notice first the sentence structure; every line is written in <\/span>omv\u00e4nd<\/span><\/i> or flipped word order, or with the subject coming after the verb. For example, Nu g\u00e5r solen.. <\/em>instead of Solen g\u00e5r nu… <\/em>Paying close attention to parts of speech with help you decipher this poem. Is the word an adjective, like daggig<\/em> or an adverb like knappast<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Read the poem a few times, then give it a listen with the link below. Next, look up words you don\u2019t know, and finally, finish by reading the English version. Enjoy!<\/span><\/p>\n

Juninatten<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span>av Harry Martinson<\/span><\/p>\n

Nu g\u00e5r solen knappast ner,
\n<\/span><\/i>bl\u00e4ndar bara av sitt sken.
\n<\/span><\/i>Skymningsb\u00e5rd blir gryningstimme
\n<\/span><\/i>varken tidig eller sen.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Insj\u00f6n h\u00e5ller kv\u00e4llens ljus
\n<\/span><\/i>glidande p\u00e5 vattenspegeln
\n<\/span><\/i>eller vacklande p\u00e5 v\u00e5gor
\n<\/span><\/i>som l\u00e5ngt innan de ha m\u00f6rknat
\n<\/span><\/i>spegla morgonsolens l\u00e5gor.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Juninatt blir aldrig av,
\n<\/span><\/i>liknar mest en daggig dag.
\n<\/span><\/i>Sl\u00f6jlikt lyfter sig dess skymning
\n<\/span><\/i>och b\u00e4rs bort p\u00e5 ljusa hav.
\n<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Listen to Juninatten<\/em> narrated in Swedish on Sveriges radio here: <\/span>https:\/\/sverigesradio.se\/avsnitt\/1729047<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

English Version<\/span><\/h2>\n

The June Night
\n<\/i>
\n<\/i>Now the sun barely goes down
\nDimmed only by its own glow.
\nTwilight’s border becomes the hour of dawn
\nNeither early nor late.<\/p>\n

The lake holds the evening’s light
\n<\/span>Gliding on the water’s reflection
\n<\/span>Or teetering on the waves which,
\nlong before they have darkened,
\n<\/span>Reflect the morning sun’s flames.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The June night never happens
\n<\/span>It is more like a dewy day.
\n<\/span>Veil-like the dawn lifts itself
\n<\/span>and is carried away on the bright sea.<\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/i>English translation: <\/span>Jan Alm & Amy Elizabeth Wheeler<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

It\u2019s July, almost August in fact. And although we’re technically over the Midsommar hump, I feel like summer only just arrived. Long days still fade into mild evenings and the sun sparkles gently as it sets into any of Minnesota\u2019s 10,000 lakes. This week, I want to share a poem that captures that feeling. Juninatten…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":9337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,10,9979,530980,3079],"tags":[3269,3446,10125,8239,7744,364872,34680],"class_list":["post-9336","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-literature","category-living-in-sweden","category-news","category-swedish-language","tag-learn-swedish","tag-swedish","tag-swedish-blog","tag-swedish-culture","tag-swedish-grammar","tag-swedish-language","tag-swedish-vocabulary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9338,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9336\/revisions\/9338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/swedish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}