Martinson Nomadism.Pdf

due punti •• 52 © 2017, Pagina soc. coop., Bari Le avanguardie dei Paesi nordici nel contesto europeo del primo Novecento The Nordic Avant-gardes in the European Context of the Early 20th Century Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Roma, 22-24 ottobre 2015 a cura di / edited by Anna Maria Segala, Paolo Marelli, Davide Finco Per informazioni sulle opere pubblicate e in programma rivolgersi a: Edizioni di Pagina via dei Mille 205 - 70126 Bari tel. e fax 080 5586585 http://www.paginasc.it e-mail: [email protected] facebook account http://www.facebook.com/edizionidipagina twitter account http://twitter.com/EdizioniPagina Le avanguardie dei Paesi nordici nel contesto europeo del primo Novecento The Nordic Avant-gardes in the European Context of the Early 20th Century Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Roma, 22-24 ottobre 2015 a cura di / edited by Anna Maria Segala, Paolo Marelli, Davide Finco È vietata la riproduzione, con qualsiasi mezzo effettuata, compresa la fotocopia. Per la legge italiana la fotocopia è lecita solo per uso personale purché non danneggi l’autore. Quindi ogni fotocopia che eviti l’acquisto di un libro è illecita e minaccia la sopravvivenza di un modo di trasmettere la conoscenza. Chi fotocopia un libro, chi mette a disposizione i mezzi per fotocopiare, chi favorisce questa pratica commette un furto e opera ai danni della cultura. Finito di stampare nell’ottobre 2017 dalle Arti Grafiche Favia s.r.l. - Modugno (Bari) per conto di Pagina soc. coop. ISBN 978-88-7470-580-1 ISSN 1973-9745 Contents Anna Maria Segala, Paolo Marelli, Davide Finco Preface 9 Anna Maria Segala The Dialectic Position of the Nordic Avant-gardes 11 SECTION 1 The Precursors Björn Meidal Strindberg and 20th Century Avant-garde Drama and Theatre 25 Kari J. Brandtzæg Edvard Munch’s Impact on Norwegian Modern Art after WW I 41 Camilla Storskog Songs about Iron and of Iron. Henry Parland and the Poetic Potential of Technology 52 Flavia Arzeni Franziska zu Reventlow: Striving for Freedom on Ibsen’s Trail 69 Rita Giuliani Two Precursors of Expressionism: August Strindberg and Leonid Andreev 82 6 Contents SECTION 2 Crossing the Borders: The European Avant-gardes’ Trajectories Hubert van den Berg The Late Arrival of ‘The Avant-Garde’ in the Nordic Countries. Some Notes on ‘Avant-Garde’ as a Critical Frame in the Late 20th and Early 21st Century 99 Claudia Salaris Marinetti and Futurism in the World 115 Franco Perrelli Lagerkvist, la vitalità dell’arte moderna e la decadenza del realismo 125 Davide Finco Copenhagen into the Avant-garde: Literary Dreams and Nightmares about a City 141 Massimo Blanco The Lyricism of Matter. Jules Romains and the French Avant-garde 155 Francesca Terrenato ‘To be continued’: Van Doesburg’s Reviews of the Avant-garde (1921-1922) 165 Paolo Bertetto La velocità e la dynamis. Il futurismo italiano e l’avanguardia cinematografica sovietica 178 SECTION 3 Avant-garde and Modernism: A Dialectic Relation Rikard Schönström A Productive Alienation. Bertolt Brecht’s Exile in Denmark, Sweden and Finland 195 Contents 7 Maria Cristina Lombardi Surrealism in Gunnar Ekelöf’s Poetry in the Early ’30s 206 Massimo Ciaravolo Harry Martinson’s Prose Nomadism. A Comparative Reading of Resor utan mål, Kap Farväl!, and Vägen till Klockrike 226 Giovanni Luciani Modernism and the City: The Exception of London 243 Antonio Rostagno Modernism without Avant-garde between Nielsen and Sibelius. The Lack of ‘War Soundscapes’ in the Music of Northern-Europe 257 Biographical notes on Contributors and Editors 273 Massimo Ciaravolo Harry Martinson’s Prose Nomadism. A Comparative Reading of Resor utan mål, Kap Farväl!, and Vägen till Klockrike Harry Martinson is more often recognized as one of the great poets of Swedish modernism, or a particularly lyrical writer at most. It is a pos- itive assessment that implies however the risk of a genre-specific reduc- tion. Lars Ulvenstam, the author of the first monograph on Martinson, defines his novel Vägen till Klockrike (1948, The Road to Klockrike)1 as not really a novel, but rather a collection of lyrical-philosophical stories, with neither a plot or a character development (1950, p. 210). Accord- ing to Kjell Espmark, Martinson’s status as a «master» and his translat- ability into other cultures rest primarily on his nature poetry, as well as on his first autobiographical novel Nässlorna blomma (1935, Flowering Nettle), and on parts of his late cosmic verse epic Aniara (1956) (Esp- mark 1999, p. 206; Espmark 2005, pp. 177-192). Staffan Söderblom claims that Martinson is a poet even when he writes his best prose; consequently, his novels are not real novels but rhapsodic tales (Söder- blom 2002, pp. 41-42, 87, 109, 233-234). Here I would like to focus on what still seems to be an underrated aspect of Martinson’s work, and also express and motivate my prefer- ence for it. I argue that Martinson is a great modernist even as a «nomadic» prose writer. I see nomadism as an aspect of the writer’s biogra- phy but also, and beyond that, as his intellectual stance and literary strategy. Martinson was nomadic, since his life experience, especially as a child and a young man, included constant migration, escape, travel, and even real nomadism as a tramp, but above all because he was able to translate this personal experience into a dynamic, not strictly chronological, non-linear and freer kind of prose; a prose capable (as Martin- son’s poetry is equally capable) of creating unconventional images and associations, but also a linguistic material that blurs traditional distinc- 1 The Road in English translation (Martinson 1955). Harry Martinson’s Prose Nomadism 227 tions between fictional narrative, autobiography, travelogue, poetry, essay and social reportage (cf. Linder 1967, p. 745, Holm 1974, p. 66). Martinson’s shorter or longer prose – his stories and novels – are there- fore impure, dialogical and polyphonic narratives in a valuable, Bakhtin- ian sense: open and capable of moulding different elements and perspectives into one artistic prose form, encompassing an image of the protagonist’s self as well as an image of the manifold, contradictory world around it (Bakhtin 1992, p. 259-422). Such qualities are particularly strong in Martinson’s autobiographical travel stories gathered in Resor utan mål (1932, Journeys without a Goal) and Kap Farväl! (1933, Cape Farewell!),2 based on the writer’s experience as a sailor and a stoker on the seven seas from 1920, when he was sixteen, to the late 1920s.3 Martinson’s nomadic prose returns, with a different mood, in Vägen till Klockrike which, in spite of being a later work, depicts a historically earlier form of vagabond life, the tradi- tion of Scandinavian tramps in rural areas. In this essay I will try to connect the earlier books with the later novel, and consider Martinson’s descriptions of and reflections on the possibilities of nomadism as a way of life, an intellectual stance and a poetics. Resor utan mål and Kap Farväl! (Martinson 1999) contain stories written in the first person, depicting the condition of a stoker on the overseas cargo boats during the interwar years, a young Swedish man who can also act, according to the various situations, as a sailor in the harbours, a flâneur in the big cities, and occasionally a wanderer, a worker or a tramp in South America. The protagonist and narrator is thus able to take up different roles and perspectives; a healthy instabil- ity which gives him a multiplicity of viewpoints, but is made consistent by his hope of becoming a «world nomad» (världsnomad), for him the definition of the future intellectual. The stories do not proceed from one point to another, but offer different entrances and exits; they are tentative, explorative and – to bor- 2 Cape Farewell in English translation (Martinson 1934). 3 Sending the manuscript of Resor utan mål to his publisher Karl Otto Bonnier on 29 June 1932, Martinson defined the book as «dels en reseskildring, dels livsskildring, in- gjutet i ett sätt som är min prosaform» (Martinson 2004: 126; «partly a travel description, partly a life description, moulded in a way that is my prose form»). Translations are mine if not mentioned otherwise. 228 Massimo Ciaravolo row a term used by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari – rhizomatic, in the sense of non-linear and non-chronological, without a clear centre or hierarchy, whereby each part can be connected with other parts by way of associations, returns and repetitions (Deleuze, Guattari 1980, pp. 9-37). The amazing, manifold beauty of the world is embraced by Mar- tinson’s open, fluid dynamism, which determines the modernistic mood, theme and programme of his stories, as well as their form. The practices that Deleuze and Guattari call «nomadism» and «de- territorialization» (1980, pp. 34-36, 434-527) offer, in Martinson’s travel books, opportunities for ethical and psychic growth. As the narrator observes, the fact that sailors experience three or four different cultures each month, makes individual, static viewpoints necessarily plural and unstable (Martinson 1999, p. 68). In particular, the text in Resor utan mål and Kap Farväl! is erratic and open in the sense that, without ever becoming contradictory, it encompasses a consciously ambivalent atti- tude towards modernity, intertwining moments of euphoric visions of future possibilities, especially for the intensification and acceleration of psychic life, with other moments of concerned social critique, and with the problematic perception of a world that is, still after World War I, mainly driven by a relentless quest for profit, exploitation of man by man, and blind faith in linear, material progress, defined as a «stupid ingenjörsreligion» (Martinson 1999, p.

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