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Tidskrift för forskning om svensk och annan nordisk litteratur Årgång 140 2019

I distribution: Eddy.se

Svenska Litteratursällskapet REDAKTIONSKOMMITTÉ:

Berkeley: Linda Rugg Göteborg: Lisbeth Larsson Köpenhamn: Johnny Kondrup Lund: Erik Hedling, Eva Hættner Aurelius München: Annegret Heitmann Oslo: Elisabeth Oxfeldt : Anders Cullhed, Anders Olsson, Boel Westin Tartu: Daniel Sävborg Uppsala: Torsten Pettersson, Johan Svedjedal Zürich: Klaus Müller-Wille Åbo: Claes Ahlund

Redaktörer: Jon Viklund (uppsatser) och Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed (recensioner) Biträdande redaktör: Karl Berglund, Niclas Johansson, Camilla Wallin Lämsä

Inlagans typografi: Anders Svedin

Utgiven med stöd av Vetenskapsrådet

Bidrag till Samlaren insändes digitalt i ordbehandlingsprogrammet Word till [email protected]. Konsultera skribentinstruktionerna på sällskapets hemsida innan du skickar in. Sista inläm- ningsdatum för uppsatser till nästa årgång av Samlaren är 15 juni 2020 och för recensioner 1 september 2020. Samlaren publiceras även digitalt, varför den som sänder in material till Samlaren därmed anses medge digital publicering. Den digitala utgåvan nås på: http://www. svelitt.se/samlaren/index.html. Sällskapet avser att kontinuerligt tillgängliggöra även äldre årgångar av tidskriften. Svenska Litteratursällskapet tackar de personer som under det senaste året ställt sig till för- fogande som bedömare av inkomna manuskript. Svenska Litteratursällskapet PG: 5367–8. Svenska Litteratursällskapets hemsida kan nås via adressen www.svelitt.se. isbn 978–91–87666–39–1 issn 0348–6133

Printed in Lithuania by Balto print, Vilnius 2019 Övriga recensioner · 431 nan, Astrid Lindgrens Pippi Långstrump. I arti- i en dikt av Johannes Anyuru översätts med ”deaf keln ”Exploring” diskuterar samme forskare Per flocks of birds” (516) är mer allvarligt, eftersom det Kalms En Resa til Norra Amerika, Anders Fred- påverkar forskarens tolkning av dikten. Det är inte rik Skjöldebrands Voyage pittoresque au Cap Nord för mycket begärt att en person med svenska som och Fredrika Bremers Hemmen i den nya världen. modersmål hade fått möjlighet att se över en vo- I ”Northern bound: Exploring and colonizing the lym med så många arbeten om litteratur på svenska. Nordic Far North” behandlar DuBois bilden av Sammantaget skall sägas att de femtioen spridda samer hos Olaus Magnus, Johannes Schefferus och essäerna är kvalificerade och ofta erbjuder intres- Carl von Linné. sant läsning. Det är sällan författarna kommer med Kjerstin Moody från Gustavus Adolphus Col- direkt nya rön, och de kartlägger aldrig outfors- lege, USA, reflekterar i ”By land, by sea, by air, by kade områden. Med ett tema som ”spatial nodes” mind: Traversing externally internally via the trope ger volymen upphov till teoretiska läsningar, i re- of the bird in Finnish and Swedish poetry” över få- gel ganska korta (10–15 sidor), som ofta inspirerar geln som symbol i dikter av Esaias Tegnér, Erik Jo- och skänker nya perspektiv. Det största värdet lig- han Stagnelius, Johan Ludvig Runeberg – i samtliga ger i att volymen så tydligt visar hur fruktbart ett fall dikter med titeln Flyttfåglarna – samt Johannes komparativt nordiskt perspektiv är och hur mycket Anyurus dikt Tid. Dessa verk diskuteras i relation de olika nordiska ländernas litteratur verkligen be- till några samiska och finska dikter. lyser varandra. Det stora intresset hos forskare utomlands Daniel Sävborg för svensk litteratur är glädjande. Överlag är de- ras kunskaper stora, oväntat stora när det gäller många av idag betydligt mindre kända verk som Anna Sofia Rossholm, och den Mellins, Bergroths och Nordströms romaner ovan. lekfulla skriften. Studier av anteckningar, utkast och Samtidigt är det tråkigt att motsvarande intresse filmidéer i arkivets samlingar. Makadam. Göteborg för grannländernas litteratur synes vara betydligt och Stockholm 2017. mindre framträdande hos dagens svenska litteratur- vetare. Det märks redan i den aktuella volymen, där The centennial of Ingmar Bergman’s birth in 2018 de svenska forskare som deltar ägnar sig uteslutande offered the occasion for renewed consideration eller huvudsakligen åt svenska eller svenskspråkiga of his life and work, and in particular, his writing verk. Anders Olsson skriver om Gunnar Björling drew fresh attention. In 2002 Bergman donated (”The limits of the unlimited: Gunnar Björling’s his archives to the newly formed Ingmar Bergman wordscape”), Henrik Johnsson om Strindberg, Foundation, and that year saw the publication of Emelie Flygare-Carlén och John Ajvide Lindqvist Maaret Koskinen’s I begynnelsen var ordet (“In the (”Archipelago”), Anna Smedberg Bondesson om Beginning was the Word”). Koskinen was the first C.J.L Almqvist, , Hjalmar Bergman scholar to be allowed access to his writings, and och Birger Sjöberg (”Through the land oflagom in her analyses soon made clear the richness of this literature: Passing small towns in middle ”) unexplored material. Her study opened a new di- och Arne Melberg skriver huvudsakligen om Axel rection in Bergman scholarship: a close analysis of Munthe (”South of the South: Literary Capri”). his writing. By 2018, Bergman archivist Jan Holm- Det förefaller finnas ett behov av ett större intresse berg, in his Författaren Ingmar Bergman (“The Au- hos svenska forskare för även annan litteratur än thor Ingmar Bergman”), goes so far as to propose den svenska. I synnerhet kan man hoppas på att that Bergman might have been a more important svenska forskare inser hur fruktbart ett allnordiskt author than he was a filmmaker, at least in the con- perspektiv ofta är även i studiet av svenska verk; text of Swedish culture. Oddly, as both Holmberg detta visar den aktuella volymen tydligt. and now Anna Sofia Rossholm (in the study un- Hur glädjande det än är att ickesvenska fors- der review here) point out, Bergman himself de- kare undersöker svensk litteratur finns ändå ibland clared that he had no ambition to become an au- praktiska problem med detta, kopplade till språket. thor, but like many of his declarations about him- Man kan väl leva med uppgiften att Creutz skulle self and his work, one should be cautious about tak- ha skrivit ”Sommer-Kväde” (35) och att Stagnelius ing him at his word. skulle ha talat om ”frammande land” (507) – och In her book Ingmar Bergman och den lekfulla en hel del liknande – men att ”dova fågelflockar” skriften (“Ingmar Bergman’s Playful Writing”), 432 · Övriga recensioner

Anna Sofia Rossholm does not concern herself mental play. This is a somewhat different image of with the question of whether Bergman was a “real” the filmmaker than the one that focuses on the bi- literary or textual author. For whether Bergman ographical details of his life — his father the priest, was an authentic author in that literary sense or not, his formidable mother, his series of wives and lov- he most certainly was a writer. Rossholm explores ers — and tries to find the key for understanding his the central role of writing in Bergman’s cinematic films through that lens. Instead Rossholm unpacks work, moving from his workbooks to his film- the methodology of Bergman’s work and shows us scripts to his films. She investigates what his writ- the “how” of his creative process, which she defines ing and sketches reveal about his creative process as “play” [lek], “materialized in the movement of in general, which she defines as “play as aesthetic writing” [“materialiserad i skriftens rörelse”] (25). act” (lek som estestisk handling, 14). In Swedish she Rossholm’s first chapter, “Perspective,” demon- uses the word “leka” for “play” that one associates strates what she means by this odd notion of “mov- with children’s play: unstructured, light-hearted, ing writing.” The phrase alludes to the way in which creative. Swedish uses a different word,spela, to a text is transformed in revisions and new versions, refer to what actors or musicians do. In her read- and she refers back to French theorists Roland Bar- ing of how Bergman engages with his writing, both thes and Jacques Derrida as sources for her charac- words might be appropriate: Bergman is “playful” terization of this movement as play. As she notes, (lekfull) as he doodles in his notebooks, engages the writing that forms the basis for a film is per defi- in wordplay, free associates, and allows himself to nition writing that moves from one medium to an- be distracted when his pen falls out the window. other. But even between texts, or even within a text, But Bergman “plays” (spelar) with his material, or Bergman’s writing moves in the sense that he shifts rather, makes his writing into a play (spel) when pronouns, divides his “I” into different figures, as- he creates characters in dialogue with their author signs names to nameless characters as they develop, and with each other, when he makes those charac- and so on. One of the sections in this chapter is ters antagonists, and pits them against each other in entitled “Writing as Transformation” [“Skrift som sometimes harrowing games (also spel in Swedish). förvandling”], which is a brief characterization of Rossholm’s close reading of Bergman’s writing re- the kind of play and magic she traces through her veals both the lek and the spel of his creative process. close reading of Bergman’s texts. In her introduction Rossholm sets the stage for The next chapter, which focuses on Bergman’s how she plans to trace Bergman’s playful method workbooks, features a penetrating close reading of through a close comparison of different versions of some of Bergman’s notebooks in relation to the his texts: workbooks, scripts, and finished films. It films they eventually became. One of Rossholm’s becomes clear that Bergman crafts an authorial self points, however, is that the path from workbook to in his writing, a self at play with the other charac- film is a highly transformative one, where many el- ters he creates: “at the moment the authorial ‘I’ en- ements of the original workbook version fall away. ters into dialogue with a fictional character […] he Nevertheless, she maintains, one finds the “kernel transforms himself […] into fiction” [“i det ögon- of his creative process” (“kärnan i den kreativa pro- blick författarjaget går i dialog med en fiktiv karak- cessen”) in these notes (49). There are forty-six of tär … förvandlar han … sig själv till fiktion”, 23]. these books in the archive, beginning in the 1930s. Rather than focusing on autobiographical traces of Rossholm observes that a shift takes place in the Bergman in his writing and films, Rossholm pro- 1950s, when the notes begin to function as a foun- vides a nuanced reading of his narrative strategy: dation for formulating new narratives. It is during “When the author puts pen to paper and writes the that period, when his films evolve a style that is word ‘I’, a split occurs. The writing subject becomes more recognizably “Bergmanesque,” that the work- an Other, a textual construct” [“När författaren sät- books, according to Rossholm, become more per- ter pennan mot pappret och skriver ordet ‘jag’ upp- sonal, more searching, and more creative (55). She står en klyvning. Det skrivande subjektet blir en an- explores the way in which this highly private form nan, en konstruktion I texten”, 197]. In Rossholm’s evolves from self-inspection to self-fashioning, analysis, it becomes clear that Bergman transforms evaluating the notebooks as diaries that allow Berg- the diary-like, personal form of his notebooks into man to create his artistic persona (62). the dramatic form of his film scripts and the novel- Among the details Rossholm attends to are “mis- istic form of his prose publications through experi- takes,” excluded passages, cross-outs, doodles, and Övriga recensioner · 433 pasted-in pictures. A wonderful feature of Ross- from Cries and Whispers) describe visual sequences holm’s book is in fact the interpolation of many that will be mapped onto the language of the script. beautifully reproduced images: Bergman’s note- Rossholm pays close attention once more to the book pages and covers, with the various shades of material aspect of the writing. The script was typed ink and doodles and notebook types offered up for on the right-hand page, while the left facing page the reader’s inspection. Thanks to the outstanding was left blank to accommodate Bergman’s hand- graphic design of the people at Makadam Press, the written notes and sketches in various colors. It is as reader can almost reconstruct Rossholm’s experi- if we are moving from the writer’s hand to the ma- ence as she plumbed the archive (Fredrika Siwe is chinery of typography, which will take us on to the credited with the design). Given that one of the cinematic apparatus that is only hinted at (unlike points Rossholm makes is how important writing standard filmscripts, which refer to camera angles materials (type of pen, paper, and notebook) were and the like). The move from the writer’s hand to to Bergman, it seems particularly important that the communal typescript finds a reflection in the Rossholm’s book is able to give readers a sense of movement, as Rossholm notes, from an “I” nar- what she describes. rator, the diarist of the workbooks, to the many In the third chapter Rossholm turns to Berg- voices of the filmscript. And once again, there is man’s scripts, which have often posed problems interplay between various versions of scripts. Ross- for scholars, in part, as she shows, because they are holm makes a case study of a script entitled “The rather unusual in comparison with other screen- Cannibals” [“Människoätarna”], which was never writing. Sparse in visual detail, Bergman’s film- produced as a film, but which served as a kind of scripts are characterized by a strongly literary style, basis for both Hour of the Wolf and, to a lesser de- which is revealed in Rossholm’s close reading of gree, Persona. Through a detailed comparison of them. She notes, for instance, that the script for the scripts and the finished films, Rossholm -ex Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf) opens in medias poses hidden elements of each work. res, with not even a rudimentary description of the Rossholm’s next chapter, “Rewritings of Inti- first figure the viewer encounters. Instead the script, macy and Violence” [“Omskrivningar av det in- like those of Persona and Viskningar och rop (Cries tima och det våldsamma”] attempts to come to and Whispers), is narrated by a subject with a dis- grips with one of the more difficult aspects of Berg- tinctive voice. Particularly these later texts, Ross- man’s work: the way in which intimacy and vio- holm argues, “can be considered hybrids between lence are linked, and the awkward interface that ex- filmscripts and novels, more than scripts that func- ists in his work between “real-world violence” (the tion simply as the basis for films” (“[de kan] betrak- Vietnam war, the Holocaust) and the psycho-ter- tas som hybrider mellan filmmanus och romaner ror of dysfunctional human relationships. Though mer än manus som fungerar som enkla förlagor till Rossholm treats this subject with careful nuance, filmer”, 100). It is this slippage between genres that she does not entirely rescue Bergman from this makes Bergman’s film scripts difficult to read as awkwardness. She does not, for instance, address scripts. As with Rossholm’s analysis of Bergman’s his 1968 war film,Skammen (Shame), or the rep- notebooks, reproductions of the pages of Berg- resentation of Cold War militarism that provides man’s scripts, replete with his marginal notes and an odd counterpoint to the intimate drama of Ty- sketches, allow the reader to follow the detail of her stnaden (The Silence). It would have been interest- argument and see with vivid clarity Bergman’s crea- ing to hear her take on these two films, and their tive play. Here, however, rather than simply expos- absence points to a more general question about ing a mind at play, the notes and sketches are de- her theoretically sophisticated and beautifully ex- vised to work as instructions for those who make ecuted book: how did she choose her texts? She the film with Bergman. spends a great deal of time on En passion (A Pas- The interior, personal work of the notebooks sion), for instance, a film that ordinarily receives lit- has here become communicative and public. Still, tle critical attention, but she has very little or noth- there is a clear link between the “moving writing” ing to say about films of Bergman’s earlier periods. Rossholm identifies in the notebooks and the way It would have been valuable to hear more about in which the writing in the scripts pushes toward her thoughts regarding the shift that takes place in the medium of moving pictures. Some of Bergman’s Bergman’s work from, say Det sjunde inseglet (The marginal notes (Rossholm cites a series of them Seventh Seal) to Såsom i en spegel (Through a Mir- 434 · Övriga recensioner ror Darkly). One wonders: are the workbooks for mit. Viktor Rydberg och August Strindberg – för- some of the earlier films simply uninteresting? The tryckets fiender. Den tycks härröra från en tid och other angle that could have provided a rich field for en värld då litteraturvetenskap förstods i termer av exploration would be the use of actors as tools in påverkan och inflytande, då litterära texter hade Bergman’s work; since Rossholm devotes a good ”budskap”, och då dessa texters huvudpersoner deal of thought to the pens, ink, and notebooks as kunde vara ”representanter” för författarens ”upp- aspects of Bergman’s fascination with material pro- fattning”. Det känns som länge sedan. duction, it would have been intriguing to think of Ändå är Sjöbergs projekt inte ointressant i sig. his cadre of actors in a similar light. But this topic Hon vill beskriva ”två motsatta uppfattningar om could easily make up material for a complete book hur politisk kamp ska bedrivas” (9), en undersök- on its own. ning som motiveras också av att ”[l]ikheterna mel- Rossholm ends her book on a promising and in- lan vår tid och 1880-talet är skrämmande många” ventive note: a look at new translations and works (11). Det temat utvecklar Sjöberg knappast, och based on Bergman’s oeuvre. She reads these works förmodligen kan motsvarande påståenden fällas by an international collection of artists within the om snart sagt alla sådana tidskonstellationer. Sjö- larger framework of her argument, namely as re- bergs fokus ligger istället på skiftet ”från revolu- writings, as part of the moving writing that Berg- tionär, idealistisk liberalism till revolutionär soci- man himself practiced. In this way the “Bergman alism och politisk nihilism” (11). Det kunde och works” that have been created after the filmmak- borde ha blivit spännande, men Sjöberg fastnar i er’s death can be seen as part of the arc Rossholm friläggandet av respektive författares ”uppfattning”, describes in her analysis: we move from the inte- samtiden och samhället läggs i skuggan av giganter- rior “I” that becomes a creator-persona in the note- nas texter, de villkor texterna skrivs och läses under books, to the persona who splits into a cast of char- försvinner. acters in the script, to the voices that take on flesh Men är jag nu inte väldigt orättvis mot Birthe and bone (albeit ultimately celluloid or digital) Sjöbergs studie? Kanske. Förmodligen. Men hon in the films, to a broad array of voices around the hamrar in att de behandlade texterna har entydiga world, continuing the work of transforming Berg- ”budskap”, hennes tes gäller Rydbergs påverkan på man’s writing. Rossholm’s book is both physically Strindberg – om ”Strindberg tagit intryck av Ryd- beautiful and the product of careful and clear-eyed berg” (10) – och i någon mån Strindbergs påverkan reading and analysis. In delving into the archive, på Rydberg. Denna ytterst basala utgångspunkt – she is able to cast new light on films that have been är den alls viktig? varför? – försöker Sjöberg sedan studied so thoroughly that one imagined there was bestämma som inspirerad av New Historicism, men no more to discover; she makes it apparent here ingenting tyder tyvärr på att hon förstått implika- that there is indeed more to learn, and this book tionerna av den traditionstillhörigheten – den bå- offers an invitation to other scholars to enter the ten seglade förbi hennes ö utan att stanna. Sjöberg archive for their own discoveries. definierarNew Historicism som en ”metod som an- vänds vid studiet av äldre texter”, men citerar också Linda Haverty Rugg (17) en grundläggande definition av Donald E. Hall där han påpekar att nyhistorikern undersöker hur tidens maktordningar speglas men också arbe- Birthe Sjöberg, Dialog eller dynamit. Viktor Ryd- tar och verkar i den litterära texten. Men sedan talar berg och August Strindberg – förtryckets fiender. Sjöberg om något helt annat, nämligen om författa- Gidlunds förlag. Möklinta 2018. rens ”politiska samhällssyn, människosyn, religiösa tro” och så vidare – och hennes studie innehåller Ibland kan humanistisk forskning te sig som flask- mycket riktigt inte ens en antydan om en maktana- post avskickad från en isolerad ö, långt ute i havet lytik. En författares eventuella ”politiska samhälls- Ingenstans. Och hur länge flaskan plaskat i havet syn” är inte samma sak som den av maktens prakti- vet man inte, men många fartyg, lastade med olika ker genomkorsade diskursordningen. teoretiska perspektiv och metodologiska reflektio- Dialog eller dynamit lider tyvärr svårt av ett de- ner, passerar den isolerade ön utan att stanna och finitionsmässigt underskott. Begrepp tas för givna: undsätta den nödställda. Bilden kommer för mig ”liberalism” är ett sådant, uppenbarligen oomkull- medan jag läser Birthe Sjöbergs Dialog eller dyna- runkeligt, begrepp som inte ges någon tillräcklig