Gustaf Fröding
Encyclopedia
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
poet and writer, born in Alster
Alster, Sweden
Alster is a locality situated in Karlstad Municipality, Värmland County, Sweden with 571 inhabitants in 2005....
outside Karlstad
Karlstad
Karlstad is a city, the seat of Karlstad Municipality, the capital of Värmland County, and the largest city in the province Värmland in Sweden. The city had 61,685 inhabitants in 2010 out of a municipal total that during the first quarter 2010 was 84,885 inhabitants...
in Värmland
Värmland
' is a historical province or landskap in the west of middle Sweden. It borders Västergötland, Dalsland, Dalarna, Västmanland and Närke. It is also bounded by Norway in the west. Latin name versions are Vermelandia and Wermelandia. Although the province's land originally was Götaland, the...
. The family moved to Kristinehamn
Kristinehamn
Kristinehamn is a locality and the seat of Kristinehamn Municipality, Värmland County, Sweden with 17,836 inhabitants in 2005.- Geography :Kristinehamn is situated by the shores of lake Vänern...
in the year 1867. He later studied at Uppsala University
Uppsala University
Uppsala University is a research university in Uppsala, Sweden, and is the oldest university in Scandinavia, founded in 1477. It consistently ranks among the best universities in Northern Europe in international rankings and is generally considered one of the most prestigious institutions of...
and worked as a journalist in Karlstad.
His poetry combines formal virtuosity with a sympathy for the ordinary, the neglected and the down-trodden. It is highly musical and lends itself to musical setting; as songs it has developed in to the much wider world of popular music and frequently been re-recorded by Swedish singers like Olle Adolphson
Olle Adolphson
Olle Adolphson was a Swedish writer, singer and songwriter. He released a range of books , LPs and CDs .Dubbel Trubbel, a homage to Olle Adolphson, performed by various Swedish artists, such as Håkan...
, Monica Zetterlund
Monica Zetterlund
Eva Monica Zetterlund was a Swedish singer and actress.-Biography:Zetterlund was a singer particularly noted for her jazz work. She began by learning the classic jazz songs from radio and records, initially not knowing the language and what they sang about in English...
and the Värmland group Sven-Ingvars
Sven-Ingvars
Sven-Ingvars is a pop/rock group from Slottsbron, Sweden. The band was formed in 1956 by Sven Svärd, drums Ingvar Karlsson, guitar and accordion and Sven-Erik Magnusson, song, guitar and clarinet. Later Rune Bergman joined on bass guitar and even later Sven-Olof Petersson on tenor and baritone...
. Gustaf wrote openly about his personal problems with alcohol and women and had to face a trial for obscenity for that cause.
He is generally held to be one of the greatest poets of verse that Sweden has ever produced, on par with Carl Michael Bellman
Carl Michael Bellman
was a Swedish poet and composer. Bellman is a central figure in the Swedish song tradition and remains a very important influence in Swedish music, as well as in Scandinavian literature in general, to this day....
.
|
|
Sickness
The late part of his life he spent on different mental institutions and hospitals to cure his mental illness and alcoholism. During the first half of 1890 he spent a couple of years at the Suttestad institution in LillehammerLillehammer
is a town and municipality in Oppland county, Norway, globally known for hosting the 1994 Winter Olympics. It is part of the traditional region of Gudbrandsdal. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Lillehammer. As of May 2011, the population of the town of Lillehammer was...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, where he finished his work on his third book of poetry Stänk och flikar. It was published 1896. He wrote great parts of that material at a mental institution in Görlitz
Görlitz
Görlitz is a town in Germany. It is the easternmost town in the country, located on the Lusatian Neisse River in the Bundesland of Saxony. It is opposite the Polish town of Zgorzelec, which was a part of Görlitz until 1945. Historically, Görlitz was in the region of Upper Lusatia...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
1896 he moved back to Sweden. But as the year neared Christmas, his big sister Cecilia took the difficult decision to make him stay at Upsala Hospital in Uppsala
Uppsala
- Economy :Today Uppsala is well established in medical research and recognized for its leading position in biotechnology.*Abbott Medical Optics *GE Healthcare*Pfizer *Phadia, an offshoot of Pharmacia*Fresenius*Q-Med...
, Sweden. Under the care of professor Frey Svenson
Frey Svenson
Frey Svenson was a Swedish doctor and professor of psychology, born in Vetlanda, Sweden.In the year of 1899 he worked at Upsala Hospital, which at that time was a psychiatric hospital rather than a medical hospital. Here he met the Swedish poet Gustaf Fröding. Svenson tried to help Fröding deal...
Fröding got away from liquor and women, except one, Ida Bäckman. To this day, people think that Ida Bäckman wanted to marry Fröding and corrupt him in some way. Later she wrote books but they were always judged harshly and never got good reviews. She is about to have her name cleared in Sweden. Fröding never married Ida. She was never asked to stop visiting Fröding by professor Svenson and Cecilia Fröding. Instead Fröding grew fond of a nurse named Signe Trotzig. When he left Upsala hospital she stayed with him to the day he died.
Plays
There is a famous Swedish play called Sjung vackert om kärlek, written by Gottfried Grafström. The play focuses on Frödings long visit to Upsala Hospital. Also some flashbacks of his life before the hospital-visit. One of Grafströms reasons to write the play was to clear the name of Ida Bäckman, who he thinks has gotten way to much criticism for her relationship with Fröding.The play was very popular during the 70's and had a revival in Värmland 2007. It was conducted by the Theater of Värmland at Alsters Herrgård, the very place where Fröding was born.
Selected works
Translated titles in italics.- Guitarr och dragharmonika (1891) - "Guitar and Concertina"
- Nya dikter (1894) - "New Poems"
- Räggler å paschaser (1895) "Tall Tales and Adventures"
- Stänk och flikar (1896) - "Splashes and spray"
- Nytt och gammalt (1897) - "New and Old Pieces"
- Gralstänk (1898) - "Splashes of Grail"
- Efterskörd (1910) - "Aftermath"
- Reconvalescentia (1913)
- Samlade skrifter 1-16 (1917–1922) - "Assembled Writings 1-16"
- Brev till en ung flicka (1952) - "Letters to a young girl"
- Äventyr i Norge (1963) - "Adventures in Norway"
- Brev 1-II (1981–1982) - "Letter 1-II"
His works in English
- Poems (1903) - (trans. by Albert Björck)
- Selected Poems (1916) - (trans. by Charles Wharton Stork)
- Guitar & Concertina (1925) - (trans. by C.D. Locock, 100 poems)
- Gustaf Fröding: His Life and Poetry (1986) - (written by Paul Britten AustinPaul Britten AustinPaul Britten Austin was an English author, translator, broadcaster, administrator, and scholar of Swedish literature. He was born in Dawlish, South Devon, England. He was educated at Winchester College...
) - The Selected Poems of Gustav Fröding (1993) - (trans. by Henrik Aspán, in collaboration with Martin Allwood)
- The Complete Poems of Gustaf Fröding (1997–1999) - (trans. by Mike McArthur, several volumes)
- The North! To the North! (2001) - (trans. by Judith Moffett, five poets including Fröding)
Atlantis
- Hark to the city-life roaring!
- Dull is the boom of the rolling fray:
- Sometimes a cry goes soaring
- Shrill from the torrent spray.
- Here all is quiet,
- Quiet the water
- Sleeps in the silent bay.
- Here is all desolate seeming —
- Far are we now from reality's strand:
- Only the City of Dreaming
- Woven on water and land.
- Let your head rest now
- Here on my shoulder —
- Look o'er the taffrail's rand.
- These are no rock-reefs that glimmer
- Under our keel in the misty light:
- Seest thou not castles that shimmer,
- Seest thou the palaces bright?
- That is Atlantis,
- Dreamland's Atlantis,
- The world that was sunk in night!
- Look on the white walls shining
- There where the ways by the citadel meet
- Godlike statues are lining
- Garden and market and street.
- All is deserted,
- Memories only
- Wander with joyless feet.
- Gold gat the power for oppression:
- Lordlings of Mammon the empire seized,
- Stole all the millions' possession,
- Squandered in riot and feast.
- Luxury's conquests
- Won they, and Ruin
- Grew as the tale increased.
- Then, as the high Gods fated,
- Vanished and sank in the gulfing waves
- A people to death dedicated —
- Sank to their ocean graves:
- Splendidly gifted,
- Sunken and perished,
- Whelmed in the sunless caves.
- Thick-set corals are gleaming,
- Paving the city of dreams and of sleep:
- Sunrays like starlight seeming
- Fall on the soundless deep:
- Weeds of old ocean,
- Twining their fibres,
- Over the columns creep.
- Some day, ah some day for us too
- Dawneth our hour for the quenching of light
- Some day descends upon us too
- Sleep and eternal night —
- Waves rolling o'er us,
- Sunlight that filters
- Dim through the waters bright.
- Over our city out yonder,
- Reared on foundations of slime and sand,
- Some day the sea-waves shall wander,
- Flooding our shore and strand:
- Over us swirling,
- Over us swinging,
- Folk from an alien land.
- Gustaf Fröding New Poems 1894
- English translation by C.D. Locock
External links
- Selected Poems (1916) at The Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
. - Samlade Skrifter (Collected Works) at The Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
. - Gustaf Fröding at Project RunebergProject RunebergProject Runeberg is an initiative patterned after Project Gutenberg that publishes freely available electronic versions of books significant to the culture and history of the Nordic countries...
. - Gustaf Fröding page at Kuusankoski Public Library.
Mp3 files and streaming audio at the Internet Archive