Claes Andersson (1937-2019)

Hufvudstadsbladet has an obituary of the poet, psychiatrist and politician Claes Andersson, who recently passed away at the age of 82.

Schakel 8, keuze Hasso Krull

By Claes Andersson

You can live in a house you have never seen, that has never
    been built.
You can live there with a woman you have
   never met.
There’s a bed that you exchange because
   it’s too narrow.
At the kitchen table you look out over a garden where
   lilac and burnet rose bloom.
Right from the outset you feel that it’s a home
  although it is not a home.
The rent is so low that you can afford a bottle
   of wine every evening.
You can pack it full of friends, sing together
   all night.
Some stranger has lived there, someone who loved
   long-haired cats.
You can leave the doors unlocked at night
   without fear.
When the urge to depart becomes overwhelming you leave it
   with joy.
When you return you no longer remember
   the address, never find it again.

From: Huden där den är som tunnast [The Skin Where It’s Thinnest], Söderströms , Helsinki, 1991.

translated from Finland-Swedish by David McDuff

Life stories

Reviewing Claes Andersson's "wonderful but short" autobiography in Hbl, Pia Ingström observes that the autobiographical essay is making something of a comeback in Finland-Swedish writing, and points to Schildts' recently-published "class anthology" as another example of this trend.

See also in this blog: Class acts

Using It

Books from Finland has published some of David's translations of poems by Claes Andersson. David Hackston also has a translation, and Bror Rönnholm contributes an introductory essay.

Rants 'n Raves

Picking through Finland-Swedish poet Claes Andersson's latest collection of poems, Lust (Desire), for a Books from Finland English-language selection, both the translator and the magazine's editor encountered some unforeseen problems: while many of the poems in the book are fresh and engaging, especially when one considers that their author is over 70, many of them also resemble extended sermons which propagate the poet's own personal and left-wing political credo.

For example, items in the original selection included a long, impassioned but ultimately outré rant entitled "black book 1", which contains all manner of arguable statements on issues ranging from global warming, bird flu and the global economy all the way to the Middle East. While the poem would make a terrific blog post, my view was that in the absence of a comments or feedback facility at least some readers might feel prevailed upon. Also, while I had no objection to the poem being published -- indeed, as I was at pains to point out to the editor, the magazine has a right to publish anything it likes -- I felt that as translator I'd need to publish some kind of disclaimer at the end.

So we opted provisionally for poems that are more universal in tone. In fact, I believe that in those Andersson is more successful than his more "political" pieces. Though the apocalyptic-cum-ironic tone is still there, the credo is somehow more genuine and effective -- indeed it's much more interesting, as it possesses an almost religious fervour. Political critique becomes fiery moral denunciation as the adversary turns out to be not some grouping of political forces, but humanity itself, which the poet apparently believes is due for incineration:

Perhaps some will wonder why our empire was effaced?

You may not like the answer, that it was our greed, our violence and our excess, that
we thereby forfeited our right to a good life in harmony with nature and ourselves

All that had depth we turned into surface

All that was surface and skin we burned apart in our compulsion to eradicate and destroy

All the beauty we could be touched and moved by we quite simply killed