Three years after winning the Nobel Prize, he committed suicide with scissors, leaving behind the dewdrops captured by his skillful hands

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Martinsson's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. Looking back on his life, he became an orphan in childhood, moved around in different foster homes and institutions, and experienced all the hardships of life; he also wandered around the world in his youth. These hardships did not defeat him, but instead inspired his literary genius.

Martinsson's works reflect many major issues of the 20th century, such as social injustice, war and peace, commercial culture and automobile culture, nuclear weapons and environmental destruction. His thoughts are enriched by scientific theories. Modern science is an important theme in his works, and scientific language can be found everywhere. Among the 120 Nobel Prize winners in literature so far, Martinsson's works are unique.

Written by | Fan Ming

This year marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Harry Edmund Martinson (1904-1978), a famous 20th-century Swedish writer, and the 50th anniversary of his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. Martinson was elected to the Swedish Academy in 1949 and shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature with another Swedish writer, Eyvind Johnson (1900-1976), who was also a member of the Academy.

Martinsson is known for his poetry and prose, with expressive and original language. The Swedish Academy's award speech said that Martinsson's works "capture dewdrops and reflect the world." This is the most recent time that two winners have shared the literature prize. Karl Ragnar Gierow, then permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, emphasized in his speech at the award ceremony that Johnson and Martinsson are "representatives of proletarian writers or working-class poets," so the award can be seen as an award for a whole generation of writers.

Martinsson and illustrations from his collection of poems, Poems of Light and Darkness

Johansson and Martinsson are two great writers of 20th-century Swedish literature, yet they are not very well known internationally, partly because their books are difficult to translate into other languages, especially Martinsson, whose works have a strong local flavour and who often creates his own Swedish vocabulary and structures.

Although Martinsson’s depictions of Swedish environments and society are firmly rooted in his native land, he is also a world traveler and stargazer, opening his eyes to outer space and the microcosm, constantly searching for visions of humanity lost in the universe.

Martinsson's works reflect many major issues of the 20th century, such as social injustice, war and peace, commercial culture and automobile culture, nuclear weapons and environmental destruction. His thoughts are enriched by scientific theories. Modern science is an important theme in his works, and scientific language can be found everywhere. Nature and culture, science and art are integrated in Martinsson's works, which is unique among the 120 Nobel Prize winners in literature so far.

Nettle blossom

Martinsson was born on May 6, 1904, in the parish of Jämshög, Blekinge, southeastern Sweden. He was the only boy in a family of seven children. When Martinsson was 6 years old, his father died of tuberculosis. A year later, his mother left her children and immigrated to the United States, never to return home. Later, the eldest sister, the only one who could support the family, died. Martinsson and the other sisters became orphans without relatives. They were forced to separate and moved to different foster families and institutions, experiencing the bitterness and pain of life. He only studied in public schools for six years, constantly running away from foster families and schools, and growing up was full of insecurity. At the age of 16, Martinsson left his hometown and went to sea to explore the world. He was drifting around the world, working as a handyman, a stoker and a cook on the ship, and spent six years at sea. At the age of 23, he had to go ashore due to lung disease and made a living by doing odd jobs or begging. Martinsson's literary talent was born in his sailing and wandering life.

Martinsson began writing and publishing poetry in newspapers in 1927. In 1929, he and four other young Swedish writers published a collection of poems, Fem unga. They were deeply influenced by popular futurism and challenged the literary conventions of the time in the form of free verse. Their advocacy of primitivism and "life worship" attracted people's attention. This collection of poems, known as "a pile of fire in the old sour literary straw", is considered one of the pioneering works of modern Swedish literature (especially workers' literature). The young writers are consistent in age, origin, experience, and especially artistic quality. Unemployment rather than professional work has given them the character of their youth, making them a unique group of writers in Swedish cultural history. Martinsson is a typical representative of this group. He draws warmth and wisdom from the harshest experiences. Few Swedish writers have such a tragic fate as him since childhood.

During the same period, Martinsson met Helga Johansson (1890–1964), a female writer 14 years older than him. She wrote for the same labor movement newspaper under the pen name "Moa". Like Martinsson, Moa was born in poverty and had a tragic fate. The two sympathized with each other and married in 1929. After marriage, Moa took her husband's surname and later became one of the greatest Swedish female writers of the 20th century. The marriage lasted for more than ten years. Although it was turbulent, it was full of creative inspiration. During this period, both of them completed many important works of their own. Martinsson fought for the cause of freedom all his life. At the end of 1939, he participated in the Soviet-Finnish Winter War as the only Swedish writer volunteer. He recorded this experience in the essay collection "Reality Until Death" (Verklighet till döds). In 1942, Martinsson remarried Ingrid Lindcrantz, with whom he had two daughters.

In 1929, Martinsson's debut work, the collection of poems "Ghost Ship" (Spökskepp), was published. Most of the poems are about the ocean and the life of seafarers. They are the result of his rich poetry creation after working as a sailor for many years. In the subsequent collection of poems "Nomad" (Nomad, 1931), Martinsson opened up a new theme - the dream of a nomadic world, boldly depicting the sea as a special time and space with keen details. Later, he wrote prose travel notes about his wandering life, "Travel without a Destination" (Resor utan mål, 1932) and "Farewell Cape" (Kap Farväl, 1933). "Going to sea makes you feel that spring or summer is just like a breeze." Nomadism, exploration, and fantasy are important themes in Martinsson's creative career. He regards nomadic life as a utopia. Martinsson wrote in the poem "Close to the Sea":

I saw a seagull flying from the sea

And sit in the fox's seat.

With this photo I dream

Random event screen.

In 1935, Martinsson published the semi-autobiographical novel Nässlorna blomma, and the sequel Vägen ut the following year. The book describes his extremely bitter and lonely childhood, his rebelliousness and fantastic ideas in a true and detailed manner. Nettle is a perennial herb common in the Nordic countryside. It is covered with thorns and has its own poisonous juice. Even when it blooms, it is inconspicuous. In Nordic fairy tales, flowering nettles can drive away fear and block ghosts. The childhood of the ten-year-old protagonist Martin in the novel is as humble as that of nettles. He still blooms tenaciously in the ravages of wind and rain. His growth process is like a lonely and painful childhood exorcism. Martin likes to be with forests and streams. His eldest sister tells him the shape of the earth and the limits of the world. He also learns the concept of "atom" from a weekly magazine. The novel not only exposes the cruelty and indifference of society, but also tells how Martin's curiosity and thirst for knowledge about the world around him are awakened.

The earliest versions of Martinsson's works "Farewell to the Cape" and "Nettle Blossoms"

"Nettle Blossom" has a strong medieval dark temperament, while also integrating the calm speculation of modernism. In the book, Martinsson ruthlessly analyzes and interrogates his other self, Little Martin. Little Martin's childhood universe is full of hatred and indifference, and his young mind wanders between light and darkness. In Sweden, the first Sunday of May every year is "Nettle Day" (Nässlans dag), which is also the Sunday closest to Martinsson's birthday. This theme day naturally reminds people of the nettle flowers he wrote. Inspired by Russian modernism, Martinsson wrote his third collection of poems, "Natur" (1934), which flashes with impressionist images, but was severely criticized and ignored for "affected" and "Baroque expansion". After that, he did not write a poem for 11 years, and did not publish a new collection of poems, "Passad" (Trade Wind) until 1945.

Nature and Philosophy

Martinsson is probably the world's earliest environmental writer and "ecological" poet. Nature has always been his place of meditation and healing for peace of mind. The observation of nature is an important gene of Swedish literature. However, few people are recognized as inheriting the spirit of Carl von Linné, the 18th-century Swedish botanist and the father of modern biological taxonomy and ecology, like Martinsson. Like Linné, Martinsson pursues accurate observation and scientific description of nature and is fascinated by details. However, unlike Linné who put humans at the center, Martinsson encounters animals and plants at the level of their own and explores the boundaries that humans can reach. He believes that nature is all-encompassing and untranslatable, and he has been searching for his place in nature throughout his life. Although Martinsson faces nature with an open mind, he has never equated the value of animals and humans, and has long been concerned about the impact of human activities on the environment.

Martinsson's works are characterized by innovative language and frequent use of metaphors. He looks down at insects or up at the stars. His description of nature comes from the triple observation of the public, science and the individual. His short poems about nature are like crystal dewdrops, reflecting the magnificent and timeless world. Long before he knew the names of hemp sedge, field bindweed, bitter leaf and wood sorrel, Martinsson learned to love these weeds and look for patterns in insect movement. As an adult, he transformed his real earthly experiences into poetic texts, describing nature from a philosophical and broad cultural perspective. From 1937 to 1939, Martinsson used his and Moa's farm life outside Stockholm as a starting point to create a trilogy of nature essays: Svärmare och harkrank (1937), Midsommardalen (1938) and Det enkla och det svåra (1939).

In his later essay collection Utsikt från en grästuva (1963), Martinsson described insects as follows: "They extend a thousand imaginary high-voltage wires from one flower to another, turning the summer meadow into a tense scene of life... an infinitely complex alternative nervous system serving the flowers..." He also wrote: "The smallest landscape, the tufts around the shoes, can be as rich in meaning as famous mountains and rivers if properly considered." Martinsson believed that "those who depict nature must first learn the art of the mind in solitude and silence." He extended the concept of nature to the entire human nature, trying to use it "as the deepest and ultimate origin of cultural expression, human good and evil, evil and war, political system construction and philosophical thought." In addition to writing, Martinsson also painted many landscape paintings with a surrealist atmosphere. His paintings are colorful and visually impactful.

Two drawings by Martinsson from the Moderna Museet in Stockholm

Martinsson's philosophy of nature is deeply influenced by Chinese Taoist thought. After the publication of Nature, he began to seek "another simplicity" after a long period of inner self-examination, that is, mature simplicity beyond "the dome and maze of complex functions", which has the artistic conception of "the great way is simple". Passad is composed of various philosophical thoughts and natural poems. Martinsson said that it was inspired by Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. The trade winds in nature are the guardians of the ocean. He uses the trade winds as a symbol of beauty and kindness, pursues the unity between extroverted wanderers and self-absorbed meditators, and seeks a spiritual outlet in Western humanism and Taoist mysticism. Martinsson borrowed the name of Li Kan, a painter from the Song and Yuan dynasties who was famous for his bamboo paintings, and the Taoist style of Song and Yuan painters. In the quiet and simple long poem "Li Kan's Talk under the Tree" (Li Kan talar under trädet), Martinsson describes a group of philosophers who sit and discuss Taoism under the shadow of trees. They approach the truth with calm perception and understand the reality beyond thinking.

The East Asian Museum in Stockholm has a painting called "Gibbon on a Plane Tree" by Yi Yuanji, a famous Northern Song Dynasty painter. Martinsson wrote an essay "Meditation in front of a Chinese painting" (Meditation inför en kinesisk målning, 1959) for this painting, interpreting Eastern culture in his own way. He felt that Yi Yuanji viewed nature from a spiritual level, and the painting was like a poetic breeze blowing into a cold heart. Martinsson wrote: "There, the landscape and the soul merge, coexisting in the universe in a free and open form" and "The rolling mist in the valley expresses a spiritual transformation in the landscape." Another poem in "Trade Winds" "Visiting the Observatory" (Besök på observatorium) was included in the "Voyager Golden Record" and was sent into space with NASA's "Voyager" probe in 1977. The poem reads:

A large number of suns are found there.

Each sun pulsates according to the laws of creation

In the great glare of the larger sun.

Everything is clear there, day after day.

Left: Traditional Chinese painting by Yi Yuanji collected by the East Asian Museum (partial); Right: Traveler’s Golden Record

Martinsson's collection of philosophical essays, Gyro, was completed in 1947 but was not first published until eight years after the author's death. "Rotation" is a key concept in Martinsson's environmental thought, and the earth itself is an example of a gyroscope. In Martinsson's interpretation, rotation represents a balance between man and nature, and is the law of equality in creation. There are many kinds of biological gyroscopes in life, "the rotation of life is more profound than the most ingenious machinery..." The gyroscope broadens the vision of the universe, from quantitative to qualitative. Martinsson advocates a development paradigm that is related to the "loop time" in Taoist philosophy, believing that time is more of an infinite movement that repeats itself and lingers and rises. Since Martinsson's youth, the European continent has been in the shadow of war. The 1940s was a decade of war, massacres and atomic bombs. Despite this, he always believed in the possibility of a better future.

Shortly after Martinsson was born, Swedish female writer Selma Lagerlöf wrote the famous novel The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, which has influenced generations of readers around the world. In 1958, on the 100th anniversary of Lagerlöf's birth, Martinsson expressed her childhood dream in the poem "Vildgåsresan" to pay tribute to this great predecessor. Martinsson wrote: "We followed our teacher's desire to set foot on the adventurous sky, where everything has changed, and the dry chalk in the school turned into snow-white goose necks, pointing to Akka's (Note: Akka - the leading goose in "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils") distant home on Kebnekaise (Note: Kebnekaise - Sweden's highest mountain)." The protagonist Nils became "the pilot in our first dream of flying", and Lagerlöf, who was respected by Martinsson as "teacher", was "forever associated with the young flying journey and the flock of birds in mythology."

Time, Space and Vision

Sweden in the early 20th century was in an era of turmoil and great changes. New technological inventions continued to enter daily life, and the process of industrialization gradually laid the foundation for modern society. The old agricultural society was disintegrating, and a large number of farmers flocked to cities or immigrated to the New World of North America. Martinsson's mother was one of them. At the same time, a new trend of nationalism and natural romanticism quietly arrived. More and more people missed the lost idyllic life and dreamed of returning to the countryside and nature. In another classic work, Martinsson's novel "Vägen till Klockrike" (1948), the story of the tramp Bolle wandering and reflecting on the edge of society and the endless journey is a tramp's view of Nils in Lagerlöf's works, and Bolle's goal is the "Bell Kingdom" - a place that is always in a state of preservation. The whole book is full of praise for Sweden's natural environment and criticism of industrial society and modern civilization.

In 1956, Martinsson created Aniara, a 103-poem science fiction epic, which was a huge success. Aniara was a large spaceship that regularly transported 8,000 immigrants from an environmentally devastated and nuclear-war-stricken Earth to Mars and Venus. During one of its flights, Aniara unfortunately deviated from its course, leaving the solar system and entering an orbit toward the Lyra constellation, wandering aimlessly in the vast space, facing the fate of ultimate destruction. Miman on the spaceship is the truth teller and protector of illusions, Isagel represents clear and truth-seeking thoughts, and Nobia represents good deeds and moral self-sacrifice. Martinsson visited the Museum of Mathematics in Paris in the same year he wrote Aniara. In one of his poems, he chose a bowl as the image of the universe, which may have been inspired by the "curved space" in Einstein's general theory of relativity. He also said that he was inspired by Dirac's "hole theory":

Likewise, in the boundless space

A light-year-deep abyss throws out the arch

Round bubble Aniara on the move.

Although she travels very fast

and much faster than the fastest planets,

Her speed is measured in space.

It's exactly what we know

This bowl of ice cream has bubbles forming.

Stills from the 1959 premiere of the opera "Aniara" and the 2018 film poster

The subtitle of Aniara is "A Review of Humanity in Space and Time". It contains various major events in human history and literary allusions. It is hailed as "the planetary song of our time" and "an epic story about human fragility and stupidity", which is of milestone significance. Aniara was published at the beginning of the Cold War. The author deeply expressed his concerns about the disasters caused by scientific progress and the distance of human beings from the original nature in the epic. This epic revolves around hope and despair. It is Martinsson's metaphorical and existential thinking about the fate of individuals and mankind. It is also a lament about the lost paradise. It can be symbolically interpreted as the story of mankind's journey to an uncertain destiny or in the inner spiritual space. Martinsson uses evocative and innovative language related to science and technology, with a unique poetic glow. Aniara has influenced many science fiction novels and has been adapted into musicals and movies. In 2019, the exoplanet HD 102956 b was named after Isagel in the epic.

Martinsson's work is deeply rooted in the times in which he lived, yet his ideas and artistic inspirations are often avant-garde. When atomic energy was used in war, Martinsson responded earlier than most of his fellow writers, and the question of whether human morality matured with the advancement of technology runs through his entire writing. Most of Martinsson's poetry collection "Vagnen" (1960) is natural romantic poetry, but the criticism of contemporary car culture in the concluding part "On the Sound of the Chariot" received a lot of negative comments. Although parts of the book were later re-evaluated, it clearly affected his mental health. In his later years, Martinsson created "Poems about Light and Darkness" (Dikter om ljus och mörker, 1971) with new enthusiasm, including many poems inspired by science. For example, in "Electrons", he turned his attention to the inner world of matter and the microscopic world. The poet compares the rotation of electrons to "chrysalis, the innermost cocoon will not open by itself", "inner deformation, deeper swaying, the performance of the dancer's inner heart."

On October 3, 1974, the Swedish Academy voted to award Johansson and Martinsson the Nobel Prize in Literature for that year. According to the Nobel Prize website, as of 1973, both had been nominated for the Literature Prize 12 times. The two writers' awards were praised by the general public, but were severely criticized by many media in their own country. Although the critics did not question the literary qualifications of the winners, but targeted the fact that the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize to its own academicians, they were still deeply hurt. Johansson died of lung cancer in 1976, and for Martinsson, who suffered from severe depression, these criticisms became the last straw that broke the camel's back. He committed suicide in February 1978 by cutting his stomach with scissors. Between 1909 and 1974, a total of six Swedish writers won the Nobel Prize in Literature. But it was not until 37 years later that Swedish poet Tomas G. Tranströmer became the seventh Swedish winner.

On December 10, 1974, the King of Sweden presented Martinsson with the Nobel Prize certificate. Johnson and Martinsson (first and second from left in the right picture)

Martinsson’s tragedy dates back a long time and had very early foreshadowings. As early as 1934, he wrote in a letter about how the pain of time tormented him like a demon. This recurring despair for humanity continued into the later years of Martinsson’s life, through the war years and the vision of Aniara. Perhaps, as Thomas Stearns Eliot, a famous 20th-century American and British poet, said, “My end is my beginning.” October 12, 2006, the 50th anniversary of the publication of Aniara, was named “Aniara Day.” Martinsson, like the passengers of the Aniara, had embarked on a journey of no return, but his spirit had entered the eternity of time and space. I would like to end this article with Martinsson’s poem “The Island” (Den lilla ön) in The Chariot:

Every century has an island,

An island of time that radiates immortal light.

Surrounded by a sea of ​​pain,

There were wars and humiliation, oppression and death.

Yet that island was our only salvation.

Socrates sat on it when he was alive.

And the Buddha sitting on the other side

On the third seat next to the cross sits Christ.

The island never got bigger.

The world of truth is always crowded.

Where are the world's small islands today?

Those who live a thousand years from now will know,

If a thousand years from now they will go that far.

Stockholm, May 29, 2024

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