Tomas Tranströmer
His poetry, building on Modernism, Expressionism, and Surrealism, contains powerful imagery concerned with issues of fragmentation and isolation. “He has perfected a particular kind of epiphanic lyric, often in quatrains, in which nature is the active, energizing subject, and the self (if the self is present at all) is the object,” notes critic Katie Peterson in the Boston Review.
Critic and poet Tom Sleigh observed, in his Interview with a Ghost (2006), that “Tranströmer’s poems imagine the spaces that the deep then inhabits, like ground water gushing up into a newly dug well.”
His honors include the Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, the Aftonbladets Literary Prize, the Bonnier Award for Poetry, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Oevralids Prize, the Petrarch Prize in Germany, the Swedish Award from International Poetry Forum,the Swedish Academy’s Nordic Prize, and especially the 2011 Nobel Prize in literature. His work has been translated into more than 50 languages.
Tranströmer suffered a stroke in 1990, and after a six-year silence published his collection Sorgegondolen (Grief Gondola) (1996). Prior to his stroke, he worked as a psychologist, focusing on the juvenile prison population as well as the disabled, convicts, and drug addicts. He lives in Sweden.
On Thursday, 6th of October 2011 he was awarded the Nobel prize in Literature "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality".
“Every person is a half-opened doorleading to a room for everyone.”
“In the middle of life, death comesto take your measurements. The visitis forgotten and life goes on. But the suitis being sewn on the sly.”
“Every abstract picture of the world is as impossible as a blueprint of a storm,”
“الحياة الجميلة ، عربة هادئة مليئة بأناس غاضبين !”
“Jag som älskar att ströva och försvinna i mängden, en bokstav T i den oändliga textmassan.”
“Hasse, duży ciemny chłopiec, pięć razy silniejszy ode mnie, miał zwyczaj kłaść mnie na łopatki na każdej przerwie tego pierwszego roku szkolnego. Początkowo stawiałem silny opór, ale to nie służyło niczemu, kładł mnie i tak, triumfując. W końcu wynalazłem metodę, która powodowała jego rozczarowanie: całkowite rozluźnienie. Kiedy się zbliżał, udawałem, że Ja Sam uciekłem pozostawiając jedynie trupa, szmatę pozbawioną życia, którą mógł sobie przygniatać do woli. (...)Zastanawiam się nad tym, jakie znaczenie metoda przemiany siebie samego w pozbawioną życia szmatę miała dla mnie w późniejszym życiu.”
“Det finns i skogen en oväntad glänta som bara kan hittas av den som gått vilse.”
“I am carried in my shadowlike a violinin its black case”