Gustaf Fröding

Audio|sv-gustav-froeding.ogg|Gustaf Fröding IPA|/ˈgɵsˌtav ˈfrøːˌdɪŋ/ (August 22, 1860 - February 8, 1911) was a Swedish poet and writer, born in Alster outside Karlstad in Värmland. The family moved to Kristinehamn in the year 1867. He later studied at Uppsala University 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 and Monica Zetterlund. He 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.

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 Lillehammer, Norway, were 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, Germany.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, Sweden. Under the care of professor Frey Svenson Fröding got away from liquor and women, except one, Ida Bäckman. To this day, people thinks that Ida Bäckman wanted to marry Fröding and corrupt him in some way. Later she wrote books but they was always judged critically 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 visit 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 Mr Grafströms reasons to write the play was to clear Ida Bäckmans name. A writer who he thinks has gotten way to much critism for her relationship with the great artist 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.

External links

* [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/froding.htm Gustaf Fröding page] at Kuusankoski Public Library

Selected works

Translated titles in "italics".

*Guitarr och dragharmonika (1891) - "Guitar and Concertina"
*Nya dikter (1894) - "New Poems"
*Räggler å paschaser (1895)
*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 Austin)
*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":English translation by C.D. Locock 1925