Poetry
Andelige och werldslige dikter
Not translated into English
Jacob Frese · 1726
Synopsis
Two parts, the spiritual poems and then the secular ones: devotional verse, hymns, occasional pieces for weddings or funerals, in which the author handles the alexandrine and the wordplay of his time. Among them stands out a sequence written on the return of the fever that seized him every spring: in it he passes from health to suffering, from despair to trust, and speaks of his sick body in a personal voice that the poetry of his time scarcely knew.
Context
The subtitle says the pieces were composed and put in order in 1724, the year the author finally obtained a stable post; printing followed in Stockholm two years later, in two parts, during his lifetime. The sequence of spring poems, which tradition has called since Atterbom the Spring Meditations, is its most quoted part. The beginnings follow Johan Runius in the pleasant occasional verse; the pietism that the author's hymns let through earned him an audience in those circles and, perhaps, exclusion from the official psalm book. Forgotten for the rest of the century, appreciated by a few Romantics, he regained his standing only after 1900, thanks to the historian Arvid Hultin.
Who it is for
Two parts, in Old Swedish. A great deal of commissioned poetry to get through before the personal pages, and a spelling that is no longer today's.
Prizes and reception
The encyclopaedia of Finland counts its author among the first Swedish-language poets of the country, and his sequence of poems on illness is said to be unique in its time.