Poetry
Fridolins visor och andra dikter
Erik Axel Karlfeldt · 1898
Opening lines
Nu, grofva smide från min tankesmedja,
skall släggan gå och pröfva, hvad du tål.
Jag vet, att länkar brista i din kedja,
men vet jämväl, att där finns ärligt stål.
Now, rough ironwork from my forge of thought,
the sledge shall go and test what you can bear.
I know that links are breaking in your chain,
but know as well that there is honest steel.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from litteraturbanken.se
Synopsis
A prose note introduces Fridolin: an educated man of peasant stock, returned to the trade of his forefathers because it seemed tempting to dig the earth after digging only into books. He no longer quite knows which station he belongs to; he has not married, although he is of an age and inclination to do so, and in his bachelor solitude he has begun to write songs. Sometimes he sings of what he lives or has lived, sometimes he imagines what other bachelors think of their lot, and his verses range from the tone of the gentry to that of the peasants.
Context
The author's second collection, published in 1898 after a first volume in 1895, the book brings Fridolin into being, whom Karlfeldt took up again three years later and whom critics have always read as his double. It opens with two introductory texts. The character borrows from the figures of Bellman and from the novels of Fielding, on whom the author had just written his thesis. With the following collection, it won its author his breakthrough as a national poet. Selections of his poems exist in English, including Arcadia Borealis, translated by Charles Wharton Stork in 1938.
Who it is for
A collection of songs in Swedish, which mixes learned language with Dalecarlian words; the opening page itself introduces its protagonist.
Prizes and reception
Its author's breakthrough, which gave Sweden the figure of Fridolin, at once compared to Bellman's Fredman.
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The pages consulted to check this page.