Poetry
Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space
Aniara
Harry Martinson · 1956
Synopsis
The Earth, poisoned by radiation, is being evacuated to Mars and Venus. Aboard the Aniara, one of those great ships called goldondes, eight thousand emigrants set out for Mars. To avoid the asteroid Hondo, the ship leaves its course and can no longer manoeuvre: it speeds out of the solar system, towards the constellation of Lyra. The narrator, the mimarobe, watches over the Mima, a machine that keeps the knowledge and culture of mankind, and the hundred and three cantos tell of life on board, memories, loves, cults and nostalgia for the Earth.
Context
The poem was begun in 1953, after the first explosion of a Soviet hydrogen bomb and an August night when the author observed the Andromeda galaxy through binoculars; the first twenty-nine cantos appeared that year in the collection Cikada, under the title Sången om Doris och Mima. The whole, which mixes regular and free verse, appeared from Bonnier on 13 October 1956. Karl-Birger Blomdahl made an opera of it, premiered in Stockholm on 31 May 1959 to a libretto by Erik Lindegren, and a film was made of it in 2018. The poem appeared in English in 1963, then in a new translation in 1991, and in French from Agone in 2004.
Who it is for
A long poem in one hundred and three cantos, which can be read in Swedish, French or English; its invented words take a little time to get used to.
Prizes and reception
His most famous work; it appears on the list of the fifty best poetry collections drawn up in 1990 for the Världsbiblioteket.
Sources for this page 8
The pages consulted to check this page.