Poetry
Den sörgande turturduvan
Not translated into English
Synopsis
Songs of mourning. The woman who speaks has lost, a few months after the wedding, the man she loved. Withdrawn into solitude, she speaks only of what she feels: abandonment, sadness, longing, a disgust with living, softening nothing and turning nothing into a lesson. Each piece is sung to a tune, and the grief is spoken in the first person, without detour.
Context
The collection was written during mourning, in a small rented house on the island of Lidingö, near Stockholm, where the widow had withdrawn. Handed to the censor on 9 November 1742, together with a mourning poem for the queen, it appeared without the author's name at the beginning of 1743, presented as a set of sad songs composed to beautiful melodies. Its author then produced four volumes of verse in six years, in Stockholm.
Who it is for
A collection of brief songs of mourning, in eighteenth-century Swedish; there is no French translation and no English translation.
Prizes and reception
The collection that made its author known, in which critics have praised a personal and anguished tone without precedent in the Swedish poetry of its time.
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