One could speculate on Ekelöf's position among contemporary poets if his mother tongue had been English or any other "world-language," but one should then keep in mind the force of another, strangely similar Scandinavian, the Dane, Sören Kierkegaard. In due time Ekelöf will prevail and conquer. He stubbornly returned to the same themes with original imagination utilizing international and intracultural imagery. Much of what he has to say is placed on the sharp edge of paradox. Some music might be lost in translation but some might even be gained, for it is my experience that he is eminently translatable because the meat of his thoughts so often is merely suggested between the lines and in the clash of metaphors.

As a student of Ekelöf's works, it was only natural that I would devour his autobiography [En självbiografi. Efterlämnade brev och anteckningar] in search of clues to supposed riddles. I ran through it feverishly in order to get to know him better—but I put away the book with a feeling of disappointment. Upon rereading it I realize that the disappointment had its roots in my greediness for novelty and sensation. There is very little here that Ekelöf has not revealed earlier in his works. He was already transparent. What the book does is stress his sincerity. It is yet another Ekelöf volume bearing witness to his alienation in the modern, superficially structured world and to his familiarity with painful, passionate and basic existence.

It is of course a rich book full of ideas and poetry and as such a useful complement to much of what he has written. For years Ekelöf had contemplated writing some sort of autobiography but never brought it off. This volume is put together by his widow [Ingrid Ekelöf] from a mass of letters and notes that he had collected to that end….

In selecting the material and adding just a few necessary comments, Ingrid Ekelöf has succeeded in giving us the picture of a man who lived according to his works and his words. Her evidence is overwhelming and overwhelmingly moving. For the autobiographical selections add little new—they merely prove the translucent consistency of a great poet. What he sees in retrospect was there from the first.