LEIF SJÖBERG

It is true that Ekelöf occasionally may appear "absurd" in his later poetry, but to call him "absurd" is inaccurate. He is beyond categorizations of that type. Whether he would approve of the most recent offshoots of the "absurd school" is questionable. Whatever "absurdism" he has is by no means absolute…. Disbelief and skepticism are in fact more typical of Ekelöf than mysticism and absurdism. Skepticism requires an observant, analyzing mind, which is precisely what he has at his disposal. With all his outward success, and with all his analytical ability, however, he finds little but meaninglessness around him. (p. 18)

By being interested in fundamentals Ekelöf has had to make some painful reductions, he has had to start from scratch, without any expectations at all…. Instead of the superstructures, so typical of our civilization, he has often investigated substructures, basic conditions and concepts. The outcome is rather alarming, at least to those with fixed positions and values. In fact, he does not consider such rigid positions as real possibilities. He must have been struck by the many conflicting elements in his own personality which tended to cancel each other out. The extent to which he has experienced these conflicts has been so great that he has questioned the existence of the self. (p. 19)

As a consequence of [the] conviction ["there is no I"] the poet can go further in "Open It, Write," which, according to some critics, can stand even a comparison with the high points in Eliot's reflective poetry. Ekelöf's pre-Christian and post-Christian, i.e. non-Christian, mysticism, however, differs widely from Eliot's meditations. In the third section of this long poem Ekelöf discusses the nature of self. The protagonist may call himself "I" and he may say "it concerns me," but in reality he is no one. The "I" is explained as a projection of fantastic order, generated from fear. Commonplace abstract concepts such as justice, human dignity, and freedom of the will are seen as mere constructions, features in an ever expanding system of beliefs in which each new extension will eventually be taken for granted, accepted, and assimilated. A concept such as salvation constitutes the apex of wishes, but this salvation has no existence except in highly developed human wishful thinking. "In reality you are no one." This statement runs through the whole movement like an echo, and it forms one of the easily recognized ways with which the poet achieves his simple but effective rhythmic patterns which may suggest a Gregorian chant.

In the last two movements of "Open It, Write," he expresses the thought that in human life two forces are constantly at variance with each other; with our constant need for generalization we speak of good and evil. The continuous struggle between them is what produces the rhythm of life, or, if you prefer, evolution. The secret balance of these forces is seen by the poet as the virgin. She can be called virgin because she is in no way yoked together with the stereotype opposites that we always deal with, i.e., life-death, east-west, good-evil and so forth. She is the third totally independent and unconnected point of view, and points to an absolute ideal, independence and freedom, far beyond good and evil. This virgin is compared to a doll thrown about by children, compliantly resigning herself to the meaningless. Whoever can analyze the components of the combat as a struggle between the two forces, automatically discerns the balance point of the struggle, the virgin. Whoever focuses on the virgin (the balance), however, loses track of her, because she is part and parcel of the combat, and so disappears in the combat. Two of Ekelöf's most important concepts are "the virgin" and "nothing."

In Ekelöf's opinion it is thus "useless to sneak behind the cloth of human dignity and the spice-cupboard religion." What then can redeem this life? As seen from his poetry only, the answer seems to be—death. Death has apparently fascinated Ekelöf, since a number of poems deal with this subject. In fact, his first published book, Sent på jorden … he has himself called a "suicide book," or if you will, "a death book." (pp. 19-20)

[The volume Färjesång], which Ekelöf himself considers his real break-through, ends with "Euphoria," presenting a sensation of almost ecstatic well-being experienced before a long one-way voyage. The poet appears thoroughly prepared for death. He is fearless, calm, almost happy. And in an early part of En Mölna-elegi (A Moelna Elegy) he recollects some of his relatives, their bad and good deeds in time gone by, as Yeats, Eliot and, later, Robert Lowell, James Wright, and others have done. (p. 21)

[Ekelöf's] brooding about death is no necrophilic endeavor … but springs from a synthetic tendency in Ekelöf's philosophy, namely, that all things interact, that every object, including people and every concept, has a series of complex relations with its neighbors, and interpenetrates them. None of them can be fully understood until they are set in their proper environment, that is, relation to their past. Thus everything is dependent on everything, the lives of the dead ones is in a way relived by the poet, and their lives are his raison d' être, and at the same time excuse. This idea has been expressed in somewhat similar terms by him in "A Dream (real)."

Paradoxically, Ekelöf attributes to the dead ones even higher qualities than to the living ones…. Death nonetheless continues to haunt Ekelöf. Like an ancient Gilgamesh he constantly is frustrated in his ambitions to understand death…. (pp. 21-2)

Ekelöf's habit of looking at things as states or processes—perhaps inspired by his reading of ancient Indian literature, which also contains The Book of the Great Decease—makes it possible for him to embrace virtually everything as one and the same thing, one grand totality. He is no less aware than a scientist like Fred Hoyle that the basic cellular component of a human is no more remarkable in itself than the basic component of a turnip. A dog or a cat is perhaps as miraculous as a human being. This view of his explains how in his writing a tree can talk, and a stone can think. It is unlikely that the poet here has just borrowed ideas from folk tales. (p. 22)

Related to death is sleep, which can yield knowledge about the "inner" personality, "the inner cells." This is the important thing: to be oneself…. When he himself wants nothing higher than "to be or become himself," it is obvious that he normally endures great clashes in his personality…. [It] is implied in Ekelöf's poetry that alone is the only way a person can be himself, and "individual man" is the only person he can trust completely. No group or ruling majority, only the outsider, the individual, without loyalties, obligations and attachments can be free. (pp. 22-3)

If Ekelöf's staunch emphasis on the individual is founded on a personal need, his assurance "a world is every human being" is founded on his agreement with Stoic philosophers, Swedenborg, and a host of other thinkers. (p. 23)

If the pessimist Ekelöf expresses a considerable amount of dissatisfaction in general, he is dissatisfied in particular with certain aspects of life in the welfare-state. His book of poems, Non Serviam (1945)—with obvious references both to the literary tradition of Satan and Joyce's Stephen Dedalus—in effect states in the title poem that he will not serve that in which he does not believe.

A poet of such high sensitivity and deep cultural conscience would evidently be unhappy with many aspects of man's technical development. He reacts against the unnaturalness of the super-civilization which the Western world has created, as compared to a quiet, dignified life in meditation, which he much prefers. He also reacts against boastful talk about progress which often is superficial and no more than our ancestors have been doing all along, without boastful claims. His highly developed sense of cultural coherence and historical perspectives makes him also react against much publicized Western "discoveries" of what is no more than practices and phenomena of long standing in the Eastern world. He dislikes the artificiality, the Ersatz so common in our culture and hankers for the simplicity and joy of certain periods, like the baroque period of eighteenth-century Sweden, or Antiquity.

In "The land of the Freeze" Ekelöf pours out his criticism of a society which he has tried unsuccessfully to escape from three times during his years as a young man…. (pp. 24-5)

Right or wrong, Ekelöf is courageously standing up for his convictions and views. The matter is no doubt of great concern to him, but one may seriously question if he is ever on a par with his best achievements in these poems of love-hate to Sweden, and perhaps especially, Stockholm. (p. 25)

What Ekelöf primarily loves and enjoys is nature, and preferably the somewhat barren, yet idyllic, Lapland scenery. His other major love is the Mediterranean area, including its people, scenery, and culture. He has written numerous miniatures and nature impromptus, thereby joining the finest tradition in Swedish lyrical poetry, including such writers as Fröding, Heidenstam, and Strindberg.

To be sure, serious subjects are the main concern of Ekelöf, but particularly in the later volumes, beginning with Strountes (… 1955) he can be thoroughly humorous, frequently employing puns in a manner which may remind a reader of Desnos or Joyce. (pp. 26-7)

The course of Ekelöf's development will remain difficult to assess in detail, until the chronology of his work has been straightened out. Tirelessly he elaborates certain themes, as if never satisfied with his solutions. The confusion regarding the chronology has arisen because out of some kind of exaggerated need of honesty, the poet has published "initial drafts" and revised or retouched versions of certain poems in an order which is without doubt very different from the order in which they were written. Ekelöf is in this respect more like Auden than like Yeats. How complicated the situation can be may be ascertained from the fact that A Moelna Elegy was a work in progress for some twenty years or more, while sections of the poem were released for publication at various intervals.

Many of the poems published in 1955 and after have a prosy, anti-esthetic character which makes them read like brief essays, but Ekelöf is concerned enough about form to be extremely selective about words and sounds. Somewhat like Philip Larkin, who claims that "content is everything," Ekelöf applies the best of his art to the simple rhythms and cadences of his "statements," to which he attaches the greatest importance. His style appears as unadorned and unaffected as it could usefully be, and precisely for this reason it gets its character of genuineness and honesty as well as humility. It conveys adequately what Ekelöf is aiming at. (p. 27)