Pessoa in Sweden: the Northern trajectory of a lonely canonical

ABSTRACT

By looking simultaneously at the succession of translations of Pessoa into Swedish and the critical reception of Pessoa in Sweden, this article investigates when and how Pessoa became a point of reference in the Swedish literary field. The hypothesis is that there currently are two overlapping versions of Pessoa in circulation in Sweden. One is Pessoa as a metonym for Lisbon, the other is Pessoa as a distinct author figure defined by his four main heteronyms but often disconnected from any specific corpus of poetry. In the 1980s, this author figure was enlisted (by the winning side) in a struggle between competing aesthetic paradigms in Sweden. Among the handful of critics and translators that have shaped the Swedish reception, this article looks especially at the pioneering contributions of Arne Lundgren and Bengt Holmqvist. Particular attention is then paid to Orons bok (Livro do desassossego). First published in 1991, Orons bok has since appeared in two more editions and is the translation that has reached the largest number of readers. In this regard, the Swedish reception follows an international tendency to construct Pessoa as the author of Livro.

KEYWORDS:

• ‘lonely canonical’
• poststructuralism
• swedish literary field
• translation
• Horace Engdahl
• Bengt Holmqvist
• Arne Lundgren
• Fernando Pessoa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All translations from the Swedish are my own, unless otherwise stated.

2. My general statements about publications in the Nordic languages are based on searches in the national catalogues of each of the five countries.

3. A journalistic yet trustworthy account of this circle can be found in Matilda Gustavsson’s Klubben  (M. Gustavsson 2019), her exposé of the scandal that threatened to undermine the Swedish Academy in 2018.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stefan Helgesson

Stefan Helgesson is professor of English at Stockholm University and a senior research associate at Rhodes University. His most recent book (co-authored with Mads Rosendahl Thomsen) is Literature and the World (2020).