How does that feel?
– The first line of my first collection of poems is a motto by the poet Bengt Emil Jonsson. It reads like this: “Whoever becomes enlightened unexpectedly is stupid.” “It’s been decades since I wrote it, but it still stands,” says Gunnar D. Hansson.
You have received several nice awards in recent years. Are they more for joy than for the moment?
– You are a joy. I work in an unprofitable industry. The prices are even more important. One can say that from a capitalist perspective, poetry is a crisis industry with constant overproduction. But for some people it can be an absolute necessity of life. The only thing that is almost actually real. So yes, the prizes have allowed me to create a freedom for myself.
Since his debut in 1979 he has With around fifteen collections of poems, he is considered one of Sweden’s most important poets. He also has extensive translation work and an academic career as Professor Emeritus at the University of Gothenburg. And even though he’s 80 years old, he’s still active, to say the least.
Does creativity continue to flow as you get older?
– I cannot make general statements about Sweden’s aging population. But I’m still very active. The poems become essays, which become translations, which become publications. I can’t separate one from the other, I’m just working on it because this poem thing is very important.
The Swedish Academy also emphasizes Gunnar D. Hansson’s contributions as a literary researcher and translator. Among other things, he has reinterpreted the Icelandic family saga in five volumes and the Sturlungasagan in three volumes. His translation of the Old English epic “Beowulf,” which is believed to have been set in southern Scandinavia at the beginning of the 6th century, was recently published.
– I’m doing it on my own initiative because Beowulf concerns me. It may not worry many, but it worries me a lot. I can’t even distance myself from it, but these ancient writings are much more relevant to me than most of what is written today. I enjoy literature the more the more distant and older it is.
But as a poet, you can still say you’re a modernist, right?
– Yes, I’m very influenced by it, but I usually say that I go beyond genres. The latest poetry collections do not contain pure poems with short lines, but are collections of different content, with pieces of prose, facts, and anecdotes. It is always the language of the poem that is crucial. It becomes a kind of contamination of genres, but at the bottom of it all lies my enormous belief in the language of poetry.
What is most important to you, your own poetry or the translation and publication of older literature?
– It lies deep within me to work with something that goes beyond my own subjective things. I am a passionate Swedish teacher from a time when people still believed in school. The Norwegian poet Georg Johannesson said: “Everything I have written are translations.” Using language means translating. Writing means translating experiences or conveying some kind of influence. What I do is a kind of lifelong language practice, a kind of further training for myself.
Facts.Gunnar D. Hansson
Is a writer and translator, lecturer in literary studies and professor emeritus of literary design at the University of Gothenburg.
Born in 1945 and grew up in Smögen, Bohuslän.
Debuted as Poet in 1979 and had his breakthrough with the trilogy “Olunn” (1989), “Lunnebok” (1991) and “Idegransöarna” (1994).
Recently translated the medieval epic “Beowulf”. He is currently working on a large edition of the works of Thomas Thorild.
Among many Literary awards include the Samfundet De Nio stora pris 2018 and the Sveriges Radio Poetry Prize, which he received in 2000 and 2018.
the Swedish Academy With a prize sum of SEK 400,000, the Nordic Prize is the second largest prize awarded by the Swedish Academy after the Nobel Prize.
