The Collector Journal for Swedish Literature Science Research

Jon Viklund, Modernism i rörelse. Harry Martinson och den poetiska processen. (Modernism in Motion. Harry Martinson and the Poetical Process.)This article advocates a historicized reading of Swedish lyrical modernism. The poems of many Swedish authors exist not in one form but in multiple versions, published in contexts which are in themselves historically or politically significant for how the poems are to be understood. For Harry Martinson the revision was a central part of the creative process, a process that many times was extended over one print version after another.In the first section I set out by describing Martinson’s view of writing, also citing some external testimonies to his writing process. Subsequently I present two different but interrelated theoretical approaches to Martinson’s work. The first one is based on assumptions about the textual processes made by French critique génétique, as well as notions of “Textdynamik” found in German editorial theory. I take these perspectives as means of a hermeneutical methodology using revisional variants as incentives for interpretation. As an example I describe and interpret one of Martinson’s unpublished poems as a work in progress, i.e. as a diachronous succession of manuscript versions rather than as a single unit. Secondly I use the theoretical concepts of “sociology of the text” and “material modernism” in order to make sense of the multiple print versions in Martinson’s oeuvre. Different printings of a poem might contain diverse historical meanings and sociopolitical codes (meanings that regularly are erased in later anthologies and critical editions).In my main analysis I read Martinson’s well known poem “Bomull” (“Cotton”) in three of its different versions – all in all it was printed 13 times during the author’s lifetime. I demonstrate how the poem in every new print version is construed as a different text, marked not only by the different wording but also by the bibliographical context. In the first newspaper version the poem is made into a clear-cut political text, and its meaning is emphasized by the overall political and ideological content of the paper. In the next version, the poem is included in an anthology of “Modern poetry”, with a novel expressive typography and new variants in the text; e.g. the word “maskinerna” (“the machines”) is used in a setting which could easily be understood as a salute to the progressive comrades in his generation. In yet another print version – in the illustrated second edition of Nomad (1943) – the poem has been thoroughly rewritten again. And this time it is illustrated in what, at the time, was labeled a “bibliofilupplaga” (“deluxe edition”). Thus here again the poem is recontextualized, altering the grounds for interpretation. Accordingly, in this analysis I try to show how a historicized reading of different textual print versions can change our perception of the work.