Lennart Sjögrens »Bernt Notke«

An interartial analysis of Lennart Sjögren’s poem »Bernt Notke« A general feature in Lennart Sjögren’s poetry is that man interacts with animals and becomes a conversation partner with these against a nature backdrop. In the poem »Bernt Notke«, in which the 15th century North German sculptor Bernt Notke’s triumphal crucifix provides the foundation, the animals and nature are absent. The human being and her history are exclusively in focus. Few of Lennart Sjögren’s interpreters have to any appreciable extent acknowledged the poem »Bernt Notke«. However, a quote from this poem has come to appear as characteristic for the poet: »Jag drömmer / om en allians mellan det fromma och köttsliga / de skimriga mysterierna och det praktiska «. (Köttets hus, 1971). Lennart Sjögren contributes to a new way of using ekphrasis in writing poetry. W.J.T. Mitchell’s note is well suited to exemplify this orientation. Mitchell writes: The »working through« of ekphrasis and the other, then, is more like a triangular relationship than a binary one; its social structure cannot be grasped fully as a phenomenological encounter of subject and object, but must be pictured as a ménage à trois in which the relations of self and other, text and image, are triply inscribed. If ekphrasis typically expresses a desire for a visual object (whether to possess or praise), it is also typically an offering of this expression as a gift to the reader. The poem »Bernt Notke« is such a gift to the reader. However, this gift demands a service in return. The educational task wherein Sjögren with his transformation of the altar piece offers his services is not only a concern of the poet, but also to embrace the reader’s commitment. Disloyal to the sensuality of the people of history, but also to the piety ideal of the church, Sjögren’s poem seeks to free the altar piece from dogmatic fetters. The ekphrasis makes such an appeal possible. When Sjögren depicts what he observes, he uses his and others’ knowledge of Bernt Notke’s time and in this amalgamation he creates a new context for this piece of art in another genre. It is the differences more than the similarities that give the writer the possibility of entering the work of art, but which also for the same reasons open doors for the reader of the poem to become part of the allegory where people of different eras – their thoughts and doings – penetrate each other.