Monday, April 30, 2012

Dan Andersson, a Finnish poet

It is eerie, reading Dan Andersson in Swedish: he sounds so strangely familiar, homely - and listening to his translations into Finnish, I cannot help thinking that they are even truer to his vision than the original. That's probably presumptuous of me, but Finnish surely is the darker, the more melancholic language, even more fitting for these sad, beautiful songs from the depths of the Finnish forests. And Sweden by far the closest, the most familiar nation to us. Free peoples lost in the midst of dark, northern forests...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dan Andersson is a brilliant poet (the present tense is intentional - all great poets are immortal!) Btw, if I'm not mistaken, Andersson was descended from and grew up in an area inhabited by skogsfinnar/metsäsuomalaiset.

stockholm slender said...

Yeah, he is absolutely great, maybe somewhat under appreciated in Sweden. He might even have some Finnish blood but in any case he rings familiar with his dark but beautiful songs.