Bücher von Tomas Tranströmer

In seiner ehemaligen Speisekammer sammelte Tomas Tranströmer die Dokumente aus den Randgebieten seiner schriftstellerischen Arbeit: Tagebücher, Briefe, Zeitungsartikel und Fotos. Daraus hat er kurz vor seinem Tod sein letztes Buch zusammengestellt. Es folgt den Epochen seines Lebens und Schaffens. Da ist die Kindheit mit der alleinerziehenden Mutter, der erste Gedichtband, die Arbeit als Psychologe an einer Jugendstrafanstalt; dann die Ehe und die beiden Töchter, Sommermonate im Schärengürtel und die Insektensammlung; und schließlich das Klavierspielen mit einer Hand und der Literaturnobelpreis. Dieses reichbebilderte Vermächtnis ist ein Geschenk an alle Leser und Liebhaber der Poesie.

Das schmale lyrische Gesamtwerk von Tomas Tranströmer hat auch außerhalb Schwedens großen Einfluß ausgeübt; besonders aber in Deutschland. In seinen Gedichten kommt eine innere, erträumte Welt hinter der Wirklichkeit zur Sprache, die in ihrer exakten Schönheit ein Gegenbild zeichnet.

Tomas Tranströmer's poems are thick with the feel of life lived in a specific place: the dark, overpowering Swedish winters, the long thaws and brief paradisal summers in the Stockholm archipelago. He conveys a sense of what it is like to be a private citizen in the second half of the twentieth century.

In day's first hours consciousness can grasp the worldas the hand grips a sun-warmed stone.Translated into fifty languages, the poetry of Tomas Transtromer has had a profound influence around the world, an influence that has steadily grown and has now attained a prominence comparable to that of Pablo Neruda's during his lifetime. But if Neruda is blazing fire, Transtromer is expanding ice. The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems gathers all the poems Tomas Transtromer has published, from his distinctive first collection in 1954, 17 Poems, through his epic poem Baltics ("my most consistent attempt to write music"), and The Sad Gondola, published six years after he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1990 ("I am carried in my shadow / like a violin / in its black case."), to his most recent slim book, The Great Enigma, published in Sweden in 2004. Also included is his prose-memoir Memories Look at Me, containing keys into his intensely spiritual, metaphysical poetry (like the brief passage of insect collecting on Runmaro Island when he was a teenager). Firmly rooted in the natural world, his work falls between dream and dream; it probes "the great unsolved love" with the opening up, through subtle modulations, of "concrete words."

Tomas Transtroemer (1931-2015) was Sweden's most important poet of the past fifty years. This book contains all the poems he published. Robin Fulton's translation is the most authoritative and comprehensive edition of his poetry published anywhere.