The work of Sweden’s Tomas Tranströmer is immensely rich, deep and wide-ranging
IT IS fitting that, in his 80th year, the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer has been awarded the Nobel Prize. It has been long in coming, long anticipated.
The course of his living and of his career as a poet was tragically broken in 1990 when he suffered a debilitating stroke, paralysing the right side of his body and impairing his ability to speak and to write.
But his poetry, up to that time, had won international recognition.
He has been ably translated into English by Robert Bly and Robin Fulton, among others, and excellent volumes of his work are available from Bloodaxe. I came across his work in the Penguin Modern Poets series; the first line of his first book gave me a sudden shock of recognition, how poetry allows the self to be vulnerable to experience and therefore reaches beyond mere reasoning.
This openness accepts the freedom that language and form allow; the poet remains permeable to the whole of experience. That first line, from Prelude, reads: "Waking up is a parachute drop out of dreams."
I wanted more of this accessible complexity; I sought him out. I translated his work for an Irish audience and we became lifelong friends.
He is a gracious presence, intelligent and precise, a great pianist who still plays piano using only his left hand. I published, with Dedalus Press, two volumes of his work: The Wild Marketplacein 1985, when Tomas came to Ireland and Seamus Heaney launched the book to an enthusiastic audience. And For the Living and the Deadfollowed, in 1994. (Both these volumes will be incorporated into a new publication due shortly from Dedalus).
Tranströmer’s power with imagery is unsurpassed; a poem of his gathers disparate images from several sources and offers a poetry that is immensely rich, deep and wide-ranging. The imagery remains true to the actual world and yet discovers mysteries that touch on a universal human memory.
His power emanates from such conjunctions, going beyond what he calls the “truth barrier”. His work honours his native Sweden and yet ranges the world, touching ground from New York to Madeira.
A long poem, Baltics,is an epic of place and history while remaining in touch with his own grandfather, a ship's pilot.
It is a poetry that opens the world to a loving scrutiny that changes the reader’s view of things; as Tomas has said: “Poems are active meditations, they want to wake us up, not put us to sleep.”
His is a deeply human and resonating voice, capacious, exciting and immensely readable.
From March '79
Tired of all who come with words, words but no language
I went to the snow-covered island.
The wild does not have words.
The unwritten pages spread themselves out in all directions!
I come across the marks of roe-deer’s hooves in the snow.
Language but no words.
John F Deane is founder of Poetry Ireland; his latest collection is Eye of the Hare(Carcanet, 2011)