Birger Sjöberg

Birger Sjöberg ( born December 6, 1885 in Vänersborg, † April 30, 1929 in Växjö ) was a Swedish poet and writer.

Life

Birger Sjöberg was born in Vänersborg, a West small town in Sweden. His parents owned a small clothing store. As Birger Sjöberg was 13 years old, his parents' shop went bankrupt. Birger Sjöberg had two brothers - - struggling with economic difficulties since the family had.

In school, Birger Sjöberg brought only poor performance. The high school he had to leave with no qualifications whatever remained a trauma for him. After he left school, he served an apprenticeship as a photographer. After a few years in which he more bad than good by his way as a store clerk, pulled Birger Sjöberg 1906 to Stockholm, where he was given through the mediation of his brother Gösta Sjöberg a job as a journalist. A year later, he moved to Helsingborg ( southern Sweden), where he also worked as a journalist. According to his book successes early 20s he gave up his position and was living as a freelance writer. Died in 1929 Birger Sjöberg from pneumonia.

Birger Sjöberg had a great looking playful and parodic talent and knew how shiny to entertain people. At the same time he was a shy and timid person. He remained a bachelor all his life, and it is not known whether he ever experienced a fulfilled love relationship.

Work

Already as a teenager began Birger Sjöberg, writing songs, which he set to music and lectured with great success in the circle of friends and acquaintances. In many of these songs he sang his hometown as " Lilla Paris" ( Little Paris ). With his songs Birger Sjöberg tied to a specifically Swedish, to Carl Michael Bellman (1740-1795) declining, tradition: songs, but there are catchy and popular, literary ambitious and artistically challenging.

First published in 1922, after intense pressure from his friends, Birger Sjöberg his songs in the band Fridas bok ( Frida's book ). The songs describe in loving irony of living in a small town in Sweden and the love of the lyrical I to Frida. Whether there was a real role model for Frida, is not completely understood.

The apparent ease of Frida songs can sometimes forget how artfully it - is following on from Heinrich Heine - between naivety and irony, balance between genuine feeling and parody of the feeling between jest and earnest.

Fridas bok was a great success. Birger Sjöberg went with his songs on tour throughout Sweden. The tour was, although Birger Sjöberg suffered from severe stage fright, a veritable triumph. To date, many of Birger Sjöberg Frida songs are popular in Sweden and are often sung.

, 1924 Birger Sjöberg novel Kvartetten som sprängdes ( The blasted Quartet). The novel continues the small town idyll of Frida songs and soon became a similar success as Fridas bok. Despite the spirited love of storytelling and brilliant humor of the author also fear and insecurity will be felt in the novel but.

As a 1926 Birger Sjöberg's next volume of poetry, Kriser och kranser ( crises and wreaths ), came out, the audience was shocked: In place of popular catchiness bold expressionist eloquence was entered, the harmless small town idyll displaced by haunting portrayal of fear, despair and loneliness. Birger Sjöberg was of the opinion that his previous literary successes were acquired at cheap and that he had betrayed his own artistic standards. Now Relentlessly he reckoned from with itself and the world. Kriser och kranser is - Pär Lagerkvist next Angest - at the beginning of modern poetry in Sweden. Formal follow the poems, eg in terms of metric or use of rhymes, mostly traditional patterns. Language, however, is distinguished by bold neologisms, surprising word compositions and startling metaphors and does not shrink from the breach of grammatical and syntactical rules, has, in its immense concentration and density far into the future.

Kriser och kranser met with contemporary readers and critics complete lack of understanding. This rejection has the sensitive Birger Sjöberg made ​​difficult to create and certainly contributed to his early death. Gradually learned critics Kriser och kranser certainly appreciate. Already in 1929 Birger Sjöberg has been awarded a major literary prize for this. Thereof The message, however, did not reach the terminally ill. Today Kriser och kranser is counted among the most important Swedish poetry collections of the 20th century.

In Birger Sjöberg's estate, there were innumerable other poems, some of which were published posthumously with great success: Frida andra bok ( Frida's second book, 1929), Minnen från jorden ( memories of the Earth, 1940), Syntaxupproret (syntax riot, 1955), Frida tredje bok ( Frida's third book, 1956).

Literature and CD Note

• Johan Svedjedal, Skrivaredans - Birger Sjöberg liv och diktning, 1999, ISBN 91-46-17378-1 (biography in Swedish)
• 15 melodier ur Fridas visor, Mikael Samuelson (vocals) and Mats Bergström (guitar), Musica Sveciae, catalog no. MSCD 625 ( CD with 15 songs Frida, detailed booklet in Swedish and English )